‘It was a nightmare’: life in the US before legal abortion

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The supreme court decision in Roe v Wade was made 49 years ago, making abortion a protected right. Now, with that right under threat, people recall life before the landmark ruling

Saturday marks the 49th anniversary of the supreme court’s Roe v Wade decision, the landmark ruling that guaranteed the right to an abortion in the US. It could be the last anniversary before it is overturned.

So I got myself to Baltimore. [The gynecologist] was a lovely lady. She gave me a little tiny folded piece of paper with a phone number on it. I get in the backseat, and we drive out to a farmhouse. There was a couple … they laid me down on a table and gave me a mask. I had no anesthesia. After a while somebody I presumed to be a doctor comes out wearing scrubs, and he performs the abortion. He leaves, and the people who are there give me some pills to dry up my milk, and some maxi pads.

I was assigned to a 16-year-old [at nursing school]. I walk into the room, and there were like six or eight doctors standing around this beautiful looking girl. I mean, I’m 18, she’s 16. And her eyes are rolled back. She’s thrashing all over the bed. And all these docs are totally helpless. I was a Catholic teen. But right then and there I thought no one, no matter what kind of mistake or goof-up or whatnot they did in their life, they shouldn’t have to suffer and die like that.

This is an example of the kind of catastrophic things that women did to themselves. They would put lye in their vagina to induce an abortion. They literally used coat hangers and knitting needles. They died. There was a group in Boulder that wanted to start a private nonprofit abortion clinic. And they got my name and called me and asked me if I would be willing to help them start this clinic. I had no intention of doing something like that. But when they invited me, I accepted.

 

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