I'm participating in blogging-for-choice day today January 22, 2008 to
honor Roe Versus Wade Supreme Court Decision legalizing abortion.
I am an illegal abortion the summer I turned twenty, and immediately
after the abortion I started hemorrhaging. Actually, after the abortion
I had gone to my legal doctor who said I was all right but I had started to hemorrhage.
Each day I got weaker, was losing blood, couldn't eat, and found it hard to walk.
Four days later I had to be rushed to the hospital in Los Angeles. By that
time I had lost a lot of blood and was losing my ability to walk. Since I was
under twenty-one I couldn't sign myself into the hospital, my doctor called
my parents who immediately came with cash and signed me in. The doctor
immediately performed a d and c to save my life and I stayed overnight
in the hospital. Actually, the doctor never told he what had happened but
told my mother who explained it all to me later. I was happy I could walk again.
My mother brought me home the next day to recuperate, and a few days later
I got mononucleosis, which my doctor thought I had picked up in the hospital.
I was sick with the mononucleosis for the next six months, and had to take
time off from college. The whole experience took about 8 months out of my life
and has had negative impact on my whole life. Even routine doctor's visits bring
back nightmares.
If I had to do it over again, I would have done the same thing as I did. At nineteen
I did not want a baby. I wanted to continue at college. I knew my mother had
gotten pregnant when she was a nurse cadet during World War II and was thrown
out of nursing school because of her pregnancy (nurse cadets weren't allowed to
be pregnant). I knew I didn't want to be forced out of college. My parents were
very poor when I was born as my dad, just out of the air force, didn't have a job.
I think that nothing can stop women from having abortions, and we should have
safe, legal abortions. Otherwise the consequences will be horrendous. I was lucky
I didn't die and merely had eight months chomped out of my life and lifelong scars.
Keep abortion legal!
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1 comment:
I can't begin to imagine what it was like to go through the experience you tell about here, but it's essential I think for people to read and hear this.
If for no other reason than to emphasize, again that this is not some abstract policy debate, that it profoundly affects the lives, and deaths, of real people.
The obscene hypocrisy of "lawmakers" making decisions about this for other people, lawmakers who will -- economics and class being what they are -- continue to have access to safe abortions themselves if they should have the need -- well, you know what I'm saying here.
Thank you very much for telling about this.
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