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My Mother Regretted Her Abortion
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Issue
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| Contributor | Imperator |
| Last Edited | Imperator Jul 15, 2013 12:27pm |
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| Category | Perspective |
| Author | Prisca LeCroy |
| News Date | Monday, July 15, 2013 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | In a recent New York Times opinion piece called "My Mother's Abortion," Beth Matusoff Merfish tells of her experience sitting with her mother in the gallery of the Texas State Senate while Democratic senator Wendy Davis filibustered the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. In 1972 as a college student, Merfish's mother crossed state lines to find a place to have a legal abortion. She went on to build a career as an abortion rights activist. Merfish writes to applaud her mother's actions and to encourage other women to put a face on abortion by coming forward with their abortion experiences.
Just a few days after Merfish sat in that senate gallery with her mother, "yell[ing] in indignation" as Republicans sought to end the filibuster and bring the bill to a vote, I sat quietly in a conference room at the Dallas-Fort Worth Hyatt Regency with my mother. She was about to share the details of her abortion experience to an audience at the National Right to Life Convention.
Like Merfish's mother, my mother had her abortion in 1972. She was living in New York City for the summer and was preparing to begin her junior year at Harvard when she became pregnant. Abortion was already legal in New York, and advertisements promoting the new right seemed to be everywhere. Abortion looked like a straightforward solution to her problem--a way to turn back the clock.
"At age 20," my mother said, "I had no inkling of the mental and emotional darkness I was about to enter. I couldn't have grasped the immense psychological toll abortion would take for years into the future--unrelenting tears, guilt, shame, and depression." While taking full responsibility for her decision to have an abortion, my mother believes she was led to what she calls her "tragic, irreversible decision" by a series of lies and distortions: distortions about fetal development, doublespeak about choice and rights, and glorification of "planned" and " |
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