I agree that this is a step backwards in the fight for equality for women.

I admire your bravery in telling your story. I didn't have to go through that myself, but I knew other girls in the 50s who did. Since I lived in the southwest, those secret trips to an abortionist often involved going to a doctor in Mexico. It was horrifying, one of those life-changing secrets that color everything that happens afterwards. Not because it wasn't necessary, but because the culture deemed it unacceptable, and because the results were often bad due to unfit medical care.

The law should not tell women that they should have abortions. Nor should it tell women that they should not have abortions.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

Ronni,
Your experience was harrowing. I am glad you survived. I am too young to have direct experience of that era, but I do remember the stigma you are talking about. Where I grew up, many teenaged-girls who got pregnant had the baby because, our elders would say, "We don't have abortions. That's not what we do." But they would also tell the girls, "You made your bed, now lie in it. I am not talking about abusive families -- that's a separate problem. What that meant was that the girls often dropped out of school, or married -- sometimes as young as 14. Sometimes the guy would go into the military because that was the only hope he had of supporting a family. Then he started drinking, then he started beating her. I saw it happen more than once.

I was going to share something else, but I'm not ready. I applaud your courage.

BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|Contributing Writer, Online Journalism Review

First, thank you Ronni for sharing this story. I know that this is the most difficult thing for any woman from your generation to witness: the erosion of the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 70s. You are right. Younger generations have no idea what's at stake. And I do not deny the success the pro-life movement has had in eroding this precious civil right. For this erosion, I apologize.

Whether you agree with abortion or not, it should not be the place of government to ever control a woman's reproductive system. Ignoring the health of the mother is the ultimate paradox--and hypocrisy--of the pro-life movement.

But can we at least agree that there needs to be a greater discussion over reassessing medical standards and educating women who choose to wait until the very last minute to abort?

Everyday technology and medical advances are forcing us to look at the nuances of choice.

Every day a growing number of fetuses deliver at 25 or 26 weeks of gestation. Many of these fetses are likely to die. A doctor will gently tell the mother that the fetus wasn't viable, and that this was nature's way.

Yet medical advances are allowing more and more of these fetuses born to survive as young as 25 weeks of gestation. And they are being born so just days after a late-term or third trimester has begun.

These infants spend months on machinery, ingesting steroids, facing extreme risk of brain damage and physical disability. But they survive.

This reality, along with what seems to be a very cruel procedure, makes it difficult for even the most pro-choice of advocates to support a woman's right toward late-term abortion.

It is a difference--and a compromise--that we in the choice movement should at least acknowledge and discuss.

A few weeks ago, I spent some time with a man in his 60s who told me that his mother was orphaned when she was a young girl after his grandmother died from an illegal abortion. It is so important for people to share their stories, and I appreciate your honesty and bravery.

Suzanne, BlogHer Contributing Editor - Feminsim & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

This discussion reminded me of a fascinating oral history interview recorded in 1974 with a woman named Miriam Allen deFord describing how contraception and abortions occured in the 1910s. She talks about using a "dutch pessary" as a contraceptive and taking ergot, a toxic fungus, to induce abortion. Twice. There's both text and audio.

BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|Contributing Writer, Online Journalism Review

Thank you for sharing your deeply personal and harrowing story. You have very powerfully driven home for me the reason that I will always believe in a woman's right to choose.
Your bravery brought tears to my eyes.

laurie
www.notjustaboutcancer.blogspot.com

Your story is harrowing.

I recently saw the film Vera Drake, about an English abortionist in the 1950's, and it's incredible. I recommend it.

Ronni,

I'm so sorry you went through the experience of aborting your child.

I understand the point you are trying to make, perhaps that it was shameful to be an unwed mother in 1959.

I am trying my best to be polite in my comments and I do not wish to sound as though I'm attacking you because that is not my intention.

One thing I can't understand about this "women's movement" is the fact that some women are ashamed to have babies without being married or in a partnered relationship, but they are more than willing to shout from the roof tops that they aborted a child and are adamant about defending the right to "choose."

Why not choose life? Why not choose to place the child for adoption?

Because that would be too difficult than admitting a mistake was made? It's too difficult for a woman to admit she had unprotected sex (or pre-marital sex as it was called in the 50s), so it's better to risk her life trying to save face? It's easier to have an abortion because then no one will ever know that this woman had sex?

I find this very hypocritical because back when abortions were illegal women were eager to risk their lives just to end the pregnancy.

But now, 50 years later the pro-life movement is being accused of hypocrisy? In an age when medical technology is so advanced that women rarely die in childbirth anymore!

The excuse that abortion could save the mother's life is just that; an excuse. It's really a way for women to get out of "the jam" they got themselves into.

You stated that you didn't make enough money to afford to raise a child and that the father wanted nothing to do with a baby or you. I'm sad to hear those words. Nothing could me more devastating than being alone to go through pregnancy and childbirth. But these are just more excuses.

Today we have adoption agencies, state funded medical care and other welfare organizations that assist single mothers.

What is wrong with using these services if one does not wish to be responsible for a child? Why wasn't that mother responsible before she had sex?

I know my questions are blunt but I'm only asking for the truth.

Pro-choice doesn't sound very liberating to me. In fact it's just the opposite. The right to life isn't respected anymore. Abortion just serves as a way to legally ease a woman's conscience.

I don't know the emotional and physical stress you were under in 1959 and I never will. But I do know that it must have been very difficult and I wish you peace.

Dana from The Dana Files.

Ronni Bennett
Time Goes By

Please, young lady, do not lecture me and do not presume to think you have the answers for everyone. You would do well to get a little more living under your belt before handing up your sanctimonious condemnations.

for sharing your story. That must have been an incredibly frightening experience and I applaud your bravery for sharing that with us.

I, too, fear that women will be forced in to going through what you went through yet again. I cannot believe how blind this lobby is... how they cannot see that by achieving their goals, they they would be forcing women in the 21st century, when "medical technology is so advanced", back to coathangers.

How utopic they make it sound, that if women were just "responsible" the world would be perfect, that no pregnancy would ever be unwanted. And even if it were a surprise, and the woman's formerly loving partner turned tail and ran, and she found herself homeless and unemployed, that's fine because women can turn to welfare and adoption agencies and get all the help they need at the drop of the hat.

Unfortunately the system doesn't work that way. Our society doesn't work that way. I would personally love it if no woman ever felt she had to terminate a pregnancy because she felt she had no other choice, no other options. But that's not the way the world is right now.

ThreeSeven... not just a number anymore

As someone whose life would be threatened by carrying a pregnancy to term, I resent the fact that people who have no medical knowledge of such things opine, much less legislate, that I am worth less than a child yet to exist.

-Lisse
@ Home in the World

I appreciate Ronni feeling able to share her story.

While I wish that she would not have had to go through that experience, I realize that she is one of many, many women that have made that choice. My own mother made that choice. I often wonder if I might have had a sister if she hadn't made that choice, as opposed to 3 brothers.

I love my mother dearly. We have a lot of water under the bridge, but I don't have to agree with the choice she made or even think that it was the right one.

Shelley P. It is not necessary to bare fangs and rip each other apart because others don't share similar viewpoints. You are allowed to have them as well as I, or Dana, would be allowed to have them.

Huffing off because you don't feel that someone has been put in their place vehemently enough is immature in my opinion.

Abortion is difficult to discuss because of all of the emotion wrapped up in it from both sides of the issue. 1.3 million abortions are performed every year. That is a lot of women having aborions. Every one us probably knows someone who has had an abortion, even if we don't actually know that they have. For that reason we shouldn't resort to name-calling.

That being said, I have seen the effect that abortion has had in the lives of family members. It leaves its mark on women in a very drastic way.

Wheat Among Tares

It leaves its mark on women in a very drastic way.

I think you should rephrase that statement to read "some women." I believe you when you say that the women in your family have been marked drastically by abortion, but there are women for whom that choice left no such drastic mark.

My mother was raped on the back porch of our apartment late one night by a man she had been introduced to when she was out having a cocktail after work with a friend. This man followed her home and surprised her as she was trying to find her keys.

My mother was in the midst of divorcing my father and raising her three daughters as a single mom. She had moved us to a very small town - a town where this man's name was very well known (and still is). She knew it was pointless to report the rape, as no one would have believed the story of a new single woman in town vs. someone who'd lived there for years.

She found out she was pregnant several weeks later. She chose to terminate the pregnancy immediately. I was barely nine years old when this all happened. She never told me until I had my own children years later.

Her decision did not have a drastic effect on her and she knows without a doubt that she did the right thing. I was already dealing with my parents splitting up - she would never have added to that by having to explain a pregnancy to me. And she was trying to start her own life over as well. Dealing with the rape was enough of an issue itself. Dealing with a pregnancy on top of everything else? No way. And if anyone wants to believe that my mother's decision was callous and uncaring or an excuse, well, that's certainly your right. But you don't know my mother.

And that is the heart of this entire matter. We cannot make these choices for each other. Only you can know what is in your own heart and conscience. Only you can and should make that choice for yourself. Period.

And to Ronni... my step-mom was born and raised Catholic. She's also a nurse, however, and while she would do everything she could to help prevent her daughters from needing to make that choice, she knows that to make that option illegal would end up being even more harmful to women in the long run. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Disorderly Conduct

Ronni Bennett
Time Goes By

Suzanne Reisman: Thank you for those statistics. I didn't know them; they shed new light for me on the overall issue of abortion.

Kim: Terrific link to the Miriam deFord history.

Valbee: Really important point. During the decades of the abortion debate in which the scar left on women who have aborted pregnancies has been a given, almost no one has been brave enough to say otherwise.

It is nearly 50 years since my abortion and not then nor at any time since have I suffered a twinge of guilt or regret. I was in an impossible situation and, given the times in which it occurred, I was lucky enough to find an almost reasonable solution.

[Hmmm. Interesting. Although I have thought it many times during abortion discussions in the half century since my abortion, this is the first time I have admitted my lack of regret. Years ago, I didn't do so because the social pressure to express one's loss (with accompanying tears) was great and when I was younger, I sometimes wondered if I was missing a morality gene. I know better now.

I don't think telling my little story in this public forum and admitting my sense of relief following the abortion is brave. Perhaps it is an advantage of getting old: coming to understand that one woman's abortion and her emotional response to it doesn't amount to a hill beans except, in this case, to warn of the life-threatening dangers to women of banning abortion.]

Some women who undergo abortions do experience guilt and regret, often emotionally crippling. But people are different, bring differing sensibilities to the same event and no responses are invalid.

It is almost safe to say that in a perfect world where no one ever makes mistakes, where everyone lives responsibly at all times every day, and every child is guaranteed a loving home with two parents who can afford the child, no one would choose abortion.

Until then, every woman must have the right to abortion for whatever her reasons and to not be ashamed of having done so.

Every woman in this discussion has a different set of circumstances and opinions related to this issue. There is no one set of reasons why women chose, or not chose, to carry out their pregnancies. Thus, why in the world should there be one pat answer???

I'm seeing this thread late.

Thank you, Ronni, for sharing your personal story. You could easily have argued on an intellectual level rather than with open, sharing heart and splitting gut.

Your account of what women were forced to go through before winning freedom to their own reproductive rights is a reminder of why it's so important to not lose sight of what's at stake.

Reproductive rights are central to the freedom of half of the population of humanity on Earth on a personal, life-long level. If even some women don't understand the importance of, and stand up for the right of all women to choose, irrespective of personal morals, how can men be expected to 'take care of us'?

Men and women bring different sensibilities and attitudes to many issues. I have always believed society benefits from including and weighing these gender differences in public debate. But abortion is where I get radical.

Until a man is capable of giving birth and/or every man is forced by law to both financially support and participate in the gestation and raising of every child he fathers, and such law is enforced without exception (a permanent ankle tracking device for those who run comes to mind) no man has a right to discuss abortion, let alone to vote on it.

No one can convince me that pregnancy, birth and the choice to abort or not are anything but women’s domain, exclusively.

If God/Life allows choice and it is choice that allows us to each create our reality, which man, or woman, dares to take my, or any other woman's, right to choose, away?

I don't aspire to 'find heaven' in the sky somewhere. We each create our individual and collective heaven/hell right where we are. In this process of creating heaven on Earth, I insist that every woman, and only the woman, has the final say in whether a child is born via her own body, or not. I'm sorry but I'm constantly amazed that there is even a debate on this issue.

My husband to this day 'jokes' that he should sue the doctor who tied my tubes after the birth of my second child since the doctor didn't first seek his 'consent'. And I never jokingly ask him what say he thinks he had in the matter.

Billions of women continue to live in poverty across the globe and one common denominator amongst them is their inability to exercise freedom in their reproductive right choices, be it under the guise of cultural, religious or other factors.

The simple matter is that a woman's economic freedom is intrinsically and inescapably bound up with her freedom to choose whether she will have children or not.

Taking away a woman's right to that basic choice is not some high-minded spiritual or moral issue, although that serves to cloak it very well. Keeping the majority of this planet's women firmly in their place economically and socially is the true intent.

Slavery is alive and well for the majority of women on this planet and will continue to be until every woman, everywhere, has access to free, effective, safe contraceptives and when chosen, free, effective safe abortion facilities. This is only one, but a very basic, important aspect of establishing women's freedom planetary-wide.

As the Maroons in my own country, led by Nanny, Jamaica's only female national hero to date, knew, and as all revolutionaries and freedom enablers around the world throughout history knew and know, freedom is either total or it is something else entirely.

Angela.

"Angela's Voice"
Spirituality Self Help

That a woman's ability to reproduce and nurture life are the abilities that truly differentiate us--and therefore, empower us--and yet that's the thing that mankind, and his enablers, fight so hard to take from us? (i.e. choice, breastfeeding in public, etc??)

Finally, why are there so many candidates wanting to take away this right who are completely uninterested in improving and overhauling our healthcare system?

Isn't the pro-life movement denying a pro-quality of life position?