In 1990, in the small window of time when a woman’s right to choose in the United States was a given, I sat staring at my young female doctor as she gently told me I was pregnant. We discussed the choices—I could continue the pregnancy or not. If I chose an abortion, I could make an appointment on my way out of the clinic. I decided right away to have an abortion. I told my ex-boyfriend what I wanted to do, and he gave me half of the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fee. There were no protestors in front of my doctor’s office on the day of my abortion. The procedure took five minutes, and I was out the door in an hour and back to my life within days. No regrets.
I was a woman in my twenties, living two thousand miles away from my family, and I owned my own business. I was capable. I was independent. But in addition to relief, I felt shame and embarrassment. I told only a few people I could trust. I worried that people would look at me differently if they knew. I worried they would think I was stupid, careless, slutty, irresponsible, selfish. I was terrified people would find out, especially my clients. My face flaming with guilt, I lied about why I had to take a few days off.
I still feel a small bite of shame. It follows me to Planned Parenthood, where I work as a volunteer escort. I feel it pricking at me as I stand in front of the clinic, my heart pounding in my chest, as anti-abortion protestors shout horrible things: You’re going to hell. You’re a murderer. Your baby will scream as she’s being aborted. The worst black genocide is happening right now in that clinic. Mommy, don’t kill me.
Despite our best efforts to shield patients, they can’t help but notice the protestors. They are bewildered by random strangers who make them feel worse than they already do. They don’t understand why their deeply personal experience has become public.
It isn’t fair. None of this is fair.
I chose to write Camille’s story to sound an alarm, to show young women what they have to lose, how their bodies are being regulated, and how their rights to decide when and if to have a child are being slowly taken away by laws that shut down clinics, set abortion limits on gestation periods, outlaw rare late-term abortions (usually used to save the mother’s life or prevent a baby’s suffering), require fetal burial, and on and on. I wanted to talk about how shame is used as a weapon to control women’s reproductive rights.
Because abortion restrictions are in constant flux, it was almost impossible to keep up with the changes as I wrote, so I set the time line for Camille’s story in 2014, after Texas passed extreme reproductive laws. I based Camille’s story on fact, in particular an Atlantic piece from June 2014, “The Rise of the DIY Abortion in Texas.” The article tells the story of women who travel to the Rio Grande Valley in search of misoprostol, the abortion pill, on the black market.
In the year and a half it took to write and edit Girls on the Verge, new abortion laws in the United States have been passed, challenged in the courts, upheld, or overturned. As I write this on March 29, 2018, the Kentucky House, controlled by Republicans, just passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in history: an eleven-week ban on the common abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation.
Although seven in ten Americans believe that abortion should be legal, women’s reproductive freedom is not assured because the political anti-choice movement is strong. There are protestors at nearly every abortion clinic, some of them peaceful, some of them violent. Abortion providers, support staff, and volunteers have been harassed, doxed, and exposed. Clinics have been shot up, bombed, and burned. Doctors and nurses have been murdered. Officer Garrett Swasey, Ke’Arre Stewart, and Jennifer Markovsky were shot and killed in a Colorado Planned Parenthood in 2015; Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in his church in 2009; Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot and killed in his home in 1998. Since the early 1990s, there have been eleven murders and twenty-six attempted murders.
It’s no wonder that women are afraid to talk about their experience. But to break the stigma of abortion, we have to bring it out into the light. Women who are able to share their stories can help put an end to the fear and the shame.
In January 2017, I walked in the Women’s Rights March in Chicago alongside my aunt Pam. She is one of the badass feminists who walked in the 1978 March for the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington, DC. As we joined the crush of people on State Street, she looked at me and said, “I can’t believe we’re still protesting this.” I can’t believe it, either. How long will we have to fight to live in this world on our own terms?
Talking about my own abortion scares me because I don’t know how people will react. But I’m fifty-one years old now, and I’m tired of ducking my head and pretending it didn’t happen. I’m ready to talk about my abortion now. Like Camille, I’m not embarrassed anymore. I’m not ashamed.
Roe v. Wade became law in 1973, making abortion legal in the United States. But it remains up to the states to regulate abortion, and many enacted Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which create never-ending regulations on clinics and on women. Nonprofits, such as Texas’s Jane’s Due Process and Lilith Fund and the National Abortion Federation, help women work around these laws, but it can be overwhelming and taxing in an already stressful situation, and women are often forced to travel many miles, sometimes to another state, to reach their nearest provider. Legal organizations, such as the Lawyering Project, the ACLU, and the Center for Reproduction Rights, challenge these laws.
The possible overturning of Roe v. Wade would mean the end to legal abortions in the United States. Women would still have abortions, but they would have to seek illegal and unsafe abortions.
Texas’s restrictions on abortion—noted in the epigraph—were struck down in the Supreme Court (Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt) in 2016. But the damage was done. Many women’s clinics shuttered in the years it took to appeal.
Pregnancy “crisis clinics” have stepped into the void left by shuttered women’s health clinics. These sham clinics and mobile units (often parked near legitimate women’s clinics) offer free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests. They offer counseling, which is an attempt to persuade women not to have an abortion. They give incorrect information about contraception and abortion. It is often difficult to tell a crisis clinic from a genuine clinic.
Abortion is common. Despite restrictive laws, as of 2017, one in four women in the United States will seek an abortion by age 45. Fifty-six percent of women who seek abortions have a child already. Thirty-four percent are 20 to 24; 12 percent are teens age 15 to 19. Seventy-five percent of women seeking abortions are poor.
Abortion rates are dropping. Due to widespread availability of contraception, data taken between 2010 and 2014 shows a drop in the abortion rate—teens accounted for 46 percent of the drop. Abortion restrictions exist in most states. The Guttmacher Institute, the leading research and policy organization for sexual and reproductive rights in the US and globally, notes that 43 states have gestational limit prohibitions, 20 states prohibit “partial birth” abortions, and 37 states require parental involvement.
Despite all of this, you, like Camille, have options. If you need help or advice on pregnancy, there are resources available to you. For information on abortion in your state, visit guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/overview-abortion-laws and the sites listed below.
Planned Parenthood, plannedparenthood.org
NARAL Pro-Choice America, prochoiceamerica.org
National Abortion Federation, prochoice.org
The Guttmacher Institute, guttmacher.org
Jane’s Due Process, janesdueprocess.org
The National Network of Abortion Funds, abortionfunds.org
The Lilith Fund, lilithfund.org
National Organization for Women, now.org