Don't like abortion, Stupak? I don't think anyone likes abortion, Stupak, but sometimes it is necessary in order to protect the living. I am a long-time Kossack but never diary, only comment. This extraordinary inclusion of de facto abortion restriction in health care reform gives me no choice but to share this deeply personal story.
I would not be alive were it not for abortion, not my own; I have finished my reproductive life and managed to avoid unwanted pregnancy and any life threatening conditions during my multiple planned pregnancies due to access to excellent information, birth control, never being raped, and, most importantly, the experiences my beautiful little grandma shared with me when I returned from my freshman year in college.
My grandparents lived up the street from us and helped my parents with childcare when my mother returned to school and, later, work. We lived in a typical postwar development, the kind filled with the families of returning WWII vets, purchased with no-down-payment for vet mortgages. My grandparents sold their big house overlooking the water and downsized, though my grandfather continued to work until he died. Our houses were physically identical but could not be more different. Grandma loved to cook, garden, sew, listen to opera, read and tell us stories. We didn't get Hans Christian Anderson fables; no need for that since Grandma's life was way more interesting with a childhood in Romania, floods that had them huddled on the roof and the loft of the barn, baby lambs, wet nurses, a savant brother, religious persecution, a large and extended family in several countries, intermarriage, and immigration to America during the tidal wave of the early 20th century.
The only unpleasant element about Grandma's house for me was the constant smell of fish from the previous night's dinner. We got dropped off in the morning before school and I would head to Grandma's sewing room, the place furthest away from the fish smell, where I learned to sew on the ancient Singer that was electrified but still had pedals, and learned to appreciate fabrics and a well-made garment. I learned to knit and crochet there, all with Grandma's instruction, and spent hours looking through family photo albums dating from the 20's with the opera or news on quietly in the background, under a print of "School of Athens".
Life at home with my parents and sisters was quite different, a lot less cozy, a lot less warm and fuzzy though plenty supportive. My mother had graduated college, quite unusual for women of her age and class; she had done so out of desire and out of the iron determination of my little grandma. Home was academic and competitive. I read and read and read and relaxed by learning the usual fecal and fart jokes with my sisters and listening to the radio or the stereo. School came really easily to me; I never remember a time where thoughts of my future did not include college.
I was wildly successful at academics and getting into colleges, the top colleges in the country. I chose to attend one on the other side of the country, sight unseen, to explore the unknown, to travel and to avoid an unscheduled visit from my other grandparents with whom I did not have a warm nor fuzzy relationship. I am only partially joking about the latter. I arrived at school armed with "Our Bodies, Our Selves" and some notion that I was now allowed some social enjoyment other than music and excrement jokes. I had dated a little in high school but was pretty immature socially. Freshman year battered me up pretty good with wild crushes, guilt and confusion about pleasure, lots of recreational drug use, and confusion about academics since I found almost everything interesting but couldn't major in that. Additionally, I felt confused and conflicted about success, beauty, music, and a career as if I was betraying my very working class roots.
When I arrived home for the summer after freshman year I was unsure about everything including gravity. I slept for a day, unpacked, found a job, then went to visit my little grandma. Grandma was possibly five feet tall in her youth but was shrinking via the magic of vertebral fractures and osteoporosis to maybe 4' 8" or 9". I am waaaaay taller and towered over her at that point as we hugged but I wanted to just curl up next to her until everything felt safer and more secure but we went out into her small backyard into the vegetable gardens and talked as we weeded.
Then little grandma dropped the atomic bomb on me: "Are you still a virgin?", she asked. Not what I expected nor anything I really wanted to talk about since I wasn't a virgin anymore. I waffled an answer but that didn't phase her. She then advised me not to marry the first man I slept with, discussed sexual pleasure, birth control and Roe v Wade! She said that abortion should be my last option now but that I had to promise her that I would do whatever I could to help keep abortion safe and legal and to help my friends avoid unwanted pregnancies and abuse but to support them if they needed abortions. I listened but my jaw would have dropped to the ground out of shock and surprise unless I clenched it though I felt unbelievably lucky to be hearing this from my grandma.
There was more.
My grandfather was quiet. I didn't know him as well at all. He worked a lot and tended to spend family time with his family who were Bolsheviks, Russians who had escaped the Tsar to America, returned to Russia after the revolution, and left Russia permanently after their massive disappointment with the realities of communist life. My grandparents met in New York, in East Harlem, where their families settled. He noticed her as she walked to the subway in a yellow cape she made, to get to her job in a sweatshop in the Lower East Side. They married and quickly had one baby, my aunt, the beautiful one. My grandfather and his nephews worked crazy hours setting up their business, leaving my grandmother at home most of the time alone with my infant aunt. They had an apartment, little money for food, and little time together. Birth control was illegal but available.
Grandma breastfed my aunt and didn't get her period, hoped she would not get pregnant again since they were so poor and because my grandfather started acting strangely, accusing my grandma of having affairs while he was away at work. She was doing nothing of the sort but his accusations continued, sounding like a crazy different person than the man she married. He was relentless and beat her. I never saw him lay a hand or even angry at anybody but I have no reason to doubt my grandma given what I know now. She went to her family for help. Typical for the time, they refused to believe her and told her to be a better wife and nothing would happen.
The threats, accusations and beatings continued and my grandma got pregnant. He said he would kill her if she got pregnant even though he was the only man she slept with and he refused to use condoms. She tried to find a birth control pessary (a primitive IUD) but was unable and feared anyway that he would find it and beat her for that. Grandma told me she felt she had to choose between ending the pregnancy or being beaten to death. She chose abortion. She asked one neighborhood woman who gave her a name. She contacted the woman who came to the apartment during the day and helped my grandma abort the pregnancy. My grandfather never knew. Grandma survived and my grandfather's paranoia waned over time as his anxiety over his business and their poverty waned as the business thrived.
They moved to help the business grow and somehow survived as a family. There were no other episodes of manic paranoia and they had other children including my mother and no other family violence, ever. Grandma told me that she discovered that my grandpa had a mistress he kept for the rest of his life. She was angered but took her marriage vows seriously and knew she and her children would be shunned by the family and be in abject poverty again if she left him.
It would be an underestimation to say that my little grandma was the most important person in my life. I am a happy, healthy wife and mother as are my sisters as were my aunts, as is my mother. All of us have worked inside and outside our homes. We have all been productive citizens, proud to be American. None of us, except my aunt, the beautiful one, would have existed without my little grandma's abortion. He would have killed her.
Which leads me to my point.
Fuck you, Bart Stupak.