I’m one among the earliest in the post-Roe v. Wade generation. Even though I grew up in a staunchly Republican household, I was raised pro-choice, period. Things aren’t often up to question in Republican households, and this was no exception.
I learned later on that I was an unexpected pregnancy. My arrival disrupted the rhythm of a family that had done its childbearing and was ready to move on and move up. I was costly and I just didn’t fit in with the priorities of a young family already well-beyond its diaper years. When you learn that, it can undermine your sense of belonging to the family – but I learned at the same time that I was a wanted child. My mother long ago revealed to me that she and my father considered abortion when they confirmed her fear that she was pregnant. They rejected the idea and decided that they wanted this baby.
Knowing this, I’m even more deeply in favor of choice. Not all people who consider abortion are scared, single young women. But I have known at least one who was.
We were still young, still in college. We were the kind of close friends who spent more time together than we did with anyone we might be dating. This, of course, led to rumors that we might be together (hilarious to us, since I’m gay). But I knew her so well back then that when something about her changed, it popped up quickly on my radar. Call it woman-identified intuition. I looked at her one day and said, "Are you pregnant?"
She stared back at me, mouth agape. "Not that I know of. Why?"
"I don’t know," I said. "Something’s just...different."
"Well, I’m a little late, but that’s not abnormal for me."
I don’t think it was even a week later that I got the early morning phone call. It was all muffled sobs. She could barely get the words out, but I knew. She wasn’t just late. Her breasts were tender and a little swollen, and that little test she’d bought at Eckerds held the result I expected. What I didn’t expect was the request that followed.
"Will you drive me to the clinic if I want to go?"
I couldn’t say no. You don’t say no. Not when you’ve always promised to be the cushion that softened a rough landing.
I didn’t know anything about what reproductive health services were available where we lived, much less abortion services. I didn’t know what to expect, either. But very, very early one Saturday morning we got up, and I drove my friend to the north side of town. It was a cool, beautiful morning, but as we drove up to the unassuming building just off the highway, we rolled up the windows. Even then – I don’t think it was later than 5:30 a.m. – there were people picketing. My parents are from Kansas; we have family there. I knew all about what happened at clinics there. I cringed. Her face went ashen. Mine turned red – not with embarrassment, but anger.
I can’t be sure, but I doubt those people knew what my friend was going through. I doubt they had any clue how heartwrenching this experience already was and would be for her. Maybe some of ‘em did, but they were short on empathy that day. She asked me to wait outside for her, and I did. The picketers at least left her alone as she went in the door. I reminded myself that mowing them down with the car was a crime and made no one’s life any better. It still didn’t help me be any less angry at people who wanted to make the most difficult hour my friend had ever faced in her life any worse. It wasn’t their decision to make. It wasn’t their body; it wasn’t their life; it was none of their freakin’ business. It still isn’t. They held signs that labeled my friend a murderer, and me an accomplice to murder. They judged and demonized. Yeah, they were short on empathy. They sodomized empathy.
Perhaps an hour or two later she emerged, and I drove her by the pharmacy and to her place. We didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t an ill-considered or quick decision. I offered to help be the doting gay uncle if she wanted to have the baby – heck, I even offered to adopt him/her myself – if she wanted to carry the pregnancy to term. I wanted to make sure she felt like she had all the options in the world. The only woman I knew who I was sure had considered abortion had all the options, and I felt like I benefited from that and wanted to make sure someone else had as close to the same options as possible. She was from a really conservative family, too – more so, even, than mine – and was sure she would be at least roundly condemned and at worst (likely) disowned if she tried to explain her situation to them. We were still in college. She was still a dependent. There was no way out, in her mind.
Since that day, she has looked back many times and second-guessed. She has grieved. She has seen children she thought looked like that one might have, and heaven knows how she has hurt. I can’t remotely say what I would have done in the same situation. I’ll never be pregnant; it’s very unlikely I’ll ever father a child, and if I do, it’ll happen very, very much on purpose. I know what it’s like to be judged, though, and I know what it’s like to fear what people will say when your private life becomes public knowledge.
The only thing I can say for sure is that I don’t regret being there with her. I don’t regret being, and I'm not ashamed to have been, an accomplice to choice.