Carrying the Shame: A Reminder of Why We Can’t Go Back

As word spread throughout my family’s traditional “Frisgiving” celebration of the

attack on the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Springs, we

all struggled to come to grips with the horrible news. Many of our guest were old

enough to remember the world before Roe v. Wade and they know what will happen

if terrorists, like the one who attacked PPRM, or anti-choice legislators across the

country get their way.

One of the women at our dinner on Friday gave me permission to share her abortion

story, which took place in 1968, five years before Roe. She asked that I change her

name because she still feels an enormous amount of shame and anxiety, not about

her decision to end her pregnancy, but as a result of the process she had to endure

to do so.

When Jill was 15 she became pregnant. She confided in her mother, who was

supportive of her decision to terminate the pregnancy. In the pre-Roe era Jill was

unable to receive an abortion in her home state. Instead, she and her mother

arranged to travel to Maryland, which had recently passed one of the least

restrictive abortion laws in the country and allowed for abortion in cases where the

woman’s life or health was at risk.

Though Jill’s life and physical health were not at risk, mental health was included

under the Maryland’s abortion law definition. So she and her mother travelled first

to New York City where two different private doctors certified that Jill, still a

teenager, was mentally unfit to be a mother. Both of the doctors were male and one

of them berated Jill for the entirety of the session.

“He was criticizing me from the minute I walked in the door of his office,” she

recalled. “He yelled at me about the cloths I was wearing, asking how I could come

to see him dressed the way I was, saying that my skirt was too short. Now I would

say it was shaming but then it felt like blackmail.”

Afraid of being denied the certification that she was seeking, Jill remembers

agreeing with all of the insults the doctor threw at her, many of which she can still

remember today. She left the office in tears and cried most of the four-hour drive to

Baltimore, where a physician at Johns Hopkins University was able to safely and

legally perform the abortion.

I have known Jill my whole life and she is someone I have always looked up to. She

is a wonderful woman and eventually, and on her own terms, became a loving and

supportive mother who raised successful and happy children who are now adults.

But Jill has carried the weight of being branded an “unfit mother” with her

throughout her life. Although she is confident that she made the right decision

almost 50 years ago, she still feels the condemnation of the doctors. Jill’s daughter,

who has been aware of the story for many years, says that she can often see the

impact of her mother’s shame in her parenting decisions.

“She’s the best mother anyone could hope for,” Jill’s daughter says, “and everyone

who meets her would tell you the same thing, but I don’t think she’ll ever believe

that she has been good enough or done enough to out run the judgment of that evil

old man decades ago. No one should ever have to live with that.”

Despite the lasting psychological effects of the process that Jill went through in

order to receive her abortion, she acknowledges that she was much luckier than

most women who needed such care at the time. Her family had the means to seek

private help and she was able to travel across state lines to procure an abortion

legally. Millions of her peers did not have that option.

In today’s hostile political climate, increasing numbers of women are having their

access to safe and legal abortions limited or erased completely. We cannot allow

these women to carry the burden of judgment in any form. Women, as the saying

goes, deserve better. I know Jill did.