HAIRY ARMPITS TO THE FEMINIST RAZOR

My dear friend,
I write to you because we started this journey together. First we read Gloria and Erica. Then we studied “Our Bodies Ourselves” both in print and in the mirror. We questioned the status quo. We demanded more choices for our lives, more respect for our work. We were part of the great second wave of the feminist revolt. Our families disowned us. Our friends told us we’d never find good husbands. Our employers handed us bras and threatened to fire us. But in spite of the ridicule and the condemnation, you and I burned our bras and grew hairy armpits together. We believed in equal rights. We believed in the sisterhood.

So I ask you now, how did it come to this? How did we let equal rights become a question of when is the best time to kill a fetus? When did being a feminist become synonymous with being a baby killer? I’m not in favor of abortion. I think it is the most horrid thing imaginable and I know that any woman, who has survived one, feels the same way. We fight for the right to make this choice but it is an awful choice to make. We take responsibility for it. We own it. But we do not ever celebrate it.

I have done it. I am still filled with shame because of it. The facts do little to erase the pain. I was already quite ill when it happened. It wasn’t even a decision about which one of us would survive. My lung disease had progressed to the point where I didn’t have enough oxygen to keep me alive. The fetus would be dead. The only question was whether it would take me with it. Still, I anguished about the decision, waiting for a miracle. Waiting, and risking my own life for each day I delayed. Praying for God to intercede and take the burden from me. As each day passed, I knew that the fetus was slowly dying. I could do nothing to save it. My body was barely keeping me alive. Finally, I could postpone it no longer.

Before abortion ripped this country apart, this would have been a medical decision, a medical procedure. A woman in my circumstance would have been admitted to the hospital. I would have had my own doctor and nurses to guarantee my safety and to help me grieve. That is no longer possible. So in spite of the extreme danger to my health, I had to make the long three hour drive into the city to find a clinic. I cried all the way there in the car. I was heart broken. I was heartsick.


When we arrived at the clinic, the words “Baby killer” had been scrawled on the crosswalk in red paint. As I walked to the door of the clinic, anti-abortion activists descended on me like vultures on a dying carcass. They hurled insults and pamphlets at me. I fought my way through them, nearly hysterical. When I went to grab the doorknob, it was dripping with red paint. I pulled my hand back in horror. Somehow I managed to get inside before I broke down in sobs. A kind woman came from behind the reception desk and put her arms around me and held me until I was able to stand on my own. “Is it always like this?” I asked. “Some days it’s worse. Some days we need a police escort. But don’t worry; you’re safe in here” she said, as she took my coat. I signed in at the reception desk and found a seat in the waiting room.


There were other women scattered about the waiting room. They ran the gambit of age and social standing, of religion and education. A well dressed older woman sat alone in the corner tapping her manicured nails on the table. Thank goodness she left quickly. Her nervous tapping was setting my nerves on edge. A frazzled housewifey looking woman sat near the door. Her shoulders hunched forward, she looked like she was ready to bolt. She wore no make up, her hair was uncombed and she had huge black circles under her eyes. We shared a glance, a knowing, painful desperate glance. Across the room, in the seat closest to the reception desk, was a little girl who looked no more than fifteen. She looked like a little broken doll. The fear in her face was palpable. I looked for a parent, a friend, someone to comfort her. She was alone.

I spent most of the day with these women. By the time we left, we knew each other’s stories. We knew each other’s pain intimately. The well-dressed woman was mid-menopause. She had three gown children; finishing college and having families of their own. She had been married twenty five years. Her life was settled and her change of life pregnancy was not welcomed by her family. She had the amino done and it showed that the child would be challenged. Her husband had threatened to leave her if she didn’t terminate the pregnancy. She tapped nervously with her elegant nails all day long.

The housewife woman, was a single working Mom with two kids and two jobs. Caught off guard when her car broke down on her way home from the graveyard shift, she had been violently raped. She knew that no matter how hard she tried, she could never love this child. Some do. Some can go beyond the brutality and the violence of the conception. Some have faith so strong they can do that. But she knew in her heart she could not. Her mental state was fragile. She was still unable to sleep, to drive alone, and to bear the sound of her own thoughts. This child would know her anger. In her womb, it would feel her anger. For its sake, for her children’s sake and for her sanity, she chose to end the pregnancy.

The little girl was the victim of incest. One night, when her parents were out and she was babysitting her younger sisters, her uncle showed up. Her mother’s brother, her favorite uncle, found her asleep in her bedroom. She woke with his hand over her mouth as he said, “Don’t scream! Don’t wake your sisters!” And he pulled up her nightgown, took her childhood and shattered her life into a million pieces. The brutality to her body was only the beginning. She hid her injuries as long as she could. Finally, she went to a clinic for treatment and found out about the pregnancy. They told her about abortion. They told her little else. She went home to her mother and sisters. But she could not speak. She did not scream. She stayed silent until now. Now she screamed. Now she could not stop screaming.
We spent the day together, the 13 of us. First we each had an interview with a social worker. She explained the procedure, warned us about possible complications. She told us that we were not obligated to stay. We could change our minds at the very last minute and leave. During the day, we were all given numerous opportunities to change our minds and cancel the procedure. I considered it but the crowd stationed outside terrified me. Those people who came to “save the babies” may have actually had the opposite effect. And the pamphlets they were hurling at me like missiles were given to us by the staff of the clinic.

Next we got a preliminary exam with the nurse. Finally we undressed and waited in a line on a gurney. Thirteen gurneys lined up in the hallway. One by one we were pushed through the double doors to the procedure room. I was number eight. Time seemed to stand still in that hallway. Finally, when my turn came, I looked at the doctor, took his arm and said, “I hope you’re not tired.” He gave me half a smile and said, “Don’t worry. You’re safe.” I couldn’t help myself, I said, “Why do you do this? How can you do this?” The same vultures that attacked me that day would be waiting for the doctor. They slashed their tires, keyed their cars. The clinic staff must have known about the people who had been killed. The clinics that had been bombed. So I asked again, “Why do you do this?” “My mother” he said, “Raped when I was 13 and butchered in a back alley abortion. My mother deserved better and so do you.”

I hate abortion. No, let me make this point perfectly clear, I hate abortion the way only someone who has been through it can. It is a ghastly procedure. You know what bothers me more? Newborn babies in dumpsters, five year old rape victims, and babies battered and bruised by the ignorance of teenage parents, children discarded on our streets or sold into sexual slavery, that’s what really gets me. Child warriors in Africa with their arms chopped off. Children dying for years in Darfur because we owe China money. Children who become suicide bombers because their lives are full of never-ending despair. Children orphaned by an AIDS and crippled by land mines. That’s what gets me. Know what else I don’t get? If life begins at conception, then why are there no funerals for miscarriages? Or is the toilet flush burial at sea? No last rites? All this wringing of hands and in the end, it’s a toilet flush either way.

On this planet, there is no shortage of children. They are everywhere. There is however, a historic shortage of people who care for children. Where are they? Where are the great Mothers? Who’s minding the kids? Who speaks for the children? And we sit silent and fill our lives with American Idle. That’s what gets me.
Why is it that those people who attacked me in the parking lot – are the same ones who deny funding for unwed mothers? The ones who ignore the plight of children across the world? Why do they only care about them when they are in the womb? Once they are born they discard them. Why is that? I want to find an alternative to abortion. I want to lend my voice to those who want to find a solution. I want an end to the culture wars for the sake of our children. But just like their insults kept me from leaving the clinic, their intolerant attitude has kept me silent on this issue. I want to speak but I do not want to join their club. I will not join any club that forces a child to give birth to her cousin. Or a club that makes a woman live with the daily reminder that her body has been intimately violated and the demon left part of himself inside. Or even that a child is born into a family who blames the dissolution of a family on its birth.

I want my own club. I want a grown up woman club where we get to discuss this without the gory pictures. I don’t know when life begins. But we know when it’s viable, when it becomes able to live outside the womb. Let’s start there.

The other day I got an email for a woman who was one of those people outside the clinic. She said she had no idea. She told me that she was sorry that she had added to my pain. She told me why she had devoted so much time to ending abortion. I must say we opened each other’s eyes. I might question her tactics but her intentions and her motives were as loving and caring as can be. She genuinely believed that if women were just given hope they would change their minds. She wanted to save them not hurt them.

So now, on to the big question. For most of my life I believed that life began at the end of the first trimester. At some point between twelve and sixteen weeks the fetus comes alive, becomes a soul. In my own pregnancy, I felt that’s when my kids became people. That's when they started to move and had their own timetable for waking and sleeping (usually not the same as my own.) They would develop their own odd food cravings that would send me looting the kitchen at odd hours. They begin to assert control over their environment. At least that’s how this woman justified abortion.

Then I was watching one of those discovery type programs about cloning. They said that in the process of cloning – they have to zap the embryo with of bolt of electricity. They can not turn the combination of egg and sperm into embryo without that ZAP OF ELECTRICITY!!! Now if that doesn’t sound like the Hand of God than what does! Could I have been wrong all these years? I’ve always believed that it was just cells. But now, now I have to wonder.

When is that zap of electricity? When does life begin? Is it at conception? Does it begin at the same time for everyone? Ancient questions that we still have no answer for. St. Thomas Aquinas said that it began at “quickening” forty days after conception. Maybe that’s the when the zap of electricity turns the embryo into a fetus. I have no answers. I am beginning to think that it is different for each and every pregnancy. Just as my pregnancy with my son had me on a milk and potato diet and my daughter had me eating hot peppers (btw – that’s a shorthand description of their personalities to this day) maybe it is never the same.

I wonder about other things too. I wonder about the women’s movement. It was supposed to be about more. I look at these new women - who can "hook up" with ease and I just have to wonder if we've done them more harm than good. I wanted it to be about valuing women's work. Back then, if a woman did it, it wasn't considered important. Teaching, nursing, mothering – none of those were considered vital professions. Just things a woman did till she got a man to marry her. I didn't want women to become like men. I guess I never doubted that we could compete in the same arena. Even back then we had what we called “a man’s woman.” She did all the things men did, hunting, fishing, fast cars and motorcycles. That’s not really what it was about. I wanted the roles that women played to be valued. They do some of the most critical jobs, childcare being at the very top of that list.

I still think that raising children is the most important thing you can do. It is still much maligned but It can be such a great job. One day you’re a chef, then an interior designer, a seamstress, a teacher, a community organizer, a coach or a best friend. Your home is the center of the universe for your family. It is a hub, a safe haven where family finds nourishment and support. Or have I just been watching reruns of Donna Reed?


Either way, instead of being valued, being a mother has lost status. Not only is it still "woman's work" but it’s done by strangers or it’s done in buildings that look like miniature boot camps. We have children only to be forced to leave them with strangers six weeks later. Our children are raised by a series of people who have no vested interest in the outcome. They are the children of intuitions, not neighborhoods or families. Meanwhile, the women are out working with the men because it takes at least two incomes to raise a family. Women are still making less money than the men and working longer hours. Even in the most progressive household, the woman is still the “homemaker.” She takes the blame when things go wrong. And unlike the men, women are always apologizing to everybody, all the time because they aren’t doing enough and they aren’t doing it right. And by the way, they say when you’re exhausted “You look a little tired and that’s not very attractive. Better get some botox.” What has happened is that we are doing more with less. That was not what we fought for.

By now my daughter would be threatening to revoke my credentials in the pantsuit sisterhood - but you and I started out decades ago. You know my heart. We grew Hairy Armpits together. So I hope you will indulge me for just a bit before you cancel my membership in the club.

We can find the things we agree on. We can agree that little girls should never go through this alone. We can agree that there is an optimum time for this procedure. Maybe that’s at the “quickening” as St. Thomas Aquinas said. We can agree that late term abortion is dangerous and should only be done under extreme circumstances. There may be other things we can agree on but I still defend the right to make the choice. I do not want the government in my womb. I do not want them to tell me that I must or that I can’t have a child. Once we give them that right, they will use it. In China they force abortions. It’s the other side of the same coin. Only the woman who will live with the decision should make the choice. It is now and always has been about Choice.


Anyway, old friend, I was just wondering about Donna Reed. Starting to think that maybe she didn’t have it so bad. At least she only had one job she could fail at. And while we wanted to release women from the slavery of the razor – this generation shaves their pubic hairs. How did we get here from there?

And now, where do we go?