Three Abortions and the Real Agenda of “Pro-Life”

(I gave this talk at a rally several months ago. I have a fractured wrist at the moment and can’t write something new about this week’s SCOTUS hearing. Sharing this instead.)

Let me start by telling you three abortion stories.

The first takes place in Chicago, Illinois, in 1964, in a women’s dorm at the University of Chicago. Those were the days before co-ed dorms — we couldn’t even have a man visiting our rooms without the door ajar — and it was also a time when many of us were on scholarship, beneficiaries of the university’s attempt to reach buried “talent” throughout rural and inner-city America. It was a long time ago and a lot is fuzzy now, but I do remember sitting huddled in extreme anxiety with a small group of 18-year-old women as we waited for our friend to return from her abortion, performed somewhere in the dark, back streets of downtown Chicago. Unable to tell her parents or teachers, I’m not sure how the money was raised to make possible what we feared might end in some terrible way. We’d all heard the stories of women bleeding to death, or their insides damaged for life. My friend, thankfully, wasn’t one of those. But she did return pale, shaken, and in pain, and there was no doctor or nurse to follow up during the days that followed. Student health? No way. Abortion was illegal. We were all sworn to secrecy.