If the supreme court reverses the federal right to abortion, some Americans will no longer have access to the procedure. Five women speak of their experience in pre-Roe v Wade era
decision that has given Americans abortion rights since 22 January 1973, was set to turn 50 next year. This June, as the supreme court approaches summer recess, it looks likely to release a decision that means the critical precedent will never reach its landmark birthday.
Here we speak to five women from across the US about their experiences of abortion in the pre-Roe v Wade era. Some were nervous, others defiant. But all shared their story in the hope that their past could shape America’s future.Abortion: 1967, aged 18, Memphis, Tennessee Larry drove me back and I only took the blindfold off when we got home. I was a good student and went straight to class. I remember sitting in the lunchroom, feeling this tube in my pants, and nothing happening. I went home, went to sleep, still nothing. The next day, I called Larry and told him. He reluctantly said he’d set up a time to do it again. And so I went through the whole thing again. But the same thing happened, it didn’t work.
I went home and the contractions started. By now it’s night-time. My brothers were roaming around the house and I went into the bathroom and someone’s banging on the door and I just freaked out because the pain was so bad. I had to get out. When my period was a day late, I suspected I might be pregnant but was in denial. Every afternoon, my mother and I would watch soap operas together while we ate lunch, and I started not being able to stay awake. My period never came.
After that, there’s kind of a blank. I remember waiting on a gurney and then I remember waking up. I stayed in a ward overnight with three other women who’d just had abortions. They were all older than me. We talked. One was putting on her false eyelashes and getting ready to go back to Florida. Another was married and her husband would come in to see her. I think we all felt fortunate to be there; to have safe, legal healthcare.
It was a cold rainy February morning and the worst day of my life. A car pulled up, I got into the back seat and the man in the front handed me a blue bandanna to cover my eyes. We pulled up to a small house and he told me I could take my blindfold off. Inside was a woman, I presume his wife or girlfriend, and she showed me to a little room with a table. She told me to lie on the table and then the man came in, inserted something into my vagina, I think it was a straw, and that was it.
I grew up pretty quickly after because I recognized that I didn’t have a right to make decisions about my own body. And that forced me to learn more about how this country provides for women’s bodily autonomy. I got involved in campaigning forand she was one of the first black women I knew who was out there speaking for reproductive justice, and how racial equity and economic equity had to be part of that.
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