I'm much more of a commenter than a blogger on Kos, but the issues surrounding women's health, birth control and abortion have been on my mind a lot lately. I've refrained from writing a diary because I didn't feel I had anything to say that someone else hadn't already said better and more forcefully. However, I've realized over the past few weeks that the history of women's lives before and after legal birth control and abortion is worth recounting.
When I was in college, I was part of a group of women who maintained access at women's clinics when anti-abortion protesters were trying to block women seeking abortion, contraception and, ironically, pre-natal care, from the clinics. We would go to any of the Los Angeles area clinics where we heard the anti-abortion protestors were. We were different ages and from different parts of the city, but standing outside, putting our bodies between the protestors and the women patients,we got to know each other very well. Judy's story has always haunted me. With her permission, I'll recount it.
Judy was born in 1950 to an east coast Irish Catholic family. Her father worked outside the home. Her mother, with six children, kept house and raised the children. Her extended family was huge. When she was 12, her mother's brother, 10 years older than Judy, began to molest her.
Like a lot of girls of that time, Judy didn't really understand what sex was, let alone what was happening to her. She liked the attention but also felt very ashamed and had no way of talking to her mother about what was going on. At 13 she started getting sick, not just in the mornings, but all day long. Her mother took her to the doctor who examined her and realized that Judy, who had not yet actually gotten her first period yet, was pregnant.