Oh, no! Don’t tell me women are going to have to start looking for sane states for an abortion, after 50 years of just a little freedom over their bodies. They are so traumatic as it is! I can’t believe people do them for fun and need to be regulated.
Suddenly I recalled poems by Gwendolyn Brooks and Anne Sexton about their abortions, and you can see that what they did was never taken lightly. Brooks’ poem can be found here.
but although I’m sure Sexton’s poem is copyrighted as well, I can’t find it, so I’ll put it below. I’m sure the world is happy that she didn’t have a third child. She was amazing but totally crazy:
The Abortion by Anne Sexton
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all…
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward…this baby that I bleed.
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all…
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward…this baby that I bleed.
In Israel, abortions have to be okayed by a board – I think it is 3 people. But to my knowledge it is usually okayed. It must be terrifying to have to explain yourself to a board, though.