It means going to jail for planning your own family.

“Attempted Abortion”

That is not exactly what happened. Luckily it was a completed abortion, and because the doctor had a good lawyer he was able to plead it down to “attempted” and suffered a suspended three year sentence and losing his license to practice medicine. My name and my boyfriend’s name were not used in the newspaper story, nor was it mentioned that we had to spend the night in jail, following the raid on the doctor’s office, that resulted from tapping his phone.

The year was 1962. This was just before the birth control pill was widely available, and of course, as since time began, women got pregnant who didn’t want to be. I was a sophomore in college, the first one in my in my family to ever go to college. Being pregnant would have been a huge embarrassment. The other alternatives of keeping the baby and getting married, or giving the baby up for adoption did not appeal to me in the least.

We tried all the old wives tales remedies first; drinking quinine, going horseback riding, taking hot baths. It was not easy to find a doctor to perform an abortion. The heat was on in New York and most doctors were refraining from doing them. We had a list, passed around from college girls, but we got many doors slammed in our faces until we got to Dr. Levy.

The cops were surrounding the block on the Grand Concourse where the doctor’s office was, and they waited until the procedure was over, to grab me and put me in one cop car and my boyfriend in another.

They brought me to another doctor to verify that I had just had an abortion. Then they put me in a jail cell in the Bronx with a box of Kotex. I was happy that I had been able to have the abortion. I thought that if they really thought it was murder they would have broken in to stop it. I lay in my jail cell and sang Joan Baez songs to myself.

The next morning they brought us down to central booking in Manhattan to take our fingerprints and mug shots. They brought us before a judge, who released us to our parents’ recognizance. On the way home my mother said, “don’t worry, we know you’re a good girl.”

In the next decade came the women’s movement and we were able to get the law against abortion overturned with Roe v. Wade. As a result of this, a lot of pregnancies that weren’t planned were aborted and women were able to wait until they finished their educations and get married. The crime rate of the following generation went down as parents had a greater degree of control of their own lives.

We thought that once we had won the right, it would always be ours. Now they are trying to take it away, bit by bit. Over the years I’ve spoken at rallies, colleges and once on Oprah to tell what it is like to lose the right to choose. It means going to jail for planning your own family. I’m sorry, but this should not be the function of a free society.