I Had An Abortion When I Was 19:

The Power of Choice in Realizing Social Justice

I had an abortion when I was 19. It was the summer of 1982 between my freshman and sophomore years at Stanford. My 23-year-old high school sweetheart got me a summer job with him as a ground laborer on an oil exploration crew working its way from Hayes, Kansas to Kalispell, Montana. We were, much to my parent’s dismay, “living together” in dingy hotel rooms and single-wide trailers. In Kalispell we stayed long enough to get a month’s lease on a little cabin with a kitchenette where I could make mac and cheese for us and eat at a table in the sun. For the first time in my life I was supporting myself and making my own decisions.

Growing up in the 1970s in Evergreen, Colorado, I got most of my sex-ed and contraception information through the rumor mill and via the experiences of more promiscuous friends with whom I’d sneak down to Denver to Planned Parenthood to get birth control pills. A year Stanford didn’t teach me much more — as young women we were left to figure it out on our own. My “more experienced” boyfriend assured me that the “withdrawal” method was safe during the first month before the birth control pills I was taking were reliable. We partied a lot, smoked cigarettes, ate tons of junk food, and once in a while dabbled in some nasty drug called “crank” which I am now mortified because I believe this was a precursor to meth. We were living paycheck to paycheck. We were infatuated, and, as it would turn out, totally incompatible.

Finding out I was pregnant in the middle of the summer was devastating, I had no friends to talk to in Montana, couldn’t afford payphone calls, and my parents were already disappointed — why would I tell them? My boyfriend, a sweet guy who was born a child of teens himself, had little ambition or desire for further education and would have been thrilled to start a family but he left the decision in my hands. The day of the procedure he couldn’t even get the day off and I went it alone. I had never even had a pelvic exam before, so it was the first time I felt the humiliating cold of the stirrups on my bare feet. The clinic did provide considerable counseling before and after the procedure and I limped out in tears. The decision to terminate my first pregnancy is a decision I’ve never regretted and today, 35 years later, I remain eternally grateful to the visionary leaders, judges, politicians and activists who made it possible for me to make it.

Last weekend I was sitting around a campfire in the Utah desert, social distancing with a handful of girlfriends. Discussing abortion, we were cataloging the many horrific reasons for legal abortion — a child of rape, abused mother, fetal abnormalities — when I threw out the question: “But how do you justify me having an abortion just for the sake of it simply not being the right time, right place, or with the right person?” Dr Giovannina Anthony obstetrician/gynecologist practicing in Wyoming who is one of a small handful of practitioners who offer abortion services in our giant state didn’t miss a beat with her answer:

“You have a right to explore your sexuality at 19. Your male partner had a right to that as well. Men and women should have the same right to body autonomy. But men do not bear the same burden of the potential outcomes,” said Dr. Anthony. “It is ultimately unjust and unfair for him to not bear that burden. And when you bear that burden, you are not on the same playing field, you are not in the same equal space in pursuing what’s best ultimately for you and your future family. A 19-year-old girl knows in her heart if it’s right for her or not. And if it’s right she will keep it and if it’s not she won’t. And if she is forced to keep it against her will, it leads to unstable family units, it leads to poor partner choice, and it leads to poverty. Women who have an unplanned pregnancies and are forced to continue them cannot realize their ultimate potential. They just cannot. It’s not possible.”

Dr. Anthony goes on to explain that in areas where access to abortion is limited, if a woman is wealthy, they will go get it somewhere else. “It’s the poor women who pay the price, and that’s unjust.

“It’s the poor women who pay the price, and that’s unjust. It is social injustice and it trashes our communities and the social fabric of our culture with unstable family units. A lot of women are forced to stay in relationships with their rapist or unfit partners for a lifetime and it is totally tragic.”

After a year of racial protests, we have all had to look closely at the social systems that keep white people of privilege in power at the top of the hierarchy ladder and the rest of us groveling up the rungs. Sonya Renee Taylor, the brilliant author of “The Body is Not an Apology” encourages us to forget trying to climb the ladder and look at ways to break the cultural rungs that support it. Do you really think Donald Trump, whose immoral actions continue to astound the world, cares as a “Christian” about abortion? Or is it all about holding onto his power over “the people.” Although we are talking about women’s rights here, I will throw in the cost of healthcare and access to higher education as other strategies to keep certain people — women, people of color, the disadvantaged — poor on the bottom rungs of the social justice ladder and unable to reach their potential in life.

In 1994, the clinic where I had the abortion — All Families Healthcare in Kalispell — was firebombed by Richard T. Andrews, a Washington man who was eventually convicted of scorching seven clinics in Western states. Twenty years later, in 2014, Zachary Klundt broke into the same clinic and lay waste to everything with monetary and sentimental value leaving women in the Flathead Valley to travel over 100 miles for abortion services. Abortion-rights advocates and providers say such restrictions and clinic closings do not reduce the demand for abortions; instead, they increase the distance patients must travel to receive care and strain the resources of the poor women and clinics that remain. For the past four years as a nation we’ve feared that more clinics would close after President Donald Trump promised to name justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. With Brett Kavanaugh named to the court and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat empty, the nomination of the strict Catholic-principled Amy Barratt to the supreme court three weeks before the presidential election is terrifying.

I didn’t get pregnant again until I was ready — at 39-years-old. For twenty years I travelled the world working as a rafting, ski and trekking guide. I’d become a writer, an activist, and a successful entrepreneur. I married a mountain guide with whom I had a beautiful, natural pregnancy and today my 18-year-old is enrolled at Stanford herself.

I have really never dwelt on who that aborted child could have become, but I know who my 12-year-old boy has become — a joyful, intelligent, compassionate ball of potential who is already deeply aware and concerned about social justice.

I got pregnant unexpectedly for my third time, at 44-years-old while living on a remote ranch in Chilean Patagonia (my birth control pills had run out and I thought I was on my way to menopause). A second child was not in our plans — my daughter was then five and we thought we were out of the woods of toddlerhood and I was free to pursue other dreams. Abortion entered my mind at that time, but only for a split second. It was absolutely inconceivable for me — even while doing the genetic testing that was recommended for a high-risk pregnancy at my age. I was a capable, financially secure, healthy, loving parent. I got my one chance at 19. I have really never dwelt on who that aborted child could have become, but I know who my 12-year-old boy has become — a joyful, intelligent, compassionate ball of potential who is already deeply aware and concerned about social justice.