"My Abortion at 11 Wasn't a Choice. It Was My Life."

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/opinion/abortion-pregnancy-child-roe.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/H3sWZ

I predict that my 17-year-old daughter will become a doctor. When my husband told her about a neuroscientist and nutritionist he met while producing a documentary, she said, “That sounds like the job for me.” She knows everything about the gut microbiome, dopamine and herniated discs. She does not look away at times when others might — like when my mother unexpectedly texted me pictures of a cyst she had removed from the back of her head, sitting in a bloody specimen cup. “That’s exactly what I would do,” my daughter said. “You have to show people.”

I don’t mind looking at such things, though I would like a little warning. But here I offer no warning, except to say that in an alternative world — one without abortion access — that conversation with my daughter would not have happened. In fact, my family and I would not have our lives together at all. The loss of Roe v. Wade is collective, but this story is mine. I ask you not to look away.

In 1982, when I was 10 years old, a 14-year-old boy molested me. He was supposed to be babysitting me and my younger sisters. After my sisters went to sleep, the babysitter and I sat on the couch, watching “M*A*S*H,” which came on after the news. He started caressing my arm. Then my neck. Then he took off my shirt and my pants. Then his clothes. He lay on top of me and had intercourse with me. I had a vague idea of what was happening. My parents had been forthcoming about how babies were made, and during long and lazy summers in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, I watched plenty of instructive soap operas.

I didn’t really know how wrong the babysitter situation was. I was flattered by the attention, but also confused. Why me? What does this mean? Was he my boyfriend? Why did we have to keep it a secret?

*snip*