Has anyone had a chance to see Midwife on PBS on Sunday?

[Hekate]

45. Wise old nun, seen it all. Jenny, I think, is just very young and naive...

I remember being that young and naive! It's so easy to accept "it's illegal, why would anybody even think about doing that" when you have never been confronted with the heartbreaking reality. The power of the series is how the girls (and they really are such young women, and innocent) learn.

Abortion was not exactly discussed when I was growing up. In college I was fortunate enough to do some important reading just on the cusp of Roe vs. Wade: one piece was an excerpt from Margaret Sanger's Autobiography, the chapter about the women lining up around the block, shawls over their heads, waiting their turn at the abortionist's when he was in; and then Sanger's patient who died of an abortion leaving 3 children motherless. She had begged Nurse Sanger for "The secret. Doctor's know some secret (to not getting pregnant, she meant). You're a woman, you can tell me." But of course Sanger didn't know, either. Damnation. That makes me tear up to this day.

The other, oddly enough, was that runaway bestseller Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). I worked in a book dept and that book just flew off the shelves. The doctor who wrote it included a chapter on abortion, and iirc there were three real-world women's stories. It gave me an entirely different point of view.

It's sad that we have lost so much ground since then. Our daughters and granddaughters have to be taught this history, or they will lose what was gained with so much blood, sweat, and tears.