My Grandmother's Desperate Choice [View all]
~snip~
As a child, I knew only that my grandmother had died when my mom was still a baby. The one time I asked what had happened to her, a bolt of panic flashed across my mothers face. A household accident, was all she said.
I was twelve years old when she finally told me the truth. Some friends and I had got into a long after-school discussion about abortion, prompted by the gruesome posters that a protester had staked in front of the Planned Parenthood in our Vermont town. I had already begun reading my mothers Ms. magazines cover to cover, but this was the first time Id encountered a pro-life position. When I hopped into my moms car after school, I was buzzing with new ideas. I had almost finished repeating one friends pro-life argument when I saw the look on Moms face. Thats when she told me: the household accident that had killed her mother had, in fact, been a self-induced abortion.
Her hands were tight on the steering wheel as she spoke. I realized later that it wasnt the topic of abortion itself that made her so uneasyshe was a nurse and a Roe-era feminist who usually responded straightforwardly to even the most embarrassing health questions. Rather, her anguish arose from sharing a truth that shed been brought up believing was too terrible to speak.
Sitting beside her in the passenger seat, I struggled to absorb the meaning of what shed told me. I had only just grasped what abortion was a few hours earlier, and was still trying on this new pro-life idea. O.K., I said, but what about the uncle or aunt I never had? Mom whipped toward me, face taut with a rage and fear that I somehow understood had nothing to do with me. What about the mother I never had? she said.
Read More: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-grandmothers-desperate-choice