Sunday’s phone conversation with my mother. I lead off. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Have you talked to Peter?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very busy, which is good.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what he tells me. And still no place to live. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine having to move because of other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whims. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too old for that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Remember, Mack was forty-eight when we moved to Evansville.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that. Hmmm, that helps anchor that move in time. Before I forget, I wanted to ask you about a story you told me. The one where Brian came running into the house and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMommy, you have to spank Joan?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Did he say, mom or mommy?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Which one was that? Oh, the black girl. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if he said Mom or mommy, but he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSpank her, you have to spank her.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Can you imagine, a seven year old giving orders like that? I asked why, and he said go outside and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see why. I ran outside and there was a limousine parked next to the Ranger Station. This was when we lived in Indian Hill. There was a little black girl alone in the car without her father, the chauffeur. Joan and her friend Barbara Burdett…Joan would have been about four…they were singing, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcShe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little nigger baby, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little nigger baby.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Can you imagine?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the one who asked every waitress in every restaurant we ever stopped in if those \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d signs meant Negros. I always wanted to crawl under the table. But do you remember Steven Brown whistling at the black woman in Westwood? We were sitting on his porch and the woman, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who she was, walked past us. Steven gave her a loud wolf whistle and then yelled, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWow, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s black.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Someone heard him, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it was you or Steven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother, but I remember you both reamed us out for it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The sort of things I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never forget.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I got a call from a priest this week. He returned my call. I told him I objected to his column in the Catholic newspaper, The Message. He asked why, and I told him he was risking the church\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tax exempt status with his remarks about abortion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If only.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I said, if only.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She laughed, because she knew there was no chance. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Anyway, I told him he was electioneering for Bush. He said he wrote about war and social justice too, but I said abortion was a hot button issue for me. I said the old male clergy have no clue about raising children. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to have kids, to get up at night with a sick child. I kept talking because I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really want to hear his rebuttal. I told him the Catholic Church didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get involved in this until the fourth century. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true, they thought women were unclean.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But the fourth century…were they concerned about abortion then?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course. Women have always found abortifacients. My mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sister-in-law tried ergot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where LSD comes from.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (You can see the high level of responses this conversation is eliciting from me. But you have to understand that I sensed where this was going, and I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ready for it. I was tossing tack strips trying to flatten her tires, slow her down.) <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work. It made her sick. Her father was a doctor and she asked him. He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPat, I never thought I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to do something like this for you.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whoa, wait a minute. Here we go again, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re having this innocent conversation, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost time to hang-up and out comes another one of your show stoppers. (My mother laughed again. The kind of laugh that sounded to me like : You haven’t listened to me for fifty-seven years, and now that I have your attention, I’m not backing off.) You tell these stories so casually, but do you listen to yourself? You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re telling me a father gave his daughter an abortion. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t doctor patient. This is family.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She had nowhere else to turn to. Her husband was this hotshot lawyer, and they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want more children. You know, my mother had an abortion too. My mother told me this right after I had a miscarriage and was feeling sorry for myself. The town doctor did it for her, and I asked her, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell Leroy (her husband, my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father, you get the drift)?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 She said ‘No’, she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the point. She did it and that was that. Besides, Leroy was a Catholic. And he’d feel awful knowing his wife thought he couldn’t provide for another child. Plus they have her paralyzed grandfather living with them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
“Okay, stop. You have to write this down. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the thread, but I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember all these details. Tomorrow you have to sit down and write this out and then send it to me.”<\/p>\n
And she did. Today she sent this:<\/p>\n
Mike, here is the effort. Some of this may be in the family history but this is close to yesterday’s.
\nOf course no woman wants to undergo an abortion but some feel they must–greatest good for the greatest number might apply to some circumstances.
\nI don’t think what follows really applies to that logic. We knew a couple in the C.Z., Johnny and Zoe. He was about 7 years older than she, had been to sea for years, second marriage for him. She was fairly immature, and at the time, I am not sure I could really judge, considering my own state of immaturity at twenty-five. The relationship was pretty rocky but they had a little year-old-boy. We were very fond of Johnny but didn’t find her too interesting. She had a lot of material wants and needs; created a much more pleasant environment in their apartment than I was able to do for us.<\/p>\n
One morning she telephoned me and said she had had an abortion and was hemorrhaging.
\n“Zoe, where was this done?”
\n“Back alley in Panama City”
\nI knew I couldn’t get to her soon enough to help in any way so I told her to go on up to Gorgas Hospital which would take her about five minutes. She insisted that they would have her arrested because she had committed an illegal act.
\nI then said, “Look, Zoe, go on up there to the admittance desk and don’t say anything. Just stand there and bleed on the floor. What ever they ask you, just hold your hands out and look helpless. They will then take care of you and I think you will be fine. Remember, don’t answer any questions.<\/p>\n
My very brash and impromptu advice worked. The couple filed for divorce about a year later.<\/p>\n
Now as to my mother and her sister-in-law. Mother told me about this some years after Mack and I were married when we were discussing the issue. She said she had had to do that and that it should be legal and safe. I asked her who did it for her, and she said, “Well, Doc, of course.”<\/p>\n
Doc was our family doctor and social friend of theirs. She said she didn’t want to do that but that her father-in-law (my grandfather O’Connell) had had a disabling stroke and they were trying to help my grandmother look after him at home, Dad had just started his auto parts business after going out on the railroad strike. It was all too much to handle. I asked her what Dad had thought about that, “Oh, I never bothered him with it.” she said.<\/p>\n
She looked thoughtful and then said, “I sometimes think we might have been able to handle it but I’m
\nsure it would have been very difficult and there’s no telling what kind of complications we would have run into. Even then, we had to put Father O’Connell in a hospital in Kansas City some three years later where he died after about two years.<\/p>\n
She then said, “Bea, had to have that done, too. Elmer (her brother) was just starting a new law practice in Parsons, and they had the two children. He has never been overburdened with patience so Bea didn’t want to deal with his reaction. She took ergot but it didn’t quite work so she had to go to her father who was a doctor in another town in Kansas for a D and C. She told me that he said, “Oh, Bea, I never thought I would have to do this for you.”<\/p>\n
I just thought of one more which probably took place in the mid fifties. My friend, Mary Helen was divorcing her alcoholic, Army Major, husband, and having an affair with a fellow I never knew. She said she didn’t know how she could handle all the stress. When I asked her where, she told me
\nNevada Hospital and a doctor friend.<\/p>\n
It needs to be part of history that well-connected women had a great advantage over poor women and will again if Roe V Wade is overturned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday’s phone conversation with my mother. I lead off. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Have you talked to Peter?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very busy, which is good.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what he tells me. And still no place to live. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine having to move because of … Continue reading