Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion

312 Pages·2007·1.36 MB·English

by  Bender

choice
True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility,
Adoption, Single Parenthood, & Abortion
Edited by Karen E. Bender & Nina de Gramont
ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-986-9
M P Publishing Limited
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright © 2007 Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Choice : true stories of birth, contraception, infertility, adoption, single parenthood, and abortion / edited by
Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont.
24 contributions
ISBN 978-1-59692-063-7
1. Women—Literary collections. 2. American literature—Women authors. 3. American literature—21st
century. I. Bender, Karen E. II. Gramont, Nina de.
PS509.W6C487 2007
Paperback edition: October, 2007
ISBN 978-1-59692-062-0
Book and jacket design by Dorothy Carico Smith
Some of these essays first appeared, often in a partial or slightly different form, in the following
publications: Sandy Hingston’s “It Could Happen to You” in Philadelphia Magazine; Susan Ito’s “If” in the
anthology It’s a Boy!; Janet Ellerby’s “Bearing Sorrow” in her book Intimate Reading; Deborah
McDowell’s “Termination” in her memoir Leaving Pipe Shop; and Kate Maloy’s “A Normal Woman” in
New Woman.
This book is dedicated to the writers
who shared their stories with all of us
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont
The Ballad of Bobbie Jo by Jacquelyn Mitchard
It Could Happen to You by Sandy Hingston
If by Susan Ito
Bearing Sorrow: A Birthmother’s Reflections on Choice by Janet Mason
Ellerby
Thirty-four Years Old Today by Pam Houston
Personal Belongings by Kimi Faxon Hemingway
Termination by Deborah McDowell
Conceiving is Not Always the Same as Having an Idea by Catherine
Newman
Harrison: Battling for the Chance to Make a Choice by Harriette E. Wimms
Mother’s Day in the Year of the Rooster by Ann Hood
Donation by Ashley Talley
Summer, 1959 by Carolyn Ferrell
A Normal Woman by Kate Maloy
The Decision by Katie Allison Granju
No Stone Unturned by K.A.C.
The Stories We Tell by Katherine Towler
A Complicated Privilege by Elizabeth Larsen
Woman of Heart and Mind by Denise Gess
Matters of the Heart: To Be a Dragon Slayer by Velina Hasu Houston
Trees in the Desert by Sarah Messer
Portrait of a Mother by Stephanie Andersen
Water Children by Nina de Gramont
Accidents: A Family History of Choice by Karen E. Bender
The Raw Edges of Human Existence:
The Language of Roe v. Wade by Francine Prose
Contributor’s Biographies
INTRODUCTION
by Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont
A WOMAN HOLDS a pregnancy test, waiting for a line to appear. In three minutes or less she will have
her answer. One pink line. Two pink lines. A blue or pink line. Pregnant. Not Pregnant.
Every day, all over America women stare at this stick and wait.
This woman could be an unmarried teenage girl, crouched in a locked bathroom while her
unsuspecting mother makes breakfast downstairs. She could be a childless woman in her late thirties,
her husband holding her hand and hoping this time the answer will be different. She could be married
to an abusive husband from whom she must hide this test. She could be an exhausted mother of young
children, not knowing how she will be able to afford another. She could know that she carries the gene
for a frightening disease and be anticipating the answer with hope and dread. She could be the mother
of the teenage girl, taking the test herself in a downstairs bathroom, excited about the possibility of
starting again on the other side of her reproductive life.
The line appears.
Thirty-four years ago, these women would have had to live with whatever results the pregnancy test
delivered. In the near future, some of their choices may be lost. But today—at this precise moment in
history—there are many possible paths that they might follow. At this moment in the United States,
they have a choice.
This anthology began on the last day of 2005, when we were at a New Year’s Eve party. The kids
had commandeered the living room, tooting noisemakers; we huddled against the wall, trying to hold
an adult conversation.
When the conversation turned to politics, we began talking about South Dakota’s proposed law to
ban all abortions in the state. We couldn’t believe such a draconian measure could be instituted in a
democracy in our lifetime.
Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s with reproductive freedom a given, the idea that such a basic
right could be revoked astonished and disturbed us. Though neither of us had had abortions, we’d
thought about the issue a great deal and had both explored abortion in our fiction.
Karen said, “I’ve always thought about compiling an anthology about abortion.”
We looked at each other. What would that mean?
We are writers; we have committed ourselves to the power of story as a way of reaching people.
First we thought about a book of fictional accounts about abortion. But events in the real world are
already dramatic; we wanted a book that would bear witness to the reproductive stories that make up
real women’s lives.
A few days later at a friend’s birthday party, someone told us that in South Dakota it was already
extremely difficult for a woman to procure an abortion. There is only one clinic in the state that offers
the procedure: The Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls, which performs abortions one day a week. Four
doctors from Minnesota fly in on a rotating basis.1
How could such a prohibitive law arise from such a minimal practice?
We started talking about what our anthology could include. We told each other experiences of
people we knew, traded stories from our own personal histories. As we talked, we realized that every
woman we knew had some sort of story involving her reproductive life. What if our anthology focused
on true stories—not only about abortion but about adoption, infertility treatments, the morning-after
pill, birth control? Doesn’t the word “choice” refer to all forms of reproductive options?
In this country people can be eager to speak but reluctant to listen. Political division may lead to
simplistic, clichéd presentation of ideas. As writers and writing teachers, we are sensitive to cliché—
we urge our students to get to the specific. With specific examples, we tell our students, your ideas will
have authority. How could specific stories about choices transcend the clichés of politics?
In South Dakota, Leslee Unruh—one of the prime lobbyists for the abortion ban—had said, “I want
abortion to end.”2
This simplistic statement mirrors the easy proclamations we see and hear every day. We started
talking about the bumper stickers we see in Wilmington, North Carolina, where we live:
Against abortion? Don’t have one.
Choose life: your mother did.
Keep your laws off my body.
Abortion doesn’t make you un-pregnant.
It makes you the mother of a dead child.
These statements are, ultimately, glib. None of these stickers tells us a story about a person who has
made a particular decision. None of them really tells us what it is like to make a choice.
“That’s what we could call our book,” Nina said. “Choice.”
In 1992 in an interview on NBC’s Dateline, the first President Bush admitted that, despite his pro-life
beliefs, he would “stand behind” a daughter or granddaughter who chose to have an abortion. He said,
“I’d love her and help her, lift her up, wipe the tears away, and we’d get back in the game.” President
Bush’s statement illustrates the stunning complexity behind this issue. It’s one thing to oppose an idea
in theory, but once the notion becomes personal and the faces familiar, even a staunch opponent of
abortion can imagine not only tolerance, but can imagine supporting a woman’s personal decision.
When nuances are explored and empathy is applied, condemnation gives way to compassion.
In this country, we can be too eager to set compassion aside in favor of judgment. We are not
attuned to complexity—but we need to be. As a nation striving to define itself as moral, we need,
frankly, to become smarter. How can we rise above having our most potent discussions by bumper
stickers, or pundits trading barbs on talk shows? How can we better understand each other as complex,
as human?
The answer lies in telling our stories. After all, one of the women taking that pregnancy test could be
your daughter. She could be your mother or your best friend. And her story might not end in that
bathroom. She could discover that her fetus has a terrible genetic disorder. She could be unable to
afford raising a child at this moment in her life, or simply be too young. She might not have a partner.
She could learn that carrying the pregnancy to term might put her own life in danger. She might have
been coerced into the encounter that led to the pregnancy. She might have been raped.
The word “choice” encompasses much more than abortion. It includes any of the numerous ways a
woman might decide to have or not have a family. As Catherine Newman writes in her essay about
conception, “Choice in all its many forms—adoption, abstinence, technology, choosing to be anti-
choice, pleasure, abortion, birth control, kids, no kids, and even, I know, regret—is what makes human
sexuality truly human and parenthood truly viable.”
When an issue is as polarized as abortion, people on both sides see the world in black and white. In
order to preserve these extremes, stories that reveal gray areas are kept secret. The woman who regrets
placing her child for adoption suffers in silence, lest someone think she would have been better off
aborting. The woman who undergoes a painful abortion keeps quiet, lest the complexities of her
situation be construed as an argument against reproductive freedom. But when these stories are
suppressed, so is our empathy. Instead of listening to each other’s stories and drawing lessons from
each other’s lives, we are turning a deaf ear to human experience.
This collection explores the ramifications of many different forms of reproductive choice. In these
essays the complexity behind these decisions—and the gray areas evident in all of them—come
through. Even we, who went looking for these stories, were stunned by such stark and unvarnished
honesty. Because the truth is, when a pregnancy is unplanned any subsequent choice is bound to be
complicated. To deny this is to make the issue something less important than it is.
In her essay “Portrait of a Mother,” Stephanie Andersen writes, “Almost ten years ago, when I was
seventeen years old, I decided not to be a mother. Instead, I chose what the world told me was a better
life. I chose college and a career for myself. I chose a stable, married mother and father for her, a two-
story house in the country.” At a glance, this makes Andersen sound like a poster child for the pro-life