IT’S COMPLICATED Nearly one in three American women will have an the most “sympathetic” abortions: those abortion by age 45. Why are we so afraid to talk performed because of rape or incest, be- about it—or to acknowledge that our lives would cause the life or health of the mother is in danger, or when the fetus has some dev- have been so much less than we hoped for without astating disease like Tay-Sachs. All those it? Why are we pressured to feel that we should regret taken together account for less than a our choice, and that there’s something wrong with us tenth of the more than one million preg- if we don’t? By Laurie Abraham nancies terminated in this country each year, Pollitt tells us in Pro: “So sorry, I went to Katha Pollitt’s apartment one latory new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion fifteen-year-old girls who got drunk at sunny afternoon last summer, bearing Rights—the very subject of which is im- a party, single mothers with all the kids fancy sandwiches and a decent bottle of politic. She greeted me at the front door they can handle and no money, mothers rosé. The sandwiches were our lunch; in dark, loose pants and a cotton-knit preoccupied with taking care of disabled the wine meant more. top, the kind of comfortable clothes one children, students with just one more year The venerable columnist of the left- wears to write. Her hair was short and to a degree, battered women, women who wing magazine The Nation lives with her spiky, a little damp, as if she’d just come have lost their job or finally just landed a second husband, political and social the- out of the shower. She was barefoot. Did decent one, and forty-five-year-olds who orist Steven Lukes, on Manhattan’s Up- I say it was hot in there? have already raised their kids to adult- per West Side. The apartment was very The wine was for me, you must know hood, to say nothing of women who just warm; sweat would soon bead on my up- by now. To calm my nerves, because I don’t feel ready to be a mother, or maybe per lip. came to Pollitt not just as an admirer even don’t ever want to be a mother.” Reporters sometimes ply interview of Pro but also to discuss my intention I took Pollitt’s book very personally; I subjects with alcohol in hopes of lessen- to write about my personal experience read it as a kind of call to action, an ap- ing their inhibitions, getting them to say with its topic. I’m tired of the rhetoric, peal to stop letting abortion opponents the impolitic but “true” thing. But not even from pro-choice advocates, who in fill all the available airspace. There is in this case. I knew Pollitt would be ea- their understandable defensive posture an incipient movement in this direction,

ger to expound on her important, reve- seem to restrict themselves to discussing akin perhaps to Ms. magazine’s “I have TaraTodras-Whitehill

292 READER Essay To read more from Katha Pollitt, go to ELLE.com/pollitt-Q&A. had an abortion” petition, first published are already mothers. They’re not—we’re means that more than half of Ameri- in 1972 and signed by such luminaries as not—“other.” Those numbers are from cans don’t approve of what I did, not to Billie Jean King and Nora Ephron. Lucy Pro, and when I call it “revelatory,” I mention that at 19 I barely qualified as a Flores, a politician running for lieuten- want to add, oddly so. You can’t live in teenager. (And somehow I suspect these ant governor in Nevada, whose story has the abortion-is-murder culture for all of respondents were thinking about girls been told in ELLE and other national your adult life and not have it affect you, finishing high school, not college.) publications, has been frank about the even if you’re pro-choice. So while I al- Some might put me in the category positive impact of abortion on her life. ready knew much of the basic informa- of women who’ve terminated pregnan- A young New Jersey woman named Em- tion Pollitt imparts, I’d “forgotten” some cies to further their careers; only a rock- ily Letts filmed her abortion and ear- facts, and lost track of how the facts in- bottom 25 percent of Americans approve lier this year posted it to YouTube; she formed my pro-choice convictions. of that. Seventy-nine percent would per- did it in part to counter the anti abortion I came of age in the ’70s—I was eight mit abortion when rape or incest are the movement’s successful efforts to limit when Roe v. Wade was decided—a time cause of pregnancy; if it’s about protect- abortions via state laws requiring clinics when pro-choice advocates didn’t feel ing the physical health of the mother, 83 that perform the procedure to be outfit- forced to talk exclusively about the other percent say abortion is okay. ted practically like full-service hospitals; kinds of medical care Planned Parent- But these figures alone can be mis- she wanted to show that the standard hood clinics provided: the breast cancer leading, and Pollitt does an excellent job surgery isn’t especially complicated or screens, the contraception, the treatment of unpacking them and showing the con- painful. And, most recently, in the ro- for sexually transmitted diseases. I grew tradictions in our views, as well as the mantic comedy Obvious Child, a single co- up in that short era when, Pollitt writes, limits to what surveys can tell us about medienne named Donna, after getting “you were not automatically a callous, su- the decisions Americans make for them- pregnant on a one-night stand, quickly perficial person if you felt nothing but re- selves (an old abortion joke, according to decides to have an abortion and follows lief that you were no longer pregnant, and Pollitt: “When should abortion be legal? through with it (unlike in most movies, you were not a monster if you said so.” Rape, incest, and me”), or even which in which abortion is used as what one In several meetings at work in which policies they’d support given the chance. critic called a “misdirect” that eventually this essay was discussed, I noticed that One piquant example from Pro: More gives way to an “uplifting birth”). As none of the other editors in the room, all than a third of those who call themselves Jenny Slate, the actress who plays her of them pro-choice, could bring them- “pro-life” also say women should have “KATHA POLLITT’S PRO IS DIRECTED AT THIS AMBIVALENT SET: ABORTION SHOULD BE LEGAL, SORT OF, BUT IT’S WRONG, SORT OF, AND IT SHOULDN’T BE TOO EASY, AND IT SHOULDN’T BE TOO LATE.…” in the film, told The New York Times, the selves to utter the word abortion; it was the right to choose abortion. arc of Obvious Child is Donna’s “complex “Laurie’s pro piece,” or her “memoir.” I The book is directed at this ambiva- experience” with terminating her preg- know that my colleagues, many of whom lent set, what Pollitt calls the “muddled nancy, not that abortion is a “tragedy.” are my friends, were just trying to be kind middle,” and it’s not that she doesn’t For a small segment of women—and when they referred to my “reproductive understand that people have oppos- the number is small, by any reasonably rights” story. The truth is, I felt uncom- ing impulses about important matters. scientific account—abortion is indeed a fortable saying it out loud too. Abortion The problem, she writes, is that “While tragedy, a trauma with long-lasting re- is a conversational third rail, women’s you in the muddled middle dither and verberations. But I want to tell a different dirtiest dirty laundry, to mix metaphors. worry and fret and vent—yes, abortion story, the more common yet strangely Because the other thing about living in should be legal, sort of, but it’s wrong, hidden one, which is that I don’t feel a political culture where a single-cell zy- sort of, and it shouldn’t be too easy, and guilty and tortured about my abortion. gote is constantly being called a “person” it shouldn’t be too late, and the woman Or rather, my abortions. There, I said it. is that there is a penumbra of shame sur- needs to think about it more, but also not “Abortion. We need to talk about it,” rounding abortion. For myself, however, wait too long, and most of all she should Pollitt beseeches in Pro. “We need to talk I wonder: Am I really ashamed—and, if not be such an irresponsible slut—a rad- about it differently. Not as something we so, what is it exactly that I’m ashamed of? ical movement against abortion rights all agree is a bad thing about which we has gathered enormous speed.” In 2000, shake our heads sadly and then debate its The first one was the “acceptable” one— according to the Guttmacher Institute, precise degree of badness, preening our- the one that most people would under- about one third of American women selves on our judiciousness and moral se- stand, at least those who aren’t categor- lived in states “hostile” to abortion. To- riousness as we argue about this or that ically opposed to abortion. Or would day, more than half of us do. restriction on this or that kind of woman. they? I found out I was pregnant in the The summer before my sophomore We need to talk about ending a preg- fall of my sophomore year at Northwest- year at Northwestern, I’d lived in Co- nancy as a common, even normal, event ern University, in a suburb of Chicago; lumbus, Ohio, working as a secretary in in the reproductive lives of women.” Pollitt cites a Gallup study that, collat- a massive, multifloor restaurant called How normal? Nearly one in three ing the results of a variety of polls, con- the Wine Cellar. I was there to be with American women will have terminated cluded that 42 percent of Americans my high school boyfriend, who went to a pregnancy by age 45, and six in 10 approve of abortion so that a teenager Ohio State. This was a boy I loved pas- abortions are performed on women who can continue her education. That then sionately, wholly. We started dating 293 when we were 17, but I remember when I I thought, Why mess with my body’s nat- rest of my life. She insists that she knew was in eighth grade, and I leaned across ural environment when I’m not having it that night. I love to hear her say it. his desk in Mr. Hanninen’s English class regular sex? and my blouse popped open to reveal So…that summer. I remember be- In the decade or so after my abortion, what my sister derisively called my “liv- ing on the bedroom floor, dim light fil- I graduated from college with bache- ing bra”—it was so padded, stood up so tering through the ugly brown curtains lor’s and master’s degrees in journal- jauntily, that it seemed a creature in its of the furnished rental. We started hav- ism, which, among other things, had own right—and R. did not laugh. He did ing the most intense sex, and we just required that I live in a hovel by the not make fun of me. didn’t pause to fumble around for the di- beach as an intern for The Miami Herald, The summer had been an idyll—R. aphragm. To be clear, even if I thought as well as work out of my school’s Wash- and I playing house in a shabby duplex of it, I didn’t want to pause. My sexual ington bureau covering the nation’s on Chittenden Avenue. My freshman desire for R. was overwhelming, mind- capitol for a small paper in Mississippi. year in college, I’d missed him desper- altering—one of the gifts of my life. For my first real job, as a reporter for ately. I knew no one at Northwestern When I found out I was pregnant a medical newspaper, I traveled around when I arrived, and I don’t think I’ve back in the drudgery of Northwestern, the country and world—including, and ever longed for anyone so much as I I called him, very upset, shaken by the though I can hardly believe this now, at- did him. He had sandy brown hair and power of my body, by how primal it felt tending the first-ever international con- beautiful strong hands; he could play to be pregnant. Shaken by the gravity of ference on AIDS. And I wrote a heavily any instrument by ear and sang Peter what we’d done. Could we have a baby researched book about health care for Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way” to together? Would we? I wanted to be with the poor, for which I spent three years me on his guitar. His three older sisters R. so much. This was my ticket. We could immersing myself in the lives of a mul- had left home by the time we started dat- get married! But though we talked about tigenerational family in Chicago, spin- ing, and until he left for college he lived having the baby, neither of us really con- ning off to report on so-called Medicaid THERE IS AN ENTHUSIASM GAP AMONG PRO-CHOICE VOTERS. IN NARAL POLLING, 44 PERCENT OF PEOPLE OPPOSED TO ABORTION CONSIDERED IT A “VERY IMPORTANT” ISSUE, WHILE ONLY 21 PERCENT OF ABORTION-RIGHTS SUPPORTERS FELT THE SAME. alone with his mother, who was jealous sidered it. He was going to be an artist. mills, the politics of organ transplant, of me at first but came around. He was I was going to get my degree, do some- the history of urban hospitals, and so on. probably the best writer in our giant thing ambitious with my life, even if it Not to put too fine a point on it, but factory of a public high school, so good meant being without R. It was him that I I couldn’t, or even had I been indepen- that he was once wrongly accused of pla- really wanted, anyway, not a baby. dently wealthy and able to afford the fin- giarism because an English paper he’d It was raining the day I went for the est child care, I wouldn’t have lived my written was too perceptive and eloquent. abortion. R. didn’t come with me to the twenties like this had I been a mother: How could a 16-year-old write that? He appointment; my dear roommate Jobie way too much time away from home, was talented at science and math, too, took me to the clinic. I think she accom- and way too much mental space occu- but missed a lot of school—his mother panied me, that is. My memories are pied by work to be the kind of mother I struggled—and our physics teacher told hazy at best from that time 30 years ago. am and wanted to be. My mother always my mother, a guidance counselor at our This was before short-acting anesthetics said, “Why be a mother if you’re not go- school, that R. wasn’t “good enough” for were used during D&Cs, so I was awake ing to be around to raise them?” I took me. R. and a friend were obsessed with for it, and it was jarring to feel the tug- it to heart. building a submarine and penciled de- ging inside me and wonder whether I’d But framing it like this is ridiculous, tailed plans for it in a black notebook. It see blood or tissue, or what. I didn’t see anyway, because if I’d given birth at was to be fashioned from a large metal anything, again, at least as I remember. 20, I would have had to drop out of col- barrel, in which they’d sink down into I don’t remember the aftermath of lege, move back to my hometown, and the dark waters of Lake Erie. I always the abortion at all, but I’m told I was get on government assistance—my par- believed they’d pull it off, and I was dis- crying and sad. That night I met a girl ents likely would’ve helped some, but appointed when they didn’t. R. wanted named Lisa, whom I now talk to or see certainly nothing like full-time child care to be an artist, a painter. nearly every day. (We’ve almost always or full financial support. I don’t know That summer, we were using the di- lived in the same city, and though it what R. would have done; he wanted the aphragm. I’d decided to go off the Pill doesn’t feel like we planned it that way, abortion as much as I did. during my freshman year at college be- I’m a believer in the power of the uncon- I offer all this detail not to show that cause we were together only every couple scious.) She’s the one who tells me I was my abortion was “justified” because of of months. One or the other of us would weepy that night. I’m sure I wished R. the productive decade that followed, take the eight-hour ride on the Grey- had been with me. and not because I think what I did in my hound bus—when the visits ended in the Lisa says that though she felt bad for twenties was per se more useful to society greasy yellow light of the bus station, I’d me, she remembers with tenderness sit- than propagating the species (though to want to die. Suspicion of oral contracep- ting on the single bed in my dorm room, be honest, I think it was, however small tives was in the air in the 1970s and ’80s listening. She thought, This girl is shar- the impact of my work), but because there (perhaps the extra hormones caused dis- ing a major emotional event with me; seems to be this cultural fantasy that, as ease down the line), and I’d absorbed it. she is going to be my best friend for the CONTINUED ON PAGE 344

Who hasn’t heard that women who have more than one abortion are “using it for birth control”? But a Guttmacher Institute study found that multiple abortions are “strongly associated with 294 READER Essay age…indicat[ing] mainly prolonged exposure to the risk of unintended pregnancy.” DANGEROUS MIND MY LOVER, THE CAMERA IT’S COMPLICATED CONTINUED FROM PAGE 108 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 120 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 294 it’s this aspect of Gone Girl—the all artifice, all the destroyed a family. “I asked ‘Can’t you put some- Pollitt puts it, “ill-timed pregnancy” is a bump time—that proved so troubling to writer Mary thing in the movie where you forgive yourself?’ ” easily absorbed, a hurdle easily surmounted. It’s Gaitskill, causing her to publish one doozy of a she remembers. Bergman said no. But she disre- as if, she writes, “bearing and raising children is slam in Bookforum. (“Gone Girl’s sickening world- garded his desire: Her film forgives him what he something [women] should be ready to do at any view” is the essay’s subtitle; the punch line, too.) could not forgive himself. This wasn’t just a gen- moment.” If childbirth is compulsory, women’s Gaitskill was missing the point. Missing a point, erosity—it was a willful reversal of his intentions. sexuality is what “defines them,” she continues, anyway, which is that if Gone Girl’s a shallow “Today I care for that movie. Ingmar did not “not their brains and gifts and individuality and book, that’s because surface is the only thing like it,” she says, softly but resolutely owning her character, and certainly not their wishes or their that interests it. And if you miss that point, you choices. The time had come for Ullmann to be ambitions or their will.” Put another way, gender miss an even more important one, which is that in control—of Bergman’s script, and of his story. equality is a hollow concept if a woman can’t con- Gone Girl’s not a shallow book at all. It’s cultural Perhaps he had finally become the muse after all. trol her fertility except by refraining from sex. criticism of the most trenchant kind, only it’s too A few years before his death, Bergman Now is the time to say that I don’t think that hip to present itself in such earnest, bluestocking brought Ullmann back to the character of Mari- I killed anyone when I had an abortion. Nine terms. It’s cultural criticism with a sexpot-noir anne with his 2003 Swedish teleplay Saraband, re- out of 10 abortions in this country, mine among face. And scratch that earlier observation about visiting the broken marriage 40 years later. He’d them, occur during the first trimester; at eight it not resembling any other novel. It’s a dead ring- offered the then 65-year-old actress the small weeks, a developing pregnancy is an embryo as er for Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, an other protection of a body stocking to film her nude opposed to a fetus, the size of a lima bean and not surreally entertaining/surreally monstrous, scenes, but when she asked for it on set, he said really distinguishable as a human. (“If all along ultraseductive/ultrarepellent, playing-it-straight/ no. She fought back. The frail 84-year-old over- abortion opponents had talked about ‘embryonic playing-it-satirical postmodernist masterpiece turned a table that was set for lunch and chased rights,’ and ‘the embryo’s right to life’ I wonder if with a sociopath at its center. Two books that de- her through the film studio and into the dress- they would have gotten as far as they have,” Pol- fined their eras. ing room, where he ordered the makeup artists litt muses.) to leave. Once behind the door, they both began By 12 weeks, it has become a fetus, 2 inches to Gone Girl was Flynn’s star turn, her breakout to laugh riotously, as Ullmann does herself when 3 inches long, with features that are recognizably book. With it, she’s moved from writing about she tells the story. When she sees herself in the human. Yet by my lights, a fetus at this stage is not pop culture to writing something that’s become buff these days, “I find I’m okay in my bedroom, a person in any real sense of that word. It can’t live pop culture. And now that she’s got a stronghold like, Ooh that’s not so bad!” she says, prancing in outside the womb; none of its organ systems is fully on the public’s imagination, she seems to have her chair and putting on an ingenue’s delighted developed; and, most crucially, it’s not capable of no intention of losing her grip. Sharp Objects is be- smile. But Bergman wanted to show “the pathetic conscious thought, since the cortical synapses ing adapted into a one-hour serialized drama by thing of growing old,” she says, “not the beauty of don’t begin to form until the second trimester. The producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity) and aging.” And so Ullmann has another memoir in way I’ve always thought of it, in lay terms, is that I writer-producer Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire progress, a third act of sorts, about finding splen- ended a potential life, not a life-life. Slayer, Mad Men). Noxon was able to talk Blum, dor in later life, in “a time of possibility where While some believe that abortion is murder, who’d “read the book, loved it, jumped on it” you’re still here and you can still love and receive Pollitt argues that it’s actually only a sliver of the back in 2010, and had been sitting on the rights and give, but everything is now different because population, no matter their answers on surveys. ever since, into switching modes—from feature it’s limited.” She’ll call it Blue Hours. “That’s in the Otherwise, far fewer people would approve of film to television program, her argument be- afternoon, when the sun is almost down and the abortions in cases of rape and incest, or to pro- ing that movies about difficult and/or troubled darkness is coming, but there is some blue and tect the mother’s health. Even the most vehement women are bummers at the box office (Fincher’s haze surrounding you.” opponents are slippery on the abortion-equals- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was, coinciden- Ullmann believes that Hollywood’s commer- murder formulation. If they really thought tally, her example), while TV shows about that cialization of female beauty is the ultimate bar- women who have abortions are killing children, very same type (Homeland, Girls) are Emmy bait. rier to what films can achieve today; that even the why would they try to convince them that they’ll Juicy tidbit: Noxon (“I haven’t told anybody this,” best actresses resist presenting themselves as any- suffer emotional and/or physical harm from she sotto voced) hopes to cast Kiernan Shipka— thing but perfect unless they can credit a pros- having one? When one commits a crime that Sally Draper, Don’s baby!—as the half-femme- thetic nose or brilliant makeup artist for their seriously injures another, we don’t bother appeal- fatale, half-lost little girl, all-jailbait Ama, the temporary ugliness. Having confronted the worst ing to the perpetrator’s self-interest; the ethical in- protagonist’s 13-year-old sister. And filming re- of herself on film, she understands the anxiety. In junction is sufficient in itself. We don’t say, as Pol- cently wrapped on Dark Places, starring Charlize her day, “we didn’t have to be so beautiful all the litt writes, “Don’t beat your children—you’ll be Theron and Chloë Moretz. Like Blum, director time. We didn’t have to be so perfect all the time. lonely in old age.” Gilles Paquet-Brenner acquired the rights to the We didn’t have to look so young all the time,” she property before Gone Girl hit it big. Says Paquet- says. The result was films that connected, that Sitting at Pollitt’s dining room table, which is Brenner (only he says it in a great voulez-vous- prompted feeling, that viewers deeply internal- stacked with books and papers, because this is coucher accent), “The timing was good for me and ized. “It’s another kind of perfection [today], like where she likes to write, I tell her about the close my producers—not as much interest.” there has been an iron on everything,” she says. call I had in my early thirties, the time that I Just because Flynn has gone to Hollywood, This relentless smoothing out, she says, applies might have had an abortion. By then I was dating though, does not mean that Flynn has gone Hol- to how women present not just their physical the man who’d eventually become my husband— lywood. Books are still her primary focus. She’s selves, but motherhood, work, even emotion. She and the father of my two beloved girls. R. and signed deals for a fourth and fifth. She’s going to laughs in exasperation. “I say, ‘Oh, stop. Feel a I had broken up when I was 25, and now there take a crack at the young-adult market, too. “As little more!’ ” was this new love, T., who adored me—for a good much as I really like the screenwriting thing,” It is feeling itself that has driven her work long while, at least. We were using condoms, but she says, “the novel is where the author has so between credits, curtains, and book covers for as had happened earlier, T. and I winged it one much control.” Except for, oh yeah, that little all these years. Or perhaps more specifically, night, and I got pregnant. project she’s got cooking with HBO, a remake of yearning. To Ullmann, so much of the human This time I was far better situated—finan- the British series Utopia (actually about a dysto- condition—and, acutely, her own—is constantly cially, professionally, and emotionally—but I pia) that’s taking up the rest of her year and for “seeking a way out of the misery of being un- wasn’t sure my relationship with T. would last, which she’s teaming up once again with Fincher. seen.” The connection with a lover, a parent, a and I didn’t want to force the marriage decision. She recalls receiving his text about the project: daughter, an audience can happen in front of the (He didn’t either.) But the choice was not mine in “I was cracking my knuckles and getting ready camera—which she still considers to be “the best the end: I miscarried. to get back to the novels, but it was too good to thing,” when it’s rolling, “like when you are with I do remember the conversation with Lisa in say no to, so….” She trails off with a smile. Well, a lover at that moment when the eyes see each this case; I was relieved. Talk about narrative mis- Flynn’s done the thriller-genre thing, the roman- other”—or behind it. Or simply when laying one- direction—I’d dodged a sperm. I wasn’t slutty and tic-comedy-genre thing, is about to do the sci- self bare to a friend, “when people really dare to irresponsible! But what I failed to see then was that fi-genre thing, so why not the gangster-genre speak to each other,” she says. That, itself, is an the miscarriage hadn’t erased the careless act of thing, too? Every time she’s out, they pull her act of creation. Gently, but with the strength of having sex without a condom. In fact, I didn’t re- back in. And Nick Dunne thought only film- inimitable experience, she says: “You are part of alize how illogical I’d been back then until I re- geek dudes could make Godfather allusions. creating your own life, after all.” counted the story to Pollitt. “Show me the woman 344 who hasn’t winged it,” she says. “No one feels out of this bind—it’s hard not to grab sweetness concerned that a fourth child would destabilize guilty when they have sex without birth control when and where you can. I felt similarly when I them anew. and don’t get pregnant.” Pollitt, who is the mother spent those years on the West Side of Chicago re- As Julie put it, “I would have the feeling when of one child, a now 27-year-old daughter whom she searching my first book; one member of the fam- I was by myself and thinking about it that I def- had with her first husband, adds, “I conducted my ily had a destructive coke habit, and repeatedly initely wanted to keep it.” But when she talked entire first affair without contraception. By the it occurred to me that had my life been equally through the situation with her husband and oth- time I got birth control, the relationship was over. hard, with so little to look forward to, I might ers, it seemed like “it wasn’t really the best deci- Although I was 22 at the time, I was like some teen- have been just like him. Yes, I knew he was hurt- sion, you know, to keep the baby.” ager who’s taken abstinence-only sex education ing people, that he could have, should have tried and who has no real clue about what’s going on.” to take better care of those he loved, but I empa- My third unintended pregnancy was the hardest. I married T. at 35 and before my fortieth birth- thized with his hunger to get high, to escape the The meaning my two girls bring to my life is in- day had given birth to my two daughters, both grinding dullness. calculable, and even in my midforties I already promptly conceived when I deliberately stopped “We’re not dealing with trying to get people knew that their time with me as children was go- using contraception. Yet one more thing it’s easy to wear seat belts,” says Corinne Rocca, PhD, an ing to be over in a flash. I was going to miss moth- to forget in twenty-first-century America is that epidemiologist who studies abortion. “We’re talk- ering so much, so why not have another one? I’d most women get pregnant fairly easily through- ing about sexual behavior, which is connected to have a child at home until I was 62! Or: I’d have a out their thirties. That truth has gotten occlud- intimacy, to relationships, connected to one of child at home until I was 62. ed because stories of infertility are so disturbing, the most fundamental biologic drives there is.” Then, too, my marriage was fraught—and it and because what woman of a certain age hasn’t Which is why, of course, just-the-facts health edu- was taking a huge amount of energy to try to keep gone through the agonizing IVF process step-by- cation—devoid of social and emotional context— our home somewhat happy, to give the girls the step, either herself or with a friend? The lack of often has depressingly minimal impact, whether time and attention I wanted to give them, and to awareness is also the product of shockingly an- directed to a high school drop-out or someone continue to do the work that I loved. My husband tiquated, oft-promulgated data that wrongly sug- who has multiple degrees. said he’d go either way, but he insisted that we gest the ability to get pregnant plummets at 35. With a team of fellow scientists at University move to the suburbs if we had a third child. I wor- (There was an excellent exposé on this subject of California, San Francisco, Rocca is conduct- ried about the suburbs being too far away from last year in The Atlantic, written by a psychology ing one of the first rigorous studies about the my office—when would I see my girls, never mind professor named Jean Twenge.) emotional aftermath of abortion. The research- the new baby I’d have? I worried that I’d lose con- Aside from when I was pregnant, I used the ers are following three groups of several hundred tact with my large circle of friends in New York, reliable Pill during my thirties, but sometime af- women each over five years: One group had first- who kept me feeling together and loved, espe- ter I turned 40 I decided to give it a rest. As new trimester abortions; another, predominately cially when my marriage wasn’t providing much parents, and longtime partners, T. and I weren’t second-trimester abortions; and the last is made in the way of ballast or affection. having sex as frequently as we had before. And up of women who came to a clinic too late to qual- This time, when the technician did the ul- while I know that there is no good evidence that ify for the procedure and gave birth. (The third trasound at the abortion clinic, I started to sob. hormonal contraceptives are detrimental taken is a control group of sorts and improves on ear- I asked to go out to the waiting room; I talked long term, or past 40, I just felt, as I did at other lier work that unfairly compared women who had to my husband about whether to proceed; he was junctures in my life, Why take extra hormones if abortions to women who had babies they wanted sympathetic and again said that it was my choice you don’t have to? So my husband and I switched or who suffered miscarriages.) but that he understood why we were there: This to condoms, and as time went on I just assumed I One of the first papers Rocca and her col- didn’t seem like a good time in our lives to have couldn’t get pregnant anymore. I mean, nobody leagues published was based on interviews done another child. I agreed with him. A third child gets pregnant at 44 without petri dishes and sur- one week postabortion. “Relief was far and away would put too much strain on our marriage, rogates and donated eggs, right? So once again the most commonly reported response,” she tells I wanted to keep working, and I didn’t want to I experienced what public-health types call “real me, though she adds that women felt a range of cheat the children I already had. I composed my- use contraceptive failure”: We didn’t use a con- positive and negative emotions. Whatever they self and went through with it. dom, and I got pregnant. felt, 95 percent of the subjects who’d had an abor- It’s Pollitt who offers perhaps the most forgiv- What a feckless idiot, you’re thinking. And tion told surveyors they believed it was the right ing perspective on my abortion history, and who that’s what I thought, and to an extent still think, decision. The UCSF group has submitted another says something that seemed to resonate with a of myself. Not one, not two, but three unintended study for publication tracking the same sample number of my friends and colleagues. “Women pregnancies. I’m the highly educated daughter of three years out, and while Rocca could not com- have to control their fertility for 30 years,” she tells a Planned Parenthood clinic volunteer, for God’s ment on its particulars, she told me, “We do not me, echoing a line from Pro. “Thirty years is a sake—my septuagenarian mother’s still out there, find emerging regret up to three years.” long time not to make mistakes.” doing her thing—and I can’t manage to use con- The ongoing project was in part inspired by I had one unplanned pregnancy in each de- traception faithfully, especially when I should the regret-relief debate between abortion op- cade of my reproductive life, which isn’t some- have known by then that I was very fertile? ponents and supporters, and to address that thing to be proud of, but I’m not sure it’s anything This is the truth the best as I can tell it: The directly, a UCSF sociologist, Katrina Kimport, to be ashamed of, either. times when my husband and I were having the PhD, conducted lengthy interviews with women And yet, the judgment still lingers in me too. kind of sex that I’d had with R.—the kind where who were expected to have had emotional diffi- It’s been less than 50 years since modern femi- you lose self-consciousness and become all culty with their abortions. When regret is used nism began to reshape our rights under the law mouth and skin and where does he stop and I in the political realm, it’s usually understood as and our desires and expectations (sexual and begin—had become less frequent. I missed that, meaning that a woman who had an attachment otherwise) in relationships. It’s deeply unset- both the physical ecstasy and the connection to to an unborn baby terminated her pregnancy tling to defy what Pollitt calls the centuries-old him. As for T., he just missed sex, any kind of sex and wishes she could turn back time and make “self-sacrificing, other-oriented, maternal” ideal. with me, period. So when it was going well, when a different decision. Only one of Kimport’s 21 What kind of woman are you, Laurie? Shame we were feeling it, I didn’t want to stop. “It’s okay, subjects fit this profile at the time she was inter- may be part of the psychic bargain women strike we’ll be fine,” I told T. He was always more cau- viewed. She split the more common reports of dis- with themselves. I felt compelled to mention my tious than me about almost everything, but he tress into three categories: disapproval of a wom- abortions to practically everyone I interviewed didn’t stop us either. an’s choice by friends and family, combined with for this piece—what was I looking for? Absolu- That is what happened the three times I ac- the social stigma; the end of the romantic rela- tion…or punishment? cidentally got pregnant: I chose the immediacy tionship that had produced the pregnancy; and In an interview with ELLE last month, U.S. of sexual pleasure and emotional intimacy over what she called “head versus heart” conflict. For Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg worrying about the potential consequences. example, one married mother of three named said that she thought that the country would When I think about the fact that poor women Julie was 40 when she got pregnant unexpect- “wake up” and realize that the state-by-state re- have a higher rate of unintended pregnancy (and edly. She’d been hospitalized for severe postpar- strictions on abortion were untenable and that thus abortion and childbirth) than women fur- tum depression after the third baby and worried we “can never go back” to the situation before ther up the economic ladder, this is what I think she couldn’t care for her existing children if she Roe, when abortions were only “for women who about: If you’re working a meaningless job for got sick again, not to mention that she had to go can afford to travel to a neighboring state.” Yet $7.25 per hour while worrying about paying the off her anti-depressants to continue the new preg- it seems to me that we have gone back to that rent, whether your kids are getting enough love nancy. Then, too, she and her husband had just time; right now poor women are in effect being and guidance, and what in hell you can do to get gotten through a “difficult patch,” and she was denied abortions because they can’t afford them, 345 or can’t afford the gas to get to a clinic that is COVERS at select Neiman Marcus stores nationwide. Jeans by hundreds of miles away—or can’t afford all that On Elizabeth Banks: Silk satin bra by Carine Gilson, $343, Michael Kors, call 866-709-KORS or visit michaelkors.com. and to stay overnight in a hotel to comply with a visit carinegilson.com, collection at Barneys New York. PAGE 144: Skirt by Nic+Zoe, collection at lordandtaylor 24-hour waiting period. White gold and diamond earrings by De Beers, price .com. Handbag by Bottega Veneta, $9,000, call 800-845- As Ginsburg pointed out in the Hobby Lobby on request, visit debeers.com. On Annette Bening: Flannel 6790 or visit bottegaveneta.com. PAGE 146: Hoodie by case, an IUD costs as much as a month’s pay for jacket, $4,150, pants, $1,490, cashmere turtleneck, Baja East, collection at barneys.com. Sandal by Dior, call a minimum-wage worker. “It makes no sense as $1,530, by Tom Ford, at Tom Ford (NYC), call 888-TOM- 800-929-DIOR or visit dior.com. Ring by Mason Stanley, a national policy to promote birth only among FORD. Silver, prasiolite, and diamond earrings collection at Roseark (West Hollywood). PAGE 148: Dress poor people,” she asserted. I admire her opti- by David Yurman, $1,350, at David Yurman (NYC), by Mugler, collection at Bergdorf Goodman (NYC). PAGE mism, but I’m skeptical of change being driven visit davidyurman.com. Patent leather oxfords by 152: Ankle boot by Dior, call 800-929-DIOR or visit dior by concern for the plight of poor women. I think Christian Louboutin, $795, collection at Saks Fifth Avenue .com. 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PAGE 156: Dress by Oscar de la Renta, $6,990, If my second abortion is still tinged with sadness, gold and diamond bracelet by Pomellato, price on visit oscardelarenta.com. PAGE 159: Necklaces it’s because it marked an end of sorts for me. I request, call 800-254-6020 or visit pomellato.com. Suede by Van Cleef & Arpels, call 877-VAN-CLEEF or visit don’t have all my life ahead of me anymore; by ac- pumps by Jimmy Choo, $595, at select Jimmy Choo vancleefarpels.com. Pump by Jimmy Choo, call 866-524- tuarial charts, I have far less than half. I won’t one stores nationwide, call 866-524-6687 or visit jimmychoo 6687 or visit jimmychoo.com. PAGE 160: Handbag day get married, or one day become a mother. My .com. On Jennifer Garner: Rayon-blend jacket by Calvin by Dior, call 800-929-DIOR or visit dior.com. Pump by sense of limitless potential is and was closing fast. 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That’s the untold necklace, price on request, rose gold and diamond trade-mark.com. story of abortion, she tells me. necklace, $12,500, by David Yurman, at David Yurman My 14-year-old daughter knows about my first (NYC), visit davidyurman.com. On Gugu Mbatha-Raw: THE SCENESTER abortion—about a year ago she asked whether I’d Wool jacket by Calvin Klein Collection, $850, at Calvin PAGE 184: Dress by Marc Jacobs, visit marcjacobs.com. ever had one, and I told her because I don’t like Klein Collection (NYC). Platinum and diamond Pumps by Jimmy Choo, at select Jimmy Choo stores to lie to her and I didn’t want her to feel that she earring by Harry Winston, price on request, call 800- nationwide, call 866-524-6687. PAGE 186: Coat by couldn’t come to me if she ended up in the same 988-4110 or visit harrywinston.com. White gold and Miu Miu, at select Miu Miu boutiques nationwide. situation. I hope that I can help her prevent that diamond earring by Chopard, at Chopard boutiques Scarf by Chanel, call 800-550-0005. Tights by Wolford, by talking openly with her about birth control nationwide, call 800-CHOPARD or visit us.chopard at Wolford boutiques nationwide. Sweatshirt by Band and the feelings that can get in the way of using .com. White gold and cognac diamond ring by of Outsiders, collection at Nordstrom stores nationwide, of it. But as I can amply attest, mistakes happen. David Yurman, $8,200, at David Yurman (NYC), visit Steven Alan stores nationwide. Shirt by Equipment, at My daughter brought up the subject of my davidyurman.com. On Zoe Saldana: Silk-blend dress by Equipment (NYC). Watch by Tag Heuer, $8,900, at abortion again more recently. It is hard to convey Lanvin, $4,245, at net-a-porter.com. Tag Heuer boutiques nationwide. Loafers by Manolo how empathic and kind she is. I’m her mother, Blahnik, at Neiman Marcus stores nationwide, call so you won’t believe me, and I really don’t know BEHIND THE SHOOT 888-888-4757. Jeans by Michael Michael Kors, at select where she came from, this child, but there is a PAGE 90: Bra by Kiki de Montparnasse, at Kiki de Michael Kors stores nationwide, call 866-709-KORS. goodness that emanates from her now and al- Montparnasse (NYC). Handbag by Giorgio Armani, $24,845, at Giorgio ways will. That doesn’t make her life easy, nec- Armani boutiques nationwide. essarily; and it doesn’t always make it easy to be VALLEY GIRLS around her. She is the Doppler radar of my emo- PAGE 128: From top left, Danielle wears: Jacquard SHOPS tional weather, which, while sometimes utterly top by Chloé, $2,395, collection at Neiman Marcus PAGE 196: Coat by Denim & Supply Ralph Lauren, annoying—“Honey, just let me be, I’m fine”—at stores nationwide. Este wears: Tank by Whistles, $125, at Denim & Supply Ralph Lauren stores nationwide, other times is a blessing so profound I tremble visit whistles.com, collection at Bloomingdale’s stores collection at Macy’s stores nationwide, macys.com. Shirt to think about it. Once, in the car when she was nationwide. Skirt by Carven, $550, at Carven (NYC). Este by Vince, visit vince.com. Earrings by Balmain, collection probably 11, I was complaining about how I wears: Double silk-crepe dress by Chanel, $4,800, at at Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus stores nationwide. couldn’t believe that I was yet again driving ev- select Chanel boutiques nationwide, call 800-550-0005. Ring by Andrea Fohram, at Twist (Asheville, NC). eryone around like a veritable chauffeur, drop- Danielle wears: Wool-blend trousers by Acne Studios, Handbag by The Styleliner by Joey Wolffer, at The Styleliner ping kids off here and there, and she said to me, $360, visit acnestudios.com. Alana wears: Cotton and silk Truck (NYC). Belt by Samantha Grisdale, at Samantha “Oh, Mommy, I know you’re going to apologize jacket by Stella McCartney, $1,795, at Stella McCartney Grisdale (L.A.), collection at Lost & Found (L.A.), Love for getting mad in a couple of hours.” We were (NYC). Este wears: Leather trench coat by Acne Studios, & Luxe (San Francisco). PAGE 202: Skirt by Michael about to pull up outside her dance class. “I know $2,350, visit acnestudios.com. Knit dress by Kenzo, $958, Kors, call 866-709-KORS, visit michaelkors.com. Skirt by you want us to fulfill our hopes and dreams.” at Barneys New York (Beverly Hills), visit barneys.com Monique Lhuillier, at Monique Lhuillier stores nationwide. So we were walking the dog on our street when Swimsuit by T by Alexander Wang, at Alexander Wang she mentioned the abortion with R. A shadow FIRST LOOK stores nationwide. Dress by Cédric Charlier, collection at must have crossed my face, or perhaps I hesitated, PAGE 141: Sunglasses by Illesteva, visit illesteva.com. Bergdorf Goodman (NYC), net-a-porter.com. Bucket my voice dropped, I don’t know, but she assumed Earrings, ring by Jennifer Fisher, call 888-255-0640 or bag by Tory Burch, at Tory Burch boutiques nationwide. I was feeling bad about what I’d done. (Actually, visit jenniferfisherjewelry.com. Ring by Jennifer Zeuner PAGE 204: Top by Sam Edelman, collection at Nordstrom I was wondering when and how I’d tell her about Jewelry, visit jenniferzeuner.com. stores nationwide. Coat by Topshop, at Topshop stores the other abortion, but I suppose we have time for nationwide. Slip dress by Zadig & Voltaire, at Zadig & that.) Her father is T., of course. TRENDS AND ACCESSORIES Voltaire boutiques nationwide. Pants by Rachel Comey, “You did the right thing!” she exclaimed. She PAGE 142: Dress by Alexander Wang, visit alexanderwang collection at La Garçonne (NYC). Handbag by Salvatore grabbed my arm, holding me in her bright gaze. .com. Earrings by Kimberly McDonald, $11,550, collection Ferragamo, call 866-337-7242. PAGE 206: Cuffs by Eddie “If you hadn’t had the abortion, you wouldn’t at Forty Five Ten (Dallas). Bikini by Proenza Schouler, at Borgo, collection at Bergdorf Goodman (NYC), nordstrom have had me.” Proenza Schouler (NYC). Clutch by Judith Leiber Couture, .com. Handbag by Tod’s, $8,900, at Tod’s boutiques 346