reeto A Women’s Guide to Reproductivehoose Freedom 1 I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown into jail, but I never will be silent; I never will acquiesce or submit to authority, nor will I make peace with a system which degrades woman to a mere incubator and which fattens on her innocent victims. I now and here declare war upon this system and shall not rest until the path has been cleared for a free motherhood and a healthy, joyous, and happy childhood. —EMMA GOLDMAN Aberhardt Question Press is pleased ofof women. Access This includes the family, E to print the second edition of church, capitalism and the state, to Free to Choose. We received mostly name a few. The knowledge we share positive feedback on the first edition and the ways we use it can be seen as and a few thoughtful critiques that tools for unravelling this web of op- are deeply appreciated. pression. Part of our intention in putting this I emphasis the necessity for access pamphlet together is to aid the dis- to abortion and not for legality. The cussion around the issue of abortion reason for this distinction is a mat- access in a anti-state context. It bears ter of control. The state may grant repeating that we should never allow or withdraw a woman’s “right” to laws or governments to dictate the have a legal abortion. The state profoundly personal and life altering may shut down clinics and imprison decisions we make around abortion, abortion providers. Criminalization birth control or bringing a child into has always made getting safe abor- the world. tions more difficult. However, no It is also our intention to better state has ever stopped women from equip ourselves and our comrades having abortions. with the knowledge and tools for It is up to women to make sure we making safe and empowered choices never go back to the bad old days of in our bedrooms and in the world back alley abortions. We should not we live in. I firmly believe that it is allow ourselves, our sisters, moth- ultimately a woman’s decision to ers or friends to end up uneducated, do what she will with her body. It is ill-equipped or desperate. We are re- important to keep in mind that deci- sponsible for our bodies, our choices sions are made within the context of and our lives. the world a woman lives in, her com- I have also included stories where- munity, family and lovers. in women teach themselves safe and There is a complex web of social re- effective ways to end a pregnancy. lationships that create the oppression When we examine our history, we 2 Introduction find examples of women’s groups, who, like Jane and other anonymous groups, were unwilling to wait for abortion to be a legally granted “right.” “Let’s just stop the frustra- tion and humiliation of trying to persuade the powers that be to le- galize abortion. Let’s just take back the technology, the tools, the skills, and whatever else we need...” stated a woman who helped form one such group in the 1970s. It truly is humili- ating to ask the state for control over one’s own body. We need not lobby, we need not beg, nor demand our “rights” to be granted to us. From traditional herbs to end or prevent pregnancy to underground abortion services, women have al- ways defended and exercised our ability to choose. The knowledge exists for women to exercise their reproductive freedoms in safe and empowering ways. The time has come to take it back. This brief introduction is meant to be educational. I hope that it can be a starting point for further exploration and discussion. I encourage people to review the recommended books at o the end of this pamphlet. Let’s sup- port one another, learn from our mistakes and remember our history. love and solidarity, To know our history Esther Eberhardt is to begin to see how to take up struggle again. NOT E : The following may be triggering if you have experienced sexual abuse or have ] had a difficult abortion experience. Introduction 3 LetE CAUS E OF SIGNIFICANT’s not ADVANC E S goshe did have back a positive pregnancy to the bad old days. Bin abortion technology and the test. There was one other finding: widespread availability of legal abor- a small puncture point with a little tion, many people have forgotten bit of bleeding at the entrance of her what life was like when abortion was uterus.... I suspected that either she illegal. Dr. Jerry Hulka, Professor of had tried to abort herself, or some- Obstetrics and Gynecology at the one else had done it to her. When I University of North Carolina School checked on her a little later, I had to of Medicine, describes what he saw press the point of asking her what on an ongoing basis as an intern, a had happened because she had vis- resident, and then as an attending ibly weakened. physician, in hospitals in Pittsburgh “I had to do it,” she said. “I went from 1957 to 1967. “In one hospital, to this lady who put a coat hanger we had a special ward that was al- up in me. She told me not to panic, ways filled with women who had but if there was some real prob- infections and perforations from il- lem, don’t say anything but go to legal abortions,” he says. Dr. Hulka the emergency room. I figured that often assisted Dr. Sam Barr, a senior blood coming out whenever I went physician on the staff, with these to the bathroom was a problem and cases. Dr. Barr ultimately wrote a I got real scared.” book about the need for abortion With luck, I thought, the worst reform, in which he recalled one un- diagnosis would be that this wom- forgettable case: an’s bladder had been perforated. That would not be pleasant, but I’LL N E V E R FORG E T ON E PATI E NT ; SH E hopefully there wasn’t any major was 32 years old and the mother systemic problem. I started massive of two children. She was admitted antibiotic treatment immediately, through the emergency room [and] beginning with several transfusions wouldn’t say anything except that to replace the blood she had lost... she thought she ought to get help [but] three hours later I learned I as soon as possible... Her symptoms was wrong.... First, the laboratory were relatively mild. Her pelvis was reported that preliminary studies moderately tender and her uterus indicated an infection with gas gan- was only slightly enlarged, but grene. Then, the nurse on the floor 4 Let’s Not Go Back to the Bad Old Days Let’s not go back tosaid that the the patient lookedbad just aw- oldunnecessary days.deaths again.” The ful she wasn’t bleeding much but nameless woman in the above sto- she had a lot of difficulty breathing. ry left two children, perhaps quite I ran to the floor and found her slip- young ones, who had to face life ping rapidly into heart failure. The without the love and protection of professor who headed our program their mother. We will never know came in to assist, but everything how her children fared in life, but that 20 skilled people could contrib- we do know that losing a mother is ute did not help. The gangrene bac- perhaps the most devastating psy- teria were destroying her red blood chological event children can face, cells. That vital fluid was turning and putting them at a severe disad- into little more than red water1 Her vantage growing up. heart couldn’t handle it and her body was dying.... The last thing I HOLLY , WHO IS NOW IN H E R E ARLY remember her saying to me was, “I seventies, and raised three children know you tried. Figure some way to of her own, lost her mother to a tell my kids. They won’t understand self-induced abortion in 1922. at all. Tell them for me somehow. I When my older sister was seven, don’t want them to think me bad.” I was five, and my baby sister was She lost consciousness and then, a two, we lived with our parents in little bit later, just before dawn, she one big room in Pittsburgh. When died. our mother, who was 28 years old at the time, got pregnant for the DR. HULKA WAS ON E OF TH E DOCTORS fourth time, there simply wasn’t who tried to help this woman. He room for another child, so our vividly remembers her pain and her dad went to the drugstore and got death, and says that similar cases some medicine. I don’t know what occurred on a daily basis because of it was, but she took it. Later, she repressive abortion laws. “Women started hemorrhaging so he took and doctors have forgotten about her to the hospital. She lived for a these deaths,” he says. “Unless few days, but one night, Dad came something is done quickly to stem home and was crying and said that the tide of regressive legislation, our mother was dead. I remember we are going to start seeing such seeing her laid out in the living Let’s Not Go Back to the Bad Old Days 5 room of my aunt’s house. We just in smaller communities, yet how couldn’t understand why it had common abortion was: happened.