My Back-Alley Abortion

Let me bring you into the room. It's a clinical operating room in a private office in midtown Toronto. It has a space to lie down. Other than that, the room is bare. I am tempted to use the word “barren,” which I think captures a fear I cannot articulate. All I can feel is how afraid I am. What am I wearing—a surgical gown? Perhaps just a slip and underwear. I remember already feeling shame and fear. I don't or can't really take in the specifics of my surroundings. I am terrified, shame-ridden, more singularly alone than ever in my life, though my life is not very long at this moment. I am nineteen, a sophomore at an Ivy League college, where one should surely be able to manage one's life. But, at that moment, late-fall 1960, I have left my quite luxurious and sociable dorm room to come north to the city I grew up in, where an older woman friend—the only person I can speak to in any confidence—has put me in touch with a doctor. I say that so easily. Maybe really a doctor? Many years later I learned that this person did indeed have a medical license, but during that first encounter, I knew almost nothing.

When I called my friend to say I was pregnant, she was kind and comforting. She clearly knew what that meant or could mean. Been there. Done that. She took a very strictly practical stance, and she helped me find the right person for that moment of legal, moral, and psychological uncertainty. Or so I had to believe. So, I sit in the waiting room and then the operating room under the control of a man who is mocking, sneering, subtly but clearly insulting, and shaming. He does his work. No anesthetic, no language, nothing comforting is said or intended, no pain meds. I walk out of the room onto the street not sure I am viable or safe. I feel damaged and bad in mind, spirit, and body. The physical pain of the experience must be carrying the emotions. I cannot sort out if I should and will die, or if I have escaped some human female requirement for suffering.

Am I bad