Anyone Else Here Remember Before Abortion Became legal?

[leftyladyfrommo]

I do. It was really pretty awful. It didn't stop abortions. Friends just went to Mexico or Oregon. Lots of women died or were physically wrecked for life.

I don't think people really remember that anymore. But they will when women can't get safe abortions anymore. The abortions won't stop.

Clinton was right. Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

[RebelOne]

1. I remember it well.

In Miami, if you knew the right people, you could go to Cuban refugee doctors and get a safe abortion.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I remember it well.......

I had my last child in 1972......

I knew if I ever needed to have an abortion, my doctor would take care of me....

But of course I was one of the lucky ones.....

Safe, legal and rare....Clinton got it right!

And of course outlawing it won't stop them.....as you so correctly point out.....

They just go underground, where so many have suffered and died, or been scarred......

What a mess.......

[SeattleGirl]

3. Absolutely, I remember.

Roe v. Wade happened just as I was graduating from high school. Please God, let us NOT go back to those awful, dark days!

[Ohio Joe]

4. Agreed

Man, I miss Clinton more and more all the time.

[Burma Jones]

5. If Abortion were legal in 1959, I wouldn't be here.....

My Mom told me so........

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. I was 19 when it became legal

I had a friend who got pregnant at 16. Right after her parents found out, they woke her up in the middle of the night, drove her 50 miles away to a motel where they met her family doctor and he did an abortion right there in the Holiday Inn. She says she can still remember the blood all over the room and watching her dad hand the doctor a wad of cash.

She lost two babies ten years later and almost died when her son was born. And her abortion was done by a doctor.

[China_cat]

7. I certainly do.

We all knew ways and there was a doctor in town who would, for a fee, take care of 'female troubles' in his office. And yet there were still a LOT of early marriages and girls who disappeared for a year.

Wasn't just abortion, either. If you wanted your tubes ties and were under 30 or with less than 3 living children, your request had to go to a (male) doctor's panel at the hospital for approval. Which was rarely granted. (My friend, a brittle diabetic with 5 children under the age of 8 was refused approval because she was only 24.)

[SeattleGirl]

8. Jeez, that makes me mad!

Men deciding whether a woman can have an abortion, have her tubes tied, etc.!!!!

I decided to have my tubes tied when I was 27 (my only child was 3 at the time). My doc -- a female -- asked me if I was certain. I said yes, absolutely. She then asked (I know she had to do this) what I would do if I met a man who wanted to have children with me. I said, well, he'd have to find someone else, because I don't want any more children, either biologically or by adoption.

I had to answer the same questions with the surgeon who did the procedure. Pissed me off. But at least they didn't stand in my way.

Edited to add: That was 24 years ago, and I have not had one day of regret over my decision.

[China_cat]

10. I'm talking about 40 years ago.

I think you may not have any idea of just how bad it was then. (Men could get condoms in a rest room but women could only buy them in a drug store...with a prescription and a copy of their marriage license if the pharmacist would sell to them at all. Doctors wouldn't prescribe birth control for unmarried women/girls. Those were the start of the days of the pill but you still needed a prescription for a diaphram.)

I had my tubes tied 32 years ago this past Wed. after almost 10 years of begging to have it done. Going in for a c-section with the third baby unlikely to live because of Rh involvement, the doctor actually asked me if I wanted to end this. I had tube in both arms and both hands were taped to boards. I told him to stick the pen in my mouth, I'd sign the release with my teeth if I had to and if not, I'd be glad to bleed on it to prove it was me.

[Radio_Guy]

9. Not really

I was born in 1966.

[LaraMN]

11. I'm too young, but the stories are horrific.

That's not the kind of world I want for my kids. :cry:

[Benfea]

12. Abortion is not in any real danger.

Republicans wouldn't dare kill the goose that lays all those golden eggs.

[Arugula Latte]

20. In many states it's already next to impossible to get an abortion.

There is, say, one abortion provider for hundreds of miles. Now imagine you're a scared young teen w/out means to travel, etc.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. I remember it very well. Also knew several girls that 'had' to get

married in their freshman or sophomore years of high school.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Yes

When I was in grade school and high school, if a girl got pregnant out of wedlock, she was sent away to have the baby and give it up for adoption, and no one talked about it except in whispers. She was then considered "damaged goods." No one ever condemned the father of the child, though.

If she brazened it out and kept the baby, then it was just like the Supremes' song "Love Child": the child was ostracized and called names. (I once talked to a woman my age who was such a child. She was not religious, but she said that she was forever grateful to the church in her small Iowa town because the minister and Sunday School teachers there were the only adults aside from her mother and grandparents who accepted her and protected her from the nastiness of the other children.)

There were some doctors who performed abortions, but woe to them if they were found out. One day in fifth or sixth school, I noticed that a girl in one of the other classes was crying. When I asked her teacher why, she said, "Her daddy got arrested." I asked what the girl's father, a doctor, had done, and the answer was, "Things that he shouldn't have been doing." A couple of days later, one of the neighbors came over for coffee, and heard her asking my mother, "Did you hear that Dr. ____________ is in jail for performing abortions?"

Later on, I was in college when first the U.K. and then New York and Colorado legalized abortion. One of my classmates took a weekend trip to London (HIGHLY unusual in those days) and refused to answer questions about it. Later, we'd hear of quick trips to New York or Colorado.

[bleedingheart]

15. I don't but my mom does...

Imagine having two illiterate immigrants with no medical training whatsoever handle your abortion...that is what happened to my cousin in the 1950's...

[In_The_Wind]

16. I remember how horrible it was! I agree with Clinton. Safe. Legal. Rare.

[leftyladyfrommo]

17. I had forgotten about the nonsense required to get your tubes

tied. Or needing a prescription for other kinds of birth control.

Boy, were those the good ole days.

I do remember the building on the corner in Spokane where the unwed mothers stayed. They used to come up and go to our church.

That idea of sending young girls off and forcing them to put their children up for adoption seems so unbelievable today. It was so sad.

Or simply making young girls get married - right. That worked well, didn't it. The good ole shotgun wedding.

And now we may headed right back that direction.

The problem is that people have forgotten. There were really good reasons for Roe vs Wade.

[brook]

18. Ironic, isn't?

The impregnators get to make all the rules.

Young women need to take the current threat seriously. Looking back over the past 30 years, we haven't come that far...and what gains there have been are in jeopardy.

[leftyladyfrommo]

19. Really - that is so true

Young people just don't have a clue what it was like and how fast it could go back to being that way again.

We never practiced safe sex. For one thing there wasn't the danger of AIDS. But there were other infections. We were too embarrassed to even bring the topic up.

And now we are right back where we started - or will be if things keep moving in this direction.

I wish they would at least get the morning after pill available to people. That would be a huge help. But that's all tangled up in other people's morals, too.