Tuesday, May 03, 2022

Something about abortion

I have posted this before, and if you don't care to read it again, I won't be offended if you scroll by.
While I was in college, a girl I was dating told me she was pregnant — and that I had to be the father. This was in the early 1970s, the pre-Roe era, when abortion was illegal in most places – especially in New Orleans, one of the most Catholic cities in America, where we were living at the time. Still, with relatively little difficulty, we found out about a legit doctor in town who routinely performed abortions for $200. I borrowed the money, and the problem was solved.
Years later, I discovered, well, there’s no lead in my pencil, and I could not have been the father. I should have suspected something was amiss when the girl more or less vanished from my life soon after the procedure. But I never blamed the girl, because at the time I was so traumatized by the episode that the campus shrink wrote me a letter to bring to my draft board, saying I should never be in the military. (Believe it or not: I actually got my draft notice the day of the abortion.) I would joke afterwards that I probably was the only person you’d ever meet who beat the draft by fucking. But a gay friend corrected me: “Well, by fucking a WOMAN, maybe.” LOL.
Now I look back, however, and I suspect — no, make that, I KNOW — that no Supreme Court ruling, no law passed by a state legislature, will ever completely end abortions, or prevent doctors from performing them. All you have to do is know the right people, and have enough money. If you don’t, however, you really are fucked. And that shouldn't happen to anyone.

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