Growing up, I don’t remember abortion ever being discussed. I knew that it involved the removal of the fetus from the uterus. The specifics of how the surgery was performed I knew nothing about. Nobody I knew had had one.

It was 1953 when I had an illegal abortion in a brownstone in Brooklyn, at the age of 16. I didn’t know what to expect. I had no desire to keep the baby. The father was out of the picture, a 19-year-old soldier in Korea, and there was no melodrama from my parents, not even a lecture. They simply arranged for me to have the pregnancy terminated by a medical doctor willing to perform it, and paid the $500 (which was a staggering sum back then).

They did what had to be done. And then I did.

During the abortion, I was alone with the doctor, the sunlight coming through the blinds. The room smelled of fear once he began his examination, but not because I was aware the operation was illegal – that wasn’t a concern. But the doctor told me that, if I cried out, the police would raid the office.

Though he was a medical doctor, the surgery itself was sadistic and barbaric. He scraped out the contents of my uterus with a curette, which is essentially a razor on a stick. He gave me no anesthesia of any kind: no shot, no pills, not even an aspirin. There was a reason why he didn’t give me painkillers: he wanted me to suffer, and he wanted to humiliate me. But I didn’t cry out. I didn’t make any noise at all.

When he was finished, he forced me to look at the “product” of the procedure – blood and bits of tissue floating in a porcelain basin – and he warned me to stay away from boys. He then told me that I had a beautiful body, and then he sexually molested me. I still didn’t scream.

I did not scream until years after the surgery, when I heard a child counting aloud during a game of hide and seek. The doctor counted aloud as he scooped out my insides.

I had a second abortion much later, after it became legal, performed under general anesthesia. There are always risks associated with general anesthesia, but the abortion was painless and, as far as I know, no one molested me during the surgery – so I bear no emotional scars from having had the procedure.



Anti-abortion lawmakers are fanatically committed to an alternate “reality” when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. Women will always seek abortions, even if they are illegal. They always have and they always will, even if it means risking their health and their lives. That’s why it is vitally important to have access to safe abortions.



To remain silent about abortion perpetuates the feelings of guilt and shame many women feel, and it makes it harder for other women to speak out. Women will say they want abortion to be safe and legal, yet they will not admit to having one unless it was a medical necessity. It’s time for the one in three of us women who have made that decision for whatever reason to come out of the closet.