I'm sorry I forgot that you are a woman yourself. And on reflection, a lot of what I said was a bit over the edge.

HOWEVER,

I find that men AND women who come from privileged environments are often very cavalier about what Hyde has done to the landscape of women's reproductive rights.

Perhaps I should have brought this up earlier, but I have had personal experience with this.

(Warning, big storytime ahead, you are welcome to "tl, dr" the whole thing and move on, but I would hope you'd listen.)

I am a poor relation of a family that you can say is quite privileged. We became "the poor relations" because my father got sick with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis when I was 8. Even though we were insured, and health insurance was way better back in the '70s than it is now, the fact that my father could not continue the pace of his business having to deal with doctors' appointments, some even out of town, and the strains the disease took on him, meant we began to experience downward mobility even when he was still alive.

When my father died, goodbye breadwinner. This was the 1970s, when women were still expected to follow the confines of the Feminine Mystique, and those who sought to earn their own bread were faced with a very low glass ceiling that at that point was frosted. Fuck, when I first started looking for summer jobs want ads were still segregated by gender.

If my dad hadn't gotten sick, it is quite likely he would have become the kind of macher (financial success, "maker") my Great Uncles were and my Uncle is. My mom struggled through most of her life, got into financial trouble with the credit cards she inherited from my dad, and basically muddled through before she was diagnosed with hideously advanced colon cancer in her early '50s. It was during the time she had colon cancer and a little before I had Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, so I was out of the financial loop.

Her tenuous finances meant my higher education was spotty to say the least. I also had an undiagnosed learning disability in arithmetical reasoning that made progressing in higher education difficult until it was diagnosed. She refused to "open her books" for financial aid, so when per-unit fees were instituted in the LA Community College District (actually throughout California, thanks George Deukmedjian!) I had to leave college. I went back to college in 2003 when I had exhausted every attempt to get another job in IT after the Dot Com Bust. It was only then that I was diagnosed, and because I was broke and an "independent student" I finally qualified for financial aid.

Anyway, that takes us far afield of my point. Sorry, I digress. A lot.

Anyway, once I became sexually active, I had a couple of pregnancy scares. I was on birth control. But I knew that even the pill failed. And when periods did not come, I was left in total panic. The Hyde Amendment meant I had no help to defray costs should I need an abortion, and even in the '70s it was a relatively high-ticket procedure that you had to pay out of pocket.

And predictably, when I mentioned the possibility to boyfriends, said boyfriends would invariably kick me to the curb at the news of the matter. I learned about stuff like emmenagogue herbs and the "no going back" homebrew vacuum aspirator because of the situation. I had a bag of tansy, a bag of pennyroyal, and a bag of black cohosh that I would use for tea. Thank Goddess I never had to go further. Because there was nothing else I could do. The mayonnaise jar vacuum aspirator never had to be built.

I COULD tell my mom. But she wasn't made of money, the cost of an abortion was going to be a crippling expense at least for a while, and it would have meant lots of drama I didn't need. So she never was told about any of these scares.

However, if the rubber hit the road and my delayed period did not come, she would have found a way. Because she had to have an abortion before she had me, when her first husband cheated on her with another man. The whole experience was repugnant to her...this was the late '50s. She didn't know the aspiring actor only wanted her for a "beard" so he could get ahead in Show Biz. And homosexuality was something she could handle on a theoretical basis, but her own husband being bi? Uh uh, nothing doing. And her dad (my grandpa) beating the guy black and blue when he discovered him in flagrante delicto kind of put a crimp in any possible reconciliation anyway.

This was the 1950s. Abortion was illegal. However, if you had about $20,000 cash you could put in a manila envelope in non-sequential bills you could go to any number of Beverly Hills OB/Gyns and have a safe, discreet abortion which would usually be followed by a hospital D&C after a "miscarriage."

If you were not that wealthy...and her side of the family never really was...you took a Greyhound bus or a Santa Fe train to San Diego, then went over the border into Tijuana to a clandestine clinic. Abortion was just as illegal in MX as it was in the US, but there were little clinics that catered to the by-and-large poor population, and the local law enforcement was easily bought off.

So she went for a Border "vacation." She had a horrifying time and nearly lost her life, if not her fertility. Actually getting pregnant with me was a bit of a miracle, to be frank, after what she went through. But she "lost" the embryo. And she regained her life.

And she met a wonderful guy, albeit one with a very different sociopolitical philosophy to her own. And they had me. And then, they decided they would stop there. So they defied Griswold v. Connecticut and religiously used birth control. I have no siblings. So it worked for them. And the Pill was a godsend for them when it came out.

When I was just 13 or so, my mom took me to the steps of Hamilton High. She pointed out a brown stain. She told me how that stain got there. "It's a woman's blood." She then told me about the classmate who had aborted herself in the girl's bathroom and died on the Hamilton High steps. "Thank G_d for Roe v. Wade." she said. "And you need to safeguard it, be active, so it doesn't get taken away."

Anyway, this is a huge deal for me. Maybe that's why I got all pissy about it. I have never really felt free under Roe v. Wade. Maybe if I was rich like some of the more fortunate side of my family, things would be different. But there it is.