San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Decision is personal
Shortly after graduating high school at 17, I woke up to two police detectives at the end of my hospital bed having had emergency surgery after an illegal abortion. My abortion took place in my boyfriend’s kitchen. I sat with my feet on two chairs while a woman who, as it turned out stole the clamp and instruments from the hospital she worked at, gave me an abortion.
One week later, I was rushed to the hospital where I woke up to the detectives, who informed me that if I did not help them put this woman behind bars I would become a ward of the state until I was 21 and my boyfriend would be sent to prison for statutory rape. Both of us went to court to testify against her.
The idea that 55 years later, girls across this country could find themselves in this position sickens me. We cannot allow the right for a woman to choose what happens to her body be taken away. Such decisions should be made by a majority of the electorate and not by a handful of judges.
Demonstrators protest at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland on Tuesday against a potential Supreme Court vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
or a self-induced abortion attempt.
It would be criminal to force women back into this situation.
Regarding “Love all children” (Letters to the Editor, May 5): The writer makes the point that all children deserve to be wanted. That fundamental premise is borne out by my experience as an attorney in more than 200 child abuse and neglect cases in which I was
appointed by California appellate courts.
Those cases represented a wide range of appalling parental behavior that resulted in babies born to mothers addicted to drugs or alcohol, every imaginable kind of injury and abuse (including sexual abuse), and in the most extreme cases, death of the child.
Many of those cases could have been avoided if the mother had chosen not to give birth to an unwanted child. Even in the least serious cases of parental neglect, families already overburdened