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Category Archive: Mabel’s Voices

  1. Nikki’s Story

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    I am a woman. I am a mother. I have had an abortion.

    There were lots of deep breaths taken those long winter months.

    Being my third pregnancy, I knew within days that something was different. It started with this little tick in my lower abdomen; when I coughed, or sat up, or moved a certain way. And then I noticed my breast; a little tender, a little swollen; just like before. Except this time I knew with certainty I was pregnant. I waited days, what seemed like months. Waiting for that time that I could take the test to prove what I had been feeling.

    I randomly ran into my midwife. The strong, beautiful woman who had gently helped bring both my baby girls into this world naturally at home. I took one look at her, said I’ve been meaning to call you and she knew. She was one of the rocks that helped me through those days.

    There were so many tears those winter months. Tears of how. Tears of why. Tears of why not. There I was a 30 year old, married, healthy mother of 2 who had always said I would have more babies. I loved having babies and had even studied toward being a midwife for a bit because I wanted to help pregnant women have their children naturally at home. I loved being pregnant, loved giving birth, loved nursing and sleeping with those amazing souls I had brought into the world. And yet there I was a 30 year old woman. Who wasn’t so content with just being a mother anymore. Who was enjoying her freedom from the constant needs of a baby. Who had gone back to work. Who was living in a two bedroom trailer while we struggled to build a home. With two very needy children already. And a husband that could be just as needy in his own way. I felt tired. I felt strained.

    I wanted to have another baby. In an ideal world where we could afford our little family, where we could afford to build a house, where we didn’t have to worry about how the bills would be paid. But the world we live in is not ideal. We have no trust funds, no inheritance, not even retirement or health insurance. Our world doesn’t cater to those of us who run our own businesses, or who work hard enough to make just enough, but never enough to really get ahead. I tossed and turned at night, accepting the reality I was faced with. I didn’t think it would be fair to bring another child into this uncertain world, where no matter how hard we work; we still can’t manage to get ahead. Could we support another child? Probably. Could we live in an old trailer with 3 children? Certainly. But what about our quality of life? The future of the children I have already brought into this world?

    I wrapped my head around the idea. Abortion. Such a heated (and hated) word for so many. I did not tell my family (Southern Baptists don’t take too kindly to the idea). My husband did tell his (ex-Catholics are much more understanding). I began to tell friends. I realized just how common abortion is. I read the statistic that 1 in 3 women in America have had an abortion. When I told 3 of my girlfriends that I was going to have one, all 3 of them told me they had had one at some point in their life. I started to feel better about my decision.

    My midwife told me about Mabel Wadsworth. I didn’t know what to expect going into it. I could not believe how wonderful everyone there was. I felt incredibly lucky to live so close to such an amazing resource, and during the entire process I thought of all the women in the world who are not so lucky. Women who do not have the care they need. Women who do not have to right to choose what they do with their own reproductive systems. Women who have died because they did not have the option I had available to me. One of the thoughts that helped me through natural childbirth was the connection I had felt with every women who had ever given birth. I experienced this again, a 3rd, time but this time it was with all the women who had been able to determine their own future instead of left powerless.

    I was so blessed. So grateful. I had a husband who was right there with me through the entire thing. Holding me, crying with me. I had friends who watched my children for me, so I could spend a day recovering and resting.

    I’m sure some would call me selfish. I like to call myself strong. I will admit it was not an easy decision to make. It was not an easy thing to do. But I do still believe it was the best decision for me at the time. And I firmly believe ALL women should have the choice to end a pregnancy if they do not want to have a child.

    Nikki Fox, December 2011

  3. Bets’ Tale

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    My two pregnancies occurred well before Roe vs. Wade came before the Supreme Court. Options for abortion were few and far between. In September 1966, I was a freshman in college in Washington DC, had rarely had a date in high school, and was naïve about my sexuality and about young men. At the first dance of the first semester, I met a handsome, freshman football player. Having had a jovial evening of dancing and some drinks, I agreed to go on a date with him. After several dates and assurances that we had protection (little did I know about diaphragms or the pill at that time), we consummated the relationship. I immediately got pregnant.

    Telling my parents (especially my father) or leaving college were not options available to me. I had to raise money for whatever way I could find to terminate the pregnancy. I worked in a department store as a clerk. What made the job very depressing was that I was placed in infant and children’s clothing and that I had morning sickness all day most days. I learned of a “doctor” in downtown Washington DC who gave injections said to terminate pregnancies. I had the injection, which did nothing to terminate the pregnancy, but left me spending most of the night wrapped around a toilet seat vomiting. I have no idea what the substance was and was too scared to ask.

    Through a friend from high school, I learned of a Dr. Milan Vuitch who provided D&Cs. If you read about the history of abortion in America, you will come across his name. He was a pioneer in making abortion available to young women and spent considerable time in court fighting for this right. His office was barebones, but sterile. He did not give anesthesia, but used the instruments efficiently and carefully to terminate the pregnancy. I bled for a week or two afterwards, and then all was back to normal. During the summer, I did tell my mother about the abortion. She took me to her gynecologist to have a check up. Thankfully, the gynecologist, who was my father’s colleague in the same hospital, and my mother kept my secret.

    Three years later, I was working in Boston, having taken a break from college for a year. I met up with an old friend from Washington DC. After dating for some time, I got pregnant again despite using protection. I was already accepted to finish my degree at a college in Massachusetts and again needed to terminate the pregnancy. While abortion was still illegal in the U.S., by this time, some churches were providing information on places offering safe abortions. A Unitarian minister gave me the number of a group in Towson, Maryland, that conducted a secret abortion clinic with physicians from Johns Hopkins Medical School who believed that abortion should be legal.

    When I called them, they told me to stand alone at the appointed time in front of the out-of-business movie theatre in Towson with an envelope in my left hand. As I stood waiting, a black Cadillac pulled up. I got in and found two other women already in the car. We were taken a long distance into the country to a farmhouse. We sat in a waiting room and one-by-one were called into the medical room. The D&C procedure was conducted by masked practitioners: a doctor and a nurse. We were told ahead of time the masks were necessary to protect the identity of the medical staff. Because I had scar tissue from my first abortion, the doctor scraped a long time, particularly at the point of the scar tissue. This process was quite painful. I began to bleed a lot. They offered to take me to have me stay overnight to be watched, but I insisted that I be taken back along with the others.


    I bled heavily for three months after the second abortion. Again I told my mother what I had done and again she took me to the doctor. While he did not take kindly to my return visit, he made sure I was healing as best as I could.


    Since that time, I have never been able to have children, which I would have loved. While I do not regret my decisions, I do regret that safer and less painful methods were not available. I also regret not having the courage to discuss my situation more openly. I am pleased that women today have more outlets for obtaining abortion that in the past. As the NARAL poster says, I hope that we can keep abortion safe and legal.

    Bets Brown, September 2011

  5. My Abortion Story

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    Beedy Parker   July 2011

         I became pregnant in the summer of 1969, twenty nine years old, with an IUD in place. I had two young daughters, by my first husband who had left the year before. I was entering a relationship with the man who became my second husband (until he died three years ago) but we were not yet married and we thought we could not get pregnant. This was in Massachusetts, the Boston area, and abortion was still illegal.

         I went back to the doctor who had placed the device ( I had had it for three years, I think) and asked him if he would remove it (thereby terminating the pregnancy). He jovially replied that he wouldn’t, but that a baby would born unharmed ”with an IUD clutched in his fist”. I think I understood then that he could not afford to remove the IUD under the circumstances of the law, and I knew he was helping a lot of women, many low-income, by giving them IUDs, which were fairly new then.
         Then we started exploring our possibilities for an abortion, feeling that we had quite enough to deal with without having another child at that time (he also had a young son in his first marriage). We contacted Bill Baird, an abortion rights activist, who subsequently spent some time in jail for his activism in Massachusetts, and found that we needed to go to Montreal for the abortion. We made the appointment and made our arrangements, being able to have it done within the safer three month pregnancy time period (I had always been able to tell fairly accurately when I ovulated and when I was pregnant).

         But in the meantime, I started to bleed and  called my IUD doctor, who told me to come right in to the hospital he was connected to. I was wheeled in in good time and given a “D&C”. While lying there, I was told that the IUD was imbedded in the wall of my uterus and that it had almost perforated the uterus wall.  I then realized something profound: that my life and welfare, and the lives of other women, were not  very important to society at large, and I think I became radicalized at that point, and have so continued since. (I also made the mistake of flippantly asking the nursing crew ”if this was an abortion?”, which was followed by a shocked silence, and my realizing that I might have exposed the doctor in some way).


    We married eight months later, and had another child two years later.