You don’t have a father because you never existed. That is, you existed, but only as a fear. My parents missed the boat with the birds and bees. Did they think we already knew?
It’s June 2018, and I’m on a quest for sterilization. Information about sterilization is like sacred text. I need to be prepared to fight, insist, again and again, about why I need to do this.
You can bury doubt pretty deep. But at age 57, when I buy a $90 DNA test kit, I begin to unravel the truth about my own birth. A truth that my mother might’ve taken to her grave.
Stories for Choice is personal. It’s political. It’s for the people of Texas, and for the future of our entire nation. It is also my attempt at healing a lineage of inherited trauma. For [...]
I was 19-years-old in the fall of 1966 when my friend Barbara and I drove my two-tone 1956 Chevrolet to Baltimore, Maryland, where I was to have an illegal abortion. One afternoon, a few weeks [...]
BY BETTY MACDONALD As an 18-year-old girl in the early fifties, I possess very little knowledge of my body or reproduction. It will be twenty years before The Supreme Court passes Roe v Wade into [...]
BY DIANA FREID It’s 1967, I am 19 years-old, and I am pregnant. I don’t understand how this can be. I think it’s impossible to get pregnant the first time you sleep with someone. I cannot have a [...]
BY ALICE TENUTO When we’re married about a year John asks me, “Are you ready yet?” “No!” I exclaim. We get Sam, a cat. Six months later, the same question. We get Herman, a dog. But I can only [...]
BY SHAI BROWN One morning when I am 14-years-old, I wake with my stomach turning. I run to the bathroom to vomit. This goes on for a few days. I believe I have a stomach virus. My friend [...]
