My Biggest Secret

Through 1984 and 1985, I reached some of the lowest points in my life. I was a young mother of three children and much to my dismay, I discovered in early 1985 that I was pregnant again. I love my children. But while I'd never tell her, if I had to do it all over again, I would choose abortion.

Marriage Trap

I was a married women in 1985. Abortion wasn't an option in marriage, not in my world. My husband, now deceased, was a preacher's kid, an alcoholic and drug addict. In the eleven years of our marriage, he rarely held a job for more than a couple of weeks. During the brief periods when he did work, he drank, smoked or toked what he earned, never contributing a penny to the household. My meager wages had to pay one hundred percent of rent, utilities, groceries and child care.

When I realized that I was pregnant with our fourth, my husband was engaged in a cycle of accusations and rants. He accused me of having sex with any and every male inside a fifty mile radius.

One time during that period he arrived home to find me and the kids in our own beds, sound asleep. He woke me to a verbal barrage. His rationale was that if I was asleep that early (it was maybe 7:30pm at the time,) it was because I was exhausted from wild sex with some unknown man. This mysterious stranger had been there and left while he (my husband) was with his best friend at the bar. I'm not sure how he figured I managed to squeeze in an affair, considering it was two and a half hours after I'd left work, and I'd gone to the grocery store, fed the kids and put them to bed, too.

For the record, I'd sought a tubal ligation several years earlier, after the birth of our second child. I was required to obtain my husband's signature before anyone would discuss the matter with me. The procedure was subsequently denied, anyway. We qualified financially for Medicare coverage under AHCCCS - the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. AHCCCS did not pay for voluntary sterilization at the time, regardless of circumstances. (To the best of my knowledge, AHCCCS still doesn't unless a patient initiates extraordinary measures. God forbid someone make a responsible choice.)

Work With Me

My job was too physically demanding for me to continue. I wanted out, for myself and my children. I called my parents, begging to sleep on their floor. I was desperate, with abortion just hovering at the periphery of my mind.

Abortion was unthinkable. Abortion wasn't something a married woman did, or any decent woman did. Our church taught abortion was murder. Abortion killed an innocent baby needlessly.

My parents informed me that they didn't have room for us. Suddenly the thought of another child was a little more overwhelming, and the thought of abortion a little more attractive.

Lose-Lose Equation

Over the next few days, I had to rethink the possibility of abortion. I did, too. Unfortunately I knew nothing about Planned Parenthood except its name. I had no money and no one to care for my children had I undergone a medical procedure of any kind. There was nowhere to go, no escape. Shelters were and are a wonderful resource, but in 2007 they still don't have room for a woman with three children and a fourth on the way, abortion or not.

Furthermore, I had a pretty good idea my husband would have to sign for me to get an abortion. Asking him something that volatile was tantamount to suicide.

Pro Life? What Life?

During the course of that pregnancy, my husband found excuses to kick me or push me against the wall. He periodically employed some sort of mechanical device that administered an electrical shock to me. When I tried pointing out that each time he shocked me, the baby I was carrying went into convulsions, he (and his parents, with whom we were staying at the time) just laughed and told me to quit being such a big baby. When I said anything about him kicking me, I was told he was "just playing." Throughout our marriage, whenever he employed any kind of force, he rationalized it as "just playing." He sometimes "just played" with knives to my throat or guns to my head. Maybe it was his intent to create a spontaneous abortion. I just don't know.

I was expected to rise early to clean his parents' 3000-foot home every day, to take care of the children when I wasn't cleaning, and to perform the majority of my husband's work at night. We'd had to move in with my in-laws when I left the job that was paying for us to live, and that meant by default I was responsible for performing any and all housework.

I didn't have kitchen privileges, though we received food stamps. I was driven to the Economic Security office and instructed to go through the food stamp application process, then had to hand over all food to the in-laws. I had a rough time keeping down the everything-fried cuisine produced by my mother-in-law. The mother-in-law also decreed that no one in the house could eat more than two meals per day. My youngest children were then two and three years old, respectively. They were also bound to the two-meals-a-day rule. No snacks, no other food ever, period.

I wasn't allowed to do laundry at the house. I was required to scrape together whatever change I could from our food stamps and use that to do laundry for the five of us, to put gas in the car to get to the laundromat, and to keep the children with me while I did laundry.

Is it any wonder I would have chosen an abortion over that kind of enslavement?

My in-laws were themselves the pastors of a local evangelical church. They condoned my husband's cruelty. His father began to follow my husband's lead shortly after. My father-in-law's abuse was restricted to me, thank God. At least no one was mistreating the children (except the one I carried, which obviously didn't count to anyone.)

On And On

Eventually my husband conned, wheedled and got the money to move us out of my in-laws' home. My pregnancy was far too advanced for me to even think of finding work. My husband decided to go to Phoenix (ostensibly to find work,) leaving me to fend for myself with three small children in the house. At my seventh month of pregnancy, abortion wasn't even a consideration. Suicide was looking mighty attractive, though.

We had less than nothing. I had no phone and no vehicle, and the kids and I were living in an area without any kind of public transportation. I was given express orders not to speak to anyone else, since my in-laws were pastors of the church and they didn't want to be "embarrassed." We lived three miles from the nearest store. The food ran out quickly and utilities were disconnected. My in-laws came and claimed my oldest son, taking him to live with them because they "didn't want [him] living like that." They didn't have any problem with their other grandchildren or their daughter-in-law "living like that."

By the time my baby daughter was born, I resented everything about her and so did her siblings. As she grew older, she became a hellion. Even as an adult, she antagonizes everyone she meets. She arrived to an inherently hostile family and reacted with hostility.

Our lives stayed on a trajectory of poverty and despair. We went homeless, living in motels, in no small part because I couldn't support four children alone. I had to become homeless in order to leave my husband. I talked to police and other authorities, begging them for advice on how to deal with his addiction and abuse. I was told if they came to our home and found drugs there, I'd also be arrested for possession. They wouldn't remove him and I couldn't, so my only recourse was to take our kids and walk away.

Reflections

I'm not sure why I didn't kill myself when I had the chance, or push the final psychological button for my husband to pull the trigger. I do know why I didn't choose abortion: I didn't have the resources and education to know how.

In retrospect, if I had it all to do over again, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I would undergo an abortion. I would find a way, any way, even if it meant a coat hanger in a dark alley. This is precisely the kind of living nightmares that abortion can prevent. Sometimes abortion involves a lot more than "personal choice." It represented a chance at a better life for all of us, including a child who grew up bitter and angry.

It wasn't her choice to be born. It was mine, and it was the wrong choice.