I called my father and asked for the one hundred dollars
I needed to start classes at the local community college.
He happily obliged. After that, I was able to get small
scholarships to pay for my tuition.
The Pill had
reached Odessa by then--1962--and I started popping
those high-hormone Enovid E's like they were candy.
The hell with the side effects. I knew having another
child would send me over the brink, physically and
emotionally. After a while, I couldn't take the Pill
anymore. The ob-gyn who had delivered two of my children
made arrangements for me have a laproscopic tubal
sterilization. I went to the hospital alone because
my husband had to get the kids off to school and get
to work or lose a day's pay. The woman who signed
me in said I had to have his signature. That made
my new feminist hackles rise, and I
told her that was impossible and, also, unfair-- I
was the one who got pregnant, after all. When she
saw I wouldn't budge, she called my doctor, assuming
he would decline my request. Instead, after a few
words with him, she handed me the consent form without
a word.
That was my small victory. It's no
wonder that history is filled with stories
of the desperate measures women have taken to control
their fertility. Even today, nearly half of all women
in the U.S. who have had legal abortions say they
would consider, or would definitely have, an illegal
one-risking health and life-- if that were their only
choice. If history is any predictor, almost all of
them would.
It took me 12 years to get my bachelor's
degree, partly for lack of funds,
partly because I wanted to minimize the time away
from my children, and partly because I worked part-time.
Surprise-- I liked having money I had earned myself.
I liked the sense of accomplishment for work well
done.
Once I got my degree, my real life
work-- in the reproductive health and rights movement--
began. The defining moment was my first day as director
of the two-room, donated, Planned Parenthood office
in Odessa, Texas, in August 1974. I had a one-person
staff, no health care or administrative experience,
and a bright pink and white button admonishing us
to "Love Carefully." I broke out in a rash
from stress but I plunged on.
I thought my real job would be running family planning
clinics for low-income women in 17 counties. It turned
out that while we were quietly providing services,
the issues were being redefined. We neglected to communicate
a broad-based public-policy agenda. Abortion became
politicized and sensationalized; sex education and
even family planning became controversial. Over the
years, as I became more deeply involved in the movement
and took a more prominent role, I became accustomed
to being told to travel with a security guard and
not to work in a bright open office because I'd be
an all-too-easy target for violence. My first experience
with clinic invasion came when I headed the Phoenix
office. One day a group of a dozen or so people suddenly
swarmed in. They terrorized people in the waiting
room. Two chained themselves to a desk. That was just
the beginning, I know now.
What kept me going then-- and locks
in my dedication now-- are the hundreds of letters
Planned Parenthood gets; letters like these, that
tell women's stories:
I was born
into an overpopulated house in an ethnic neighborhood.
Shortly after my sixth birthday my mother died from
a self-inflicted abortion. Our family was so damaged
as to stunt our intellectual and social growth. Each
of the siblings suffered in individual ways. At sixteen,
when I learned why my mother died, I determined this
would not happen to me. --Linn, age 79
(Linn was able to get contraception
when she married at 19 in 1942. She and her husband
planned their four children, and just celebrated their
sixtieth anniversary.)
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