Share Your Story or Your Mother's Story about the Challenges of Accessing Birth Control

I graduated from college in 1966 and there were no business job opportunities for women. Employers were allowed to ask if you planned to have a family and always argued that they did not want to train someone who was going to leave to have a family (and were allowed to assume all young women were going to leave to have a family). Birth control became widely available as I was graduating and gave women control of their reproductive choices and therefore gave them job opportunities. A reversal of birth control rights is essentially a reversal of the limited job rights we now have.

My Mother was raised with a Catholic background and therefore this is how my brothers and sister and myself were raised. There were 6 children in my family, ( 4 boys and 2 girls). My Mother divorced ( which was also a no-no) and remarried having three more children, all boys. The youngest boy died two months after birth from water on the brain.

My Mother tried to get her tubes tied or have a hysterectomy after her first 6 chilldren but because of religion no one would allow this. They did not allow for any form of birth control either (because of religion).

Then when she remarried she had three more. Finally after the death of her third son from the second marriage they allowed her to have a hysterectomy.

This had to be back in the late 1960's. A friend of mine learned she had become pregnant. Her parents were already in their 70's and she was a teenager. Her father would have treated her cruelly, and her mother would have stood by as she had had a series of electrochock procedures that left her an acquiescent almost mute person. She had a friend who would go along to tend to her, and I and my friend Bob would take Bob's car and drive her to New York City so that she could have an abortion.This wasn't possible in Ohio either because they didn't do abortions in Ohio at that time, or because of her age she could not get one. We drove to NYC, she had her abortion and we drove back. We almost died in a car accident as we had a blow out at high speed in one of the tires of the car on the highway. My friend Bob was incredible in his handling of that situation behind the wheel. People are going to have to make trips like this, or risk back alley abortions with hangars again because of these absurd laws.

I was told by my mother that her mother had obtained, on several occasions, something at the drugstore to cause an abortion. They had a family with 5 children, and could barely make ends meet. There was no birth control at the time, at least not of the woman's choice or ability to obtain. I thank God for Margaret Sanger. And all the crusading, pioneer women in the pro-choice movement. No one chooses abortion lightly, like buying a new scarf or lipstick. I find it the height of hypocrisy and arrogance that, *still,* we have men leading the charge against choice. This is so reactionary and intense that it's frightening. And they're even taking on anti--contraception as a rallying standard! For shame. Once more, exploiting and blaming women alone, as though there were no males involved. Let every man who wants no children get a vasectomy. This is such a firestorm of an issue--and I'd thought it settled decades ago...