The Ambivalence of Abortion

By Linda Bird Francke

When Linda and her husband were faced with her fourth pregnancy, both were caught by surprise. “The timing wasn’t right” for either of them. Her husband had plans for a career change and she was starting a full time job after having stayed home with her first three children, now in school age. Their lives “didn’t have room for another baby”. Regardless of her husband’s support she would have to go through this alone.

Once in the Women’s Services Center, the decision so rationally made didn’t seem so easy or right. The same feeling seems to be share by the men accompanying the women and the women themselves. There were women with “different races, ages and backgrounds” and “one common denominator, the one which usually floods across languages and economic barriers into familiarity, was the shame. We were losing life that day, not giving it.”

Even though, the author had been an advocate for abortion and the woman’s right to decide about her motherhood, she “discovered there, in the waiting room that I was nor the modern woman I thought I was”. She wished that somehow she could get away without hurting her baby. The procedure itself was short and the physical pain didn’t last long, and her body recovered soon without complication.

Life went back to normal, and Linda and her husband always come to the same conclusion: “it certainly does make sense not to be having a baby right now” they say to each other, but every once in a while a ghost appears in the horizon waving at her making her wonder if they indeed “have room” for him.

Word Count: 280