Pittsburgh in the 60′s

CHOICE

Yep, I’m about to get into a very important subject and I know that whatever I say I’m bound to really make someone somewhere really angry. I realized awhile ago the there’s a whole generation that has grown up never knowing what it was like before having a choice. There are also those folks older than I am that still cling to some of the “wages of sin is death” belief. Yes, my young sisters and brothers. That really was a widely held attitude. Don’t let anyone tell you that it wasn’t when a girl or woman’s body was found after a botched back alley abortion many older people would whisper that she, “had it coming.” not mind you, because she had an abortion but because she had sex.

I’m 59 years old and all I can relate here are the things I saw and heard growing up here in the burgh. So, I will. Keep in mind that I was a suburban child growing up in a nice little town. I went to a pre-Vatican II catholic grade school and a very well known exceptional public high school. Here goes:

We were a very naive bunch in grade school. So much so that in 8th grade a group of us girls snuck into the boy’s lavoratory (boy’s room for those of you unused to old style nun-speak) to look around. What awfully brave girls we thought we were. Well, one thing puzzled us. Can you figure out what it was?

The urinals! Yes, we back in 1964 didn’t know what the heck they were for. That should give you an insight into the level of sophistication we had. Meanwhile that same year one of the boys stole a box of KOTEX pads from the local A&P and a group of them got caught by one of the nuns as they were looking at their prize and passing the pads around to examine. That was 1965. we wouldn’t have dared do anything remotely sexual even though the hormones were kicking in big time. Ah, what a difference those next few years made!

I started my freshman year in 65 and graduated in 69. the world and I both changed dramatically. I lived in 2 very different worlds. Many of us did. In my high school some kids did “go all the way.” but they were either the sad girls desperate to please. To fit in somewhere or they were the sophisticated, well heeled girls that decided to break the rules. Oh there were always the few that had decided with their boyfriends that they would get married right out of high school and an early baby wasn’t really too much of a worry. I’m not talking about them. They had charted their course and were following it.

I’m going to tell you about the sad girls and the well to do girls. No names, I can’t recall some of the names even if I tried.

But, believe me. These are true stories and maybe you will come to understand why we need to have the right to choose. I knew all of these girls. Some went to school with me. Some were ones that I hung out with in the city while I was in school and right after I graduated.

The sad girls. I understood them well. I might have become one but I was enough of an observer of life that I knew better. These were the girls that ached to belong. To be loved. I knew some of their families and I could see even then how and why they gave themselves so freely to almost any boy that gave them attention and made them feel important if only for a little time in the backseat of a car AFTER they had taken their real girlfriends home.

The rich girls were privy to a lifestyle that had it’s own problems. Lives where some of them were groomed as ornaments and extensions of their parents social status. Their lives were every bit as strictly controlled as in a caste system. They rebelled in their own way and as any person my age can tell you, sex was a big part of that rebellion. It wasn’t just my city friends and my hippie street friends that were “going all the way”

So, as any 1st. Year biology student should have known. some girls in all of these groups got pregnant. Here’s were the choice comes into it. This is why I am a believer in the RIGHT to choose:

The well to do girls either took a leave from school to, “travel in Europe” with their families for “educational”purposes OR their “little problem” was taken care of safe and clean by a family doctor. Some of these girls had no say in the matter and some were glad to have their lives back on track to the lives they were expected to lead.

The sad girls, well there were some things they could do too. They could go into hiding at a relative’s home and give the baby up or they could go into a home for unwed mothers (yep we had one here)and then give the baby up. Girls from all over were brought by their parents, dropped off and then picked up after giving birth. Boys used to hang around behind the building and yell nasty names at the residents there.

OR

They could try to abort themselves. Desperation made for some awful ideas. It was whispered that if a pregnant girl filled up the bathtub with water as hot as she could stand it and then drank down a pint of gin that she’d miscarry. Think about your teenage daughter trying that. Think of the possibilities for tragedy. They could and did throw themselves down a flight of stairs or unbend a coat hanger.

OR

They could find a back alley abortionist. I’m sure you’ve all read of that soulless man in Philly that was found to be giving abortions in filth and maiming and killing woman. Well my gentle young hippies, there were places like that in every city before Roe v Wade. Even the fairly clean ones were nowhere near a clinic’s standards and regs. We had them here too. I know because I had a friend that had one. Long story-short.
Her fiancée found that he liked Vietnam. He had found his niche in life. He loved the adrenaline rush. He enjoyed the kill. He came home on leave and broke up with her. Just like that, “hello/goodbye.” She went into a tailspin and of course there was a sleazy guy waiting to take advantage with soothing words and a shoulder to cry on. I watched and I knew what he was about but, she needed his words and he got what he wanted. She got pregnant and he took off. I had no idea that she was planning on an abortion. I did know the man that overheard us talking about it at a downtown lunch counter. He must have approached her after I left to catch a bus home. She went with him a few days later and had it done. She didn’t talk about it but she did talk to me when the man who took her there wanted to put her to work on the street!

That is when my position on choice became set in stone. Now that I am a mother and a grandmother I can not just sit on the sidelines and say nothing because I might offend some group or look as if I am heartless and hate babies. I have a heart and I love children. That is why I am pro choice and why I fight to keep the government out of a very very important and personal matter.

To close, a little story of my own:

I spent a week in a hospital years ago trying to save an early pregnancy. Hooked up to IVs, unable to get out of my bed as I bled small amounts on a blue pad. I wasn’t permitted to eat in case I had to be taken into surgery I did it all because it was my choice to try to do what I could to stay pregnant. I almost bled to death on the 5th day. BUT that was my choice. I knew what might happen and I chose to do it. I sometimes thing of some government bureaucrat would have forced me to endure that week.

So, these are my reasons for my being pro choice. Our rights are being attacked again as I type this. Think about your child going through what some of the girls I knew did. Do you really want those days back?

Read More Pittsburgh in the 60′s by Sherry Pasquarello.

Sherry Pasquarello is an eclectic little woman who has been published in the Individualist Newsletter, Black Roses, online at the Amateur Poetry Journal and the Alchemy lit. mag, and elsewhere. Sherry is a member of the international PK poetry kit list workshop and has been included in many of their projects. For more about Sherry check out her blog After the Bridge.