Poor Baby: A Child of the 60's Looks Back on Abortion

I came of age during the €˜60€s and €˜70€s. I€m a former waitress, an ex-lawyer, a sober barfly, a Catholic convert, and a self-supporting writer. I€ve been financially independent all my life. But I€ve never much been able to reduce the mystical to the political. I€ve never been much moved to call myself a feminist. The feminists had said that sleeping around would be empowering. The feminists had maintained that €œchoosing€ would make me free. The feminists had asserted that there€d be no repercussions. The feminists had been wrong. That I€m for life€"and against abortion, war, the prison industry, capital punishment, and the destruction of all that is most precious in us and the people around us€"is a given. That I€m for life is why I suffered, in silence, in guilt, in sorrow, for over twenty years. Even women, who will talk about anything, don€t talk about abortion. But I do, in this 10,000-word essay that I hope might open the door to a new way of thinking about and talking about this difficult subject. Because abortion is not a political issue; abortion is a mystical issue. Abortion is a matter of emotional and spiritual poverty, of what we inherit from our parents and what we pass on to our children, of what we absorb from a culture that is saturated with violence. As Dostoevsky observed: €œLove in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.€ "Poor Baby" is the tragicomic story of a harsh and dreadful thing. May it shed some light on our collective yearning for love. NOTE: POOR BABY is a 54-page essay, not a full-length book.