I Worked in an Abortion Clinic in the 70s, and I’m Terrified About Our Future

As reproductive rights are being stripped away in states across the U.S., I’m seeing the way abortion access has served as a thread throughout my life. In fact, I’m 72 years old, and the evolution of reproductive rights has played out right in front of me.

The needle was threaded long before me: When I was about 16 years old, my grandmother, who was born in 1899, revealed to me that she’d had an illegal abortion when she was around my same age. I was shocked. That wasn’t something people openly talked about at the time (especially not members of my family).  

She was 16, in love with her boyfriend, and they got pregnant. They were just kids, still in high school and living with their parents, so they knew they had to get an abortion. They found someone — I’m not even sure if it was an actual doctor — who used a wire hanger. My grandma had almost died. Hearing her story, I was a little shocked. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that abortion would become a recurring theme in my life.

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When I graduated from college with degrees in education and anthropology in 1972, I was interested in gaining experience as a mental health counselor. I got a job at a private abortion clinic in Manhattan. Abortion was legalized in New York State in 1970, so it was a legal clinic, but it felt like a very hush-hush topic at the time. There was still so much stigma surrounding abortion, and the Roe v. Wade decision wouldn’t come for another year. 

I wasn’t really aware of the issues surrounding reproductive rights then, and while I certainly was active in protests and demonstrations as a college student, our focus was on Vietnam and Watergate. We protested for women’s rights, but not specifically abortion rights.

But I was eager to get experience in counseling. So, I worked at this clinic every weekday from about 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It was on 5^th Avenue, downtown and run by Dr. Gold, who was kind and compassionate. The staff trained me on the procedure and how the equipment worked, so that I knew what these patients would experience and I could better counsel them. 

The place wasn’t big but it was clean and separated into private rooms for patients, along with a recovery room. The doctor and nurses were very thorough with the women who came through, explaining what the procedure was and what they would feel. I remember that the women always asked if it would hurt.

I saw women of all ages come through. And at that time, since it was legal in New York, I think women were probably coming across state lines to get legal and safe abortions in New York. The safety was key: This wasn’t some shady doctor in a back alley, like what my grandma had experienced.

My role was to counsel the women and men who came in, to talk about the emotional element of this decision and procedure. The patients were often distraught, confused, conflicted. I remember one woman distinctly. She was 30, married, and already had a few children — and she was Catholic. The obvious choice for her would have been to have the baby. But she couldn’t afford another child. She was going against her religion, but she also felt this was the right thing to do.

I remember how emotionally torn apart she was; we all assumed she might just walk out of the clinic. It was so complicated for her, not only because of her religion but because she was married and already had children. For this woman, pregnancy wasn’t something she had to hide. But it wouldn’t be fair to her or her family to have more children. The decision ate at her.

She, and everyone else I met at the clinic, opened my eyes not just to the debate about abortion rights, but to the incredibly difficult personal and emotional decisions women have to make for their own health and the health of their families. That’s the problem we still face today. Abortion is a personal medical decision and experience, yet people want to make it a political or religious one.

I worked at the clinic for six months. But that job wasn’t the last time abortion would touch my life.

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I got married in 1983, and my husband, who was also a social worker, was working at a community-based agency for pregnant and parenting young women and their families in the Bronx. He was also getting his Ph.D. in social work and writing his dissertation on teenage pregnancy.

We had two daughters. And then, in 1989, we got pregnant again. It wasn’t the right time to expand our family: My husband was still in school at night, teaching graduate school, working a full-time job at the agency, and writing his dissertation. And we weren’t financially in a place where we could afford a third child. 

I couldn’t believe I was now in this position, having to make this decision. I was overcome with sadness and emotion — we both were. Our OB-GYN counseled us and helped us come to the realization that we didn’t want to have another child. We had a choice and we made it. 

So, in May of 1989, I had an abortion at a hospital in Manhattan. 

I knew what would happen and how it worked because of my experience at the clinic. But it’s different when you’re the patient. Like the women I’d met at the clinic, I found myself asking how it would feel, even though I’d heard the answer to that question many times.

I think about my abortion every May. It’s not a decision anyone wants to make, but every woman deserves the right to make it. 

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I’m only recently realizing how closely I’ve witnessed the evolution of our right to choose. Working at that clinic in 1970, and even when I had my own abortion in 1989, I didn’t think much about how privileged I was to have that right. To me, the crux of this issue should be what a woman experiences emotionally and physically. These decisions shouldn’t involve Supreme Court justices or some stranger’s political or religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade means regressing further than where we were when I was working at an abortion clinic in 1972. It’s be an embarrassment to our country. And I worry that we’d be heading back toward what my grandma went through. It’s not the type of full-circle moment you want to experience.

Abortion has been many things to me throughout my life — something that’s touched me professionally and personally. Choosing it for myself was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, and I’ve seen and helped others make the same choice. But for me, abortion has never been something shameful. And it’s never been anyone else’s business but a woman’s own.