POOR BABY: A Child of the 60's Looks Back on Abortion

POOR BABY: A Child of the 60's Looks Back on Abortion

I came of age during the â€˜60â€™s and â€˜70â€™s. Iâ€™m a former waitress, an ex-lawyer, a sober barfly, a Catholic convert, and a self-supporting writer. Iâ€™ve been financially independent all my life. But Iâ€™ve never much been able to reduce the mystical to the political. Iâ€™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 â€œchoosingâ€ would make me free. The feminists had asserted that thereâ€™d be no repercussions. The feminists had been wrong.

That Iâ€™m for lifeâ€”and against abortion, war, the prison industry, capital punishment, and hypocrisyâ€”is a given. That Iâ€™m for life is why I suffered, in silence, in guilt, sorrow, for over twenty years.

Even women, who will talk about anything, donâ€™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 Dostoevskyâ€™s observed: â€œLove in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.â€

"Poor Baby" is the tragicomic story of a harsh and dreadful thing. May it shed some light on our collective yearning for love.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2012-02-20
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2012-02-20
Format	Kindle eBook

POOR BABY: A Child of the 60's Looks Back on Abortion

You might also like...