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Posted on 10/24/2006 10:02:53 PM PDT by Lorianne
Between Sandy Hingston's teen years and her daughter's adolescence, "abortion" became a dirty word. It was time to tell her child a secret from her past.Theoretically Pro-Choice There were 20 little girls in the Brownie troop that I took over from another overstressed mom when my daughter was 7. Twenty girls, fat and thin and pretty and plain and brave and timid, shilling Thin Mints, earning badges, going camping, and saluting the flag. It was on one of our first camping trips that I looked at my co-leader, Jeannette, and said, "Who do you think will be the first one to get pregnant?" She stared at me for a minute, then laughed.
I was only half joking. Girls mate young in this blue-collar town outside of Philadelphia. College isn't much on the radar; kids graduate from high school (or don't) and go to work at Wal-Mart or the supermarket or Jiffy Lube.
The first Brownie got pregnant at 14. "She's due in six months," my daughter, Marcy, told me.
I gasped in spite of myself. "She's having the baby?"
"Well, what else could she do?" she asked matter-of-factly. I looked at her, surprised. "She could have an abortion."
Something flickered in my daughter's eyes. "Nobody I know would ever do that," she said.
It was my first glimpse of the enormous gulf between Marcy and me on the subject, and I was stopped cold. She knew, had known all her life, that her father and I are staunch supporters of a woman's right to choose. She'd even professed her allegiance to the concept. But clearly, it was all theoretical to her, something we believed some imaginary women somewhere ought to have the right to do.
I wanted so much to say more to her. But she was so young: She was only 14. There was plenty of time.
The second Brownie who got pregnant was 15. "She's showing," Marcy said knowingly. "Her mom is giving a baby shower for her." I was dumbfounded.
"I can't believe she's having the baby."
"Like she has a choice." Marcy was curt.
"She has a choice."
"What choice?"
"She could get an abortion."
Marcy's back went straight. "And kill a baby?"
"It's not a baby. It's a fetus. And if she got an abortion, she'd still have a future."
"Nobody gets abortions," Marcy said. Again, that abrupt dismissiveness. My throat was aching with what I longed to tell my daughter. But I couldn't figure out how to couch it. I was suddenly seeing the issue not from my comfy old political perspective, but from a different angle: that of a young, naive, kindhearted girl who wouldn't hurt a kitten, much less an unborn child.
Fetus.
Not to mention, she still believed in happily ever after.
"I think they can make it," Marcy said of the ex-Brownie and her baby's father. "They seem really solid."
"They're 15," I said.
"But they're in love." Speaking Up About My Abortion We are all products of our times. I am 50, and in the time I grew up in, good girls didn't have sex. I was a good girl. For a while. I lost my virginity when I was 16. I would have died before I let my mom and dad find out. Teens who became pregnant when I was growing up never kept their babies. They were discreetly sent off to group homes, or they managed to get themselves abortions. Either way, the pregnancy didn't permanently alter -- at least outwardly -- the arc of their lives. Now, girls my daughter's age were having babies and showing off their bulging tummies like Britney Spears on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. What had happened to shame in those 30 years?
Don't get me wrong. I'm no particular fan of shame. I didn't want my former Brownies branded with scarlet letters. But I did want some sort of -- what? Acknowledgment that their choices hadn't been wise? Warning to those coming up after them that this wasn't the way to maximize your potential? Sure, there's a Planned Parenthood outpost in this town -- but there are three places with heartwarming names like Golden Cradle, eager to reassure reluctant moms-to-be that, as long as they stay pregnant, everything will be all right. Marcy sees the cute onesies at the showers. She sees the babies toted to football games and fawned over. Nobody is telling her the other side.
So I do it. I tell her that I had an abortion. It takes a long while. I start the conversation a dozen times without finishing it. I'm terrified that I'll stop being Mom and become Mom-who-killed-a-baby. I explain that I was 19 and in college at the time. I tell her how frightened I was to go into the city to the clinic, but that I was even more frightened my parents would learn I'd had sex. I tell her I've never regretted my decision. We are driving in the car, at night. I can feel her beside me taking in what I'm saying, feel it altering her perception of me, just as I'd feared, like a kaleidoscope that shows one pattern, spins and blurs, then clicks into another pattern.
"Wow," she says, a little breathlessly. "I didn't think anybody really did that ... I mean, anybody I knew --"
And that, of course, is why I had to tell her. Who else was going to speak up, to witness to her? Movie stars? They were all trying desperately to get pregnant or adopting babies in Africa. Female musicians? Athletes? Politicians? Ha! There's no shame at all in Katie Holmes bearing Tom Cruise's child out of wedlock. But when's the last time you saw a headline saying "Star Aborts"?
"Did you ever feel guilty?" Marcy asks me.
"No," I tell her, honestly. "I was too worried that Pop-Pop and Nana would find out." She takes that in too. Then she says, "I guess I won't be afraid to tell you."
I wrote a magazine article about our conversation and got dozens of e-mails in response. Some said I was a murderer, a selfish monster. I printed those e-mails out and showed them to Marcy. "You're brave," she said, knowing perfectly well that I'm not, really. The rest were from women who'd had abortions. They told their stories, different stories with a single theme: I had a choice, and my life is better because I did. A lot of them said, "I've never told this to anyone before." The writers spoke of secrecy and shame.
I showed Marcy those e-mails, too.
The third Brownie to become pregnant was Marcy's age -- 16. When the news reached Marcy's lunch table, she spoke up loud and clear: "She could have an abortion." Her friends didn't argue politics with her. They weren't aghast. They just blinked and stared, she said, "as if they'd never thought of that."
Sandy Hingston is a senior editor and parenting columnist at Philadelphia Magazine. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and their teenage son and daughter.
Originally published in MORE magazine, October 2006.
She's still in denial. That is where the anger comes from in pro-abortion women. They don't want to admit that they killed their own baby. She continues to enable herself and her wrong decision by indulging the fantasy that abortion is the only answer.
She talks about "shame" for getting pregnant out of wedlock? Where is the "shame" for killing your own child here? She's demented.
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I was very much in the mindset of this woman at one time---it is not a baby, it's a fetus, a parasite, a kind of tumor that will suck you dry of life and money and opportunities. Thank God I didn't go through with an abortion. Yes, I lost the respect of my parents, who wanted me to finish college, to find a husband who was more of what they wanted.
What did I get for my sacrifice of life, money, opportunities?
A baby boy who weighed over 10 lbs.. I've grown into a more caring person, more sympathetic, somewhat wiser person. Yes, children are expensive. Yes, they require time and energy (life). Yes, in spending my time, money, and energy on him and his sibs, I've missed out on opportunities to really get involved in the corporate grind. I wouldn't change it for anything.
One thought about this woman and her daughter: did she ever thank her mother for not aborting her? Will her daughter ever thank her for not aborting?
I think we should have a national "Thank Your Mom For Not Aborting You" day. Maybe on the day Roe V. Wade became law.
Anybody with me?
I caught that too. She had to correct it in her head. You can totally see the chain of thought there. She has more issues with her own abortion than she admits. Sad that she should feel more comfortable admitting to having an abortion than admitting to feeling shame over it.
It sounds like she has accepted her mom's ethos. Because the alternative is to hate her mom.
Like I wrote earlier, wait until she is older and realizes just what a horrible thing her mom has done.
She told me before I went off to college, as a precaution -- "Be careful, and always remember you have a 'choice.' In 1975 (two years after I was born),...blah blah blah, new choices, blah, finances, blah blah, no big deal, blah kids were a burden..." She's still unrepentant, and it breaks my heart
I never looked at her the same way again, and still struggle with it. A younger sibling that never was, sacrificed on the altars of convenience and choice.
Sure, that sounds like an Amish locution -- NOT! (Lucky the Amish don't go in for radio/TV, so she didn't have to hear that!)
I believe she was talking about former Brownies. She looked at the girls when they were little and thought which one would be the first one to get pregnant. When the daughter says another Brownie got pregnant she's referring to the girls that she was in the Brownies with.
Oh! (Embarrassed.) Of course you're right. She's talking about "what happened to these Brownies in just a few years." If I'd re-read I would have realized that.
The right euphemism makes it so much easier to embrace a lie.
"And if she got an abortion, she'd still have a future."
Yes, she would have a future with innocent blood on her hands. Of course, she would have a future if she put the baby up for adoption, or even if she raised it herself. Babies do not take away one's future.
Ah! She is the complete feminazi! She has sacrificed her child on the altar of death and is now an evangelical feminazi.
I have been thinking along the same lines as you
have for quite some time.
"Sandy Hingston is a senior editor and parenting columnist at Philadelphia Magazine. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and their [convenient]teenage son and daughter"...and one dead, unwanted son or daughter and her living children's dead brother or sister.
At least she didn't use the word "breed" -- but mating isn't much better.
You are right. I also thought it was scary that this woman writes a parenting column and she has a venue to expose young girls to her pro death view point.
The article should remind us that as parents we need to make sure that the other adults in our children's live either hold the same values or are careful not to naysay what we have taught our children.
Also I would like to know how many of the girls profiled in the article were being reared in single parent homes. I am willing to bet all of them.
...where she is a brave hero.
She can lie to herself, she can lie to her daughter, she can lie to the world. But she can not lie to God.
He knows.
Poor child.
Wow, what a dumb thing to say. In this day and age, with the divorce rate what it is, there are lots of children being raised by single parents. Sometimes you don't get a choice.
Single parent home or not, that shouldn't determine where you fall on the abortion issue, or how you want it presented to your child.
I should have clarified. I believe it is more likely for a young girl to have sex when there is not a strong father in her life. Single mothers can and often do make sure their children have a strong fatherly role model. But too often the children of single mother just don't have that very important influence in their lives.
I was not speaking about what children are taught about abortion. But the women who wrote the article obviously thought the age of the pregnant girls was a valid argument for abortion. So answering the question of why these girls had sex can go a great deal towards taking that argument out of the pro death roster.
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