I recall sitting on the bed next to my mother during her final days, watching the Senate confirmation hearing of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. My mom commented how happy she was that she had lived to see women in such positions of power and respect, as well as how relieved she was that in her lifetime…
I am a 74-year old man, and I can look back at a life that someone sometime in the future will call a life well lived. But were it not for a mother who, against the urgings of her doctor, had refused an abortion, I might not have lived. By rights, I should be a…
It was 1964 in Southern California. I was 23, in a committed relationship, and even though I was using birth control, I found myself pregnant. I had vowed I would never have an abortion. Not because of religious or moral issues but because a 15-year-old high school friend of mine had died from an illegal…
I had an illegal abortion in 1964, and I have hardly mentioned it in the last 52 years. I might have mentioned it to my former husband. I know for sure my four adult children didn’t know because I told them one by one on the day I decided to write this piece, and asked…
When memory bursts, it’s like a dam opening, flooding the present. Still, I did not expect it to happen in a late-night taxi as I headed home from work, reading a New York Times story on my smartphone. On its face, the story before me had nothing to do with my own history: It was…
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