Emily
Helm
WST
3015
January
25, 2012
Reflection
Paper—Roe v. Wade Anniversary Event
Last
week I attended the 39th anniversary celebration for Roe v. Wade,
put on by Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando. The event included a number of
diverse speakers ranging from activists to ministers to community organizers to
students. The theme of the evening was “what choice means to me,” and most of
the speakers addressed this theme when they had the floor.
Each
speaker was moving and inspiring, but one woman, I can’t remember her name,
really struck a cord with me. This woman was brave enough to share her personal
story of why Planned Parenthood and Roe v. Wade are so vital to her life. In
1973 she was a junior in high school, living with her deeply religious parents,
when she got pregnant. Because Roe v. Wade had just passed, she was able to
visit her local Planned Parenthood to get an abortion. She said that if she had
been denied this care, she would have killed herself rather than face her
family.
After
the speech portion of the event was over, I was discussing this woman’s story
with some friends. One friend mentioned that she thought the woman’s comment
about killing herself was overly dramatic and insensitive to those affected by
suicide. I disagreed; I believed the woman was being honest and sincere. I
tried to imagine first a life in which the religious fervor of my parents
created a threshold between us which would prevent me from trusting them or
shame me so severely that I would rather die than reveal certain truths about
my life. I then tried to imagine living in this type of home environment and not
just getting pregnant, but getting pregnant in a world which denies me my right
to reproductive choice.
This
task wasn’t easy; my parents are liberal Jewish doctors who would never
question my personal choice or deny me medical care. I’ve spent the past week
failing to properly grasp this situation. I finally got somewhere last night
while watching “Dirty Dancing” for the eighty-four thousandth time.
Through uncontrollable tears I watch the
paternal hands of Jerry Orbach caring for Penny, traumatized after a botched
illegal abortion, and wonder why I can finally feel the impact of the vitality
of reproductive rights through a cheesy film I’ve seen more times than I should
be willing to admit. I’ve never had this reaction to Penny’s abortion before,
why now? Why could I not connect with the woman’s experience when she was right
in front of me, when I looked into her eyes and watched her worried hands steady
each other as she related the worst experience of her life to a room of
strangers.
Maybe the reason is that I’ve been so
privileged to live my entire twenty years with the freedom of choice that I am
too far removed from the experiences of women in my mother’s generation. Maybe
the reason is that now my own right to choose is being threatened by the very
government that once vowed to protect my rights. Both answers terrify me; I
never want to be in a position where my good fortune disconnects me from the experiences
of those less privileged than myself. If the woman’s purpose was to scare me
away from my position of privilege and inaction, she was successful. I refuse
to allow my right to choose to be taken; this is a fight we cannot afford to lose.
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