Choice: Then and Now
by Cathy Fiorello
Art by Nathan Stanton
“Choice: Then and Now” is the runner up of our “Reproductive Freedom” Essay Contest. Judge Kim Coates shares why she chose Fiorello’s essay:
Cathy Fiorello’s essay focuses on how government is restricting women’s reproductive freedom far more than in past decades. Fiorello draws upon personal family history to provide readers a look back at how past generations of American women navigated their right to choose. This historical glimpse showcases the magnitude of importance this medical procedure has had on generations of Americans. Juxtaposed against this history, the current state of restrictive legislation comes across as even more glaringly out of step with culture and reality. Readers can easily see the direction America is headed: an extreme few making decisions the majority does not support. Fiorello has beautifully woven a family story into an indisputable claim that women and people who can become pregnant have the right to choose their own best course of action for their lives.
Towards the end of her life, my mother lived with my sister Eleanor at her seaside home in Belle Harbor, New York, a community kind to those at both ends of life’s range. Eleanor was a patient listener, she loved to hear Mom talk about old times. One summer afternoon, they sat on the porch waving to the steady stream of young mothers passing by on their way to the beach towing toddlers in red wagons. Eleanor broke open a new pack of cigarettes; Mom snipped dying yellow leaves off the potted geraniums she loved. The conversation, as always, went back in time. This day, my mother told Eleanor about the dilemma she had faced before I was born, and the emotionally wrenching choice she’d had to make. Many years later, as we sat on the same porch, watching another generation of young mothers lead their children to the beach, Eleanor shared that story with me.
Nathan Stanton, “Untitled” from Faces of Fortune series
It was 1930, one year after the Wall Street stock market crashed, ushering in the worst economic depression the country had ever known. My father’s soft-drink business was floundering. “When they learned Mom was pregnant again,” Eleanor said, “they didn’t think they could support another child.”
Slowly, she began to re-live the pain of that long-ago conversation. “Mom was so distressed over the pregnancy that when Dad said he’d ask Bruno if he had something to end it, she agreed.”
Bruno was the neighborhood pharmacist families took their medical problems to because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor. He always shook up something in a bottle that made them feel better.
“When Dad brought home the bottle of Bruno’s medicine,” Eleanor continued, “he told Mom whether she took it or not would be all right with him. It was her choice to make.”
My heart ached for my mother at this point in the story. I couldn’t think of a more difficult decision to be confronted with. But my mother was a woman who didn’t flinch when it came to making tough decisions. She poured Bruno’s medicine into the toilet and flushed it down, And I was born.
Eleanor had mixed feelings about telling me this story. “Mom never wanted you to know.” But learning about my tenuous beginnings explained some of the “why’s” in my life. In good times and in bad, I have been a confirmed Pollyanna. Maybe having survived an imminent pre-natal demise is, subconsciously, the reason why I tend to look at the sunny side of life. I’ve always been at peace with what is, not dwelling on the uncertainties of what if. I didn’t inherit that trait from my mother. Her sky was always falling but she was fierce in her determination to keep it from falling on me. I wonder now, were her extraordinary efforts to keep me safe, to keep me well, to keep me near, a reflection on my shaky start in life? She was a diligent mother to all her children, but I was raised in a more-encompassing safety net than my siblings. I always thought it was because I was the youngest, but after Eleanor’s revelation, I believe there was more to it than that. I think my mother never forgot how close she had come to making a decision that would not have been right for her.
One would think that having this knowledge of my close call with extinction, I would be a radical member of the Right To Life Movement. I am not. I consider that movement an infringement on a very private matter, a choice that should be made only by the woman involved. In my mother’s day, there was no political or social movement, pro-or-con, on the subject of abortion. Members of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives had no say in what had always been a woman’s issue to decide; state governors did not pass draconian laws that dictated reproductive restrictions and often endangered a woman’s health; abortion had no place on the ballot of presidential candidates. My mother made her choice in the privacy of her own life. Whether it was right or wrong in the eyes of the world was not an issue; it was right for her.
This is the issue not being addressed by today’s politicians who pass the laws we live by, and it’s an essential one. There cannot be a blanket course of action on the question of abortion. Every woman lives with a different set of circumstances and health issues; every woman must be allowed to make the choice that is right for her.
The reproductive decisions made by women in my life have had a profound effect on me. I exist because my mother had the option to abort but chose to have me instead. I became a mother myself because two other women chose to give birth to babies they knew they could not raise themselves.
I acknowledge that I have been the beneficiary of all those choices for life. Though they undeniably favored me, I am uncompromising in my belief that every woman should be free to make the reproductive choice that is right for her.
Nathan Stanton, “Kindness” from Faces of Fortune series
