featured in the NY Daily News | October 4, 2022
In 1950s America, my mother was given the care she needed to survive her miscarriages. In 2022, in some parts of this country, my mother might be considered a criminal.
It has been three months since the Dobbs decision, yet the shock continues to reverberate. When my phone first lit up alerting me that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe vs. Wade, I sat in stunned silence, the lines on the screen in front of me blurring together. Even though I’d known the decision was coming, the news alerts dinging their way down my phone’s display were simply unfathomable. It took me a few beats to realize that no, the New York Times hadn’t gotten it wrong; nor had the Washington Post, CNN, the Daily News. It had happened.
My mind went immediately to my family. I have six grandchildren, four of them girls. That number — four — resonates, and not in a good way. I am painfully aware that, statistically, one in four female children in the United States has experienced sexual abuse. And I know what will appear in my newsfeed in the coming days: stories about more children, raped and broken, who will be doubly betrayed by their adult caretakers when their childhoods are stolen from them when forced parenthood replaces their hopes and dreams.
The day after the decision, rapid-fire comments like this one hit my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts: “I went to bed in 2022 and woke up in the 1950s.” Little did these posters realize, even 1950s reproductive care was more advanced than what’s available to some American women in 2022.
About a month after the decision, I read a story about a woman, Amanda, who’d had a miscarriage and received treatment in a Texas hospital. She underwent a D&C (dilation and curettage), performed when a pregnancy isn’t viable, when hemorrhaging, infections and even sepsis can threaten the mother’s life. Afterward, the staff even left her a note and a small gift to express their sympathy.
But when Amanda had another miscarriage months later, the same hospital staff sent her home without treatment. Digging her nails into the wall from the pain, she sat in the bathtub for hours, she and her husband weeping together as the bathtub water went from clear to deep red.
When I read Amanda’s story, all I could think about was my mother. Born in 1928, Mom came of age in post-World War II America, an era distinguished by an exodus of women from the workforce back into the home. Mom reveled in the domestic life that pervaded 1950s America and was most authentically herself among her home and family.
As an adult, I once asked what her ambitions had been as a young girl. The subtext of my question was obvious to us both: hadn’t she wanted more? She looked me straight in the eye, smiled sweetly, and without hesitation said, “All I ever wanted was to be a mother.” She embraced motherhood with her whole heart and loved my brother and me with a ferocity that grounded us in security and protection.
However, in 1950, a year after her marriage, she had a miscarriage. As the months passed, she overcame her profound sadness and found the will to try again. Then she miscarried a second time. Years later she told me, her head bowed, that the doctor had performed a D&C after each miscarriage. She had stowed that secret away as if it was a failing on her part. For my part, I was relieved that she had been provided this potentially life-saving treatment.
In 1951, Mom finally gave birth to a son, her dream fulfilled, her joy boundless. Then in 1954 when Mom became pregnant for the fourth time, she experienced the familiar signs that she might miscarry once more. Dad whisked her to the gynecologist, where the doctor confirmed that she was miscarrying.
This time, Mom refused the D&C, insisting she still felt life within her. The doctor patted her hand and, with a wink and a nod to my dad, allowed her a few weeks to “come to terms.” In an era when she could neither own a house nor apply for a credit card, she was treated as though she was a spoiled, clueless child. Fortunately for me, her “miracle child,” that time, she — not the doctor — was right. Mom knew when to call it and when not to.
Like women everywhere: When given the right, they know what is right for them.
Mom’s story illustrates why we cannot rest until our right to choose is reinstated. Because unlike in the 1950s, in 2022 my mother — the consummate mother by any definition — would, in some parts of this country, be treated like a criminal. And in the America of 2022, many Amandas may decide it’s just not worth trying again.
Boulanger is a writer.
Originally Published: October 4, 2022 at 5:00 AM EDT
