My Story: A Manifesto

By Amy Gonzalez

I always had my own definition of what I believed feminism to be, but I had not formulated that into a manner of practice for my beliefs. On the first night of my feminist theory class, we were polled on the type of feminist we believed ourselves to be — liberal or radical. After a further explanation of the two theories, I felt even more unclear. As we continued and studied many other approaches and perspectives — queer, black feminist, post-modern, socialist, and others- I still felt as though I had not solidified my thoughts into something I could use to act upon. Some of the readings resonated loudly; others forced me into a deep state of reflection; truthfully, some I found downright confusing. Ultimately, I concluded that my brand of feminism didn’t fit cleanly in a box. I had accepted this as things not working cleanly and neatly together. I used my knitting skills to create a little patchwork on unclean boxes representing gender, race, sexual orientation, and economic status. And then, just before we were to submit the manifestos, some news broke that changed everything for me…

On May 2, 2022, Politico.com published a leaked copy of an initial draft majority opinion that Roe v. Wade should be overturned (Gerstein, 2022). This act would eliminate the current standing of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights for women and would revert the ability to restrict or even ban abortions to state legislatures. Roe v. Wade has been what cannot be understated as one of the most important court cases in America. Since 1973, it has meant the legalization of abortion and the rights of women to choose what is best for themselves and their families. The decision has allowed women to decide about their own bodies without excessive government interference.

In recent months, abortion has come back to being a spotlight issue, with states like Texas passing restrictive laws that make abortions illegal the moment there is a detectable heartbeat, as early as six weeks into pregnancy. I have watched the debate closely and even seen my home state of Idaho attempt to put a similar ban into place (Patel, 2022). Abortion rights have always been an issue, but it seems that we are about to fight a battle that we haven’t fought since the 1960s and 70s with the actions of the Supreme Court, which will revert the decision to states. If this happens, there are very conservative states like Idaho and Texas that will make abortion a criminal act for women. It will have devastating consequences, and when it feels like we have made progress with the #metoo movement and attempts to close the wage gap, we are at a point where if we don’t act, it will diminish everything that the second-wave feminists did for us. This event and the potential risk to women’s rights are where I am now. I am reminded of Carol Hanisch’s “The personal is political.”

As I went through school, I had a mother who was in the education system and being the youngest of three daughters, I always functioned from this place of needing to feel seen and noticed. That meant I was always trying to be the best student, the best athlete, or even the best daughter. As a freshman in high school, I was in an advanced curriculum group where we spent a semester organizing into debate partners and going head-to-head on the selected topic. We decided on abortion. Anything you quote or use in a debate has to be referenced on 3x5 index cards with the quote and complete reference. We spent endless hours in the library, locating books and journals for the cards. And as the semester progressed, I remember how my partner and I hated that we had to defend the pro-life stance. When we were arguing on the Pro side, the materials we could find were limitless. I can remember having our small little stack, around an inch and a half thick of Con cards ready to go and dreading when we did the straw pull to see if we would have to end up on that side with arguments like adverse mental effects on women, that fetuses had fingernails at 14 weeks in an attempt to humanize them as early as we could, and pseudo-scientific religious arguments about the fetal pain perceptions. And then, in the following year of my life, the unthinkable happened to me.

When I was 15 years old, I had an abortion. There are more fingers on my hand than people I have shared that sentence with. It is an event that drastically changed the course of my life, but it is also a critical part of the woman I am today. My desperation for getting my parent’s attention shifted into seeking that validation from a romantic partner. In my immaturity, that meant a serious high school boyfriend who made me feel that the “right” way to express love also meant sex. When you are at that age and that vulnerable, it’s a ticking time bomb until you do something to reach beyond parental control and practice some ill-fated maneuvers to show your independence. For me, that was attempting to practice safe sex but ending up unintentionally pregnant as a sophomore in high school.

I can remember the desperation and denial that I felt. I remember hoping and wishing for it not be true when I missed my period. I remember the shame and debating suicide instead of having to tell my parents and disappoint them. I remember getting into a bathtub one evening after hearing all the references to illegal abortions, taking a metal hanger, and attempting a “do-it-yourself” style abortion until I was in so much pain and bleeding that I had to stop. Still, this horrible sense of shame, fear, and denial made me wait another week until I finally told my parents. Being a flawed human being, my parents burdened me with even more feelings about it. My mother told me that no one else could ever know I would have an abortion. She cried openly and made me feel even more ashamed as she shed her own tears and said her first grandchild would be an abortion. My father, who was always logical, passive, and kind, came home from work and slapped me across the face — the first and only time he had ever struck me.

It got worse from there. When you cannot remember the date of your last period, you are required to have an ultrasound to determine gestational age. This was not done at a local office, I had to go to the hospital’s maternity imaging ward to have this done. I remember sitting in a waiting room, surrounded by expectant mothers in varying stages, and thinking how happy they were. Partners and married couples were so excited as it was going to be the first time they saw their babies while I was sitting there trying to mentally and emotionally detach me from what was growing inside my body.

Once age is determined, you encounter another barrier that is not discussed regularly. Just because conservative states allow abortion does not mean you can locate a provider within your state. With the public perception being what it is and with people willing to put the doctors and nurses at risk if they do perform an abortion, it does not mean that they are readily available. Acceptance and support are too very different things. In states like this, while most women might support the right to choose, the availability of abortion services is limited (White et al., 2016). I initially had to go to visit a Planned Parenthood facility even to understand where I could get an abortion and what my next steps would be. For me, that meant traveling to the neighboring state of Washington. My mother, who had always been so strong and in control even in chaotic situations, was so emotionally distraught that she said she couldn’t take me and had my dad do it instead, further exacerbating my shame and fear. We drove in uncomfortable and awkward silence, with periods of him making desperate attempts at small talk to keep his sanity and mine.

When we went to the clinic, I was again in an unfamiliar waiting room, though the circumstances were much different. We all knew what we were there for. Another teenage girl was there with her mother, and I remember feeling angry at my own for her lack of strength in not being there for me. I did not understand if it was her shame of me or her feeling of loss, but it made me reflect on what kind of mother I would want to be. When it came time to meet with the doctor, he was an older man with a thick heavy eastern European accent. My dad was in the room initially, and I remember thinking how surreal it was that they were talking about a signed photo of a famous boxer that he had hung on the wall while he was palpitating and probing my abdomen. They were making small talk about boxing as though I wasn’t in the room. I had what is known as a D&C abortion procedure. That meant that the doctor inserted a stick-like device in your cervix the first afternoon, which would cause dilation. Then you return the following day when he would remove the fetus and clean the uterine lining while you are sedated. We left the doctor’s office and attempted to have dinner, which neither of us ate, and went to the hotel. The awkward attempts to draw ourselves away from the reality of what was going on continued.

That evening, it got worse. My water broke, and I started laboring with full-on contractions. This is the part that people gloss over with euphemisms and misunderstandings. When a woman spontaneously aborts, it is identical to giving birth. It is talked about and portrayed as a simple event that completely overshadows the pain and humiliation of women who experience it. No one wants to equate the happy sensations of pregnancy and motherhood to the sensations of either a chosen or accidental abortion. We want to divide them into two separate experiences, but they are not.

We went back to the doctor’s clinic after making an emergency phone call, and they immediately took me back and sedated me. I woke-up mid procedure in a panic at the pain as the doctor stood between my legs, literally vacuuming my uterus. While I tried to scramble my way up the examination table, a nurse at my side told me to calm down and that they were adjusting to an IV. The gruff doctor said in his thick accent, “Lay still, I’m not the one that did this to you,” which made me realize instantly that he meant and was blaming this surreal situation on my father. I remember thinking, “I’m bad and horrible, but I’m not that horrible that I’m a victim of incest,” in my semi-lucid state. On the way home, I bled so much that I asked if we could just stop and buy diapers instead of the maxi pads that I had.

My dad was so inept but tried his hardest to keep it all together — we both just had no idea. As we drove back, I cried like I had so many times since I realized I was pregnant. I had an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness. I thought I just had a baby removed from me that doesn’t get to be a baby, it’s something tied up in a medical waste bag now to live in perpetuity as something forgotten and unwanted. This is the most significant flaw I see in the pro-life side’s arguments — they believe that women use abortion as a means of birth control and that women who seek them are remorseless murderers. I thought about what kind of person this meant that I was that I did this thing — if God is real, am I to be punished for this at some later point and time? With all the blood and pain, what would it mean for me later — what if I were punished further by not being able to have kids when I wanted? Later on, when I had my first child by choice, I remember the weird, uncomfortable sensations of having done these things before, in a way that I was humiliated by but was now something I should be proud of. Before my daughter exited the womb, I very privately worried that something would be wrong or would not work for me as punishment for the abortion past. Abortion is profoundly personal and not something that can be summed up on a 3x5 index card for public debate. It stays with you in small and big ways- from dreading going to the new gynecologist’s office because you will have to explain the difference between the number of pregnancies and the number of live births on your paperwork to affecting your feelings of self-worth. If I was taking a life by having an abortion, it also gave me a greater appreciation for the life I have.

I have never written or considered my thoughts on this in depth. There was such an indignity to it all when it was going on. I felt removed from the situation but also at the heart of it. I felt so much pain and loss because it was such a taboo thing. I had no one to talk to. There was much lack of conversation, guidance, and even basic human gestures like eye contact when it was discussed. One person who talked to me made me feel safe, and that was at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Boise, where I originally went to find out options. I met with a counselor who was a nurse in a private room. She made me feel like there was no right or wrong option — there were simply options, and they would guide me in the most logical path to what I needed to do to achieve the desired end. There is a vast juxtaposition because you are made to feel like less of a human being for seeking out an abortion, but to the same end, you are choosing to end the life of another, so you feel like you deserve those feelings.

Planned Parenthood was the only place that made me feel safe and like I could talk about not only what was the best path for me but how I could do that and change my life’s course. I am forever grateful to them for that. It is an insurmountable task that they are completing. They do it in the face of daily opposition and threat to help women achieve their best end. More importantly, they provide those services for the population that is the least served and most impacted — women in the minority and/or poor. As discussed in Angela Davis’s piece “Outcast Mother and Surrogates; Racism & Reproductive Politics in the Nineties,” teenage pregnancy in African American communities is a widespread issue, and those women are rarely given other opportunities to make the shift towards adulthood in any other way (Kolmar, 2013). Providing the option of choice is how you make it known to others that there’s another path.

Abortion will always be one of the great philosophical debates. Suppose philosophy is the attempt to give rigorous and systematic answers to life’s fundamental questions. In that case, there can be few more significant than the ones that abortion generates: when does life begin? What defines the existence of a separate entity, consciousness, or heartbeat? If something is intrinsically dependent on another human body for support, does that mean it exists if it cannot be independent?

For me, though, it is about something deeply personal and essential. This is why Simone de Beauvoir’s work is meaningful to me. I am the sum of my lived experiences. My experience includes a past abortion that forever changed who I am as a mother, daughter, and human being. I would never want to deny another woman the opportunity to make that kind of decision for herself. I think that because we are the sum of our experiences, limiting a woman’s ability to choose ultimately limits who they can be as a person. If laws like these are passed, they will disproportionately negatively impact women who are already disadvantaged. They might not have the education on birth control options or the means to get them. They might not be able to travel to get an abortion, though the ones with power, money, and influence always will. Abortion does not fit neatly in a box, much like my feminist beliefs. I have discovered in this course that I am all and none- I am possibly a radical feminist with an existential bent who can accept and appreciate other feminist points of view. I want fundamental changes for equality, but I also love men. I am not a minority, but I am raising two daughters who identify as such based on their physical appearance received from the genes of their minority father, and I so desperately want this to be a better world for them.

Most importantly, I am awake and aware of all these contradictions and choices of who I am before me, and I don’t want that denied for any other woman. For years I have hidden this truth about who I am and how it affected me. I felt shame, anger, pain, and loss. I was made to feel like less of a human being, but the reality was that it made me more of the woman I am today. My manifesto is simple — come out of the shadow of shame and speak to be a voice for women now and in the future who need to have the right to choose in their own life. I have never talked openly about this subject at the risk of offending others or remembering the pain of it myself. I have never attended a protest, even though I have supported many causes. I have never been vocal about my opinion because there are too many. This paper is the first step of many to change that.

References

Gerstein, J. &. (2022, 05 02). Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows. Retrieved from Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473

Kolmar, W. &. (2013). Feminist Theory — A Reader. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Patel, V. (2022, Apr 8). Idaho Supreme Court Halts 6-Week Abortion Ban Based on Texas’ Law. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/us/idaho-supreme-court-abortion.html

White, K., Potter, J., Stevenson, A., Fuentes, L., Hopkins, K., & Grossman, D. (2016, Dec). Women’s Knowledge of and Support for Abortion Restrictions in Texas: Findings from a Statewide Representative Survey. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 48(4), 189–197.