What the Supreme Court Decision Means to Me as a pre-Roe v. Wade Survivor

I know the fear. I remember everything about it. Being afraid of doing something illegal. Being afraid of getting hurt. Being afraid of bleeding to death. Being afraid of being so damaged that I wouldn’t be able to have children when it was the right time.

Then wasn’t the right time. I was a freshman in college. I became pregnant. It was 1967. I had two options. Marry the father or find a way to have an abortion. The father said no to marriage. He was right. We were too young.

A person would look at me now and say, oh, you had options. You just didn’t explore all your options. You didn’t try hard enough. You could have had the baby and given it up for adoption. Maybe. It’s hard now to explain the world for women in 1967. First off, I would have had to leave college. Drop…