Regressive health policy- botched abortions: Vote to protect women!

"Back-alley arrangements were theoretically possible, but costly. For women without means, DIY remedies were personified by the coat hanger."

This echo essay is published by a man who describes one family's experience:

Opinion: A long-kept family secret reminds us of the peril of illegal abortions, echo opinion by Michael Sondergard, Press-Citizen opinion writer.

Aunt Margaret’s humble tombstone marks the beginning and end of her life, but not why she died, at age 21. That family bombshell was dropped several years ago by an older relative by marriage as we sat together at a wedding reception.

“Are you aware that your aunt Margaret died of a botched abortion?” she asked.

My jaw dropped. Until that moment, Margaret’s story had always been shrouded in silence and mystery. It was almost as if she had never existed.

I’m not even sure my late father, her younger brother, was aware of the details. Someone had said that Dad had been called out of a high school classroom to be informed of his sister’s death in a Muscatine hospital, but that was as much as I had ever been told.

After the explosive revelation, I began asking questions of two elderly women who had known Margaret while growing up in rural Iowa.

Their times had been defined by big events, including World War I (ignited by an assassination that occurred 25 days after Margaret’s birth), the so-called “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918-19, and of course the Great Depression (1929-approx. 1939).

Alas, details about Margaret’s life are skimpy. A fun photo shows her and a female relative arm-in-arm, both playfully dressed in bib overalls, hamming it up in a farm field, a pale work horse standing idly nearby.

Sundays were spent at the Lutheran church, where services were conducted in Danish for immigrant families trying to build better lives.

My Body My Choice

Margaret played violin in the high school orchestra and performed in a small group with her dad, and later her brother, that entertained at rural shindigs like wiener roasts and hayrides.

“Happy times!” a friend recalled.

A portrait taken in the 1930s captures a lovely woman (said to be 5-foot-4 or 5-5) with wavy dark hair, dark eyes, and a serious disposition.

We can only speculate about why, or how, Margaret terminated the pregnancy. “It just wasn’t talked about,” her friend recalled.

Margaret is known to have had a boyfriend, said to be a “very Dane” farm-boy for whom marriage and childrearing were evidently not an immediate option.

Imagine Margaret’s inner turmoil. Religious teachings and social norms pushing in one direction, daunting economic burdens and social stigmas pulling in another.

Margaret had no legal, safe options for ending the pregnancy, abortion having been criminalized under most circumstances in most states since the mid-1800s.

Back-alley arrangements were theoretically possible, but costly. For women without means, DIY remedies were personified by the coat hanger.

Exactly how many women died from “botched” abortions is evidently unknown, but (IMO- thousands) of women did die, often from unsanitary conditions- Maine Writer- also, from hemorrhage.

Now that Republicans have packed the Supreme Court with a super majority of right wing justices ideologically and religiously inclined to overturn Roe vs. Wade, militant anti-abortion foes seem giddy with anticipation, as if the “good old days” were glorious.

Margaret’s tombstone, though, reminds us of what criminalized abortion can look like when women are denied the right to choose when they are ready for childbearing.

For intensely personal reasons, often amplified by race and poverty, women have always sought to end unwanted pregnancies — secretively and, if need be, alas, unsafely. They probably always will.

If stories like aunt Margaret’s tell us anything, they tell us that.

Michael Sondergard is a University of Iowa retiree and long-ago city editor of the Iowa Press-Citizen.

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