Thursday, June 16, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Abortions - in English
Abortion Guilt is a Social Construct
(ES Original: Oct 09; Revised Dec 10; JLH Review June 11, GD June 2011)
I have been always intrigued by the difficulties surrounding abortion issues in our times. My parents faced them without anguish, fear, or discussions. In the Zhitlovsky organization, according to my mother, everybody knew when a woman had one. It was as open as talking about salaries earned.
I vividly remember my mother’s explanations about sexual relationships. Her doctor had told her that it was ‘psychologically bad’ (sic) to be preoccupied about pregnancies, and if they happened, you got an abortion, and that was that. No existential terrors, regrets, or doubts of any kind. The only necessary condition in order to have an abortion was, naturally, to be pregnant.
I asked her once if there weren’t any, a little bit less radical, forms of contraception, and she told me there was a pill called “L’amour de Paris” (suggestive name, isn’t it?) which needed to be dissolved in lukewarm water, and then shoved inside with a rubber syringe, within 15 minutes of the deed. This was impossible, -she said. I remember looking at her with a doubting face, asking why something that sounded so easy, was so impossible. She gave me the look of “don’t be stupid” and explained the logistics: leave the rented single room where they lived, pass through the open patios, go to the back of the tenement house where the bathroom was, get water, come back, start the ‘Primus’ (a cooking device that uses kerosene), pump as needed… and by the time it was all ready, the 15 minutes were long gone. That’s when I realized how ignorant I was about such poverty. I couldn’t even imagine a time when getting warm water was so difficult.
This means that my mother, who could have been a great Rabbi’s wife, in which case instead of just one sister I would have had at least 15 siblings, paid heed to her doctor’s advice. My sister was born in 1930, and from then on, an abortion every couple of months, until 1944.
So what about the theater? Uh, that’s a side story. Once, a female director from Buenos Aires – I don’t remember her name - came to direct the Zhitlovsky theater group. She was bossy and intransigent. And my mother, recalling that time (and still upset about it), told me about how disgusting she thought the woman was. “She made me go up and down a table about 20 times, and when I started singing my revolutionary song, she would tell me I was doing it all wrong. And the bitch knew that very same morning I had had an abortion!” Needless to say, not only the director, but also the whole cast knew about it, and everybody else too. It was just natural. And no one thought it strange my mother would go to the rehearsal that night, as if it were any other day.
The theater group and the fans in their audience were like a large family. I can’t forget the evening when in one of the plays, rehearsed night after night for about 6 months - in order to perform it a single time-, my mother had to place her hands on her hips and scream ‘Ha!’ Regrettably, that time, her dentures flew out of her mouth, landing in the third row. Oh, the horror! But it wasn’t a problem. A kind spectator picked them up, stood up, and gave them to my mother, who quickly put them back in her mouth, without even cleaning them, and the play kept on going with no troubles.
Moishe wasn’t as lucky (that’s not his real name, but perhaps he was a relative of someone reading this lines, and I don’t want family problems on my head). The scene was a Nazi attacking a Jew with Moishe as the Nazi. The Nazi had to jump on top of the other guy, and as a result of his effort to strangle the Jew, a big explosive fart came out of the Nazi’s ass. The theater had good acoustics, so from that day on, the poor guy came to be known as ‘Moishe der forts’ (Moishe the fart), and that name stuck with him till his death.
But let’s go back to my mother’s abortions. They went on and on, until she was 43 years old. When she didn’t get pregnant for a whole year, she felt relieved, thinking her eggs were long gone, as well as her problems. When at the age of 45 she stopped menstruating, she thought ‘OK, that’s the menopause’, and didn’t pay any more attention to the issue. Four months later, “the menopause” started kicking. Big shit. She ran to the doctor, but he only said: “Lady, congratulations and good luck. You know I don’t do abortions in advanced pregnancies”. She yelled at him, but got no answer.
And then, -she told me-, when she got back home, she filled a container with the wash (remember those large, round, metal containers?) and went up to the roof using a little ladder. When almost up there, she let herself fell backwards, firmly holding the heavy container, in order to really hurt herself badly enough for a hemorrhage to occur. If she ended up in a hospital, she knew they would do a proper abortion, no questions asked. And maybe she could even miscarry without any added help needed. She never thought, even for a second, that she could be seriously injured, and that she was putting her own life in danger. And of course she didn’t think I was too young to hear that story and properly understand it. I was, clearly, not old enough.
Years later, I realized each of my friends had a single sibling, many years older than themselves. I believe they all went down the same road. Their immigrant parents had a child as soon as they got married, because they wanted to. Then, after many years of abortions, they had a late offspring before they could get rid of it. Of course, the economy helped dictate that result. During the 40s, our parents were already in a better economic situation than when they were newcomers to Uruguay, so a second child wasn’t so dramatically difficult at that time.
Yet, I’m still interested in what I said at the beginning. So, why are abortions considered so traumatic today? If the social group accepts them with no remorse, there are no interior dramas. I don’t believe any of our parents had suffered at all for those lost fetuses. The “traumas” of abortion are clearly social.
(ES Original: Oct 09; Revised Dec 10; JLH Review June 11, GD June 2011)
I have been always intrigued by the difficulties surrounding abortion issues in our times. My parents faced them without anguish, fear, or discussions. In the Zhitlovsky organization, according to my mother, everybody knew when a woman had one. It was as open as talking about salaries earned.
I vividly remember my mother’s explanations about sexual relationships. Her doctor had told her that it was ‘psychologically bad’ (sic) to be preoccupied about pregnancies, and if they happened, you got an abortion, and that was that. No existential terrors, regrets, or doubts of any kind. The only necessary condition in order to have an abortion was, naturally, to be pregnant.
I asked her once if there weren’t any, a little bit less radical, forms of contraception, and she told me there was a pill called “L’amour de Paris” (suggestive name, isn’t it?) which needed to be dissolved in lukewarm water, and then shoved inside with a rubber syringe, within 15 minutes of the deed. This was impossible, -she said. I remember looking at her with a doubting face, asking why something that sounded so easy, was so impossible. She gave me the look of “don’t be stupid” and explained the logistics: leave the rented single room where they lived, pass through the open patios, go to the back of the tenement house where the bathroom was, get water, come back, start the ‘Primus’ (a cooking device that uses kerosene), pump as needed… and by the time it was all ready, the 15 minutes were long gone. That’s when I realized how ignorant I was about such poverty. I couldn’t even imagine a time when getting warm water was so difficult.
This means that my mother, who could have been a great Rabbi’s wife, in which case instead of just one sister I would have had at least 15 siblings, paid heed to her doctor’s advice. My sister was born in 1930, and from then on, an abortion every couple of months, until 1944.
So what about the theater? Uh, that’s a side story. Once, a female director from Buenos Aires – I don’t remember her name - came to direct the Zhitlovsky theater group. She was bossy and intransigent. And my mother, recalling that time (and still upset about it), told me about how disgusting she thought the woman was. “She made me go up and down a table about 20 times, and when I started singing my revolutionary song, she would tell me I was doing it all wrong. And the bitch knew that very same morning I had had an abortion!” Needless to say, not only the director, but also the whole cast knew about it, and everybody else too. It was just natural. And no one thought it strange my mother would go to the rehearsal that night, as if it were any other day.
The theater group and the fans in their audience were like a large family. I can’t forget the evening when in one of the plays, rehearsed night after night for about 6 months - in order to perform it a single time-, my mother had to place her hands on her hips and scream ‘Ha!’ Regrettably, that time, her dentures flew out of her mouth, landing in the third row. Oh, the horror! But it wasn’t a problem. A kind spectator picked them up, stood up, and gave them to my mother, who quickly put them back in her mouth, without even cleaning them, and the play kept on going with no troubles.
Moishe wasn’t as lucky (that’s not his real name, but perhaps he was a relative of someone reading this lines, and I don’t want family problems on my head). The scene was a Nazi attacking a Jew with Moishe as the Nazi. The Nazi had to jump on top of the other guy, and as a result of his effort to strangle the Jew, a big explosive fart came out of the Nazi’s ass. The theater had good acoustics, so from that day on, the poor guy came to be known as ‘Moishe der forts’ (Moishe the fart), and that name stuck with him till his death.
But let’s go back to my mother’s abortions. They went on and on, until she was 43 years old. When she didn’t get pregnant for a whole year, she felt relieved, thinking her eggs were long gone, as well as her problems. When at the age of 45 she stopped menstruating, she thought ‘OK, that’s the menopause’, and didn’t pay any more attention to the issue. Four months later, “the menopause” started kicking. Big shit. She ran to the doctor, but he only said: “Lady, congratulations and good luck. You know I don’t do abortions in advanced pregnancies”. She yelled at him, but got no answer.
And then, -she told me-, when she got back home, she filled a container with the wash (remember those large, round, metal containers?) and went up to the roof using a little ladder. When almost up there, she let herself fell backwards, firmly holding the heavy container, in order to really hurt herself badly enough for a hemorrhage to occur. If she ended up in a hospital, she knew they would do a proper abortion, no questions asked. And maybe she could even miscarry without any added help needed. She never thought, even for a second, that she could be seriously injured, and that she was putting her own life in danger. And of course she didn’t think I was too young to hear that story and properly understand it. I was, clearly, not old enough.
Years later, I realized each of my friends had a single sibling, many years older than themselves. I believe they all went down the same road. Their immigrant parents had a child as soon as they got married, because they wanted to. Then, after many years of abortions, they had a late offspring before they could get rid of it. Of course, the economy helped dictate that result. During the 40s, our parents were already in a better economic situation than when they were newcomers to Uruguay, so a second child wasn’t so dramatically difficult at that time.
Yet, I’m still interested in what I said at the beginning. So, why are abortions considered so traumatic today? If the social group accepts them with no remorse, there are no interior dramas. I don’t believe any of our parents had suffered at all for those lost fetuses. The “traumas” of abortion are clearly social.
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