NWPC Metro Event on Foreign Policy on June 10

MY GRANDMOTHER’S DESPERATE CHOICE - The New Yorker

MY GRANDMOTHER’S DESPERATE CHOICE
The New Yorker
By Kate Daloz  
May 14, 2017

My questions about my grandmother's death, of a self-induced abortion, haven’t changed since I was twelve years old. What feels new, in the Trump era, is the urgency of her story.

As a child, I knew only that my grandmother had died when my mom was still a baby. The one time I asked what had happened to her, a bolt of panic flashed across my mother’s face. “A household accident,” was all she said. I was twelve years old when she finally told me the truth. Some friends and I had got into a long after-school discussion about abortion, prompted by the gruesome posters that a protester had staked in front of the Planned Parenthood in our Vermont town. I had already begun reading my mother’s Ms. magazines cover to cover, but this was the first time I’d encountered a pro-life position. When I hopped into my mom’s car after school, I was buzzing with new ideas. I had almost finished repeating one friend’s pro-life argument when I saw the look on Mom’s face. That’s when she told me: the “household accident” that had killed her mother had, in fact, been a self-induced abortion...

www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-grandmothers-desperate-choice