My grandmother told me this story during the March for Women's Lives in 2004, which I attended with all three living generations of women in my family (she, my mother, and I):

My grandmother married my grandfather in the mid-1950s, when she was nineteen years old. They moved a couple hours away from her family and she quickly became pregnant. During that pregnancy she developed a condition that, while not life-threatening to her or the fetus, made her extremely ill, unable to work, and on bed-rest for much of the pregnancy. My uncle was born premature, but luckily healthy and the young parents began to raise him in thier tiny apartment.

When my grandmother found out she was pregnant again not even two years later, she was terrified. She had a toddler to care for, and if she became sick again during this pregnancy there was no one to care for him. My grandfather was working long hours to save a little money and be able to provide for thier son as he grew up, and they lived far enough from her family that she could not look to them for help. After talking it over, they thought that they would look to one of his family's friends, a doctor, to admit her to the hospital as if for a Dilation and Curettage (a procedure done to treat abnormal uterine bleeding), and therefore elude the law against abortion. They had the date set and the money saved up, but as time went on my grandmother realized that she was not feeling any of the symptoms she had felt with my uncle. She ended up carrying to term, and my mother was born about six months later.

To hear anti-choicers tell it, I should not be pro-choice. I should focus on the fact that my mother wouldn't have been born if my grandmother had gone through with her plan, and for that matter, on the fact that I myself was a bit of a "surprise" and I'm sure the thought went through my mother's head to abort her pregnancy. But they would be asking me to focus on the wrong part of the story. I focus on another part: the choice my grandmother was making.

First, I thought about the fact that my grandmother was making a choice between having a friend perform an illegal abortion on her and carrying to term a fetus that she thought would endanger both her wellbeing and her son's. That is not a choice anyone should have to make- between health risks and health risks- and that is a choice that women still make everyday because the cost of getting to an abortion clinic and having a safe abortion procedure can be prohibitive (like, say, if they live in one of 87% counties in the U.S. without an abortion provider, are low-income, if thier insurance or medicaid does not cover the procedure, if they are uninsured, etc.).

Then, I thought about how even in a circumstance where abortion was illegal, my grandmother still had so much privilege. My grandmother had the privilege of being able use connections to seek an illegal abortion in relatively safe circumstances - false pretenses at a hospital- rather than the table of a con-artist or through attempts at self-inducing. She had the privilege of the support of her husband and the ability to scrounge together the money for the procedure. She had the privilege of being able to change her mind and afford to raise my mother and uncle without worrying about not being able to feed them. All of these things could not be said for many women before Roe, and they cannot be said for many women now.

Finally, I tried to weigh the fact that my mother would not be here today- nor would I- if she had not changed her mind. But I could not pull this from its context. While the other parts of the story showed me a glimpse at the experiences of women everyday, all this part taught me was that I wouldn't really be here to be offended or complain any way.

Tomorrow when I go to the Supreme Court in support of Roe, and on Saturday when I escort at a clinic in my city to protect patients from the large numbers of anti-choicers that bus in from around the country to yell as them, I will keep this story to remind me of the women that I fight for; to remind me of why I am Pro-choice.