Two Abortions

    My first mother in law hated me. Considering how things worked out I'm not sure I blame her.   Who knows?  She forbade us to see each other so we did.  We were in love and wanted to be together.
It being the late 1960's and it being the smallest of towns, we knew if my soon to be wife were to become pregnant her mother would insist we get married. So, no more trips to the gas station to buy rubbers for me!  Work, work, work!
    I have a 47 year old daughter as a result. She seems to disapprove of me but that's a different story. I'm not sure I blame her.
    As a young married couple raising a daughter we had two friends in particular. They were in love. That's a life-long bittersweet story that I'm not going to tell today.
    Her parents objected to their relationship.  Not because he was a bad guy but because they had plans for her education and future and a young marriage didn't suit those plans.  In the end, she fulfilled those plans beautifully.  She's a wonderful person who has been a positive influence in countless lives.  I think her parents were wrong.  She would have been fine with a child and a man she loved.  Too late to tell.  Too late.
    To be together they hit upon our plan.  They knocked her up.  They expected the usual shot-gun wedding.  They did not expect the shot-gun abortion.  It was 1971 in Pennsylvania. Abortion on demand was illegal unless certain conditions concerning the health and well being of the mother could be certified.  For the tidy sum of 4,300, 1971 dollars the certifications were made and the abortion was performed by a OB/GYN in a clean, prominent hospital.  No law proposed since Roe V Wade would effect that outcome.  The price of the doctor's integrity was set and met.
    In 1984 I met a beautiful, smart girl.  We were both at the bottom rung of new careers.  We both knew we would progress.  We did by the way.  She became an electrical engineer and, of course, here I am.
    We enjoyed living together.  We were in love.  We planned to marry and start a family when we were more financially secure.  To that end she took birth control pills.  She was a detail oriented, motivated person. She took her pills  as directed and we screwed away.  It was a lot of fun.
    She did have an occasional flare up of eczema.  When it got bad the cure was a visit to the doctor for a shot of cortisone in those days.  Now it's prednisone.
    So, she had the flare-up, we went to the doctor, got her a shot and we continued to screw. Did I mention it was fun!
    Then she turned up pregnant.  This is what we thought:  If all kids were planned there'd be about a third of the kids there actually are.  We were young, motivated and we had families who were great support systems.  Then we were told the cortisone shot had counteracted the birth control pills.  The chances were the end would be a very painful miscarriage and if the baby went to term it would be profoundly affected.  I don't know or care what your morality is. Our morality was to not threaten her health or to bring a profoundly affected child into the world.  To act on our morality we went to Planned Parenthood and I wrote a check for $268.  We were not happy and had someone confronted the woman I loved for that choice on that day they would have paid dearly for their convictions.
    The only morally ambiguous thing I see here is the doctor who sold his integrity.  I don't know that he was an immoral or amoral man.  I doubt if he thought about it in those terms.  I do know that we have never questioned our morally based decision and would dismiss as unwelcome any questions posed by others.  I certainly think the decision imposed in the first circumstance was completely, in the end, immoral. Nor was that any of my business and that's the entire point.