Vox Populi
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Sandy Solomon: Abortion Clinic
Pregnant, but unclear about her last period, she said she thought nothing was wrong for weeks, but knew she couldn’t afford another, couldn’t afford the five kids she had now, so she’d tried to put the idea out of mind, but finally had to admit, struggle to borrow cash to pay for this visit, and Please, please, (she reached her hands across to grasp mine, her grip painfully tight) make it alright, please. But when the doctor examined her, he shook his head—She’s too far along— and left the room, the door clicking shut. And then she sobbed as I’d never before heard a woman cry, her gown slipped off a shoulder, her body keening as she knelt on the table. Her tears, my helpless hands, and all she couldn’t afford. *** Nineteen years old, a freshman at Notre Dame. This time last year, I picketed the clinic with my mom. She’s big in Right to Life, devout. But now… She chews a frayed blonde lock. She squints her outlined eyes. I can’t be pregnant. My mom would kill me. She leans forward in her chair as she describes her summer in a seaside resort where she shared a place with other seasonal staff. We partied some. She looks away to recall. A pause. She straightens her back—good girl— and folds her freckled hands together in her lap as words disappear. She’ll say no more. Together we move towards what she needs, side by side, down the wide, clean corridor. College first. Then a nice guy. Engagement, white wedding, the works. Her mom will beam. *** Fourteen and petite, knee jiggling, eyes un-still, away. She says her mother brought her. She says she wants to keep the baby, wants for once, someone to love me. Elbows and anger. Her mom joins us from the waiting room. No more than thirty herself, like a blown rose. You have this kid, you won’t be running around anymore, she tells her daughter. She should know. She wants for her daughter time to grow up, says she knows her child’s child will come to her to raise. Another. I won’t. I can’t. Each of them, head down, as if certain. I send them home, nervous girl and tired- looking mom. What else can I do? The kid shoves fists in the pockets of her leather-like jacket, bought, I guess, on lay away. *** At twelve, she doesn’t seem to know how she got pregnant. Older boyfriend, yes, but the act itself seems a mystery. She and her mom have driven five hours this morning so her eyes keep drifting shut as I talk about condoms. For what? She blinks. She tells me about photos of fetuses, babies, on the walls of her Catholic school, and she begins to weep at the thought of sin, so I call in Betty, the nurse-midwife, Irish Catholic herself. Betty quotes St. Thomas: Life begins at the quickening. Not yet, little one. The size of a thumbnail, this fetus. And the girl calms. Soon we’ll send her out to her mom’s arms, back to her grade school’s gallery of blow-ups, childhood’s wake. *** A tough month, she tells me: boyfriend left and now this, her IUD still in place. I’ve done my best. She shakes her head, fine red curls, a whiff of scent. Ben won’t be coming back. A shock, she says, after five years to learn about another woman, blonde and younger. Anyone could write this story! She laughs bitterly. When she told him, his response was a promise to pay. Half, she laughs again. She’s twenty-seven so she can start again, but she loved him, even his smelly socks on the bathroom floor. Doctor gone, she drapes an arm across her eyes and cries: Ben, oh Ben. Damp strands against the pillow, beneath her elbow, her lipsticked mouth, as it says his name. *** Nothing’s simple, one-sided, or neat. I remember the time the condom broke, his eyes wide as he withdrew. Oh shit. We loved each other, but didn’t want to marry. No morning-after pill to purchase then. We waited in suspense as men and women have for centuries, the unrecorded story, each bloody month an infinite relief. My friend’s mother, a doctor, recalled in 1930 knocks on her boarding room door at night: whispering women from the neighborhood who’d heard she might know someone safe to help them. Otherwise disgrace or hidden shame: invented, dead husbands; new towns. Otherwise, a long slog of poverty. Most chose danger on a kitchen table. *** The clinic staff calls: another protest. She puts her TV suit on, and while she drives to work, she tries out the day’s sound bite. She parks across the street to view the scene: the usual unruly mob recites abuse as volunteers in clinic T-shirts greet arrivals, walk them from their cars and through the battered doors. At least today, police stand watch, and Channels Five and Two have sent a truck, crew, and photogenic face. A thin teen-aged couple, wearing jeans that slide below their hips, appear to wince as the mob begins their epithets and taunts, mouths stretched to teeth, MURDER signs in red. Whose right? Who’s right? Let’s say, these two: they stumble past, the girl, chin out, eyes full. -- Copyright 2022 Sandy Solomon Sandy Solomon's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Scientific American, Harvard Review and Kenyon Review. Her book Pears, Lake, Sun won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. She is the Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University.
Vox Populi 
Gosh, this sequence is so powerful–and so essential at this moment. It SHOULD go viral.
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I completely agree, Idris!
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It is incredible that in 2022 we are still discussing these issues, on the rights that we now considered acquired in the so-called Western world. Millennia can pass but man does not take anything to go back to caves. Thanks for these poetic testimonies.
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In America, we are moving backward, taking rights away from people.
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Thank you for putting a face on these women we will be punishing for making decisions in their own best interest. Goddamn.
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Thanks, Pat!
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Thankyou for this.
A bad day yesterday. Not many of them, outside of my pastoral heaven and universe seem good, but I am privileged and live in paradise where I can find sustainable sense and peace.
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Thanks, Sean. Your ranch in Florida sounds like heaven!
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