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HBO Documentary '12th & Delaware': Abortion Policy at a Crossroads

1 year ago
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Bonnie Goldstein
Bonnie Goldstein
Woman Up Editor
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This week my daughter Rachel has been in my thoughts almost constantly and so, inevitably, she slides into my written words. She's about to have a baby in September and our mother-daughter conversations have recently dwelled on topics of doulas and breast-milk pumps. Neither of those concepts was relevant or even in existence in 1972 when her birth brought my theretofore blurry, inchoate, life into sharp focus.
The little boy who will soon be the center of her world, and that of our entire family, is already loved and anticipated. Rachel is, as best one can be, prepared for his appearance. I was nowhere near as equipped for her arrival 38 years ago. I was 22 and naively planning for a clone of myself who would be my best buddy and sidekick to hang out with on my hippie-inspired world travels. Obviously, my plan lacked the structure of a fully articulated framework but I wanted a baby and, ready or not, I had one.
Hers was my first "live birth," as they say on OB-GYN charts, but not my first pregnancy. At almost 18, about a month before my high school graduation, I had inadvertent coitus with my Minneapolis boyfriend which, to my deep distress, verified my fallopian system's great efficiency. (The description "unprotected sex" was still years off in the cultural vocabulary but I quickly came to understand my catastrophic reproductive defenselessness.)
The unfortunate pregnancy of my teen years was terminated in a medical procedure that resembled a bad experiment at sleep-away camp. Abortion was illegal and, as far as I knew, always had been. It never occurred to me at the time that real medical practitioners could or would undo the unfortunate upshot of mine and my boyfriend's insistent passion. The sad, seamy episode ending my casual conception occurred in a motel room using a tubular contraption the woman (a nurse? I hoped so . . .) who inserted it said was typically intended for catheters. Many days later, the air introduced into my uterus caused a painful and very bloody miscarriage. I lied to my parents and pretended I hadn't known I was pregnant. Thankfully, I did not sustain permanent scarring or worse damage and, a few years later, had the daughter who, with her much younger brother, would for the rest of my life be my proudest achievements.
Rachel, who is a documentary filmmaker, is the beneficiary of decades of reproductive freedom. The Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade the January after she was born so, all of her life, women have been permitted safe and legal access to abortion. Were an unplanned pregnancy to have occurred in her teens she would have been able to exercise her reproductive rights and wait to have children until she felt prepared. Though prophylactic-less fumblings have the same predictable result today as they did in 1967, the difference between my youthful choices and decisions regarding the consequences are so dramatic they existed on a different planet compared to those of my daughter's cohort.
My former Slate colleague Emily Bazelon had a fascinating article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine about "the next front in the abortion wars." Emily writes that doctors have begun quietly terminating unwanted and unviable pregnancies in their offices instead of sending their patients to one of the 800 medically segregated abortion clinics in the United States.
Long ago set apart from mainstream medical care, women seeking dilation and curettage or vacuum aspiration have been relegated to a relative handful of embattled clinics typically accessorized by sign-carrying protesters harassing women clients just beyond the property lines. There are over 4000 abortion-alternative outposts around the country called CPCs – crisis pregnancy centers – many of them located as close as possible to the stand-alone Planned Parenthood health centers and independent clinics. Originally supported by St. Louis-based Pearson Foundation to assist local groups setting up anti-abortion counseling centers, CPCs have in the past been legally determined to have engaged in dishonest tactics, such as misleading patients about their options.
As a journalist reporting on the third wave of liberated women, Emily unapologetically associates reproductive rights with feminism (note: WomanUP writers have not universally reached the same consensus). She reports in Sunday's NYT Magazine that many young female MDs have begun incorporating pregnancy termination into their regular patient care, eliminating the isolation and perhaps the stigma of the clinics.
Coincidentally, my daughter knows quiet a bit about the political landscape and storefront realities of reproductive rights. Last year she and her co-director, Heidi Ewing, spent many months filming a documentary -- "12th & Delaware," airing on HBO Aug. 2 -- about a crisis pregnancy center located directly across the street from an abortion clinic in Ft. Pierce, Fla.
Their camera catches what goes on outside most typical abortion clinics and what girls facing a tough solution go through on the way to making that choice. Their film also captures what happens when girls and women go inside the doors on either side of Delaware Street, and what they are told. It is not a spoiler to write that on both sides of the street, unhappily pregnant women are met with confusing, painful and troubling alternatives.
Though there is no good answer for the women in their film – as Rachel says, "no one is popping champagne" -- or for the thousands of women every month who arrive at a similar crossroads, I'm proud to say as their camera rolled and editing progressed, my daughter and her sister filmmakers represented each anxious woman facing her individual catastrophe with honesty and compassion. Something abortion policymakers on both sides of the perpetual debate still fail to do.
Filed Under: Abortion, Woman Up
Tagged: 12th and delaware, abortion, abortion rights, abortion+documentary, abortion+documentary+hbo, abortiondocumentary, abortiondocumentaryhbo, crisis pregnancy center, documentary+on+abortion, documentaryonabortion, Emily Bazelon, hbo, hbo documentary, hbo+abortion+documentary, hbo+documentary+abortion, hboabortiondocumentary, hbodocumentaryabortion, lineup3, new york times, new york times magazine, Planned Parenthood, slate
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5 Comments

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kev

I'm sure everybody here does not want there private business posted for everybody to see??????? Abortion to me is the same way!!!!! Its between that women and her Doctor!!!! Do Republicans want to pry in other people's Business??????????????????????????????????????

July 22 2010 at 5:14 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
truthforfreedom

I don't think we needed to hear about the author's personal experiences. I find this to be a very sad commentary and feel very sorry for the young women in our society today.

July 22 2010 at 2:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jtajbozeman

It seems to me that supporters of abortion are, well, let's be frank, really irresponsible. The sort of folks who like NOT to take responsibility for their own actions.

Speaking of her first "born alive" daughter:

"Were an unplanned pregnancy to have occurred in her teens she would have been able to exercise her reproductive rights and wait to have children until she felt prepared."

So, because your daughter might have been irresponsible and had intercourse before she was ready to deal with the consequences of such actions, she's liberated because she has the ability to say, "screw it, let's just kill it." That sounds not only irresponsible, it sounds horribly selfish and downright sickening. It's amazing we live in a world where the term "reproductive rights" means killing your baby, because you didn't feel it was the right time for you. Screw the baby, we live in a world of selfish women who can't keep their legs closed, I guess?

How about teaching your daughters that life is precious and it's not something to be snuffed out for convenience? How about teaching your daughter's that actions have consequences, and until you're ready to deal with those possible outcomes, you keep your panties on and your legs closed? We know, we know, you "liberated" women would die without your indiscriminate sex outside of marriage with as many men as possible.

THIS is the culture we live in. Sick, selfish, and debased beyond belief.

July 22 2010 at 12:51 PM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
djasenane

It never ceases to amaze me that no one else sees through the fact that Abortion, as an issue of public discussion, in this day and age, is nothing more than a political wedge instrument,wielded bluntly ( and freely) for maximal dramatic effect, by either side to their advantage, completely bereft of any relationship to the poor woman in distress or the hapless fetus being aborted.

July 21 2010 at 10:50 PM Report abuse +3 rate up rate down Reply

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