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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
Big Blue Book No. 474
CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
by
Martin Avery
(non de plume)
Intimate Sidelights on the Secret Human, Sorrow, Drama and
Tragedy in the Experience of a Doctor Whose Profession It Is To
Perform Illegal Operations.
1939
Haldeman-Julius Company
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
1. EARLY DAYS AND IDEAS
Sometimes I find myself thinking wistfully of the days when I
was young and sure of myself and my future, when I thought the
solid ground under my feet was a foundation for an air castle and
when right and wrong were very definite things, and black was black
and white was white and I would have nothing to do with gray.
I had no such regrets, of course, when first I gloated
childishly over the neat little black and gold sign that announced
to the world that Martin Avery was a doctor of medicine and ready
to practice. I admired my small library of medical textbooks, my
shiny surgical instruments and I repeated over and over the
sonorous words of the oath I had taken. Much has happened to me
since then, much that I somehow feel compelled to put on paper.
Perhaps even after these years I want to prove that in my way I
have tried to be faithful to my youthful ideas.
So this is a human-interest document designed to show troubled
women that they have companions in distress, I shall not clutter it
up with medical terms. I have no patience with doctors who think
they must sprinkle Latin in every sentence and generally talk as
though they were dictating a highly technical article for a medical
journal. I am not trying to be impressive nor am I trying to
preach. This book might be called "Sidelights on Tragedy." If it
will make a few less persons look disdainful or horrified at the
word "abortion," I will have succeeded in my purpose.
I must have been a somewhat priggish Sir Galahad when I was
graduated from medical school. I saw myself curing the world of
nice, respectable diseases like measles and smallpox and perhaps
halting epidemics by quickness of thought or saving a rich man's
life by my miraculous skill as a surgeon.
I had lived a fairly clean life, almost unbelievably clean it
seems to me now. But then I never had much money. My people were
farmers. That accounted for part of my pride. I thought Myself
mighty smart to be going up a rung in the ladder, from peasant to
professional man. Sometimes I thought it would be nice if I had a
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
physician father to take me in with him and a long line of medical
ancestor's to give me an honorable tradition. But at the same time
my egotism fed itself on the thought that I was the first of my
family to have guts and ambition and brains enough to escape the
soil for a white-collar profession.
I liked to hear my mother refer proudly to "My son, the
doctor," and I liked to strut around in front of the neighbors. To
be sure, the white collar and the shiny instruments and even the
neat little office were mortgaged to my father, whose dirt-
encrusted hands had earned the money that sent me through school.
But I had visions of grateful patients showering me with gold. I
was an idealist in those days and I had plenty of illusions, too.
The sad thing about my office was that it stayed empty as did
likewise my purse. I angled after connections as hotel physician,
and I tried to get a job as a city clinic doctor; but I had no
political pull, and, being a farm boy, no influence in any other
lines. Most of my few patients had little money and came to me
because they believed I would be cheap.
So for a while I pursued my honorable profession by lancing a
few boils, prescribing for a few bad hangovers, treating a child
for a nail wound, issuing headache pills to a woman who went from
doctor to doctor seeking an audience for her complaints and dishing
out enough medicine for common colds to stock a drug store. I was
so anxious to display all my knowledge that I went in for complete
examinations no matter how trifling the complaint, tried to look
wise, clucked thoughtfully and shook my head.
At times I wished to high heaven that I lived in England,
where I could buy a steady practice and not have to sit in my
office reading and re-reading medical journal's and wondering if
I'd soon lose any surgical skill I possessed for lack of practice.
It amuses me now to recall how I felt when I first treated a
house girl who had gonorrhea. I treated the girl, and then gave her
a lecture in which, as I recall, I told her that because of my oath
I would protect her secret but that she was running a horrible
risk. I know now that she must have been choking with laughter, but
at the time I thought that she was mightily impressed. And I felt
quite the man of the world. In fact, I made up some impressive --
to me -- thoughts about how my profession brought me in contact
with the dregs of the world and how it was up to me to maintain my
purity of thought in spite of all the depravity I was forced to
see. I meant to deliver these noble sentiments to a pure sweet girl
whenever my practice grew enough that I could afford to seek this
marvelous woman who would be chosen as my wife.
I still had this holier-than-thou attitude when a very pretty
blonde came to see me. She looked like a "nice girl," and this
shocked me all the more when she told me, in a frightened way, that
she was "caught" and she wanted an abortion. Her father was dead,
and she lived with her mother and her brother, a prominent
businessman in the town. I had heard of the girl as a well-known
college student and a gay member of the younger set. She was not a
social luminary, but she was a class ahead of me.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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I made the finger examination and there was no doubt that she
was pregnant -- about two months along. She wanted a
"prescription," she said. She was ignorant about such things, but
a friend had told her that for a few dollars she could buy some
medicine that would cause a miscarriage.
It seems odd to realize that I was shocked about this. I had
heard of girls who were "knocked up" and did something about it.
There had been plenty of such gossip in the farming community where
I had lived, and I'd heard methods of causing crude abortions
discussed among the medical students. In fact, I knew one medical
student who worked his way through his senior year as an
abortionist among the lower classes of the university town. He had
told me something about the method he had used, but I had paid
little attention and had disapproved of the whole business.
I was stern and righteous with this girl and asked her why she
did not marry the man.
She burst into tears. "I can't," she said.
"Is he married?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Engaged to another man?" I asked. Those were the only two
reasons that my mid-Victorian mind could conceive why any man would
refuse to marry her.
"No," she said, "but he says that it is my fault. And I guess
it is. He asked me if I were doing anything about this, and I
suppose I was a fool, for I said that I was. I didn't know anything
to do. I asked a girl I know, and she told me to take a douche
anytime within 24 hours."
Dumb as I was, I was shocked at this ignorance. Bit by bit she
unfolded a story that was new and pitiful to me then but which I
have heard so often since that I can supply it before the girl
opens her mouth.
Katherine, as I shall call her, had fallen in love with a man
about seven years older than herself, a bachelor businessman. She
had gone absolutely crazy about him.
The man was the sort who likes sexual freedom and gets panicky
at the thought of marriage. He had given Katherine a big rush, for,
of all reasons, her look of wholesomeness. He had said that she had
a "wholesome attitude" toward sex. As a matter of fact, she was too
deeply infatuated to have any definite attitude except to agree
with everything he said. A man's idea of a wholesome attitude
toward sex usually is one that leaves him absolutely free, while a
woman's idea is one that leads inevitably toward marriage.
Because she wanted to appear worldly-wise, she denied being a
virgin. I was astounded to hear that, but I learned afterward that
a great many young girls do the same thing. Frequently they
themselves cannot explain why. Almost invariably, it is when they
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are having affairs with older men. They seem to believe that the
man will wonder why they have not had affairs before and will think
less of them. So they try to disguise their awkwardness and
ignorance; and since many athletic girls do not have hymens, the
man does not find it out.
Katherine had talked vaguely about an imaginary previous
affair. She seemed to think that it would make her more interesting
if the man believed she was sexually experienced and had been
desired before. "A lot of men had made overtures to me," she told
me. "but I had managed to evade them. I knew that Don had had a lot
of affairs and told him some lies so he wouldn't think I was quite
so dumb."
This, of course, released the man from any feeling of
responsibility and had also made him think that she knew about
contraceptives and could take care of herself. And she was too
inexperienced to know whether he was protecting her. It was an
example of the dangers of innocence and where ignorance was not
bliss.
Naturally, when she did not insist that the man use
contraceptives, he omitted them. She told me that when she learned
she was pregnant, she had explained the situation to him and he had
advised her to go to a doctor. But I think now that she lied. A lot
of girls are overwhelmed with false modesty in such circumstances
and will go instead to girls as inexperienced as they are. Having
pretended to be worldly-wise, they are caught in a web of their own
lies.
This girl was not as stupid as she seems in this narrative.
She had sense enough to realize just what type of man she loved.
Apparently he had made it plain that he did not intend to marry her
and he expected her to take her full share of the responsibility in
this affair. She couldn't tell her mother because mother was the
type who would "rather See her daughter in her grave" than have an
abortion and she probably would try to force the man into a shotgun
marriage. Katherine was sensible enough to see that the man would
evade this, or if he married her, would hate her for the trick.
Too, since she had lied to him about her virginity, she had thrown
away that hold.
So she had gone to a girl friend and the girl had said
something about a mysterious medicine that would cause her to
resume menstruation. Then she had come to me, for, of all reasons,
the fact that she did not know me and I was new in town. She did
not want to go to her family doctor or any physician whom she knew.
It was a case of the blind going to the blind. I was horrified
and told her that, of course, I could not perform an abortion I had
heard about some of the drastic medicines given in such cases and
I warned her against them. I told her that I could go to prison for
doing what she wanted, and I was against such things personally. I
probably sounded fierce, for I was afraid someone would find out
that she'd been to me with such a request, and I feared even that
would get me into trouble.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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She left me a great deal more frightened than when she
arrived. I had told her that no decent doctor would perform an
abortion. And I had scared her pretty badly about using any home
devices. Also I'd added a little homily on her 'sins. I should have
been shot, but I felt righteous about the whole business. She had
some money. She'd been teaching school and saved several hundred
dollars and she offered me the whole sum if I would get her out of
the jam. I needed the money, but I felt a virtuous glow over
turning it down. I was living up to medical ethics. I was being a
good citizen and an honorable physician.
So she went away, and I settled back in my empty office and
read medical journals and old magazines and treated a few persons
who came in with colds and indigestion.
The next day her name leaped at me from the front page of the
daily newspaper. Her body had been found on the doorstep of her
home, at one o'clock that morning, by her brother as he was
returning from a dance. She had shot herself, and she died in the
ambulance on the way to, the hospital.
The newspaper account said she had resigned her position as a
teacher because of a nervous breakdown culminating when she fainted
in the class room. Her relatives had noticed that she seemed very
nervous, refused to eat and was unable to sleep at night. They had
tried, without success, to arouse her interest in social life. She
had left no note -- just gone out in the yard and shot herself with
her brother's revolver.
There followed several paragraphs telling how prominent and
popular she had been in school, how she had a promising future as
a teacher. Her family was. grief-stricken.
It shook me pretty badly. I tried to console myself by saying
that she had not threatened suicide to me, that I was within my
rights, in refusing to help her, and it was unfair of her to ask me
to risk my future by performing an illegal operation.
But I kept seeing that description of her. "She was a pretty
blonde girl. College mates described her as always being full of
fun and active in all school enterprises." She had belonged to
several clubs. I wondered which sorority sister had advised her to
"get a prescription."
I wondered how her lover felt. I was filled with sudden hatred
for him, taking this young girl easily and selfishly and ruining
her life, talking to her glibly about her "wholesome attitude
toward sex." Now she was dead, and innuendoes would be whispered
about her nervous condition and her fainting spells and her lack of
appetite and her insomnia. Her relatives would feel bad about it.
It might even ruin their lives, too. Of course, her puritanical
relatives were partly to blame. Had they been more tolerant, they
would have helped her. It was her own fault, too, for being so
careless. She had trusted people and life too much. She had been
too confident in the decency of others.
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In the back of my head there was a nagging thought that I,
too, was to blame. I might have found someone else to help her. I
might have made arrangements. I was not so stupid that I did not
know of a doctor whose legitimate practice was small but who, drove
around in a big car with a chauffeur and had plenty of money. It
was common talk that he did a lot of illegal operations. He was a
pretty good surgeon, too.
It was all a mess, and I resented being dragged into it, and
being made to feel guilty over the death of a strange girl.
II. MY FAMILY SPEAKS
I went out in the country to see my family every Sunday. This
meant that I got a good meal and my depressed spirits were helped
by my mother's soothing prediction that soon her boy's practice
would pick up.
The next Sunday the conversation happened to turn to the
suicide of Katherine J--.
"The poor girl," my mother said. "Sounds like she was in the
family way."
She clucked her tongue sympathetically. "I wish you had seen
her," she said. "If she'd come to you, you could have sent her to
old Ma Gooding, the one folks call Feather Sally, because she uses
a goose feather. Lots of good doctor's send patients to Feather
Sally, and she's never lost a one. Good money she makes, too."
I was shocked.
"She did come to me," I said indignantly, "waving her money in
my face as if I were a quack she could buy with a few hundred
dollars. But I refused to have anything to do with it. That's a
prison offense."
My mother looked at me queerly. "And it's no prison offense to
drive a girl to suicide?" she asked.
"It was her own lookout," I said, "She couldn't expect me to
risk my future with a criminal operation in order to get her out of
a jam."
"If you keep on turning down hundred-dollar fees, it doesn't
look as if you're going to have much future," my father said dryly.
"The drought hit us pretty bad son, and we're needing money out
here, too. Doesn't pay to be too choosy about how you earn it. Old
Doc Kennedy over at Clear Creek makes plenty of money that way.
Specializes in it. You'd be surprised to know the names of some of
his patients, too."
I felt like a badgered animal. It was not until years later
that I realized that only youth is moral in the accepted way. Youth
judges more severely and expects more rigid living up to standards.
Old age is more tolerant; it has learned to compromise and give
only lip-service to awkward convention.
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And like most youths I had the idea that my parents were very
strict. It was a shock, now that they had admitted me to adulthood,
to learn some of their views.
"Folks call it murder," sniffed my mother. "Ain't hardly
nothing more'n a germ at first. Ain't no more murder than doin'
something aforehand to keep from having children. As far as that
goes, it ain't really no more murder than bein' an old maid and not
havin' nothin' to do with man at all. If you want to argue, you can
always say that every woman could bear a child, and it's murder if
She don't do it. Talk about the child's right to be born! The child
ain't saying nothin' about it. How do all these preacher's know the
child wants to be born. I've seen some cases where if the child
knew what was coming to him afterward he wouldn't want to be born.
Her voice softened. "Poor unwanted little mites. No money and no
name and not much chance in the world."
"It was a case of professional ethics, mother," I said. "Of
course, quack doctors do a lot of underhanded business. And
probably they risk the girl's life by crude methods. But good
doctors avoid such things."
"Maybe," 'sniffed my mother.
"Some of these days the laws may be changed," I said, "and
birth-control methods and abortions may be legalized. But until
then, I must obey my oath and abide by the medical code."
This did not impress my parents. Country people are not much
in favor of laws. Laws to them mean disagreeable taxes, game laws
which preserve the quail and ducks for the benefit of city folks
who swarm over the land, shooting at everything that appears on the
horizon, foreclosing of mortgages and other unpleasant
interferences with their lives.
"Human beings come before laws," my mother said. "Some of
these laws are made by folks who want to kick others in the gutter
so's to make themselves seem higher up. I ain't never had no use
for such folks. Pull themselves up by pushing others down. I've
known some mighty good women who had convenient miscarriages and
women who were in trouble and later on made fine marriages and good
wives."
She sighed. "If I'd known that poor girl, maybe I could have
told her something to do. They're more ways of killing a cat than
choking it with butter."
My father laughed. "Ma could tell her," he said. "She'd have
had her jumping off porches and riding houses and merry-go-rounds
and climbing up and down stairs and taking hot baths and purgatives
and God knows what all."
My mother smiled. "That's all right for you," she said. "Many
a time you've been thankful I wasn't so green."
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
"I never could stand to see a poor young girl bringin' a
fatherless babe into the world," my mother went on. "Of course,
sometimes they love the children just as much as if they were born
in wedlock and sometimes they make good marriages later on. But the
run of folks are hard on them, and it's bad trying to live down
your mistakes."
My father, however, was more upset by the idea that I had let
a hundred or so dollars slip out of my hands because of ethics.
"It's dangerous," I said. "Suppose I'd done a bad job and
she'd died because of the operation. Her folks would claim that I
murdered her."
"She killed herself anyhow, didn't she?" my father said.
"Looks to me like it's six of one and a half-dozen of the other."
It was a relief for me to get back to my bare room in a cheap
Lodging house in the city. My pleased glow of virtue had departed,
and I remembered the boy who had worked his way through school with
abortions and a young interne who frankly had announced that he
meant to specialize in illegal operations.
"They're the easiest way for a young doctor to get started,"
he had said. "And they're no more dangerous than, performing any
other operations. I'll wait until I get a little money saved and
then I'll be respectable. It takes money to be high and mighty."
Some nagging prick of conscience forced me to go to Katherine
J's funeral. I eyed her weeping relatives with scorn. A little of
the love they were parading in public would have saved the girl's
life if they had exercised it in private. Some of the money that
went into the flower's, the elaborate coffin, the big monument,
could have sent the girl away on a "vacation" and brought her back
whole in body, and presently her heart would be healed. Later on,
I was to learn that while broken hearts cannot be cured by a
doctor, a little surgical or medical aid for the by-products helps
along a lot.
Since then I've seen many girls, who were as tragic in speech
as Katherine, laugh about the whole episode a year later. By then
they had put it down as a valuable lesson and forgotten the horror
and fear they first felt.
After the funeral, I drifted into a coffee shop and
encountered a doctor I admired.
"You look low," he remarked.
"I've been to a funeral," I said, and gave the girl's name.
He nodded. "Nasty business. I suppose it's the old story."
"Yes," I looked at him. "I guess you see plenty of them," I went
on.
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
"Not so many now," he said. "I get about two patients a year
who want abortions. I got more of them when I first started to
practice. I guess they thought that, being a young doctor, I'd need
the money. But luckily I made money from the start. I had plenty of
friends, and so I didn't need to take the risk."
"What do you do about the ones who come to you now?" I blurted
out.
He gave me a keen glance. "Give them an examination and tell
them whether they're really pregnant. Chances are they're only
delayed by something. Up until three months, it's not easy to tell,
especially with the finger examination."
This, it might be added, was before the rabbit test was widely
used. Nowadays it is possible to tell immediately by injecting
urine, into the rabbit and examining its ovaries 36 hour's later.
"Then," the doctor went on, "I say nothing more unless the
Patient obviously is ignorant of anything to do, I may drop a hint
about the proper doctor to go to. Usually I don't do this, because
most people have ways of finding that out for themselves. However,
of course you know that some doctors make a good deal of money with
such recommendations and split fees. If I do drop a hint, I make
sure that I can trust the doctor."
"It's a problem," I said frankly, "I've been wondering what to
do about such business. People come to me for medical aid and I
have to refuse treatment. We are permitted to treat venereal
diseases and we can be called in after miscarriage --"
He grinned. "Of course. You know the stock alibi. You were
called in, and it was obvious that something had been done to cause
a partial abortion and your aid was needed to save the girl's life.
As soon as the uterus is punctured or the fetus is expelled, the
abortion is a fact. No one can prove anything against you as long
as you and the patient keep mum."
"Understand," he went on. "I'm not taking sides. I'm not the
type of doctor that crusades for birth-control legislation. A
successful doctor -- of my variety -- can't afford to. I admire the
kind of doctor who does -- but he usually doesn't make any money.
Whenever anyone asks me, I give them what birth-control data I can,
which isn't much. Anyhow, they probably won't follow instructions."
"Maybe the laws will be changed," I suggested.
"I'm not very hopeful about legislative reform," he said. "In
my opinion, the whole business will work out for itself.
Information will be spread more widely. To me, it seem's better to
send a girl to a good surgeon than to let her get an infection by
going to a quack or trying some crude home method. I knew one poor
girl whose sweetheart kicked her in the abdomen and almost killed
her."
"Of course," I said weakly. "It's the women's fault."
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
"I blame the men more. Some of these men are just like
animals. They don't give a damn what happens to the woman. They may
know all about contraceptives; but they don't want to use them, and
some of them think it's fun to fool the woman. But even those men
aren't so bad as the ones who carry disease and won't warn the girl
or take any precautions. A girl may escape pregnancy but she'll
probably get a dose. I'd Like to see all venereal-disease carriers
quarantined or branded. And if they're incurable, they ought to be
sterilized or shut up."
I grinned to myself. The doctor, in spite of his suave
exterior, was like all good doctors, a bit of a crusader when you
got him on his pet subject.
"They send habitual criminals to prison," he went on. "But a
man can get dose after dose of a disease and remain at large. He's
just as dangerous, if not more so, to the community than a habitual
burglar. He's worse, in my opinion. A burglar only rob's people
who've got plenty of dough. But a man probably will give a dose to
some poor dumb girl who hasn't sense or money enough to get proper
treatment, and she may die or be ruined for life. Reformers talk
about sterilization of criminals and the insane, but I'm in favor
of sterilization of any man who's had a disease more than twice. A
man can get a dose once without really being to blame. But if he's
got any sense, he takes care of himself after that."
He seemed to weary of the subject then, and I went home a
mighty thoughtful young doctor. I'd been so busy passing exams and
skimping along on my allowance that I'd never gone in for many bull
session's. Anyhow, a lot of the stuff that we talked at medical
school seemed haywire now. I'd gone around with a bunch of young
idealists who talked about being second Pasteur's and great
surgeons and doing good for humanity and in the back of my mind I'd
always seen myself saving a millionaire's life and bringing young
beauties back from sure death by tuberculosis.
But I was getting rid of my fancy ideas mighty fast.
III. I TAKE A CASE
Two or three days after my talk with the old doctor, a well
dressed man came into my office.
"There'll be a girl up here pretty soon for treatment for
gonorrhea," he said bluntly. "I'm paying for it. She's a dumb cluck
who got mixed up with one of my employees. He won't pay for it, but
something had to be done for the girl, and I told her I'd have her
cured if she wouldn't see him again.' You fix her up and send me
the bill. I don't want to give the girl the money because she might
spend it on something else or quit after one treatment. See that
she's clean, but if she comes back with another dose I won't be
responsible for any more bills."
He gave me his card and the girl's name. He was managing
editor of one of the local newspapers.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
"See if you can get any sense into her head," he added. "I
don't want any more trouble with her."
He went out then, looking irritated, and I grinned. I figured
it was one of those "A-friend-of-mine" stories in which the
personal pronoun is soon brought into play. I wondered a little why
he told such a clumsy lie.
But when the girl came in, half-frightened, half-angry, I
learned his story was the truth.
One of the reporters had seduced the girl, whom I shall call
June. She was a pretty business-college student, dumb but
attractive in a virginal fashion. It may have been that very docile
innocence that attracted the man. He played around with a
sophisticated, hard-drinking crowd and it probably was, amusing to
find a girl who didn't know the ropes, didn't drink, didn't smoke,
June, on the other hand, had heard about Jim, the reporter,
and she was fascinated by his reputation as a dapper man-about-
town. Jim was a handsome and entertaining scoundrel. He said that
he did not know she was a virgin until he had already started the
sex act. This may have been true, but it did not stop him then.
Afterward, he either was conscience-stricken or decided that
it was dangerous to play around with her. Innocence may be
dangerous not only to the girl but to the man. At any rate, he did
not see her for about a month.
But June was seized by the crazy infatuation which many young
girls feel for their first lovers. She telephoned Jim, she wrote
him notes asking why he was angry with her, what had she done? She
wept. She reminded him that, although a virgin, she had gone to bed
with him.
Jim told his boas that he firmly intended to stay away from
June. Whether he was deeply attracted and some remnants of chivalry
motivated his refusal to see her or whether she bored him, I don't
know. But in the meantime he had been playing around with girls
equally dumb but not so innocent, and he got gonorrhea. He was
forced to tell his wife and to refrain from any intercourse with
her. But apparently his scruples did not apply to the young girl he
had seduced, for he went back to her. She got the disease and the
whole thing began again with the girl pursuing the reporter and
asking for medical treatment. The badgered newsman had gone to his
editor for sympathy.
But his editor cursed him and told him to do something to keep
June from calling the office and coming down to the newsroom. Jim
refused, saying that he didn't have the money and anyhow the girl
had been with plenty of other men since he first seduced her.
Whether this was true, I do not know. It may have been. Frequently
girls who have just lost their virginity become promiscuous if
their first lovers desert them.
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Such girls seem to feel that since, they have lost their much-
guarded chastity it doesn't make much difference what they do and
they weakly succumb to any man who comes along. It takes some time
for the girls to recover their emotional balance and become
discriminating. June denied that she had been with any other men.
And Jim admitted that he was diseased when he was with her.
So the editor went to June and agreed to pay for her
treatments if she would promise never to see any of his reporters
again. She was grateful but at the same time she was a little
indignant about it. The editor had not minced words in describing
her lover, and she resented being forced to face the fact that
there was no romance in her seduction. She wanted the treatments,
but at the same time she would have liked to save her vanity.
Since then, I have noticed the same traits in many girls. They
will try to find excuses for their first lovers, and say that it
"wasn't all his fault." They generally have remarkably few
illusion's about later lovers, but they want a little glamour over
the first affair.
One intelligent girl talked to me about it. "It's a matter of
vanity for women to lie to themselves about their sweethearts," she
remarked. "The worst thing about breaking up an affair is that I
finally have to admit to myself that I have been kidding myself all
along. You see, I know that I am only an average girl and therefore
will attract only an average man. I know there are exceptions, and
sometimes you see a fine man absolutely crazy about a very
commonplace girl. But I, of course, have an ideal man in mind.
Whenever a man falls in love with me, I try to see my ideal
characteristics in him and I exaggerate those I do find. I try to
convince myself and my friends that he's a better man than he is.
When we break up, I have to see him as himself. That hurts, because
it shows me that I'm not attractive enough to get the sort of man
I want and hold him."
But to go back to June. I sent my bill in to the editor and he
paid it promptly. June's spirits grew better as her cure
progressed. This time I gave no lecture on morals. Instead I tried
to teach her a few principles of hygiene.
"Listen," I said, when I had pronounced her cured, "there is
no Santa Claus in this sex business, even if your case does look
like it. You were darned lucky. There are not many men who would do
for you what this editor did. It wasn't for the good of his soul,
either. He couldn't afford to have one of his men in a jam. So
don't go around expecting good Samaritans to yank you out of the
gutter. And don't try to get out of your class. You thought it was
romantic to have a love affair with a social butterfly, a dashing
columnist. But look what happened. A stranger got you out of your
jam. He did it because you were making a nuisance of yourself. If
you'd been in this guy's class, he would have taken more
precautions. He didn't give his wife a dose, but he figured you
didn't count. And to him you didn't. So you play in your own back
yard."
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She nodded. Later she married a clerk and they have three or
four kids. I don't know whither she ever told him about her first
affair. If she was smart, she didn't.
The editor was pleased, because she kept away from his men And
two or three weeks later he sent me an abortion. This time didn't
quibble, I did it.
IV. WHY I AM AN ABORTIONIST
Since then I've performed hundreds of abortions and when I did
all the work I've had no fatalities. Of course, I've been called in
on bungled jobs when it was too late; there was infection or a
hemorrhage and death was a matter of hours.
I have changed from the surgical operation, in which the womb
was scraped, to use of heat, bacteria and exercise to cause a
natural premature birth with very little danger. I discarded the
finger test for the rabbit test of pregnancy. My prices went up as
the danger went down.
I don't regret the fact that I have risked prison terms
constantly. As I went up the financial scale, I tried to use more
discrimination and to work for the sake of humanity. I have refused
to abort young society women who merely wanted to save their
figures, who shrank from the responsibilities of children. I have
turned away young women who could afford to marry and who I felt,
should mate legally and carry on the race. I have seen women whom
I felt needed children to make their lives fuller and who were
merely lazy or afraid of pain. And I have performed operations
later regretted by the women when they wanted children and for some
reason could not have them. That has made me more careful.
I am not bragging that I really made the world better. I am an
older man now and a little tired and a bit inclined to be cynical.
Perhaps all these things would have worked out anyhow. But I
believe that I have saved valuable members of the race from
disgrace or from suicide, that I have kept families from being
wrecked. And I have not had a repeat case in years,
The reformers argue that we must pay for our sins. But I do
not know that I agree with their definition of sin. There are times
when our instincts are too strong for us. There are accidents.
There are many cases in which it does not seem to me that I should
judge. I do not believe in populating the world with unwanted
children. I do not like to see the women suffer when the man
escapes without even blame. If there is some disease or some taint
of insanity, I do not believe in allowing the child to be born. And
if the birth of the child is going to wreck even one adult life, it
seems to me kinder to stop it. The people who yell "child murder"
have almost invariably never been faced with the problem.
Criminologists say that crime is caused by children being born
into families where they have no opportunity for proper upbringing.
The children turn to stealing to get money for luxuries, even
necessities. They run in the streets because they have no
playgrounds. Their minds are warped in childhood. I believe it to
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be an act of crime prevention to halt any such children coming into
the world with the stigma of illegitimacy and a mother who is going
to have a much harder time making a living after the child is born.
I am always irritated when I hear politicians talk about as
being the only land of equal opportunity. It isn't. Illegitimate
children had far better chances in the medieval days when "natural"
sons and daughters were the "natural" thing.
I have never been in favor of forced marriages. In this
complex world the married couple starts out with enough problems
without being handicapped by an unwanted child and probably
unwanted mates.
A great many cases have been like that of poor June, who fell
in love with a married man of a class slightly superior to her own.
Had she been slightly above him socially, the chances are that the
man would have obtained a divorce and married her. At least he
would have given her much better treatment. I get many girls who
have had affairs with their employer's, either married or
unmarried. The men do not want to marry them. Frequently they blame
the girl, for a great many men seem to think that it is up to the
girl to protect herself.
I have heard men who considered themselves ethical in sexual
matters say that they believe the women should protect themselves.
Some of them excuse this by saying that women cannot trust the men
and so they must get accustomed to taking their own precautions.
Others frankly admit that they will not use anything that
interferes with their pleasure.
A fellow doctor, one high in his profession and a man who
gives birth-control advice to his patients, once told me that he
received his pleasure from the thought of the risk.
"If my wife is even a week pregnant, my pleasure is gone," he
said. "And I wouldn't touch a woman if I knew she was using any
sort of protective device. Man is still primitive enough to want
copulation for conception."
He might have added that man is still primitive enough to want
to shirk all responsibility for the act and perhaps civilized
enough to regret any consequences.
For these reasons I advise my women patients to take their own
precautions. One girl told me that she was shocked when her lover
asked her if she never used any contraceptive devices. He had made
love to her several times and she thought that he was protecting
her. She came to me for a pregnancy test. Fortunately she was all
right. But she was indignant and disgusted with the man.
"I thought he was a swell fellow," she said. "I'd had only one
love affair and then the man took care of everything and I supposed
this man would do the same. He's shocked now because I won't see
him any more. But I hate to ask him to do anything and I'm afraid
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to risk dating him unless this is arranged beforehand. Suppose I
get a little tight? Anyhow, I can't carry around a medical kit when
I go on a date. And it's more awkward for the girl to do such
things than for the boy."
She laughed a little self-consciously. "It sounds silly to
talk about modesty at a time like this. But these affairs usually
aren't deliberately planned. It's one thing for a man and girl to
have a steady affair and go to a hotel room with a private bath or
to an apartment where they can have everything handy. It's quite
another thing to go to a dance and have a hot petting scene on the
way back. I take this business seriously and I'm not promiscuous.
I don't mean that I've got matrimony in my eye all the time, but if
I let a man "make" me I mean for this to be an affair of fairly
long duration and I'm fond of the man. But there has to be a first
time for it; and I'm not sure when that's coming and maybe I won't
get an opportunity to protect myself. Girls in an excited emotional
state aren't noted for using their heads."
"And another thing," she continued. "My generation may sound
hard-boiled and as if we knew what it was all about. But most of my
girl friends are pretty dumb about sex. We think we're smart
because we keep a few college boys from "making" us. And we joke
about the trade names of contraceptives, but you'd be surprised how
little practical knowledge most young girls have. A girl told me
the other day that she'd die of shame before she'd go to a doctor
and ask him about feminine hygiene. I told her that she might die
of shame if she didn't. There are a lot of jokes about how a girl
can't be raped, but if she's a little tight she hasn't got much
resistance. And most girls get panicky when they find themselves in
a difficult situation."
The answer to all this of course would be that a girl who
can't take care of herself shouldn't take a drink and shouldn't go
out with men she can't trust. But at the same time it seems to me
that men would find it easier and better to use a little
discretion. Where do they expect the girls to get any knowledge of
birth Control? Their mothers certainly aren't going to tell them --
not if they're nice girls. The girls are afraid to ask a doctor.
The other girls they know are just as dumb. They can't believe the
advertisements they read -- if they do they'll probably get caught,
either because they don't follow the direction's or because the
stuff isn't any good. They may ruin themselves with too strong
douches or they may trust some preparation applied too long before
or too long after the sex act.
Anyhow, the girl usually wants this whole business sentimental
and glamorous. She wants to be swept off her feet. Otherwise she
feels a little guilty about it. So she doesn't precede her moment
of grand passion with a questionnaire on hygiene. Furthermore, the
inexperienced girl has no way of knowing whether she can trust a
man. Usually she finds out that she can't when it's too late.
A lot of the fault lies with young boys who got their first
sex experiences with older women who knew enough to guard
themselves, or with prostitutes. From the talk of youths who come
into my office, I've decided that they don't have sense enough to
take care of themselves let alone protect the girl. They're not
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bothered by false modesty, but a lot of them think it's smart to
fool the girls, either by lying to them or using some cheap trick
to make their precautions useless. The older men have more sense,
but some of them are selfish and not much concerned with protecting
a girl, or they find it hard to believe that a young woman can be
ignorant of matters so vital to her.
I haven't any answer to the problem. Gradually hygiene classes
are becoming more liberal, but they still fall far short of what is
necessary. Doctors do what they can, but we can't go from house to
house instructing girls and boys. Like lawyers, we're usually
called in when the damage has been done. I'd like to see all high
school students given compulsory sex education.
One doctor I know says that there should be a stiff penalty
for spreading venereal disease. I asked him how he was going to get
witnesses to testify, and I said the medical profession had better
clean house first. I pointed out that doctors have been run out of
small towns for introducing disease-stricken, cheap prostitutes who
spread the disease and brought business to the physician.
"It's just like blackmail," I said, "The ones who are really
hurt by diseases are the nice girls, and they'd never testify
against a man. The list of men I've had in for treatment would
sound like a Who's Who of the town. You can't regulate sex. We've
just got to do the beat we can. Even if there were a fool-proof
contraceptive, which there isn't, people would forget to use it or
they wouldn't know about it, or they wouldn't believe in it."
The most cheering thing to me is that doctors are getting more
skillful in such matters and the present generation is becoming
wiser regarding the need for knowledge. Anne, who said she would
feel foolish interrupting an ardent love scene to arrange for her
contraceptive, did not allow that false modesty to keep her from
dashing down to my office immediately for a pregnancy test instead
of waiting and worrying for several weeks until time for her
menstruation.
More and more women are making a practice of monthly visits to
the doctor to make sure that nothing has gone wrong and to get
early aid if anything has.
In the last few years I have had fewer women patients who had
to be told that they had waited too late; that it was too dangerous
for them to have an abortion and they'd better arrange matters so
they could have the child and have it adopted. Fewer women spend
months of mental agony hoping that something will happen to cause
a miscarriage or trying dangerous home devices. The doctor's bill
may sound steep, but it's cheaper than risking an injury by home
use of sharp instruments or by violent blows in the abdomen.
I get more women whose menstruation has merely been delayed by
natural causes but who know it is wise to go to a doctor as soon as
they are a week or 10 days overdue. A hot bath, a few drinks, a
strong purgative or a simple prescription saves them from a lot of
worry and from dangerous patent remedies. A woman who is
persistently irregular needs medical treatment, anyhow.
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While I admire these self-reliant young women, I see a danger
in their new attitude. I do not mean the risk of promiscuity that
moralists raise whenever the birth-control question comes up.
Promiscuity, I believe, is a matter of taste and character and not
knowledge. Too, a woman who takes the trouble to inform herself on
these matters and who spends money to protect herself is going to
be smart enough to use discrimination. She's not going to be as
casual as the dumb girl who doesn't know what she's getting into.
Nor do I howl race-suicide and say that the country will go to
the dogs because all the big families are in the lower classes. The
lower classes have always had big families. Let them share in the
knowledge, too. Many of the women would be grateful for birth-
control data.
But I will give you an example. Not long ago a young girl came
in to see me. She was about 29, attractive, intelligent, earning
her own living. She wanted an abortion. She had the money to pay
for it and she said she wanted the best one she could get.
I always ask the history of these cases, but it happened that
I knew this girl. Her lover was a young businessman in the same
town, handsome, healthy and with a promising future.
"Why don't you marry, Dorothy, and have this child?" I asked.
"I know that when you started this affair your lover was still
married, although he was separated from his wife and the divorce
was pending. But now there's no obstacle to marriage. You're both
earning good salaries. You could afford a child. It would be better
for you. It isn't natural for two adults such as you and Bruce to
continue living with your families and have a clandestine
relationship. It's hard on you. It's making you nervous."
She shrugged her shoulders. "I know," she said. "But Bruce is
panicky about marriage. He had one, and it failed. And he hates
responsibility. I'm not sure that I'd be a good wife, either. I
don't want children and I hate domesticity."
"You're spoiled," I told her. "And even if it weren't for the
child, you ought to marry. Marriage isn't such an outdated
institution as you young folks seem to believe. There are plenty of
reasons for it, especially from the woman's standpoint. You've got
too much to risk. Here you are sneaking into my office and jumping
whenever you hear a door slam. And if I do this, you'll have to
stay in hiding for about 10 days, I don't think there's any danger,
because you're a healthy young woman. But you'll have to keep it a
secret, of course, and that's going to be a strain."
"I know all that, too," she replied. "But Bruce and I agreed
long ago that if anything happened I was to get an abortion and
we'd split the expenses. I can't go back on that now. I'm not going
to pull the weeping-woman stunt and sandbag him into marriage. I'll
admit I'd like to be married. I'm tired of this hole-in-the-corner
business. I'm as much to blame as Bruce is for what's happened and
I'm not going to have him suspect that I arranged this to trick him
into marriage."
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"You don't need to Sandbag him, as you phrase it," I
protested. "If you're in love with each other, surely you want
something more than this. You can't go on forever having just an
affair. You can be subtle about this and arouse his sense of
possession. A lot of the happiest marriages didn't start with
romantic proposals on the bended knee. People need to have a few
responsibilities. A little encouragement and he'd be proud of the
child and proud of his marriage. And a child would hold you
together."
"Maybe," she said, with a touch of bitterness. "And maybe not.
He had a child by his first marriage, and his wife had an abortion
when she was pregnant the second time. Children didn't hold that
marriage together. Maybe he'd be proud of me; maybe not. But I'm
too proud to make the first move. I've bragged too much about how
I, can take care of myself and how I want to stand on my own feet."
She smiled at me. "And don't say that Bruce isn't any good
either, doctor, I happen to love him. I'll admit that he has his
faults and he's selfish. Maybe that's the fault of his first wife.
Maybe it's my fault for spoiling him. She wanted too much and asked
for it and I ask for too little. Maybe sometime we will marry. But
I'm not going to play the helpless innocent to arrange it. I don't
blame him for not wanting to marry me. His family disapproves of me
because my reputation isn't exactly unspotted. His friends don't
like me. It would make trouble if he married me -- so why should
he? This way he can take sex as an adventure."
"It's an unhealthy state for you," I said. "You're getting to
be an emotional, nervous type."
"I know," she interrupted impatiently, "and wondering what's
going to happen all the time doesn't make me any more calm. But
then neither does having a series of casual dates and keeping
almost strangers from 'making' me. That or an affair are the two
choices I have until some man decides to make an honest woman of
me. And i'm too proud to use any of the old gags to get a proposal.
I'm used to working as a man and getting a man's salary and being
respected as an equal."
"You're not an equal now," I told her. "Your lover is paying
half the expenses but you are the one who'll be away from work,
who'll suffer the pain, the fear of discovery. In sex, you'll never
be man's equal. You've got to turn your weaknesses into strength.
But it's your own business, of course."
"Sure," she said, "and if you don't want to do this, doctor,
I'll go out of town to a strange physician and use a fake name and
a fake story."
"I'll do it," I promised, "but I don't want you back again as
a customer."
I didn't either. At first, as I said, I did abortions for the
money in them. Later I did them because I felt I was doing the
right thing. Maybe in this case I made a mistake. The girl got
along fine. But later on she told me that after it was all over,
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her lover said that he wished she hadn't had to do it, "And then,"
she added bitterly, "he said very quickly, 'but of course I knew
that it would be impossible for you to have the child.' And I
agreed that it would have been. You see, he didn't add that he
wanted to marry me."
But if all doctors had refused to perform the illegal
operation, he probably would have married her. And they might have
been happy. On the other hand, she might have tried some home
method and inflicted an irreparable injury.
That's one type of patient. There was another in which I had
no qualms at all. A young teacher with a promising future came to
me. She was about 32, and did not have a very attractive face, but
she had one of the most beautiful bodies I have ever seen. And
bodies are no novelty to a doctor.
Furthermore, she was naturally a passionate woman. But because
of her position she had to be very discreet and lead a circumspect
life. She told me that she had had sexual intercourse only two or
three times in her entire life.
That summer she had gone to a farm to spend a week. A cousin,
who was almost an idiot, was staying there. He came into her room
one night. The teacher had one of those sudden bursts of passion
that occasionally overcome women who are forced to live suppressed
lives. She had intercourse several times with her cousin. And,
unfortunately, she was caught.
Even had the man been fit mentally to be a father, it would
have ruined the woman's career to give birth to the child. She
would have had to marry her cousin, and that would have forced her
resignation.
"I hate him now," she told me. "I'd rather die than marry him.
I just went crazy, that's all. And disgrace of any sort would ruin
me in my profession. I couldn't go somewhere else and start all
over again. Teachers can't do that. The Slightest stain on my
character would prevent me from getting another job."
"Stop worrying," I said. "Everything is going to be all
right." Later on she married a fellow teacher. She came to me
before the marriage.
"I haven't told him about it," she explained. "He knows I'm
not a virgin and he can't expect me to be -- at my age. That
doesn't make any difference. But I wonder if I should tell him the
whole story."
"Don't," I advised her. "You paid the penalty for it. There's
no reason why you can't have children. No one can prove that you
had an abortion. Forget the whole thing."
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V. THEY AREN'T SO EASY
But those sample cases were several years after my first
abortion. I'll admit I was a little panicky then. I was an
inexperienced doctor and such operations were more dangerous then.
The death rate among women with abortions was much higher than the
deaths in childbirth. If the girl died, I would go to prison and my
life would be ruined. But I needed the money.
"I might as well go to prison as starve," I thought, and I
went ahead.
This girl was far different from the poor teacher who had
killed herself. A married man had got her into trouble and was
paying for her operation. She didn't seem worried about it. In
fact, she seemed rather proud of her affair with a prominent man.
"For God's sake, try to get it through her head that this is
serious business," the intermediary said. "I know that you'll keep
your month shut, but that fool girl hasn't any sense. Tell her
she'll go to jail. Tell her anything to keep her from talking."
Her lover was married to a wealthy woman, and it was necessary
to keep the story from the wife.
"She'd divorce him in a minute," the editor who brought me the
case said. "She's 'strait-laced. And to do X justice he isn't the
playboy type. He's got several children and he's crazy about them
and he loves and respects his wife. He went on a party with two or
three other businessmen. It started out as a stag drinking party
and someone suggested that they bring in some women. They did, and
this girl, Dot, was one of them. She was X's girl. Everybody got
drunk, and it wound up as a hotel party."
I grained. "The usual story. Only this time. it was a man who.
got betrayed."
"Exactly. X said that Dot, was a good sport. She isn't a
chippy or anything like that. She just went along for the party,
and it wasn't her idea to stay all night and she wasn't paid for
it. X is about 40 and he's always behaved himself pretty well. He
was flattered at a young girl liking him and he said that he wanted
to see her again. He forgot all about it, and then she telephoned
him. He felt that he owed her something for keeping quiet about the
party so he went out to see her, thinking that he'd take her a box
of candy and apologize again for the jam they'd been In. After
that, he saw a lot of her. He told me that he knew she was cheap
and ignorant but somehow that was what fascinated him. He'd seen
too much of over-civilized, inhibited women, and it was a relief to
find a girl who was pleased with whatever he did for her, who
enjoyed sex for itself alone and who gave him a good time. Pagan is
too lovely a word for it and animal sounds a little too vulgar. But
whatever she had, it went over with X."
Dot, in her way, was one of the most unusual girts I've ever
met -- and in my business I've seen all kinds. I could see why she
had attracted a sedate, prominent businessman, and I could see why
she puzzled the editor.
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Pagan was not the right word for her. That somehow implies
unspoiled naturalness. Dot used make-up far too liberally. She
curled her black hair tightly. She drank and she smoked. She was
not childish, she was not innocent and yet she was not vulgar. Her
idea when drinking was to keep on until she got soused. She took
her hangovers philosophically. She never seemed envious, never
blamed anyone, was always good-natured, enjoyed every treat with
fresh pleasure.
I suppose she was mentally a little deficient, but sometimes
I've thought it would be a better world if we were all more like
Dot. Her happy-go-lucky attitude made her helpless and at the same
time provided a protection. People wanted to do things for her
because she did not clamor for her rights.
She did not envy her lover his wealth or think that he had
hurt her. In fact, she seemed a little sorry for him.
"He doesn't have much fun," she told me. "His wife is too
good.
I do not like very good women."
I smiled. "Why?" I asked.
She looked a little astonished that I did not understand.
"Good women want to boss because they think they're always right.
They won't let people alone. When I was little, people were always
telling me to be good. Whatever I really wanted to do wasn't good
for me. And it was always bad people who did nice things for me.
And never asked anything in return."
Oddly enough, though, it was by telling her that people would
think her lover was not a good man that I got her to promise
secrecy about the whole business. She realized that it was
important for him to appear "good."
X came to me when it was all over and paid me. "I felt like a
cad not coming down with her," he said. "But Ben (Ben was the
editor) insisted that he'd arrange everything. And I guess he's
right when he says it's best for me not to see Dot again. I hate to
do it. It's like slapping a child. Dot's a sweet kid. A lot of
girls would be howling for money and making trouble and wanting
marriage. I've never seen anyone like her."
"And you won't again."
"I know," he hesitated again. "She does things that in any
other woman would disgust me. You know the sort of things I mean.
But they seem all right coming from her. She pulls tricks that I
know she must have learned from prostitutes. And with her they seem
an innocent desire to give as much pleasure as possible. I
sometimes think that if she wanted me to, I'd give up everything
and marry her."
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But he wouldn't, of course. It was the fact that she made no
demands of any kind that made him feel guilty, and he got a feeling
of virtue from toying with the idea of what he'd do if she wanted
him to. He liked to think of giving up his prestige, his money, his
respectability, as a gallant gesture. But if it came to brass
tacks, he would have decided that she was just another gold-digger
and howled like the dickens.
Since then, I've heard a lot of men make the same curtain
speeches. Sometimes I've wanted to say exactly what I thought about
them. Sometimes it's amusing. A man comes to me to arrange for an
illegal operation. He's sweating blood. Maybe he really loves the
girl and he's worried about her. He's worried about himself, too.
And he's in a hurry. He and the girl may have waited for a month,
waiting to see if she actually were pregnant. As soon as they find
out, they're in a hurry to get the abortion over, especially the
man, since he's afraid the girl will, change her mind.
The man is in a panic-stricken state until I agree to do it.
For once he has to eat humble pie. No matter how well he pays me
he's asking me a favor and I let him know that. The law can't do
anything to his girl for the operation. But it can do something to
me.
He worries until everything is over and the girl is all right.
Then the cold sweat dries off and there is a reaction. Probably the
girl cools off a little. Her, scare is over, too, but her nerves
have been shot to pieces and the usual effect is that she's
irritable and quarrelsome. What she wants is a lot of tenderness,
but the man in his relief tries to laugh the whole business off. So
the man begins to think that he hasn't cut a very impressive
figure, and he wants to justify himself.
Usually he talks a lot about what he would have been willing
to do. He figures he's safe in doing that. I don't mean that he's
always a cad, because he isn't. Men are usually a little frightened
by pregnancy. It's one thing they can't quite understand, in spite
of the graphic descriptions of childbirth that have been written by
masculine authors. He's had his nervous ordeal, too, and he'd like
to forget it but a nagging feeling of being made to appear a coward
and a fool makes him talk about it, sometimes to the girl and often
to the doctor.
Some of the men who send girls from other towns and have
friends make all the arrangements tell me that they'd have been
glad to see me personally beforehand but they couldn't get away
from business or they felt that it was too big a risk when secrecy
was necessary. And some of the men get a little sentimental abut
the unborn child and say that if circumstances had been different
they would have been glad to do the proper thing.
Even when they foot the entire bill and make the arrangements,
they sometimes have a feeling that they haven't exactly done their
share in this and that makes them angry. And they feel that they've
lost caste.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
I've seen a lot of couples who were genuinely fond of each
other quarrel bitterly after the worst apparently was over, simply
because neither of them knew enough to allow for the inevitable
aftermath of such an ordeal. In the first place the man usually
minimizes what the girl is going through. A pregnant married woman
gets a lot of attention. She complains about her health, she goes
regularly to the doctor, she is petted and pampered. She gets a
special diet. She isn't allowed to do any heavy work. She is
honored by stork showers. Her husband is supposed to be especially
gentle with her. And usually he keeps up a pose, at least, even if
he is having an affair with another woman while his wife is
pregnant. He knows if he doesn't, he'll get hell from his wife's
relatives and her friends; and while men are freer from the
domination of society than women, they're just as particular, if
not more so, about cutting a good figure in the eyes of the world.
It makes me laugh sometimes when I read masculine authors who
say wives are too strict with their husbands, just to please their
vanity and to cut a good appearance in the eyes of their friends.
Those men ought to be in my trade for a while and see some of the
things that go on under the surface.
The girl who has an abortion doesn't dare complain about her
nausea, or her pains, or her dizziness. She has to pretend to be
bright and happy for fear people will suspect what is wrong with
her. And she has to go through an operation that is a severe
nervous shock. An abortion is not the easy thing that people who
haven't had one seem to think it is. Married mothers talk loudly
enough about how they went through the valley of the shadow of
death for their children.
But these women can go to a good hospital and have the best
doctors and can lie in bed for the proper time afterward. And
they've got the child after they're through. The girl who has an
abortion frequently goes back to work or to her daily life before
she's ready. She can't explain too much mysterious absence. Her
first reaction is one of relief. Then she wants to talk about it
and get sympathy. Usually the only person she can talk to is her
lover. Naturally, he isn't fond of listening to her go on for hours
about how sick and scared she was. It makes him sound like a cad
for getting her into this condition. And sometimes he worries a
little about the money and that makes her mad and sometimes he
tries to justify himself by making her share the blame. If he's any
sort of a man, he feels that he was a worm for getting the girl
pregnant.
But the girl isn't in any mood for arguing about whose fault
it was. What she wants is to be told that she is an unsung heroine,
that her lover appreciates the gallant way she went through it,
that she was humiliated by being asked a lot of questions, by
having to admit that she was, to all outside appearances, a scarlet
woman having a criminal operation. She wants to be told that her
lover admires her for what she did and loves her all the more.
Above all else, she doesn't want to have flung at her what she
usually knows, that the affair is not serious enough and their love
not deep enough for her and her lover to throw everything overboard
and go away together, get respective divorces or eliminate any
other obstacles to marriage.
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She realizes the situation and that's why she went through a
nasty, disagreeable business. But right at the moment she wants to
pretend that this is a grand passion and worth any amount of
suffering and humiliation.
For despite what the moralists say, a lot of "nice" women have
abortions. When you consider that doctors estimate the abortion
rate in any city as being about five times the reported birth rate,
you must realize that all these cases cannot come from the dregs of
society such as gang molls and prostitutes. As a matter of fact,
few prostitutes have abortions. They are too smart, and frequently
they get so they cannot have children, even. Then they want them
Nature has made them sterile.
Sometimes I think that these after-quarrels are the saddest
part of the whole business. Usually the couples are reconciled
because they are genuinely fond of each other. But sometimes they
aren't, and there is bitterness over what nature intended as a
means of bringing a man and woman closer together.
Usually my clients try to bring me an iron-clad reason why I
should perform an abortion. Sometimes I know they're lying.
Sometimes it simply happens that an affair is drifting to a close.
And at the wrong psychological moment, an accident happens, love
has died or is dying and neither the man nor woman wants marriage.
Sometimes, as Dorothy frankly admitted, the man is not the marrying
kind. More and more young and eligible men seem to be panicky about
marriage. And it is in these cases that emotional disturbances
almost invariably follow the abortion. The man and woman resent an
accident disturbing the smooth course of their love affair. Their
love is not old enough and deep enough to stand much strain, and
when the emergency is over there is a quarrel. However, I do not
moralize about such affairs. I have seen many affairs that lasted
as long as most modern marriages. Some of the couples drifted into
marriage as they grew older. And I have about as much respect for
such liaisons as for a marriage. Frequently there is more honesty,
and more fidelity, and more genuine love than in the average legal
union.
Not long ago, I heard a young girl say glibly, "Oh, abortions
are nothing. I know a girl who had one in the morning and played
bridge that night." She may have played bridge that night, but I'll
bet she was gritting her teeth under her smile. If she did it, she
was a fool. She should have been in bed. I'll bet that after her
guest's left she burst into nervous tears. And probably for weeks
before and after the abortion it seemed to her that the
conversation was filled with joking references to pregnant women.
The truth is very rarely evident in such matters. Naturally the
girl is not going to talk about what a hard time she had. That girl
obviously had had the knife used on her. She may have felt pretty
good at the time and then weeks or maybe months later suffered
pains and discovered that she had not escaped so easily. The knife,
I maintain even in the face of those who still use it, is
dangerous.
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VI. I HAVE A PROSTITUTE PATIENT
After Dot, my next case was a country woman who already was in
a serious condition. Her husband, a hulking man with more
stinginess than sense, had given her a crude abortion with an
umbrella rib without even sterilizing it. Naturally the woman got
an infection. I brought her to the hospital and did what I could.
But she died. The man tried to save a small amount of money and
lost his wife.
He tried to avoid paying me, saying that I had caused a
useless hospital bill and his wife had died anyway. But I
threatened him with complete exposure of the case and he came
across. I had no pity for him. He was the sort of man who refuses
to either restrain himself or use any sort of precaution. His wife
was a small, dainty red-haired woman, and he was a big man, too big
for her. They were mismated even if he had not been utterly callous
in his treatment of her. He could be punished only through his
purse.
They had four small boys, the oldest only eight years old, and
his wife had rebelled against her fifth pregnancy. I gathered that
she had never really loved her husband, but he had been crazy about
her and had argued her into marriage. Later he treated with
contempt the very refinement and daintiness that had first
attracted him, boasting that there were many women who would be
glad to have him as a lover. He seemed to think it his wife's fault
that she had so many children.
"She got pregnant when I just looked at her," he said.
He married again a few months later but I never saw him again.
I managed to save a neighbor of his who had given herself an
abortion and had a hemorrhage. I packed her and put her to bed.
Some of the crude methods used are laugh-provoking; some are
tragic. I heard of a man who thrust a glass. tube into his wife's
uterus and pumped her full of air with a bicycle pump. But the
history of such cases is not completely written when the abortion
is over. The damage may not appear until the woman is pregnant
again. Women come into my office and complain of backaches, pains
in the side, general weakness. They say that they've been taking
patent medicines with no luck. Eventually I learn that they have
had miscarriages and I suspect that they were artificial.
However, I've known of natural abortions that left no bad
aftereffects. They may have been caused by sudden shocks, by undue
exertion, by a jolt, by a nervous condition.
It wasn't necessary for me to advertise that I was willing to
step over the line to help the fallen. Such things get about. A
pimp soon came in to arrange for an operation for his girl.
One of the silliest objections to legalizing abortions that I
have ever heard is that it would spread vice. Crusaders have been
trying since the world began to stop vice, and the oldest
profession still flourishes. It will continue to do so. Personally,
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I'm in favor of it, with strict medical supervision. I would rather
that my young son go to a bawdy house, where a smart girl would
wise him up to the use of contraceptives, than have him
experimenting with some dumb virgin or a pick-up. I think he run's
less risk of disease if he goes to a high-priced house. He is in
less danger of being yanked into an undesirable marriage or being
gold-dug or blackmailed.
Not long ago a boy was brought to me with a bad case of
gonorrhea, His father was tremendously shocked. The boy had tried
to keep it a secret until he grew too ill to, disguise it.
"I've warned him and warned him," the father said.
"That's the trouble," I replied. "You warned him against the
wrong thing."
The father was so goody-goody that he wouldn't face the facts.
He wouldn't admit that a boy of 17 has sexual desires and it is
natural for him to satisfy them. The boy had been warned against
prostitutes, and instead of going to a house he went to a "high
class girl" who was "giving away a million dollars worth of it
free." The girl was also giving away a lot of valuable medical
business. She didn't tell the boy, of course, that she had the
disease. Instead she let him buy her some cheap gin and they went
out for a ride in the country.
He might have got a dose at a $3 house, but I doubt it. If the
girl saw that he was dumb she'd wise him up about prophylactics.
And there wouldn't have been so much risk of the boy's trying to
make some young girl in his own set while he was diseased, if he
went to such places when he wanted only physical relief. I'm not
advising young men to go to prostitutes, but sometimes they are the
lesser of two evils,
The pimp made arrangements for the operation in a business-
like fashion and brought his girl down. She took it for granted as
one of the risks of her profession, although some girls in the
business raise hell if they're caught. I had no scruples about
performing the operation. I didn't feel then that I was spreading
vice and I don't feel that way now. It seems to me doubly important
that a house girl should not give birth to a child. Some of the
girls marry their pimps and get out of the profession when they
become pregnant. But if they don't marry, it seems to me a crime
against society to let the child be born. The girl may have a
disease that seems to be cured and the child may be born horribly
deformed. Its father may have been diseased and the girl did not
know it.
There have been some romantic tales written -- and some of
them may have a foundation of fact -- about beautiful young girls
reared in convents on the wages of sin. There have been more
unsavory stories of such young girls being pressed into service
when they were young; of children who led miserable lives because
of their mothers' occupation. Naturally, the girls usually cannot
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name the fathers of their children, so no help would come from that
source. For half a dozen reasons, I don't think a prostitute should
give birth to a child. And after she's pregnant, there is no time
for lecturing on why she shouldn't have allowed herself to get in
that condition.
Fortunately, Violet had escaped disease, so there were no
complications from that source. She derived an ironic amusement
from her condition, but resented having to pay out hard-earned
money for the operation.
"It's a helluva world," she said cheerfully. "I work all day
at this job and then for fun I get knocked up."
She told me in private that her pimp was not the father, but
that she didn't want him to know it.
"He's always bragging about how good he is to me in giving me
a rest when I get off work, and it would make him madder than hell
if he knew I stepped out on him," she said.
The next girl I got from the same house wasn't nearly so calm.
She had a hot temper, and she was wanting to get virtually every
man in town to pay for the job. Violet brought her down and laughed
at her.
"Fat chance you'd have proving anything," she jeered. "You'd
have to say, It's either Jones or Smith or Brown or Thompson if it
isn't some man I never saw before.' Just keep your mouth shut and
don't be so damned lazy."
I got quite a lot of that trade thereafter. Later, I tried to
discourage as much of it as I could. The girls might be recognized
coming into my office. They couldn't pay much, and I was out after
higher class trade. It was bad business having them sit around in
the waiting room, although most of them were well-dressed, quiet-
looking girls.
However, I will say that I didn't have to pamper along their
nerves and I didn't have to keep soothing them and impressing the
need for secrecy. Prostitutes have so many tough breaks that one
more didn't mean much to them.
One day a dainty, petite little blonde came in. She was
tearful and indignant at the same time. She had such a short vagina
that douches did her no good.
"I can't get to the bathroom quick enough," she said, "and
that fool of a husband I've got won't do anything."
She had had one child and didn't want another one. Her husband
hated the use of contraceptives, and they were constantly
squabbling.
"I tell him I'll leave him and I will," she said. "He doesn't
have to worry! The darned fool got me half-drunk or I wouldn't be
this way."
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She wanted a sterilization operation, but I refused to give it
to her. "You may want a child later on," I told her. "And then
You'll blame me."
She told me about a friend of her's who was in somewhat the
same position.
"She wants her husband to be made sterile," the woman told me.
"I've got sense enough not to ask that. But I think I'll get a
divorce. Jim is an ideal husband in other ways. But it isn't worth
it. I can't get any pleasure out of sex because I'm afraid of the
consequences. And I keep resenting Jim's attitude. He'll promise,
and then at the last minute he says that it's no fun if he has to
use anything."
"Send him in to me," I said.
I didn't bother him with any lectures on the mental strain he
was forcing on his wife. Instead I said, "Which would you rather
have, a frigid wife or a little less pleasure because you're
sensible and use precautions? If you're not careful, this abortion
will finish the job."
He really loved his wife, and this warning frightened him.
"I didn't know whether she really was telling the truth," he
said. "We had the first child because we wanted it. That's been
more than two years ago, and nothing has happened since. Part of
the time I've used contraceptives and part of the time I haven't.
I thought," he added, "that she was, just getting a lot of funny
notions from some of those cats she plays around with, and that I'd
better not humor her."
"Better try humoring her," I told him. "It's a doctor's
prescription."
"I will, doctor," he promised. "I didn't realize that she was
telling me the truth about the douches. She wouldn't let me go to
the doctor with her and I didn't know but what she was just panicky
or lazy. I have a friend whose wife is so sloppy that he has to
force her to go to the bathroom. Otherwise, she'll just lay there.
She wants him to do everything."
He looked at me. "I don't suppose Anna told you. I'd been
married before?"
"No," I answered, beginning to take an interest in Jim. It
looked as if there were another side to the story. I'd believed be
was merely thoughtless to what I deemed an almost criminal point.
"I was divorced from my first wife," he said. "And the reason
I fell in love with Anna was because she seemed to be so gay and
wholesome about sex."
"A man's idea of a wholesome attitude toward sex frequently
means that the girl is either dumb or too trusting," I interrupted.
"A woman who runs the risk of unwelcome pregnancy rather than
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
insist that a man use artificial methods to prevent conception is
going to become nervous and irritable sooner or later. A wholesome
attitude is one where you can discuss this matter and arrive at a
decision agreeable to you both."
He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't mean that. I'll explain.
When my first wife, Audrey, and I were on our honeymoon, we went to
a quaint inn up in the mountains. We had a big room with a
fireplace and a bearskin rug in front of it. I wanted to make love
to her on the rug. She objected; said it made her feel like a dog.
Later I wanted to make love to her in a meadow filled with flowers.
She thought it was beastly. When we went to visit her people or my
people, she refused to have anything to do with me because they
might hear us. And she was always afraid the servants might hear
something."
"It began to give me inhibitions," he said frankly. "I'd been
brought up in a fairly strict household myself. Audrey's attitude
ruined our marriage and my love for her. Her idea of the proper
approach to sex took away most of my pleasure. Finally we got a
divorce. I was gun-shy of marriage until I met Anna. She Seemed so
free from complexes that I guess I went to extremes the other way.
I remembered Dot who had been so "natural" according to her
lover. I found myself telling Jim about her. He stared at me.
"I knew her slightly," he said. "You mean Dow' and he gave her
real name.
It was my turn to be a little startled. "Yes, but I didn't
mean to violate a confidence. I hope you'll keep this a secret. I
didn't suppose you'd ever heard of the girl."
He smiled a little grimly. "You're not violating any
confidence. Or at least you're not spilling any beans. I knew all
about it. X's wife is my sister. But didn't you know Dot is dead?"
"Good God, no," I exclaimed. "What was the matter? The
operation was a success. I'm positive of that."
"Oh, the operation was all right. And X, like a good boy, went
back to his wife and was the model husband. He gave Dot some money,
but since he became the virtuous spouse he didn't feel that he
should keep on paying money to a woman he no longer saw. And Dot
was too good looking and too carefree to hold a job long. So she
drifted from one man to another, and finally one of them strangled
her with her own silk stocking. He caught her being unfaithful with
another man."
"I don't remember seeing anything about it in the newspapers,"
I said.
"Oh, it wasn't in this town," Jim told me. "But she'd kept a
card of my brother-in-law's all these years. So they notified him
of her death. He was in a funk. He was afraid they'd learn of the
old affair. So he sent me to keep him out of it, arrange for the
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funeral and send her some flowers, anonymously. I told the
officials that he'd helped to get her a job once. And I managed to
get her a quiet funeral and send her some flowers without mixing
him up in it."
He was more impressed by my connecting Dot with his wishes
regarding his wife than by any lecture I could have given him. I
saw his wife later and she seemed perfectly happy. She told me that
her married life was now perfect.
I had not lied when I told Jim that abortions sometimes made
women frigid. The same thing often happens with childbirth. Memory
of the pain soon fades, but there is a vague emotional hangover,
especially if the woman feels she has been unfairly treated. Women
who are naturally a little under-sexed may have their emotions
drained by the experience.
On the other hand, sometimes it makes women more passionate.
They feel that they know the worst that can happen to them. And
usually they have acquired better knowledge of birth-control
measures, either from the doctor or from realization that previous
carelessness must be stopped.
I talked to a woman recently who had been having an affair for
several years. Her nerves were shaky. She asked me several discreet
but leading questions about abortion's.
"Do you need one?" I asked bluntly.
She shook her head. "I don't think so, but this is one of my
worrying days. I worry constantly for about the last half of my
period. I feel safe during menstruation and for some reason feel
quite safe for the first week or so thereafter. I suppose it's
relief from having passed another period without danger. But along
about this time I get nervous and wonder if something could have
gone wrong and figure out what I'd do if anything happened.
Sometimes I think I'd feel better if I were caught and had to go
through an operation. Then Id know that there is no fool-proof
method of contraception. I'd know what to do in case anything went
wrong again and just what it would be like. And I could decide once
and for all whether to go on with this affair."
"I don't see how women stand it," I said frankly. "Of course,
we doctors have our worries, too. But we've got a good stock alibi
ready if anything slips and we get paid well for our worrying. It's
bad enough for married women. However, most of them plan to have
children when they marry. But girls like you --."
"Some of us don't stand it." She gave me a wry smile. "I could
give you a list of some who haven't borne up under it too well. The
thing that saves the majority of modern mistresses from nervous
breakdowns is that the affairs don't last more than a year or so,
and then the couple either marries or they break up and the girl is
so sick of uncertainty that she marries the first man who comes
along with a proposal in his hand."
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I grinned. "And by then, I suppose they're so tired of
worrying that it's almost a relief when they get pregnant and stay
that way."
She nodded. "That's why you see a lot of attractive young
businesswomen -- girls in their late 20's and early 30's -- who
have been going around with equally attractive men suddenly marry
sappy-looking eggs who can offer them a home and security but no
romance. The ones who don't -- well, a friend of mine is in a
hospital now recovering from a nervous collapse. Other girls drink
too much. I know one who has taken to drugs."
I never have become calloused to hearing stories like that. Of
course, I took them much more seriously when I first started to
practice. For a while it seemed to me that I was peculiarly lucky
in being first too poor and then too busy to have much to do with
sex except in a professional way.
VII. MY OWN ROMANCE CRASHES
After I had launched myself into the illegal side of my
profession I began to take it for granted. Of course, I solemnly
warned my sub-resa patients of the danger of talking. But my name
was mentioned because many of my later patients came to me on the
recommendation of friends who said that I was discreet, efficient
and reasonable in price.
I didn't object, because such advice was given in confidence
to persons who were not likely to broadcast the information in the
wrong quarters.
However, it was not until I met Rose that I saw how the change
in my professional attitude might effect my private life.
I had more money now, and could afford to have more
recreation. I had a bank account, and I was slowly paying my father
back the loan he had made me. I felt that I was entitled to a
little fun. So I looked up a friend of college days and he invited
me to a party. Rose was there.
It was a case of immediate mutual attraction. I was girl-
starved and I was still idealistic as far as my personal life was
concerned. That was in the days of the short skirts. Rose wore a
frivolous blue taffeta frock coming just to her knees. Above it her
blond curls, blue eyes and rosebud mouth looked like those of a big
doll. Nowadays I probably would dismiss her as insipid. Then I
thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
I had just acquired a car and was very proud of it. I took
Rose home. I think she was thrilled by her conquest. Women like to
display their power, a trait that frequently gets them into
trouble. They will encourage a man just to flatter their vanity and
then try to retreat when he gets serious.
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I gave Rose a big rush. My intentions were honorable, as the
old-fashioned phrase has it. I thought it was a good idea for a
doctor to be married and I thought Rose would make me a perfect
wife. I see now how foolish that was and how lucky I was to escape
her, but at the time I was youthful enough to consider beauty all-
sufficient.
I met her father, a pompous businessman, and her mother, a
minor society woman. The whole thing seemed ideal. I would get a
young and pretty wife. I would be allied with a respectable family,
and that would help me in my profession. A few women like a good-
looking young doctor, but the majority of the patients want a
middle-aged or elderly man with a lot of dignity. The young doctor
may be a better physician, but patients believe that the older man
can be relied upon more because of his experience. However,
marriage lends an Aura of respectability.
Mothers feel better when their children are being examined by
a gray-haired man with the manner of a priest at confession. And
with men there is it jealousy of a young doctor. I think they would
prefer the old Chinese custom of having eunuchs to wait upon their
women. I have had women tell me that their husbands and lovers were
jealous because "strange doctors" give them examinations. I know of
such cases in my own practice, when men reluctantly gave permission
to have their wives or sweethearts examined, or treated, or even
submit to an abortion. They seemed to feel that in some fashion I
have ravished them or had a sexual experience that they had been
denied.
But to go back to my romance. I paid court in the traditional
fashion. I sent Rose flowers and candy. I took her to the theater
and to parties. I restricted myself to a few kisses and embraces.
I intended my marriage to be free from any emotional hangover. I
wanted a virgin bride, and I wanted an aroma of orange blossoms
around everything.
I had been going with Rose for about six weeks when she
telephoned that her mother wanted to see me. Rose let me in the
house and avoided my hasty kiss. She looked pale and somehow
indignant.
"Aha," I thought, "the old lady's been inquiring about my
intentions and Rose is peeved because I haven't popped the
question. I'll soon put that right."
I felt a little irritated as I smiled in an encouraging
fashion at Rose. The Garners seemed to be rushing things a little.
I wanted to propose and receive her acceptance in the best 19th
Century romantic style -- my literature was old-fashioned -- and
then go to her father to ask for her hand. I was in favor of
marrying as soon as possible, but I wanted to arrange the whole
business in my own way.
Mrs. Garner rose from her chair when I came into the room. She
didn't invite me to sit down.
"I'm sorry to have to say this to you, Martin," she began. "I
understand from Rose that you have always treated her with respect
--"
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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"Of course," I said hurriedly. "I want to marry Rose, Mrs.
Garner. Perhaps I should have declared my intentions sooner, but I
was not sure Rose returned my affection. I can support a wife. I
haven't much money now, but my practice is growing. If she's
willing to start humbly --"
Her face hardened. "Don't add insult to injury, Dr. Avery. I
know all about your profession. I didn't want to have to drag that
in. Fortunately, you hadn't mentioned it to Rose. I have not told
her the details. As for her affections, she will get over this
foolish infatuation quickly enough. I have, caught it in time,
thank heavens!"
I was stunned. "What's the matter with my profession?" I
demanded. "I'm a doctor. I'm not a very good one yet, but I'm
making a living. It's an honorable calling."
"You," she was almost stuttering with cold rage. "You're a
child murderer! My husband told me all about it. And you want to
drag our daughter into the filth and slime of your work! You who
help the hardened creatures of the world with their sins -- only
you are worse than they are. If it were not for people like you,
they might reform."
"It isn't murder," I retorted angrily, forgetting that I had
once very nearly shared her view. "It isn't murder any more than it
was murder when you and your husband decided not to have any more.
children after Rose was born."
"Get out," she shouted furiously. "I won't bandy words with
you. Get out, and stay away from my daughter!"
I got out. I was mad enough not to try to see Rose, either.
I'd wanted me drama in my romance and I got it. And in my anger I'd
hit the sorest point in the armor of the righteous.
There are very few women who want their children, and there
are fewer yet who want an unlimited number. I've met a few young
wives who wanted children immediately, but most of them don't want
to be tied down. They want to arrange their children. That's
reasonable and natural. And the crusaders usually don't have many
children. If they did, they wouldn't have time to run other
people's business. A lot of them are equally indignant about the
large, families among the poor. They're not so much against big
families as they are against the parents having any fun.
I used to marvel at the twisted, perverted forms that sex
took. Nowadays I marvel that there is as much naturalness connected
With sex a's there is.
Mrs. Garner hated me because I helped girls out of their
mistakes. She wanted them to suffer because she hadn't enjoyed
herself. Probably she was one of those unfortunate women who spend
the early part of their lives dreading pregnancy so that they never
enjoy the sex act, the sort of woman who thinks it somehow cheap to
be caught on her wedding night. Then with her menopause, she
probably found out that she'd waited too late for sex enjoyment.
Either her passion had died a natural death or her husband was
impotent.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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Since the time when Mrs. Garner arbitrarily decided that I was
not a fit companion for her daughter because I faced the facts
about sex, I have seen a lot of peculiar things and developed more
tolerance. Then I was furious at her. Oddly enough I probably
treated-her daughter with more respect than most other men would
have, partly because I was still young and idealistic and partly as
a reaction from the sordid part of my business.
I would have made Rose a much cleaner and more romantic
husband than some man who had not seen the results of sexual
abnormalities and irregularities and flouting of conventions.
Eventually, Mrs. Garner married Rose to a small-time
businessman who made a household drudge out of her. Rose grew fat,
peevish and complaining. She came to me several times with minor
ailments. She didn't have good health. She virtually ruined herself
by taking too strong medicines and using too harsh disinfectants.
I could have saved her all that. But her mother was a good woman!
Afterward, I was thankful that I'd escaped Rose. She and her mother
drove her husband half mad complaining because he didn't make
enough money. Finally he became a habitual drunkard. He was weak
and so was Rose; and Mrs. Garngr ruined their lives by prying and
dictating. Rose felt that she committed a crime when she became
pregnant and felt equally guilty when she tried to prevent
conception.
But that day, of course, I didn't know anything about that. I
went on a binge and wound up in a house of prostitution.
And there, ironically enough, I found myself in a room with
Violet, the first house girl I'd had for a patient.
"What the hell are you doing here, doc?" she demanded. "I'm a
cash customer," I laughed. "What do you think I'm doing, picking
daisies?"
"You're drunk," she told me.
"Of course," I agreed amiably. "My girl's mother told me to
get the hell out of there. She thinks I live in the gutter with
girls like you. So here I am."
Violet sniffed. "Probably her old man comes here, too, for
half and half. That's what good women do to men." I sobered up and
went back to work the next day and knocked a lot more silly,
romantic ideas out of my head. At lunch I met a doctor friend of
mine, one who sent me some business occasionally. I hear you're
going to marry," he said.
Eventually," I told him, "but I've no prospects in sight just
now.
"What's happened to the big romance?" he asked. "I saw you
beaming at the Garner girl like a love-sick calf the other night."
"The love-sick calf has had a good dose of salts and is
cured," I told him. "Mamma and papa disapprove of the way I
practice my great profession."
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He grinned. "You've got a clean job compared to some
psychoanalysts I know. They really get the sex dirt dished out to
them. I've just been talking to one. A woman came to me and asked
to be examined, said she wasn't getting any kick out of her married
life."
"Tell her to be glad she's a good woman," I grunted.
"I told her she had nothing organically wrong with her," my
friend went on. "Then I asked her the usual questions. Everything
seemed all right to me. She said the sex act was completed, she
loved her husband, nothing is wrong with him, no trace of
perversion. From her description, it sounded like a perfectly
normal coition. But she wasn't satisfied. She thought she was being
cheated out of something. So she went to the psychiatrist. And you
ought to hear the pay-off."
"Go on," I said. "I'm listening."
"That was her trouble, too. She'd been listening to a gal in
the same apartment house, a divorcee. The other woman got a divorce
because she couldn't or wouldn't sleep with her husband. She
doesn't have much to do with men nowadays, and when she doe's,
she's a teaser. Gets a big kick out of the preliminaries, but won't
go any farther. However, she's been driving two or three of her
married women friends crazy with descriptions of how thrilling the
sex act should be. As a matter of fact, she's never got any kick
out of it at all, not even the normal kind. And she's not a pervert
or a practicing one at least."
"Nice woman," I muttered.
"Very," said my friend. "The psychiatrist had a hard time
convincing my patient that she was getting everything there was out
of sex and that she should pay no attention to her neighbor.
Advised her to move, in fact. I'd rather have an out-and-out
pervert try to Convert my wife than have one of those dirty-minded
wenches around. They're worse than the so-called good women who try
to tell a woman that enjoyment of sex is sinful. It's pretty hard
to convince a woman that it's wrong for her to have a good time.
But when someone tells her that she ought to be having a better
time, she's liable to start trying out other men."
"The whole business is crazy," I said. "Seems to me that we'd
be more sensible if we had rutting period's as the animals do and
got it all over with in a few days."
He grinned. "We're the higher order. We can think! We can
reason!"
I went back to the office pretty well soured on the whole
thing. A woman came in and tried to convince me she was pregnant.
Most women fight against the idea and keep hoping that even the
doctor may be wrong, But once in a while there's a nut who's so
full of symptom's, both genuine and imaginary that she wears a path
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
to the doctor's office. This woman didn't want a child, but the
fear of pregnancy obsessed her. If she gained a pound and it showed
as it usually does, on her breasts and hip's, she decided that She
was caught and rushed right down to see me.
I got rid of her and settled down with a magazine. Then two
well-dressed, pretty young women came in. One of them looked as if
she had been crying. Both were nervous. I recognized the symptoms.
The prettiest girl introduced herself and her companion. She
was tall and slender without being either skinny or curved in the
wrong places. Even in the awkward knee-length dresses of that
period she looked graceful. She had intelligent-looking gray eyes,
dark brown hair, combed simply and lips with a tendency to curve
upward. Her companion was sweet-looking rather than beautiful and
she didn't have the competent air of her friend.
Norma, the prettier of the two, did the talking for herself
and for Pearl. She came right to the point. She said she understood
that sometimes I helped girls out of trouble.
I was cautious. Neither girl wore a wedding ring. They didn't
look like street-walker's, but I had to be careful. I told them to
tell me the whole story, adding that it would be in strict secrecy.
"It's a simple story," Norma said. "Pearl is in a jam. She
isn't married, and so it's important that she get rid of the child
and do it as quickly as possible. I've heard that she can register-
in at a hospital and say she's married and have the operation as
essential to her health. But I don't know how to go about it."
"Better not try it," I advised. "It's too risky. In the first
place, in this State three physicians must certify that the
operation is essential to her health, And the case would be
investigated. A good doctor isn't going to risk putting his name on
record in such a case."
"Then what do you advise?" Norma asked.
"Where's the father of the child?" I asked. I always want the
men in the case to appear. In the first place, the men usually foot
the bills. In the second, I want to have a clear understanding
among all concerned before I risk my career for an operation. A
hysterical woman may -- and sometimes does -- rush into my office
and want something done right away. Later She may discover that the
man would have married her and she blames me. Or the man may have
scruples against such operations or the family may raise hell.
Sometimes wives try to get abortions when their husbands are
absent. The husband may stir up a devil of a mess when he finds it
out, and the woman may not be able to pay and there may be charges
that the doctor induced the woman to undergo the operation. If
something happens to the woman in such a case, the doctor may as
well buy his railroad ticket and leave before he finds himself
behind bars.
"He's on a business trip," Pearl said, "and it's important
that I don't bring him back for this."
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
That sounded fishy and I said so in as tactful a fashion as I
could manage. I told her that his presence was important. Then the
story came out. The man was married to an insane woman now in an
institution. The wife was a Catholic and so were all her people.
The husband made her regular visits, and he was on one now. He
occupied a position in a firm largely controlled by his wife's
relatives. He couldn't divorce his wife, and so they we're waiting,
patiently hoping that her failing health would end her life.
The man's job took him away from our city much of the time. He
had been gone for about six weeks and it would be several weeks
before he returned. Pearl wanted to get the whole business over
before he came back.
"I'll tell him, of course," she said. "But it's almost
impossible for him to return now and it would do no good. I've
plenty of money and Norma will look after me. He's got troubles
enough without my adding to them. If I let him know now he'd
probably dash back here and the whole story might come out. We've
gone through too much to risk endangering everything because of
this unfortunate happening.
I believed her. She was in a bad spot.
"All right," I said. "I'll help you."
"We'll pay you in advance," Norma told me eagerly. "Then
you'll know we're all right."
Of course, it is customary in all these cases to get payment
in advance. No abortionist is going to take the risk without being
paid, and paid well, in advance. Once the abortion is over, the
doctor has no hold over the woman. It is the surgeon who commits
the crime, not the girl.
No girl needs to be blackmailed by a quack abortionist if she
will keep that in mind. He may threaten to expose the whole thing;
may produce documents from his files. But if she pays him in cash,
pays him in advance, and then bluffs, she'll be all right. He won't
dare say anything about it. He'll not only let himself in for a
prison sentence but he'll also kill his practice at once. Once he
has come out in the open about one abortion, no one else will trust
him.
But that day I forgot my strict rules. "No hurry about that,"
I told them "You can take your time."
They looked a little relieved. I learned afterward that they
had brought every cent they had in the world and were prepared to
offer it to me. My charges then were not so high as they are at
present, when I never accept anything less than $125, and sometimes
my fees are as high as $500.
The girl had arranged to take a short vacation. She moved into
a small apartment with Norma. It may be that I called there oftener
than professional purposes required. But the appreciation expressed
by the two girl's helped to soothe my vanity, wounded by Mrs.
Garner's outburst.
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
"It's ridiculous," Norma exclaimed, "that we have to hide in
here in order to prevent a tragedy. Oh, I know we have to do it,"
she added quickly. "But here is Pearl, trying to get a little
happiness. Here you are, trying to do some good. Here I am, just
standing by. And all three of us would be disgraced if this got
out. If someone wrote a play about the situation and a beautiful
woman did it on the stage, she'd be a heroine. But in real life the
fiction Situations don't work out so well."
"I know," I said. "Camille is a figure of romance and all the
women in the audience weep when she dies. But if Camille were
working hard to earn her living and trying to have a little
pleasure in the evening and got caught and went to an abortionist,
she'd be that 'wild little French girl' and the good ladies would
sniff and say it only went to show that foreigners couldn't be
trusted and they've been thinking that their husbands should fire
that dark-haired, dark-eyed girl in the office. She's too pretty to
be a really efficient typist."
I told Norma about my brief fling with Rose Garner.
"Even my love affair aborted," I Said grimly.
But Norma was laughing. She choked and waved her hands. "I
don't mean to laugh at you. It's just that I remembered what Mr.
Garner does."
"He's a druggist. He's something in a wholesale company."
"And he's also a big stockholder in a company that
manufactures hot water bottles and syringes," Norma replied. "It's
all right to buy a douche bag. And you can buy all the salves and
jellies and everything else for 'feminine hygiene' that you want.
A lot of them may be dangerous; a lot of them may be worthless. But
nothing is done about that. The ounce of prevention is perfectly
legal, and if the prevention isn't any good, the manufacturers are
safe. Mr. Garner sells plenty of disinfectant that is less powerful
than soap and water and some that's so harsh the solution ruins
your hands. But when people actually need help, he's moralizing
somewhere."
"Well," I said, "no statues are being erected to me. And a lot
of the time I don't get any thanks for what I've done."
Of course, no doctor expects thanks. He's supposed to do his
best even if he feels the patient isn't worth saving. He's supposed
to work when he feels that he isn't going to get paid. But he isn't
risking his future and a damned disagreeable prison sentence for
it.
A lot of my patients come in virtually on their knees. They
continue to be abject until the operation is a success. Then they
may hear about a quack who would have done the same thing for $10
or $15. Why shouldn't he be cheap? He hasn't had any expensive
medical training. He hasn't got half as much to lose as I have. He
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
may be good. There are men who can perform abortions skillfully and
can't do anything else. Some of them are doctors who have already
lost their licenses to practice; Some are premedical student's who
dropped out. And there are old women with an uncanny skill at the
business.
So when it's all over and the money has been paid in advance,
a patient, or more often the man who footed the bills, may get to
thinking that that was a lot of money for what little was done. And
he feels wronged. An abortion has no permanent effect like the
removal of an appendix or tonsil's. The man wants to blame somebody
for this business just to get rid of surplus irritation that he
hasn't dared to take out on the girl. So he treats me as a quack
and a sharper and a few other disagreeable things.
It reminds me of a man I knew who went on periodical drunks.
"I stay sober for weeks and nobody says that it's fine I'm
restraining myself," he told me once, "but as soon as I go on a
toot, everybody says, 'Look, he's drunk again."
I told the story to Norma. She didn't laugh. "It's funny, I
know. But look at us. I mean, Pearl and myself. Outwardly we're
good girls, nicely mannered, hard working. Nobody brags on us
because we are behaving ourselves. That"s natural. We're all
supposed to behave ourselves. But let us, make one slip and we're
marked for life. Oh, I know, people don't talk about scandal
constantly as some girls seem to think. And lots of girls who have
been naughty become nice. But always there's someone who's going to
say, 'I remember when she got into a jam and they say there was a
hush hush operation.' Probably that person doesn't mean anything by
it. It's just casual gossip. But did you ever notice the peculiar
glint women get in their eyes when the subject of pregnancy is
introduced. They invariably count the months if the woman is
married. And if she's not, they lower their voices and start
discussing the possible fathers."
I grinned. Norma and I were good friends by now. I enjoyed
blowing off steam to her and she talked with amazing frankness to
me. I told her how I'd started doing abortions.
"I suppose vanity was one reason why I hated it," I remarked.
"Any starving doctor could look down upon me for violating the
ethics of the profession. Same way any physician rather looks down
on a dentist. The dentist may be making a lot more money but he
never has ranked quite so high."
"I know," Norma said. "I knew a girl who fell in love at first
sight with a man. But when she found out he was a dentist, she was
humiliated and refused to see him again."
She looked at me. "I'm not noted for any piety," but I believe
that your credits and debits will balance on Judgment Day."
It was about this time that I turned down my first case. I had
always told myself that I meant to use discrimination in this
business and the only way I could maintain my self respect was to
take only such case's as I felt worthwhile.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A very pretty, richly-dressed young woman came into my office,
accompanied by her mother and her sister. This was unusual. It had
so happened that my previous clandestine patients before had
consisted of girls anxious to keep news of the operations from
their families. It is an indictment of family life and the much-
touted mother love that girls will tell their troubles to friends
before they will confide in their parents.
Of course, there are several other reasons for that. Sometimes
it is merely a desire to spare pain and worry. The girls are not in
a mood to listen to maternal anxiety. It is the same thing that
causes many girls to want their lovers or husbands away when they
are going through an abortion. They sometimes prefer the more
impersonal kindliness of a nurse or a close friend. They know that
they are going to be in a great deal of pain, that they are not
going to be at their best and vanity keeps them from wanting anyone
really close to them around.
But I was pleased at the sight of the mother. I felt somehow
that she lent more respectability to the visit. This thought
disappeared in a few moments. The girl, I learned, was the wife of
a wealthy young man in a nearby city.
She was annoyed and petulant over her pregnancy. She was just
starting to have a good time as a young wife in a smart young
married set, and she hated to have her fun interrupted by
motherhood.
"I know just how Frances feels," her mother told me. "She has
all those lovely new clothes and the season is just beginning. And
she has such a beautiful figure. It would never be the same again.
Men are so selfish about such things."
"Then her husband doesn't approve of the operation?" I asked.
Both mother and daughter burst into tirades against the
general selfishness of mankind. Finally I managed to extract the
information that the young husband did not even know his wife was
pregnant.
"And he isn't going to," Frances said firmly. "He'd probably
raise the dickens and insist on my going through with it. Men are
foolish about children, They don't have to get all ugly and clumsy
and ridiculous-looking. Of course, I did tell Jack that I wanted
children. But I don't want them right away. Later on, I'd like a
boy and a girl, right together so they'll be cute to dress."
She paused, apparently admiring herself as an attractive young
mother.
"Later on it may be harder for you to have children," I
remarked.
She dismissed that. She was the type who regards everything
beyond tomorrow as being vaguely in the far distant future and not
to be taken into consideration.
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Both women annoyed me. They irritated me further by saying
that they would pay any price "so long as it's reasonable." They
seemed to regard the whole business in the light of pulling a
disfiguring tooth. There also was the attitude that they were
really doing me a favor by bringing the job to me.
"I can't do anything about it," I told them. "If your husband
should find out about it he could send me to prison. Even with his
consent, it would still be too dangerous. Later, you'll want a
child, and if you can't have one you'll blame me. You're young and
healthy and you have plenty of money. Your husband will love you
even more if you have the child. So go home and forget about it."
They burst into torrents of rage then, but I shooed them
firmly out of my office and gasped with relief. They were the worst
type of patient. In the first place, they would have made trouble
all through the case, complaining about any pain and having to be
pampered.
"I usually try to send the mother home," a doctor told me
later. "She'll raise hell all the time she isn't telling you what
to do and how she had her children. Mothers make the worst possible
nurses because they want to do whatever the patient asks instead of
what is good for her. They'll feed the girl the wrong things,
refuse to make her exercise and spread the news around at the tops
of their voices."
Another danger is that patients of this type are babblers.
Secure in their moneyed and social positions, they don't give a
damn what happens to the doctors. Afterward they are likely to
regard all abortion in the light of an interesting tea-table
conversation subject, along with nervous breakdowns and trips to
Europe. They tell the whole thing, including the doctor's name and
address.
Such frivolous women may manage to keep the abortions secret
from their husbands for a while, but when it's all over they get
careless. And when they can't have children, the husbands blame the
doctor and think he probably performed a sterilization operation in
secret or did a bad job. There is something mysterious about an
abortion to the lay mind, anyhow. I've heard people inquire if I
actually cut out some of the organs. An abortion is simply what the
name implies, a premature birth, before the woman is more than
three months pregnant. After that it is more dangerous and comes
under the term of miscarriage. But I have had girls come to my
office and expect to go under ether and have ugly abdominal sears.
A successful abortion does not prevent a woman from having
children later on. But some women are not very fertile and one
pregnancy exhausts them. Or society women, such as Frances, may
keep their vitality at low ebb by reducing diets or by high nervous
strain and be unable to bear a child. Or they may ruin themselves
by use of too strong contraceptives. And in all such cases the
abortionist is blamed.
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In Frances' case, the fault lay in the lack of understanding
between husband and wife. It may take some of the roses and
moonlight and glamour out of young married life to discuss such
things cold-bloodedly, and one woman told me that she grew to hate
her. husband because he insisted on analyzing their emotions before
and after the sex act, but there would be fewer husbands and wives
drifting apart if they talked things over.
Frances probably lacked the courage to tell her fiance that
she didn't want children for several years. She may have been
afraid that he would not marry her if he knew her true views. I
don't think she wanted children at all, but there are other wives
who actually desire a family but want the first year or two of
their marital companionship without the complications of a child.
A man came to me once for examination. "I want to know if
there's anything the matter with me," he said. "I've been married
two years, and we haven't had any children. If I'm sterile, I
should know it because it isn't fair to my wife. She wants
children."
I suppressed a laugh. I knew that his wife used contraceptives
regularly because she had come to me about them.
"Is she in a hurry for a child?" I asked.
"No. She's very nice about the matter. But when we were
married we both agreed that we wanted children. Of course, nothing
definite was said about when, I thought we'd just let nature take
its course."
I told him there was nothing wrong with him and advised him to
talk it over with his wife. I also told him to send her to me. She
came in a few days later.
I didn't bother about giving her an examination. She was a
friend of mine, and I simply told her what her husband had said.
She sighed.
"I didn't know he was in a hurry about having a child. Of
course I'm willing. I want children and I told Leslie so. But he
never said anything definite about the matter and didn't appear
very eater to be a father, So I thought I'd enjoy being carefree as
long as possible."
"You see," she went on, "I know husbands who talk about how
fond they are of children, but then when their wives become
pregnant, they are peeved because she doesn't feel well and she
can't be gay and a good sport. And when the child comes, It's the
woman's responsibility Even if the man is a good father, it's the
woman who has to take care of the child all day. I'm not going to
be one of those women who complain about being tied down by a
child. Leslie is tied down to a desk all day supporting me, and I
ought to do my share."
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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She grinned a little impishly. "I don't take that too
seriously, either," she added. "Leslie was tied down to that desk
before he met me. The only difference is now he has more
responsibilities. But I didn't see any point in adding to those
responsibilities unless I thought he wanted them."
I smiled at her. "You're a smart woman, Jane. But be careful
of being too smart and figuring things out too closely. There's as
much danger in making a slip in too close calculations based on
human nature as there is in being too careless."
"You're telling me," she replied. "I thought I was being smart
in saving Leslie from the results of his vagueness, and here he is
dashing around to doctors to find out if anything is wrong with
him. But you see, Martin, when we were going together, Leslie was
cursed by a desire to evade being definite about anything. He was
the sort of man who telephoned and said he might call me later that
night if he could get away. That kept me at home all evening
waiting for his call, because I'd rather take a chance of being
with him than go somewhere else and disappoint him if he did call.
Or he'd say that he'd call me about the middle of the week and I'd
stay at home Wednesday and Thursday nights. And he'd say, 'I'll
come by between seven-thirty and eight-thirty,' leaving me
twiddling my fingers for an hour."
I nodded. Such things often seem unimportant to the man who is
busy until the time he goes to see a girl, but they may make or
break the romance. I knew a girl who broke off a love affair
because of such treatment.
"If he can't make up his mind when he wants to see me when
he's courting me, what will he be like after we're married when he
feels that he can take me for granted?" She, had said.
But Jane was still talking. "And he had a beautiful habit of
just dropping by in the morning to see me. He'd be out and around
town on business. He'd find me looking like hell and busy. But he
thought it nice to surprise me. Same way, sometimes he'd drive by
at night or call at an hour when I had either decided to stay at
home or had made other arrangements. I was so much in love that
this seemed petty. But I decided that after marriage I would take
things into my own hands a little more. So I did. Leslie was just
as vague about having children."
Shocking as it might seem to their mothers, who preferred to
Vail the whole thing in reticence and look upon pregnancy either as
an act of God or a cross to bear, most modern young women prefer to
plan their romances, their marriages and their children. It's only
natural. Everything else about their lives is planned. This is
especially true of businesswomen who marry. They want a certain
number of children at a time when they can afford them and at a
time when the birth does interfere with other important things.
VIII. I CONTRIBUTE TO THE ARTS
Shortly after I turned down the case of the society bride, I
did perform an abortion on a married woman.
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A young couple came into the office. They were shabbily
dressed but there was something clean and vital about them. They
held hands shamelessly and came into my private office together.
The girl was slight with a mop of rumpled curl's and big dark
eyes. She was not really pretty but she had a vivid charm. The
youth had a freshly-washed, boyish look that appealed to me.
They both started to talk at once, then looked at each other
and were silent. Finally the boy acted as spokesman.
"I'm an artist," he announced, "and my wife here is a writer.
We've just been married about six months and we're poor as church
mice. We've got what are known as futures but very little present."
I guessed immediately what they wanted but I let them go on.
The boy, he was just that, introduced them. The girl's name was
vaguely familiar to me. She had sold some free-lance material to
newspapers and to a few cheap magazines. I had read one of the
stories. It was not smoothly written but it had life in it. The boy
had painted pictures that were hung in good exhibits but thus far
neither had had any financial success. But they were still hopeful.
And now they had the chance of a life-time. A magazine had offered
to sponsor them on a boat trip along several scenic rivers. The
girl was to write the articles and the boy was to illustrate them.
They had expended most of their capital on a boat, supplies and
painting materials.
"It might be made into a book afterward," the girl's eyes were
glowing. "But since we're unknowns, we can't get much of an
advance. We got a little and spent that on the boat and our camping
outfit. And then," she flung out her hands, "then I had to go and
get pregnant."
"Can't you go ahead with the tour?" I asked.
She gave me a sickly grin. "With me already having nausea in
the mornings?" she asked. "I'm going to be the type that takes it
hard. I'm so darned little in the first place and so excitable.
We'd meant to go ahead and have the child and starve in a garret.
And then along comes this opportunity. We'd written to the magazine
about it and sent along sample sketches. And they've accepted and
want us to start. It would all coincide neatly with baby's arrival.
I can't bounce over mountain river rapids and sleep in a pup tent
and eat when and what I can and work when I'm this way. And It's
our big chance. If we back out now, we'll get a black eye with the
magazine, especially since we've spent their advance. We've got
about two weeks, but if we postpone it any longer, there'll be
another author available. To be frank, we're about third choice
with the editor, but we were selected because we were footloose at
the right time."
Here was a case where by a little lying I could have got the
girl into a hospital and said that the abortion was necessary. As
she said, she was in too delicate health to endure any hardships
while pregnant. She needed the best of care. And they could not
afford the best of care.
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But hospitalization would also have been beyond their means.
They told me frankly just how much money they could pay me.
"It isn't what we can afford but what we have," the man told
me. "I don't much like the idea of an abortion. But I don't like
the idea of taking Sally on a trip when she isn't up to it nor do
I like the idea of watching her work and suffer in a cheap lodging
house because I can't afford to buy her the proper food and take
her somewhere where she could rest and have sunlight. Later on,
when we can afford it, I'm all for having a lot of children."
Sally was one of the most gallant patients I've ever had. She
joked about the matter and made it into an adventure.
"I want children," she told me in a more serious moment. "And
I thought about this a lot before I came down here. I haven't any
scruples against abortions. Kent and I were just careless. I see
nothing any worse about what I'm doing than in what we did the
nights when I wasn't caught. If we had even a little money, I'd
never let poverty stop me from having this child. But it isn't fair
to either of us to let this happen now; not fair to me nor to Kent
nor to the child. If we missed this job, it might be that we'd
never have another one like it, although I think that sooner or
later we'd crash into money because we work hard and we've got a
little ability. But we'd always hold it against the child that we
lost a big job because of it. And I couldn't bear to have Kent
think that I held him back when he got his first chance and he'd
feel guilty about me. We're young and we've got plenty of time for
more children."
The articles caught on immediately. I read every one of them.
Sally had a blithe style of writing and Kent's pictures were good.
As they predicted, the articles were put into book form and had a
good sale. Eighteen months later, Kent and Sally came into my
office. At first I didn't recognize them. They were deeply tanned,
healthy looking and were well dressed, They no longer appeared
hungry and haunted by poverty.
Sally handed me a book, autographed by both of them. It is one
of my treasured possessions now.
"We intended to send it to you," she said. "We were in the
East when it came out. But we meant to come back here after a while
and Kent said we'd bring it."
Kent wanted to pay me some more money. I grinned.
"That's the first time anyone has ever come back to make me
another payment," I told him. "Usually the return visits are to
make complaints."
"You cut your price for us," he said. "I knew about what your
lowest charge was when we came here. I was so thankful then that
you left us a little grub-stake that I didn't say anything."
"That's all right," I told them. "A lot of doctors charge by
the income of their patients."
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"Yeah," he grinned. "But they usually charge more than $10 and
a picture. The picture may be worth Something sometime, but you
didn't know it when you took it. Anyhow, our income is bigger now
and I want to make it right."
"I'll just keep the picture and watch it increase in value,"
I remarked.
As a matter of fact, later I was offered enough money for the
picture to more than make up the difference between my usual price
and what I had charged for the abortion. But I turned it down.
"In that case," Sally said, "I want to engage you as my
physician. I'm pregnant again." Her eyes twinkled up at me. "It
seems incurable in me. But this time I'm going through with it."
I knew that they didn't have much money even then. But they
had the start they wanted. I felt pretty good about it. I'll admit
I was a little relieved when I learned that Sally meant to have a
child. Irresponsibility can become a habit. There is an old saying
that when a woman has one abortion she will have two more. And
there's a reason for it. If the first operation is comparatively
painless and inexpensive, the woman may grow careless. Always in
the back of her mind is the thought that she can afford to take a
risk. There's an easy way out for her. That is the type of patient
I try to discourage.
Pearl had long ago recovered from her operation. She moved to
another city, but Norma remained behind, and I continued to see
her. Pearl's lover had had his headquarters. transferred, and she
could be with him more. Two or three months after her departure,
Norma telephoned.
"Come over and Say goodbye to me," she said.
I was shocked. I'd gotten into the habit of dropping in to see
Norma two or three nights a week. "What's the matter?" I asked.
Pearl has arranged a better job for me in her city."
I hurried right over.
"I had a job here I was hoping that you'd take," I told her as
soon as I got in the door. "I know a doctor who needs an able
assistant."
She stared at me. "But I don't know anything about medicine."
"You know a lot about this doctor," I said. "It might mean a cut in
pay, but I wish you'd stay and marry me." She smiled. "You've hired
a wife." Later she told me that she had planned to jolt me into a
proposal. "If it didn't work, I'd have gone, of course," she told
me frankly. "Because I didn't want to stay here any longer if I
wasn't married to you. But I hoped you'd take the hint."
She looked at me anxiously "Are you sure this isn't just a
rebound from Rose?" She asked.
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"No. Rose was a rebound from life. She was my calf-love affair
and my revolt against the realities, all rolled into one. This is
the real thing. I had to get over my rose-tinted spectacles stage.
It may be unfair to you. This hasn't been a glamorous courtship, by
any means."
She laughed. "We're spared that re-adjustment, at least."
And we were. We started with no illusions about each other.
She knew all about my profession. I knew that she had had to face
some harsh things. Our love was based on the solid foundation of
friendship. We had simply become necessary to each other.
I'm not against glamour and romance. Every girl feels that she
has a right to a romantic courtship. But glamour is also frequently
a trick of nature to lure a girl into fulfilling her biological
duties, and sometimes it backfires.
A Young girl came into my office late one afternoon.
"What's the matter with you?" I asked.
"Too much moonlight and light fiction," she replied.
She was about 18, but she looked older and more sophisticated.
Nowadays young girls dress and act as if they knew everything, and
men are not always to be blamed if they take them at their face
value.
Patricia, as I shall call her, told me her story with a sort
of ironical amusement, the attitude of the newly-made cynic.
"I'd feel better if I'd been soused to the gills, Then I could
have waved my hands and said that the cad took advantage of me when
I was too drunk to know what I was doing."
But she had been intoxicated on something headier and more
dangerous than whiskey. She'd been drunk on the idea of glamour.
She was a debutante in a small city, Popular with boys she'd
known since childhood. Pretty and clever in a superficial way, she
imitated the mannerisms of her favorite movie stars and mouthed
risque flippancies with only a vague idea what they meant.
Boys had tried to "paw" her, and she was a little intoxicated
with her power over them. She easily evaded their advances,
although she said she'd done a good deal of wrestling.
"Sometimes I wanted to go ahead," she told me frankly. "But I
was always glad I hadn't when I got home."
With three other girls, Patricia went to a resort to spend a
week. They had a cabin and no chaperon. Chaperons are out-dated
today. Anyhow, the girls were all grown and parents had become
careless.
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All the girls had vague hopes of meeting someone "really
exciting" at the resort. They were tired, they said, of the youths
they had been going with. There was no thrill in dating boys they'd
known from childhood, boys with only a little pocket money and
their fathers' cars.
Unfortunately for Patricia, she met an "exciting new man" at
a hotel dance. The girls' cabin was close to a resort, and they
went over without escorts.
It was fun, Patricia thought, to dance with a stranger. She'd
been rushed by strange youths at college dances, although the man
introduced himself or was brought up by a friend. This man only
gave his first name and preserved a glamorous mystery about
himself. He was well dressed, handsome and danced well. Patricia
fell for him at once.
Girls of that age have an unfortunate tendency to exaggerate
all their emotions. Patricia decided she had a violent crush on the
man. She went driving with him and he kissed her.
"I'd been kissed before," she,related. "But never like that.
The boys I'd been going around with were pretty amateurish. I
didn't have sense enough to know that this was just good technique.
I thought that it was the real thing." She laughed a little. "Don't
think I'm so dumb. Men are mighty egotistical about the way they
kiss or hug a girl, but a lot of them have the idea that the thing
to do is break a girl's neck or crush her ribs and then aim in the
general direction of her mouth, This man was different. I wasn't
such an idiot as I sound in falling for him."
She talked a good deal about it. I let her ramble on. It was
for her nerves and I want to have all the details I can before I do
anything about these cases. Success as an abortionist depends on a
lot of things, and skillful handling of the patient is necessary to
save my own neck. I must learn everything I can before I commit
myself.
"When I was little," Patricia went on, twisting her hands
nervously, "I used to worry a lot about how I'd feel when I was
converted to the Church. I thought there'd be a great blinding
light of some kind. I thought falling in love would be about the
same thing. Well, I saw the light all right. Or rather I felt as if
I'd been shocked by a big volt of electricity.
She sat there, a pert, lipsticked young girl with frightened
eyes. Her hair was smoothly coiffed. She was expensively dressed.
But her manicured fingers twisted constantly with a handkerchief,
wadding it and then unfolding it. The red lips trembled as she
talked.
The money expended on her personal appearance, exclusive of
the casual jewelry she wore, must have been at least a hundred
dollars. Her parents had provided her with a good home. They spent
money lavishly on her. Yet they had neglected to prepare her for
life. Sex to her meant dates, dancing, light flirtation's and
finally marriage to the "right man" to be picked by heaven-sent
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inspiration. No one had ever told her to beware of passion, no one
had ever told her that her own emotions were unreliable, that she
carried within her enough dynamite to ruin her life. The thing that
constantly amazes me about such gals is not that they get into
trouble but that they do not get into more trouble.
"It seemed just like something in a story," the girl went on.
"Meeting a good-looking stranger and falling in love right away. I
thought about how I'd gloat over the girls. It was just like a
movie."
She had been unresisting in the hands of an experienced man.
The sex act had been disappointing. She was a little frightened and
yet a little thrilled at the emotion of the man. She was so sure
before that this was love that she was almost incredibly reckless.
He didn't even tell her his entire name until after her seduction.
He simply touched a match to all the stored-up longing for romance
and passion in her 18-year old body. I never laugh at jokes about
girls who don't find out the real names of their lovers beforehand.
Patricia had agreed to go to a little cabin he said he had. It
all seemed thrilling. She had visions of herself, a gingham apron
tied over her evening dress, cooking his breakfast. It was in line
with all the silly 'stories she'd read or seen portrayed on the
screen in which the 'heroine takes refuge in the hero's cabin and
he nobly surrenders his bed and sleeps on the couch.
This, she thought, was adventure, romance. This was heaven.
She spent a week end with him. It was a puzzling week end, but
her faith in her lover persisted until he dumped her back at the
resort and said he hoped that he'd see her again sometime. Then the
whole thing burst upon her full force. She'd deliberately avoided
asking about several things that seemed strange and had reassured
herself by thinking of his love-making.
In a daze, she murmured some sort of excuse, telling her
friends that she had been swept off to a house party and there'd
been no telephone or telegraph facilities. Fortunately they hadn't
notified her parents of her absence. She had meant to surprise them
with news of her whirlwind courtship and romantic marriage.
She went home and tried to conceal her feelings. She was badly
hit. She had fallen in love head over heels, and the
disillusionment was bitter.
She felt that she had somehow been lacking; that if she had
been prettier or more interesting or more passionate she would have
held the stranger and he would have married her. She was especially
worried about her lack of passion.
"He kept telling me that I was a sweet child and lovable," she
said. "But I didn't want to be a sweet child. I wanted to be a
woman."
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Then one day she picked up a paper and saw the picture of her
lover. He was a notorious gangster. He had been hiding out at the
resort. Most criminal's are careful about the women they pick up.
They've known of too many comrades betrayed, either intentionally
or unconsciously, by a girl outside the racket. Their women have to
be in the know. They must be able to keep their mouths shut when
questioned by the police; they must know who is safe and who isn't.
But some of them forget -- as newspaper headlines and pictures of
"the woman in the case" show.
Patricia's hero, however, was notorious for similar episodes.
He could not resist a pretty face, and he preferred "nice girls."
He had left a trail of brief romances all through the Middle West.
He was handsome, usually had plenty of money, was a liberal spender
and appeared to be a wealthy young businessman on vacation.
He was, of course, a scoundrel, and his sexual crimes were
worse than his robberies. But then a lot of factors contributed to
Patricia's private tragedy. One is that conventions have relaxed so
that introductions are no longer necessary and young girls know
little or nothing about the men they meet at parties and dances.
Another is that while mother's may warn their daughters vaguely
against strangers, there has grown up a romantic tradition of the
fascinating stranger. He is encountered in parks, taxis, at the
theater, at parties, in lonely mountain cabins, on yachts, and, he
is always at the scene of any accident. In fiction, he is
invariably chivalrous and proposes after the first kiss, In real
life, he's a risky subject.
Patricia had not told her mother when she missed menstruation
and decided she was pregnant.
"I can't," she said. "I'll do anything before I'll tell her.
She thinks I'm such a nice, sweet girl, and it would break her
heart. If I can keep her from finding this out, I will be a nice
girl. I've learned my lesson. But she'd never get over it. She'd
tell me that she'd rather see me dread. And she'd blame herself for
letting me go on an unchaperoned house party. She'd always be
suspicious of me afterward, She'd want to keep me under lock and
key, and she'd be asking questions all the time about my friend's.
Father would have to be told and he'd say that I've brought
disgrace on the family."
She was crying now. I remembered the young girl who'd come to
me when I first started to practice and how she'd killed herself.
Here was my chance to wipe out that old feeling of guilt.
"There, there," I said soothingly. "It's all right. Your
parents won't need to know anything about it." "I've got money,"
she sobbed. "I've got $200. It's my Christmas and birthday money.
And I can sell my pearls."
"You won't need much money," I soothed her. "But you'll have
to manage to be away from home for a few days. Can you do that?"
She nodded. Then she began to cry again.
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"I'm all right. I'm just relieved. It's been so awful, not
daring to say anything. I worried all the time even before I knew
I was overdue. And then I'd dream I was all right and wake up
believing it."
"I know," I told her. Such dreams are common to pregnant
women, just as women who are worried about themselves may dream of
pregnancy.
I've heard women going into orgies of self-pity over their
tragic lives when there's been sickness in the family, financial
distress and even death. And I always think of that gallant, tragic
army of young women who march into my office on leaden feet.
There's a vast difference between trouble that can be shared, and
trouble that must be kept secret.
The real tragedies are the young Patricias, who must pretend
to be gay and guard carefully against any betrayal of their
worries. Patricia had to stand alone. She had not even dared to go
to her family doctor. She had got my name by accidentally hearing
a conversation in which a girl said that I'd arranged an abortion
for a friend "
She had been afraid that her doctor would tell her parents. Of
course, he would have kept the secret. But it is usually less
embarrassing to go to strangers with humiliating confessions. Every
time she saw her doctor thereafter, she would be reminded of her
sordid episode.
It would have been safer for me had I insisted that Patricia
tell the story to her parents and obtain their permission for the
abortion. Her father was prominent in the town. If anything
happened to Patricia, he would raise hell and might charge me with
anything from murder to being the father of the unborn child.
Patricia's story, sounded a little fishy, which made me trust her.
Stories that are too pat probably have been framed. The unexpected
usually happens in sex.
Patricia was sure that her parents would object to an
abortion.
"They wouldn't do anything but make my life miserable," she
explained. "They'd call me a murderer and they'd make me have the
child and then put it in an orphanage. An abortion doesn't seem any
worse than that. And they wouldn't believe my story. They'd think
I was shielding someone, and they'd talk day and night trying to
get me to name the man. They're old. They don't understand how I
wanted excitement and how tired I got of the nice boys who brought
me home at 10 o'clock. But believe me, I'll appreciate the nice
boys from now on."
I didn't tell her what her parents would do to me if they
found out. She was going to keep her mouth shut. And it would have
frightened her needlessly. However, I've seen some "helping hands"
get slapped.
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A friend of mine helped his niece by marriage to get an
abortion. She was an adopted child, and the family was puritanical.
So the girl went to him, and he gave her the money and brought her
to me. Her lover was a worthless scamp who went away at the first
news of trouble.
Several years later she died. In her possession, were papers
that revealed the story, but fortunately, not my name. However, her
uncle's connection was shown.
There was a great uproar. The abortion had nothing to do with
the girl's death. But her relatives professed to believe that it
had "ruined" her. Furthermore, they declared the uncle must have
been the man in the case. Otherwise, why did the girl go to him
instead of her parents and why did he help her in secrecy?
He told his story, but they did not believe him. He had no
right, they said, to take so much responsibility. His wife left
him. The name of the poor, dead girl was bandied about by the
people who had talked so loudly of their love for her.
"Everything I ever did with or for her was raked up wrong
interpretation given it," he told me. "I loaned her my car
occasionally. She used it for dates. She may have told her folks
that she was out with me. I don't know. She was of age and I
figured she knew what she was doing. She would have gone ahead with
her affairs anyhow. And now, because she came to me when she was in
trouble, they're trying to make me out an absolute scoundrel."
"I'd give her a drink once in a while," he went on. "She
couldn't drink at home. And I gave her cigarettes. That's dragged
out now to show that I had a tremendous affair with this girl. I
gave her the money for the abortion because she didn't have any and
she needed it at once and she couldn't think of anyone else to go
to. She knew that I had a good income and could get it for her
without much trouble. And she knew I'd keep my mouth shut about it.
She said she'd pay me back but she never got enough money together,
and she knew I didn't need it badly."
"Calm down," I told him. "I could tell the way you behaved
when you brought her to me that you weren't responsible for it. You
were worried about the girl and you were fond of her, but I could
see that you weren't guilty, and you never tried to defend yourself
then."
I thought of this case and what happened to my friend when I
agreed that it was best that Patricia not tell her parents. I'm not
saying that it was best. As it happened, it did turn out all right.
Patricia arranged a "trip," and instead went to a discreet
apartment hotel where she could have seclusion and be treated for
colitis.
Naturally she was nervous as the dickens and I let her blow
off to me. She had a nurse, but she liked to talk to me. While she
was firm in her decision not to tell her mother, she fretted about
it and conducted debates with herself.
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"Mother is fine," she said, "but she worries me so with
questions about little things. Usually it's something I don't mind
telling her. But she tries to worm it out of me in a tactful
fashion and I can see through her little tricks and that annoys me.
She'll try to find out what time I came home. Instead of asking me
a direct question, she beats around the bush. She doesn't know I've
ever had a cocktail and she disapproves of my smoking. And she
talks about my boy friends in such a silly, areh way that it keeps
me from being honest about my dates."
"I know," I said. "All mothers and daughters -- or most of
them -- go through the same stage. The mother can't become adjusted
to the idea that her daughter has a right to private thoughts and
a private life."
Sometimes I've thought it would be a good thing if mothers
could hear some of the things their daughter's tell me -- and I get
the cases where the mothers apparently have made a failure of their
job. I told Patricia that.
"I don't think it would do any good," she replied, "It might
change mother in the long run. But she'd be hurt at first because
I didn't talk to her instead of a doctor. I can't treat mother like
a human being. She's always reminding me that she's my mother, and
so I must give everything she says special consideration. For
instance, if I do something silly, just a little harmless thing, I
can't tell mother about it and laugh. She will give me a lecture
from a sense of duty. Even if I know I made a fool of myself and
admit it, she's still got to go motherly on me."
If mother's could only learn to graduate their supervision
through the teens and concentrate on the bigger things, I'd lose a
lot of my business but I'd be thankful to do it. But they are so
accustomed to commanding their children's lives, from what time
they go to bed and get up to what they eat and wear and think, that
they can't get used to the idea that their children now have minds
of their own and that these minds must be respected.
Patricia's mother was fairly typical of a certain class of
well-to-do women. Of course, Patricia's case was unusual in that
she met an utter rotter. But she might have received virtually the
same treatment at the hands of a jaded businessman on vacation at
a resort and a little plastered. Or she might have been knocked up
by a reckless school boy who would be too frightened to be of any
help. Such lads get panicky, try to evade the blame and in so doing
spread the story and do the girl more harm. They rush to their
parents, deny everything and the story is circulated that way.
Patricia's mother lost her daughter's confidence because she
failed to give the girl the same friendliness and tolerance that
she would give some one not a relative. She expected perfection
from her daughter, and even the most modest mothers seem to think
that this perfection can be attained by implicit obedience.
Maternal orders usually are so vague or so contradictory that the
daughter finally ignores them altogether and begins a series of
minor deceptions which can never be ended because confession of one
of them would cause the mothers to become suspicious or to discover
the others.
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"Mother is always telling me to be like Mary Warren, and she's
a pill." Patricia said. "She never gets to go anywhere. Or she
tells me to be like some girl who plays up to the chaperons and
gets away with murder on the sly. She never gives me any practical
advice. She just tells me to be a nice girl and to associate only
with nice boys and girls and gives me a lot of platitudes. She told
me once that I shouldn't let boys kiss me. But all the girls pet a
little, and if I didn't I wouldn't go anywhere."
"She never told me anything about --" Patricia stopped rather
than use any words for sexual intercourse. "She always says that
she'll tell me more about thing's at the proper time. I suppose she
means when I marry. She just says for me not to do anything bad.
But this didn't seem bad when I did it. I couldn't help It. Or I
thought I couldn't. I got all dizzy when Darrell started kissing
me, and then I was weak and burning all over."
It sounds almost unbelievable that there could be girls as
innocent as Patricia in the world today. But there are. Some of the
girls who tell risque jokes so glibly are almost as ignorant of the
volcanic properties of sex.
Patricia went home a sadder and wiser girl. As far as I know,
she never told her mother about her experience. Later she married
a young bank clerk whose chief characteristic seemed to be
placidity. She had lost her taste for excitement and wanted the
prosaic.
A mother I consider far above the average in intelligence told
me that she had been criticized by her neighbors for bringing the
confessions magazines home and allowing her daughter's to read
them.
"The literary standard may not be high and the stories may be
written by staff members," she remarked. "I don't mind that. We
have plenty of good books in the house to offset any lowering of
literary standards. I told my girls the facts of life as early as
I thought they would understand them. I was criticized for that,
too, because the neighboring mothers were still favoring the stork
theory and the doctor's black bag, and they were peeved because my
children explained the processes of nature to their youngsters. But
I never saw any reason for lying to children if I could keep from
it.
"I've had mothers say they didn't wish their children to read
the newspapers because they were so full of scandal. It's my
experience that adolescents don't read the newspapers enough. I
encourage that. I may be robbing my children of the bloom of
innocence, but when my oldest boy has a hangover he tell's me so
with a sheepish look and I fix him a pick-up and he doesn't need a
lecture. I know he's going to do a little drinking and I want to
know what he drinks and see that he doesn't make too big a fool of
himself. I won't find out if I try the heavy mother act. I let him
give beer parties at the house and I don't sit around telling the
boys how nice it is that they come and how I want to know all
Jimmy's little friends. That went out after his 10th birthday. I
tell them that the house is theirs, but not to break any furniture.
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I encouraged Jimmy to start dating when he was young because I
figured he'd be safer with a nice girl than he would be hanging
around pool halls or running the streets with a gang of sensation-
hunting boys. I had his father give him a lecture on diseases and
dangers of picking-up girls, too, with no mincing of words about
it.
"I told my girls the same thing. I don't want them to think
that sex is a sordid matter, but I do want them to be able to
distinguish between cheap thrills and genuine affection when it
comes. I don't want my girls to be manhandled and overkissed. But
I want them to do enough kissing that they won't be swept off their
feet the first time anyone puts any enthusiasm in the embrace. I
gossip with them, too, for that's an easy way of putting in my
opinions without a formal lecture on the style of 'Now mother wants
to tell her little girls something.' It's just as foolish to let a
teen-age girl remain ignorant of the dangers of sex as it is to let
her go motoring without warning her of the dangers of drunken
driving."
"How is it working out?" I asked.
"Fine," she said. "I have to catch myself from relating to
neighbor mothers some facts about their dear, pure daughters that
my girls have told me. They're still trying to keep that virgin
bloom on the theory that the girls will be more attractive brides
in the marriage market. But if my prospective sons-in-law are going
to be frightened away because my daughters know the detail's of
their anatomy and the difference between a marriage proposal and a
proposition, they can remain away. They'll find out all the facts
sooner or later and I'd prefer that they find out from me. That
way, I know they'll learn the truth and not a distorted version
from some girl friend. It's easier for them to hear it from me, and
they won't be afraid of shocking me with confidences. I want them
to talk easily to me. If ever any of them need your services,
doctor," she concluded with a smile, "I'll be right along. But I
don't think they will."
And they haven't either. If more mothers were like Mrs. X, the
world would be a better place for everyone except abortionists.
Some of the young girls who come to me have been warned
sufficiently about the dangers of sex but in such garbled fashion
that they received no practical information and sex held a morbid
fascination for them. Some of them were frightened to death after
they had their first sex experience. But when nothing happened,
they recovered from their scare. They were excited over their
initiation into womanhood and they went to extremes. Their mothers
had tried to control them by fright rather than reason. When fright
left, there was no longer any deterrent.
"I try to make chastity something besides just a word to my
daughters," Mrs. X said. "There are so many jokes about chastity
and the scarcity of virgins that the mere terms are not enough to
do any good. Common sense and good taste must be added.
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"I tell them that they're pretty girls and a lot of men are
going to want them. But they must have a yardstick to measure the
men and they must think of the future. You can't expect girls to do
much reasoning when a man is making love to them. But if you can
get them to ask themselves if they would want to marry this man,
you have a foundation for good behavior. If he's attractive enough
to be considered seriously as a husband, then the girl should not
risk losing marriage by an affair. If he's not husband-material,
he's not good enough to be taken as a casual lover. My girls must
learn to make their own decisions, but they must have something on
which to base their judgment. Just telling them to go around with
nice men and to behave isn't enough."
She is right. Some of the mothers who come weeping into my
office wondering why their daughters failed to follow their advice
were always careful to tell their girls to be "nice."
Even when confronted with evidence of their failures, many
such mothers resent any insinuation that they did not follow the
wisest course. They have the excuse of the weakling, "I did the
best I could." The favorite alibi is, "My children won't listen to
me any more," These mothers never pause to wonder why their
children won't listen to them.
Patricia's mother undoubtedly would have wrung her hands and
justified herself by saying, "But how could I know that Pat would
meet a horrible gangster?"
How could she know Pat wouldn't meet a gangster? She knew
there were such things. Pat might have received worse treatment. At
least, she didn't get a disease. How could she know her glamour-
seeking daughter might not meet a blackmailer who would drug her
and photograph her nude in an obscene pose? Girls of some of the
best families have been treated in such fashion. How could she know
that her daughter wouldn't meet some diseased and reckless youth
who thought it smart to give a girl a dose or to knock her up! How
could she know that Pat might not meet some man with emotions so
jaded that his ardor could only be aroused by fresh young purity or
a pervert seeking new converts? How could she be so blindly
optimistic as to think that a young girl guided only by platitudes
would reach the altar without a single misstep along the way?
IX. SOME TRAGEDY AND COMEDY
All my cases do not have happy endings. A young country girl
was brought to me by her father. She was a rather attractive girl,
but sensitive about her "country" look. She had gone to a town
high-school and had been embarrassed by her sunburned skin, her
work-roughened hands, her faded and old-fashioned dresses. She had
no mother, and she had to work hard. Her father was a prosperous
farmer, but it never occurred to him to hire a girl to do the
housework while his daughter went to school.
As a consequence, his daughter was always a little harassed by
the conflict between her housework, her studying and her school
days. She had little time to devote to her personal appearance,
even if she had possessed money and taste to buy clothes. I tell
this because it was important from the standpoint of what happened
to her.
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Small town's are more snobbish than cities, because lines are
more sharply visible. The daughters of the town's leading families
sneered at Kate. And most of the other girls toadied to them. So
she was deprived of the normal girl companionship of high-school.
She had no chum with whom to discuss her crushes, and, anyhow, she
had no time for walking arm in arm around the town after school,
going to basketball and football games, having sodas in the drug
store.
This lack of time would seem to prevent her from getting into
trouble. But, instead, it had the opposite effect. She was So
hungry for any sort of companionship that she proved a "pushover"
for the small-town toughs. The high-school boys did not think it
necessary to treat a "green country girl" with any respect or to
ask her on regular dates and parties. One of the boys took her home
one night from a play and "made" her. She was flattered because he
came from a "good" family, and she was too dumb to realize that he
was treating her like an unpaid prostitute. He had several similar
"dates" with her, usually leaving her immediately after --
sometimes making her walk home. Presently she learned that she was
pregnant.
Her father found her weeping one day and forced her to tell
him the story. She concealed the name of the boy from him and she
refused to tell me. I gathered, however, from talking to her that
she had been with several boys. I think she knew which one of them
was to blame, but he had apparently threatened her with something,
and so she protected him. Probably he used the old trick of telling
her that he would deny everything and that he would prove she had
gone with other boys.
She maintained a sullen, frightened silence most of the time
she was in my office. Her father wanted me to get the man's name
from her so that he could either horsewhip him or force him to
marry Kate.
"He won't marry me, papa," the girl said. "I told you that.
Ain't no use trying."
The girl was diseased, too, and I refused to risk an abortion.
"I can cure the disease," I told her father. "Then perhaps you
can send her away somewhere to have the child."
He grunted, and they left. Several days later I heard that the
girl had hanged herself from a rafter in the barn loft. Maybe it
was for the best. Life would have been a pretty dismal business if
she had had to remain in the same community. Fundamentally she was
a decent girl. She had simply been the victim of cheap small-town
toughs and a social system. Probably she was wise in not telling
her father the names of her lovers -- although that is a strange
word to use in such a case. The boy to blame might have been
frightened into a shotgun marriage. But if he were under age, the
marriage could be annulled by his parents. There would be an ugly
quarrel in which the girl's name would be drugged deeper into the
filth and the whole incident made unforgettable.
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I saw that happen in another small-town case. The boy, a son
of the local banker, was called "wild," but I have a more blunt
term for youths of his type. He was spoiled by too much money, too
much prestige. For several years there were rumors of how he had
tried to assault various girls, but they were kept quiet for fear
of parental wrath. The banker could make things financially
embarrassing for a great many people. The boy behaved himself
fairly well around girls of his own set.
Then he seduced the daughter of a widow. "Seduced" is the
proper term, for I believe he led her to believe that he meant to
marry her. Perhaps he didn't say so in so many words, but he told
her that he loved her, and to her 16-year-old mind that meant
marriage.
He bragged to all the town youth of his conquest of a virgin.
Some of the other boys tried to follow in his footsteps, but had no
luck. Then the girl became Pregnant. She went to the boy and asked
that their marriage be hurried. He took the refuge of such sexual
cowards. He said that he was not to blame, refused to believe that
she had been faithful to him and even that she had been a virgin.
She was a delicate little thing with an Irish beauty, smoky
gray eyes, black curls and a fair skin with a few freckles
scattered over her nose. Ordinarily she was shy, but desperation
lent her new courage. She tried to see the boy's mother. She
failed, but the boy heard of it and got the wind up, He went to his
father and told him that the girl was trying to force him into
marriage. He painted the girl as a fortune hunter, knowing this the
most powerful appeal to his money-mad parent.
The banker was enthusiastic about his Son's plan of getting
other boys to swear that they, too, had intercourse with the girl,
Bessie, and that she had not been a virgin at the time. Then the
father went to Bessie's mother and accused her of trying to marry
her daughter to his son. This was the first the amazed woman had
beard of the whole thing. She knew Bessie had been dating the
banker's son, but she thought it just a boy and girl friendship.
For once, a mother remained loyal. Usually it seems to me that
those whose love and faith should be bulwarks for our younger
generation are the first to believe any rumors about their beloved
offspring. I've had girls fell me that their mothers accused them
of immorality if they stayed out late at night, and refused to
believe their explanation of tardiness. Some of these girls
eventually decided that they might as well play the game if they
were to get the blame.
But Bessie's mother, Mrs. G, refused to believe the banker's
lurid tale of how Bessie had been playing fast and loose with the
town boys and was now trying to fasten the blame on his innocent
son. Part of her loyalty may have sprung from the banker's misstep
in including her in the accusation. He blamed her for plotting the
whole business and using her daughter as a willing tool.
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Mrs. G. also refused to believe that her daughter had been
intimate with any boy other than the banker's son. Bessie told her
the whole thing, and she upheld her daughter. The town was in an
uproar. The widow and her daughter were requested to leave. A
friend of Mrs. G's brought her to me.
"I wouldn't want my daughter to marry a boy like that, even if
he were willing," she said. "What kind of a life could she lead
with him after this? And I certainly don't want her to have a child
by him. He isn't fit to be a father. I don't want any of his money,
and I don't want my daughter to have a child that would be
supported by such horrible people. I'm going to leave the town and
I want to get rid of the child. But X isn't going to get off by
paying me a little money."
In the general uproar, some of the boys revealed -- in
youthful boasts -- how they had lied about Bessie and how young X
had bragged that Bessie was a virgin. The banker soon saw that he
had stirred up a hornet's nest. The whole story came out, and was
whispered throughout the community. The banker's enemies took
delight in spreading it. Finally he tried to buy off the widow. She
refused any of his money, even enough to pay for the abortion. The
banker's son was shipped off to a military academy.
The girl got her abortion. I saw to that. There was no time
for arguing over who was to pay for it and who wasn't. I admired
the widow's spunk in refusing the money that, according to any
code, her daughter was entitled to. It was her best way of refuting
charges that she was trying to gold-dig or blackmail the banker.
She had to leave the town, of course, for the girl's sake. But she
was not entirely unavenged.
I don't mean to paint all small towns as dens of iniquity
where a poor girl is never safe. If I exaggerate, it is simply that
I hear few tales of sweetness and light in my office.
Shortly after the case of Mrs. G, I got exactly the opposite.
A designing mother accused the son of a prominent man of seducing
her daughter. The son denied it, and the father believed him. They
forced the girl to have an examination, which proved that she was
a virgin.
In my business, you soon learn that truth about sex is
stranger than fiction. A prosecuting attorney told me of a 10-year-
old girl who came into his office with her mother. The child's
parents were divorced and she divided her time between them.
The father lived on a farm. The girl didn't like it, and she
wrote her mother making accusations of incest against her father.
The mother rushed to her, and then went to the prosecutor to file
charges against her former husband and to obtain complete custody
of the child.
"The kid acted mighty funny," the attorney told me. "I could
see that she didn't like to live in the country. She was used to
town, where she could go to movies and have plenty of playmates. So
I had the county physician examine her. Sure enough, he found no
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signs that she'd been ravished. The kid then admitted that she'd
made the whole story up so that she could go back to her mother. I
told the mother that she'd better drop the charges and work out
some friendly agreement with her ex-husband.
He sighed. "Attorneys and doctors hear some queer things" he
said philosophically.
He was right. When people ask the secret of my marital
happiness I say that I see enough tragedy in my office and I
learned my lessons without any experiments at home.
A colleague of mine told me about a prominent woman who was
trying to divorce her husband. She told all her friends he was
impotent. Just as they succeeded in agreeing on a friendly charge,
she became pregnant.
I don't know how she managed her divorce, but it probably was
an embarrassing situation. My colleague laughed heartily. I didn't.
For a somewhat similar case was brought to me.
"I'm planning to divorce my husband," the woman, whom I shall
call Janet said. "I'm going to marry another man. And now to throw
a monkey wrench into the works, I am pregnant."
"Well," I told her, "if you're planning to marry the man, go
ahead and have the child. You can get the divorce in Reno in plenty
of time. It may be a bit embarrassing, but that's one of the risks
you took. You and your lover will just have to face the music."
"You don't understand," she said. "My husband is the father of
the child."
With difficulty I restrained a grin. "That does make it a
problem."
"I can't go through with it," she explained desperately. "You
see, it's like this. I'm divorcing my husband because of
infidelity. We've been married about five years and I see there's
no hope of changing his ways. He's fond of me but he can't resist
women -- and they can't resist him. I don't think these affairs
mean much to him -- but they mean a lot to me."
Janet paused for a few moments, searching for words. I waited.
You can't just walk into a doctor's office -- unless he's an out-
and-out quack -- and demand an abortion. All these confessions may
sound a bit queer, but if a doctor has any standing at all, he has
to be convinced that for the sake of humanity this case is worth
taking a risk.
"I stood it as long as I could," she said. "Finally I was
forced to realize that such a marriage would drive me crazy. I like
security. I want to be respectable. Don made me feel casual,
unimportant. I was his wife, but there was nothing that we had that
he didn't share with any woman of uneasy virtue. It was killing my
love and my self respect. I was tormented by jealousy at first, and
then I found myself becoming a little resigned. But I never knew
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when he'd meet some woman who'd make a fuss. One or two of his
flames did come to me and demand that I give Don up to them. Don
was horrified at that. He liked being married to me -- because it
gave him plenty of freedom. But I hate scenes."
"And then," Janet went on. "I met Andy. I admit I poured it on
a little about being the misunderstood wife. Andy was sympathetic,
and we fell in love with each other. With Andy I could have
everything I want, security, comfort. I could be an actual wife. He
is steady-going and he has high ideals. If I lose Andy, I'll
probably try the dismal experiment of becoming a philandering wife.
I'm not cut out for that sort of thing and I'd make a mess of it."
"I know," I told her. I'd 'seen plenty of women driven to
extramarital affairs by unfaithful husbands. Frequently it wrecks
their marriages because the husbands never feel that anything they
have done justifies the same action in their wives.
"Andy and I agreed that I should get a divorce," Janet
continued. "I put off telling Don about it. I know Andy won't
understand that. He's a matter-of-fact person who makes a decision
and sticks to it. And he couldn't understand how I could still be
fond of Don and hate to hurt him, even if he has hurt me a lot in
the past. Finally I just left the traditional note on the pin
cushion and departed."
"And then?" I asked.
"And then I discover I'm pregnant." She shrugged her
shoulders. "I've got to do something about it, and I didn't want to
try any crude things that might keep me from bearing Andy's
children. It's so early that it should be simple. But you can see
my position. I could never make Andy understand that after I had
agreed to a divorce I would take my husband as a lover. I've
thought of all the possible reasons and none of them would be
credible to Andy. He'd feel that I didn't really love him -- and I
do. He'd think it my duty to stay with Don if I loved him enough to
go to bed with him, and he'd think me utterly a hussy if I told him
I didn't want to live with Don any more."
"And why did you do it?" I asked.
"I don't know." Janet flung her hands up. "Why do we do
anything? Why did I marry Don when I knew pretty well what he was
then? I did it because he was so attractive to me that I felt I'd
rather risk a little unhappiness than lose him entirely. And oddly
enough I'm still a little fond of him. We've lived together five
years. It's hard to wipe all of that out. To be honest," she turned
and faced me, "I think it was more or less force of habit. He came
into my room late at night when I was asleep, and the next thing I
knew he was making love to me. That was always Don's way of
starting a reconciliation after he'd been unfaithful. And I had
submitted to him before when I was angry or sad, and, anyhow, there
wasn't time to think. I suppose I could have made a scene and told
Don I meant to divorce him. But the fact remains that I didn't.
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"Maybe there was a little sentimentalism about it, too. A
desire to have one pleasant night with Don before our life was
closed entirely. Anyhow, he stayed the rest of the night with me,
and I didn't use any preventives. And, of all the nights, it had to
be that one on which I was caught. I once wanted a child thinking
it would help me hold Don. Later, I decided it would be bad because
Don didn't care for children; he would assuredly be unfaithful
while I was pregnant and I would hate that and the child would make
me even more helpless. Now, just as I had put an end to the whole
dismal mess, this had to happen."
"Don't you think you ought to tell Andy the truth?" I asked.
"What is the truth?" Janet asked. "That I, being still a wife
in name, did not refuse my husband? I can't ask Andy to marry me
when I'm carrying Don's child. It would be an impossible situation.
If the child already were born, it would be different. He might not
object to a two or three-year-old child, although Andy is great on
doing his duty and there would be difficulty about the custody of
the child. But I couldn't go to him like this. There would be jokes
-- he'd be suspected of being the father, of course. It might
seriously hurt, his business career if there was scandal."
"Can't you blame it on Andy?" I asked.
She shook her head. "He's too honorable. We haven't been
lovers, and he won't take me until we're married. I know; I've
offered myself to him.
"He isn't as much of a prig as I've made him out to be. Just
as I suppose I've given Don a little too much of the worst of it in
talking to Andy. A woman probably would understand how I
automatically let my husband make passionate love to me when I was
half-asleep. And she could understand how, even when I had decided
it was impossible for me to live with Don any longer, I could have
a sort of affection for him, a remembrance of our honeymoon days
and early married life and the fun we have had together, that would
make it pleasant, even more pleasant when I thought that it would
be our last time together."
"I know," I said. "Over-compensation. You find it in men and
women who are being unfaithful or have decided to separate. The
guilty person feels that he or she has taken something important
away from the other mate and by way of compensation lavishes
tenderness on them."
She nodded. "But Andy's never been married, and I'm afraid
he's never had any really passionate love affairs. I say I'm
afraid, because I'll probably make a lot of little slips, such as
calling him Don or talking about Don without rancor. But he's what
I want, and he's what I need. I'm not going to let Don or Don's
unexpected child cheat me out of it."
Here was a neat problem. She could have gone back to Don. She
had not committed adultery, and she said Don would take her back,
although he did not seem greatly upset over. her desertion.
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"He fancies I'll come back of my own free will if he lets me
alone," she said. "And he's too lazy to exert himself. Out of sight
is out of mind with Don. If he happened to meet me he'd probably
make an eloquent little speech urging me to return and saying he is
broken-hearted. But if he doesn't see me, he'll let the whole thing
slide and besides he might take the attitude that the child is
Andy's and I've been jilted by Andy. He couldn't understand Andy's
attitude in not making passionate love to me. Anyhow, as I said, I
don't want to go back to Don."
Perhaps she should have told Andy. After all, the child was
not illegitimate. She was not disgraced. She had made Andy no
promises. Janet was not a loose woman. But, as she said, a bachelor
of Andy's type could not realize how after several years of
marriage sex becomes more or less automatic. Don, of course, was
innocent of blame in that particular instance. He did not know that
Janet was planning a friendly divorce. The interlude did not change
Janet's mind. She merely regarded it as the close of her sex life
with Don, and she felt that it was really no more of an infidelity
to Andy than any similar experience she had had with Don since she
had met Andy.
On the surface, it looked as if she should take it on the chin
and go through what would simply be an embarrassing situation;
perhaps wait until after the child was born before she got her
divorce. She was still fond of Don and perhaps she should take up
her married life again. That probably would be the viewpoint of the
moralists,
But Janet was not stupid about herself or her condition.
"My pregnancy is an accident occurring at the worst time," she
said. "I'm not dumb enough to think that it was an act of God at a
dramatic moment to keep Don and me together. Don doesn't want
children. I want them, but I don't want Don's. If I stayed with
him, I should hate the child, hate myself for being a darned fool
and hate Don for getting me into this fix, although it really isn't
his fault. I'd think that his selfish desire to have me when he
wanted me ruined my life. I'd reached the limit of endurance in my
present existence. If I felt that sex had cheated me out of my
chance for happiness, I'd fling my cap over the windmill for good
and try to outdo Don. Then things would be in a mess."
So she got her abortion. Then she obtained a quiet divorce and
married Andy. They seem very happy. She has never told him of the
incident. I think she is wise. She understands him as well as one
person can understand another. And so she knows there are certain
things that he could never understand.
A second husband or wife is always vaguely jealous of the
first. A second wife was pregnant, and came to me -- not for an
abortion -- but for other medical advice. As it happened, she had
had an abortion before marriage.
"I've never told David about it and I won't," she said. "He
talks to me a good deal about his first wife and that's bad enough
without my chiming in with tales of my past lovers. If he were
jealous, it would be bad, and if he weren't, it would be worse. I
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tried asking David not to talk about Alice, his first wife, but he
looked surprised and hurt and said one of the nicest things about
me was that he could talk about such things freely. He doesn't see
any danger in it, because he knows that it is all over. But I am
forced to realize that he must once have been very fond of Alice
and wonder if his affection for me will dwindle just as quickly.
Also, I can't keep from feeling somehow that his first wife had the
best of it. She had him when he was youthful and idealistic and
more romantic than he is now. Of course, I know that my marriage is
safer because my husband wasn't romantic and impulsive when he
selected me. All the same, I wince, when he talks of some youthful
and quixotic thing he did with her."
The more I see of the mistakes made in sex, the less I think
of the noble idea of a man and woman telling everything in their
pasts before marriage. Of course, if there is something that the
husband is sure to find out, such as a previous marriage or a
scandal that will be immediately resurrected, then the woman had
better beat the gossips to it.
"When I became engaged, my husband began asking a lot of
question's, in a joking way," a woman once told me. "He smiled, but
he was serious behind his light manner. I hadn't given him an
opening by asking him about his past. I didn't want to know about
it. I knew he was virile and he was not diseased. I liked him for
himself, not for any record as a Casanova or a monk. So after I had
answered or evaded several questions, I said, Look, John, if you
want virginal innocence in a bride you have asked the wrong woman
to marry you. I'm not a virgin and you'd be sorry if, at my age, I
were. I have done a few things in my life that I regret and very
few that I'm ashamed of. Probably I've been a fool at times, as who
hasn't? But I've a sense of loyalty to the men who've been in my
past and I'm not going to talk about them. I took my affairs
seriously then or I wouldn't have gone through with them and they
deserve some reticence now.'"
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He was a little offended at first," she replied. "I told him
that I hadn't asked him any questions because I thought that a man
I loved would naturally be all right. I thought I deserved the same
faith. I was 30 years old when I married. It would have been odd if
there had been no men in my life. Some of the men had asked me to
marry them. One of my former lovers still lived in my town. Had I
told John all about my past, it would have risen to haunt me from
time to time. John would have looked at my former men friends with
jealous and prejudiced eyes. He would have suspected me of
lingering affection for my former lover. Or he might have thought
that I was regretting not having married some more prosperous man.
Then he would never understand the accidents."
"Accidents?" I asked.
She nodded. "Yes, accidents. He'd think they were planned or
I was weak or something was wrong, although he probably has had the
same type of experiences. I mean things like going somewhere and
having the car or the motorboat break down and staying the night.
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Maybe you just sleep. Maybe you sleep together. I'll give you an
example. A man and I went on an all-day picnic to a cabin omened by
some mutual friends. The whole thing, I warn you, sounds like a
plot for a romance except for the ending. We went in a car. when we
started the man said, 'Now remind me to get some gasoline.' I
agreed. Well, it was one of those trips when you whiz past a
filling station and the driver says, 'I should have stopped there,'
and by that time you're a mile on down the road and you wait for
the next one. Finally we ran out of stations because we were in a
wooded country and off the highway. Jack thought we had enough
gasoline to get us there and back to civilization. There wasn't
anything. deliberate about it. We were just careless."
I grinned. "So you ran out of gas."
She nodded again. "We didn't discover it until we got ready to
go home. We'd spent a perfectly congenial day, had our picnic,
walked around, admired the views and it was dark when we started to
go back. The car wouldn't start. I was dead tired. So was Jack.
Something had gone wrong with the gasoline gauge. It showed about
two gallons. Jack looked at me and laughed and we decided to stay
there. The next morning Jack could hunt around for a farmhouse. It
seemed utterly silly to go barging around in the dark when there
was a snug cabin stocked with wood and groceries.
"Plausible enough," I agreed.
"Yes. But here comes the part that is hard to explain to a man
you're about to marry. I'd met Jack about three years before had
been attracted to him. But he was going with someone else then and
so was I, and nothing came of it. About a week or so before the
picnic, I'd met Jack again. He was just back from a long trip, and
he gave me a rush. I wasn't going with anyone in particular. We'd
done a little petting, nothing else.
"Jack hadn't been with a woman for months. The inevitable
happened. I liked and respected Jack. He was very attractive
physically. But I wasn't in love with him and he wasn't in love
with me and we didn't pretend to be. I like to look back on the
episode as being an adventure. The next morning, we found a tin of
gasoline in the back of a woodshed. If we'd rummaged around a
little more or had a flashlight we'd probably have found it the
night before. We laughed, but both of us said that we were glad we
hadn't discovered it."
"And you don't intend to tell your husband about it?" I asked.
"No," she replied. "You see Jack and I had a couple more dates
and then his business took him away, probably forever. If he'd
stayed, we might have had a long love affair; we might even have
been married by now. I don't know. I've heard men say that when two
nice people meet and have a powerful physical attraction the thing
to do is, well, to do something about it. But I once ruined a
beginning love affair by telling this story to the man. He had told
me of experiences which seemed much more casual to me. But it
ruined his idealistic view of me, and he couldn't bear that."
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"So I learned my lesson," she concluded briskly. "I've thought
a lot about that since. I was going to be frank and straightforward
with that man. I was being idealistic when I told him about Jack.
I thought the man was so fine and understanding that he deserved
nothing less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth. I thought he'd appreciate my frankness and my confidence. I
should have known better. He was extremely jealous, and in his
jealousy he said things that hurt. Afterward he felt that he'd made
a fool of himself and he tried to salve his vanity by convincing
himself I was not what he had thought. This is getting a little
complicated. But it was a matter of his egotism. He took it calmly
when I first told him, and afterward he started thinking of it and
began to get more jealous; and he exploded and insisted I had done
an awful thing, so he could excuse his own spasm."
"I agree with you," I said. "There are only a few things any
woman needs to tell her husband. I think she should say whether she
had been married before or that she doesn't really love him and
loves someone that she can't marry for some reason. Then she should
tell him if she can't have children, if she doesn't like children
or if she has a child already. I mean, of course, an illegitimate
child whose existence is being concealed. Chances are, he'll find
out about the child later and then it will be worse. And she should
tell him if there is anything wrong with her physically so that she
can't do her share in the sex partnership. That seems to me all the
information any woman needs to or should give her husband and all
any husband needs to give his wife. I include abortions in the list
of things she doesn't need to tell him, unless there is a big
chance that he may find out about it or unless the job has been
bungled so that she can't have children."
There has always seemed something grisly and morbid to me
about raking over the past just as a marriage is about to begin. It
is unhealthy emotionally. Why drag out the dead on the eve of a
wedding? It turns it into a wake. An emotional woman probing into
the past may become upset and wonder if she's doing the right thing
or start thinking of what might have been. Likewise, tiny doubts of
the other person must creep in after detailed reminiscences of the
past.
A young girl came to me for a physical examination before her
marriage.
"I'm going to have a clean bill of health for my husband at
any rate," she told me. "If I'm pronounced sound of wind and limb
and technically a good girl I think that's enough. I'm not going to
drag out the love letters. I burn them as soon as I get them,
anyhow. And any girl past her middle 20's is a fool if she
confesses her life and loves; If she's been at all popular it's
going to sound pretty over-whelming to the gentleman in love with
her, and if she hadn't been popular, she doesn't want him to know
it."
She smiled at me. "Some girls get too modern. But it isn't
modern to know when to keep your mouth shut. Our grandmothers knew
plenty about maidenly reticence. The trouble with the modern girl
is not so much what she does but her habit of talking about it at
the top of her voice."
Which seemed words of wisdom to a man in my profession.
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
X. MY WIFE LENDS A HAND
Ordinarily, as I have said, I tried to keep Norma separate
from my professional life. Of course, I talked over my cases with
her and frequently I relied upon her decisions.
When we were first married, she wanted to act as my office
girl.
"It would save you money," she insisted. "Then you'd need only
a nurse for operations. I could keep books and answer the telephone
and sterilize instruments as well as a nurse could."
I shook my head. "No. I've found out by now that most of the
old platitudes are true. One of them is that you can't touch pitch
without being defiled. I don't want you to come in daily contact
with the most sordid side of sex. One of the nicest things about
our marriage is that I can look forward to coming home at night and
finding you serene and lovely. I can talk over anything that
bothers me, but you haven't been upset by seeing these people and
hearing their stories."
She laughed. "Darling, don't think I don't hear about sex just
because I keep away from your office. When two women get together,
the conversation goes from clothes and diet to its logical end of
sex."
I grinned. "I didn't know. I know that women talk to me mostly
of sex, but in a strictly professional way."
"I went to a bridge luncheon today," Norma said. "And we got
to talking about abortions and miscarriages. Don't look shocked.
These were all nice women. It just happened that one of them had
had an operation. She said it was a curettage to stop a hemorrhage,
but we were all a little suspicious, I think. Anyway the
conversation turned to Women Who Do Things. And such a lot of
gossip as you wouldn't hear in days, I heard that Doctor B does
abortions, too. I didn't know that before."
"I don't know it yet," I answered. "Doctor B might do one for
a close friend, but I rather doubt it. He'd probably send the
friend to me or to another doctor here who has some shady practice.
Don't believe all you hear about such matters. A lot of women who
come to me thought that they could persuade their family physicians
to help them out of jams, but they were mistaken when it came to a
showdown."
"I know," she said. "Women will say something as rumor and
when it's next repeated it's a fact and next time it's doubled. For
instance, some one told me that Mrs. G had had three abortions."
I grinned again. "Mrs, G had an operation several years ago
that would prevent her having any children. She had a tumor, and
she didn't menstruate for some time. What happened was that the
tumor made her abdomen enlarged and there were rumor's that she was
pregnant. Since she didn't have any children, a lot of gossip-
minded women supposed that she was doing something about it."
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"That's what I suspected. But you know I hadn't been around
married women much before I married. I am still a little amazed at
the way the wives all seize a chance to talk about sex. I suppose
they feel that this is one of the privileges of wifehood, to drop
all reticence in such matters, and they make the most of it.
Before, they had to be careful, for nice, unmarried girls aren't
supposed to know about such things."
"That's why my practice grows," I remarked flippantly. "But a
lot of married women don't know very much about sex, and that
causes trouble when they go to dishing out advice. A woman who has
escaped having more than one or two children, chiefly through luck,
isn't in a position to give much advice to a woman who doesn't want
them."
"I'm very popular," Norma said, "because they know I'm a
doctor's wife and they all figure they can get some free
information as well as a lot of gossip from me. I just tell them
that my husband never discusses his cases with me. But I was
surprised at how much talk, true or otherwise, there is floating
around about women. If a woman has a bad time at menstruation, half
her friends jump to the conclusion that she's had a miscarriage.
And if she has an abdominal operation, everyone wants to know if
she had her ovaries removed. If she did, a lot of women think she
probably was diseased or she didn't want children. And how they
dwell on the detail's of their menopauses."
I grinned. "Maybe you'd better come to the office, where the
air is pure and clean and disinfected."
"I Almost burst out laughing at one fat woman," Norma told me.
"She has two children, and she said that when she knew she was
pregnant the second time she was so irritated. I got so mad at
Frank that I just went out and jumped off the porch two or three
times, she said. 'But it didn't do any good. Of course, I don't
think it's right to do anything about such things.'"
"What she meant," I interrupted, "was that she didn't think it
right to go to a doctor for such things because that would cost
money and she'd probably have to tell her husband and it might get
out. So she's willing to risk her health by some such silly trick.
A fall might have caused her to abort and on the other hand it
might just have injured the child or broken her leg. Probably she
braced herself for the jump so she landed lightly."
"Another woman said that she got nervous and so she took
something," Norma went on. "It just made her awfully sick and about
a week later she had a normal menstruation. She said she was
ashamed of herself and never told her husband."
"Of course not. She wouldn't tell her husband, but she
probably was irritable and nervous and raised hell about something
else and he wondered what was the matter with her and why she
didn't seem to want anything to do with him sexually; and he
decided that she was tired of him. And it may be that at that
psychological moment he met an attractive woman who didn't seem to
have many scruples, and the next thing he knew he was having an
affair. That's the way those things usually go. Then the wife talks
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about how she was dishonored and betrayed and men are only animals
after all. She say's that she's always been faithful and she's
suffered agonies of anxiety on his behalf and that is the way he
treats her. But she never let him know about her worrying."
"I don't know," Norma mused thoughtfully. "You'd think that
two people who are married could talk anything over and reach an
understanding. But sometimes it seems to me that love causes
misunderstanding. At first the wife hates to do anything that would
spoil the romantic attitude of the honeymoon. Later she's afraid of
discussion that will cause her husband to be less ardent."
She smiled at me. "We started with less disadvantages than
most couples, because we had talked over so much of this before
marriage and understood each other. But I can see how wives would
hate to bring up such things. You, being a doctor, ask me personal
questions that an ordinary husband probably wouldn't think about.
For instance, you check my periods, and if I'm delayed you do
something about it. But no average husband would think of that. And
if he comes home worried, the wife hates to add to his worries. If
the husband seems gay, she feels that she doesn't want to Spoil his
mood by dragging up a disagreeable subject. So she just lets it go,
waiting for the perfect opportunity. And the opportunity never
comes."
"I know," I agreed. "And oddly enough, some women resent their
husbands asking them questions. I've had women say that their sex
life was marred because their husbands asked them how they felt and
how they enjoyed intercourse. The men were merely trying to make
Sure the wives were satisfied. They were unusually thoughtful and
knew that some women are slower than the man. But the wives got
self-conscious about it."
I used to be constantly amazed at the many mental quirks women
have regarding sexual matters. But most of them are easily traced
to a desire to calm their consciences and to the idea that anything
that isn't found out is all right.
For instance, a woman will excuse home attempts to abort
herself. Going to a doctor seems to definitely ally herself with
the wrong kind of woman and forces her to come out in the open and
admit that she doesn't want a child and is willing to enlist
assistance to get rid of the fetus.
She will risk injury to herself by several such attempts, and
then go ahead and have the child if she fails, rather than go to a
doctor and do the thing scientifically and safely. Then she may
preen herself later because she didn't do anything, forgetting that
it was because of ignorance that she didn't succeed in aborting
herself.
Likewise, many women feel that it is all right to have
abortions up to about two months, explaining that the fetus is
"nothing much but a germ." Of course, the danger increases as time
passes, but five days after conception there is life. What these
women really mean is that if they wait until they are far along
people will notice the change in their bodies and suspect something
if there is an abortion.
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Similarly, women, especially religious women, feel that
withdrawal on the part of the man or continence during dangerous
periods is all right, while use of artificial devices to prevent
contraception is sinful. Here again the fear of being found out
enters into it. Most women hate to purchase any type of
contraceptive. Likewise, they hate to ask other women for definite
advice.
Some of them might be shocked out of this false modesty if
they knew the freedom with which men, both married and single,
discuss such matters. Men have far less hesitancy about going to a
doctor for an examination or information and they buy
contraceptives calmly at a drug store.
One woman almost broke up her marriage because she refused to
go to the doctor. She had a physical defect which made intercourse
painful. Yet she delayed a visit to the doctor. Finally her husband
forced her to go. Even then she sulked about it. She even tried the
argument that her husband should be willing to abandon sex life.
On the other hand, there was another young bride who was a
virgin before marriage. For several weeks she had intercourse every
night. Then came a night when her husband was tired and did not
make love to her. She seemed a trifle upset but he paid little
attention to that. He thought that she surely knew that there were
limits to the man's physical powers.
The next day she hastened down to my office, greatly
disturbed. She had been filled with the usual mass of
misinformation that seems to be dished out to virgins by their
feminine relatives and friends and she thought that her sex life
was over just because she had missed one night I assured her that
her husband's love hadn't cooled, and that he hadn't suddenly
become impotent. She went home a wiser wife.
I told Norma about it, but she didn't laugh.
"That isn't so uncommon," she said. "And on the other hand,
there are girls who have been told that once a week is the limit
and they are afraid their husbands are over-sexed if they want
intercourse more often. This girl's case was no joke. A friend of
mine divorced her husband because she wanted intercourse every
night and he couldn't stand it."
Such women are usually dismissed lightly as over-sexed, but in
many cases that isn't true. The man may be too hasty, and the woman
therefore does not get satisfaction. The partly-completed act on
her part leaves her restless, nervous and irritable and desiring
intercourse again as soon as possible, Some men cannot tell when
their wives have had an orgasm, and if the woman doesn't tell them
they may postpone the second act. Too, some types of contraceptive
devices prevent the normal culmination of the sex act.
As I said, I tried to keep my home life separated from my
practice, although I discussed things freely, with Norma. After the
birth of our first child, of course, she was too busy at home to
want to work in my office. But from time to time she did bring
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cases to me. I objected, because I didn't want her placed in the
position of a go-between for an abortionist. She laughed when I
told her that.
"Don't you remember how we first met?" she asked.
The first case she called to my attention went smoothly. A
friend came to her and said that another woman, whom I shall call
Gladys, was pregnant and wanted to do something about it.
Gladys was married, but she already had four children, and she
and her husband could not afford any more. She was not in good
health and she hated her present condition.
She had told her friend, Anna, about it and Anna had gone to
her own doctor. The doctor refused to take the case. It was another
example of how a woman optimistically declares that her doctor will
perform an illegal operation and then is turned down. The doctor,
I gathered, had been a little indignant and had asked if Anna had
used his name in any way. Fortunately Anna had not -- or at least
she said she had not.
The next time she tried a more round-about way, by approaching
Noma. Anna said that Gladys had tried the more common home methods,
without success. She was desperate, and was in a continual nervous
state. She had been warned at the birth of her last child that it
would be better for her to wait several years until she had another
one.
"She's one of these helpless women who don't know how to
manage anything," Anna said with a shrug of her shoulders. "You
know the kind. She means well, but somehow she always manages to
muddle things. She didn't have sense enough to insist that her
husband be more careful, and now she's with child again."
Norma saw Gladys and was upset at her weeping. So she, came to
me.
"She'll keep on doing things until she gets herself in such a
condition that she'll either die in childbirth or she'll kill the
child beforehand," she told me. "She's in that hysterical state
where she's willing to try anything. And, you know, old women can
offer more methods of abortion than they can for curing colds.
She'll keep it a secret, and Anna has promised to see that you will
get your money."
I told them to bring Gladys in. She was what I call the "faded
petunia" type of woman. She worked so hard fixing things for her
husband and her children and keeping her house clean that she never
had any time left for herself. Her skin was wrinkled and her hair
lacked luster. She was not the "good manager" type, and it showed
in her last year's clothes and her bedraggled hair and work-
roughened hands. Of course, her husband did not make much money.
But some women seem to be able to keep themselves up in spite of
being pinched for funds. She was the sort of woman who will make a
martyr of herself and then wonder dumbly why she isn't appreciated,
why her husband doesn't stay home and why her children, when they
grow up, seem to lack respect for her but give her, instead, a sort
of pitying affection.
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I told her I would help her out. Her husband didn't object,
although he was the sort of man who didn't exactly approve of
abortions, just as he liked to pretend that he didn't use
contraceptives because he "disapproved" of such things. He was
willing, it seemed, as long as he did not have to do much about it.
There was nothing to do but give Gladys temporary help by aborting
her and then try to frighten her into being a little more firm with
her husband.
"Isn't there a way that you could fix it so Gladys wouldn't
have any more children?" Anna asked.
I looked my most professional. "She could, of course, have her
ovaries removed. But they are in good condition and I would refuse
to perform such an operation or to advise it."
Anna hesitated a moment. "I've heard that operations can be
performed on men so that they can't become fathers but they still
have their normal sexual feelings."
"Don't believe all you hear," I evaded. "I wouldn't attempt
such a thing. If that's what you mean. In the first place, you'd
never get the man to agree to it. In the second place, the woman
might regret it later. These people want some children. The
children they have might die, and then they couldn't have any more.
I'll give temporary help, but I won't perform sterilization
operations. And don't let anyone fool you with these theories about
hypodermic injections that will make the man sterile for a few
months. Most of the talk about magic and simple operations, is
quackery, along with sure-fire cheap abortions and positive
contraceptives."
Anna, who had gone to school with her, brought me the money
beforehand. Gladys got along as well as could be expected. When she
was well, I sent for Anna.
"I know you've impressed the need for secrecy on her," I said.
"But for some reason I'm upset about the woman. I can't help
feeling sorry for her. For the love of Mike, try to get her to
understand that unselfishness is not always a virtue. Too much
unselfishness makes other people uncomfortable. As long as she has
that air of hang-dog devotion, she'll be run over. She's made a
mild rebellion in having an abortion. See if you can keep up the
good work."
I don't know what Anna told her. Probably she hinted that if
Gladys didn't pay more attention to herself, her husband would
start straying. There were plenty of examples she could point to.
Later I saw Gladys and she looked amazingly better. Her children
were no longer dressed in the most expensive coats and hats and the
daintiest of handmade frocks and I doubt if she still slaved hours
over a pet dish of her husband's. I remarked about it to Anna. Anna
looked vague and mysterious.
"Her husband took his stenographer out to lunch and dinner
while she was "sick," she said. Then she grinned. "But he doesn't
do it now," she added.
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Which reminds me of a young bride who came to me for
information about birth control.
"I thought I heard you say once that you wanted children," I
said. "You came in here before marriage for a physical examination
and said you wanted to be sure that you could bear healthy children
without much pain. What's made you change your mind?"
"Just before I was married, I saw something that gave me a
decided shock," she replied. "One of my best friends has only been
married about a year and she's pregnant. She's the sort who takes
it hard. She had a lovely figure, and she hates to go around now
that she's big and clumsy. Besides, she's ill, nausea in the
morning, headaches, general listlessness and all that. Betty was
the sort who was always the life of the party, and she won't go
anywhere feeling bad. So she stays at home."
"Yes," I told her, "but the chances are you'd got by pretty
easy if you took care of yourself"
"Oh, I'm going to have children. But in my own good time. I
hadn't finished my story. Betty's husband, Jim, married her because
they had so much fun together. He likes to dance and get around.
They decided after marriage that it would be more fun to just
forget precautions and let nature take its course. Jim fancied that
it would be fan to have a toddler around the house. And they said
they wanted to be young enough that they could grow up with the
children."
"Yes," I responded, "I've heard that. It has its points. But
one of the disadvantages is that children need a civilized adult
for a parent and not a happy-go-lucky playmate."
"Well," she said, "I saw Jim lunching with an attractive girl
the other day, and then I saw him dining with another girl. I know
it's no fun for him to go home and find Betty moaning on the couch
or to learn that she's at her mother's and have her mother looking
reproachfully at him for what he's done to her darling girl. But at
the same time, Jim is doing considerable partying and in the
company of a good-looking divorcee who always had her eye on him.
I don't know how far the affair has gone, and I didn't tell Betty,
because I'm not the sort of girl who rushes to her friends and says
'I think you ought to know.' Betty isn't in any condition to have
to face too many facts."
"Anyhow," I suggested, "her husband probably will repent
sooner or later and rush back to her."
"Maybe. But I'll admit I didn't like to see this on the eve of
my own marriage. For Jim and Betty were one of the good examples
that caused me to take the leap. But I'm no babe-in-the-woods. I
realize that it's fairly common for a man to do some playing around
while his wife is pregnant. I know that a lot of men feel that it's
unfair for them to be denied sex life for three or four months.
Personally I feel that's a selfish viewpoint. But I believe in
facing facts. I thought it over and decided that my husband was a
normal male, and that, being so, the wedding ceremony was no
insurance that he really was going to cherish me forever and be
blind to all other women."
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"Yes," I agreed. I like to encourage these girls to talk to me
because I may be able to pass some of their good advice on later.
"So I decided that since I loved the man and had gone this far
with the engagement, there was no point in being a coward. But
there was no point either in making things too hard for myself.
What I want is to have as much fun with my husband as I can for a
year or two. We can't keep the rose-colored spectacles on forever.
But I want to have a little care-free youth together first."
"And," I said, "You want your husband to get into the habit of
thinking of you as his permanent partner in fun so that you'll be
more certain if he does stray a little he'll come back to you."
"Certainly," she agreed. "And I don't believe that six or
seven. months is enough time for that. I want our marriage to be
well established before I take on any risks. If after two years of
married companionship I get pregnant, I can more easily condone any
lack of attention from my husband. I'll remember that we've had a
lot of fun and maybe a slight marital vacation wouldn't hurt either
of us. Furthermore, Bill would be used to regarding himself as a
married man. He'd have got in the habit of making small adjustments
and sacrifices for our mutual welfare. And people would be
accustomed to regarding him as a married man, which is important.
"I don't want to wait too long. For if I do, I may wait until
our marriage is beginning to pall a little on Bill and my pregnancy
would be the one thing needed to cause him to seek diversion
elsewhere. It's all very well," and she grinned at me, "to talk
about baby hands bringing people together and husbands rushing back
to their wives when they find them sewing tiny garments. But while
the husband may be pleased, he may also be annoyed. And he isn't
going to enjoy having a wife who is just a human incubator for
several months."
"Well," I told her, "I'm thankful that you're thinking of this
before and not after you're pregnant. I don't think you'll have any
trouble with Bill. Just remember that it's important not to go to
thinking you're too smart and let the iron hand come out of the
velvet glove. Don't ever let your husband know that you're managing
him. You can be too modern in this sex game.
And you can. Which brings me back to my wife again. I came
home one knight to find her laughing.
"I think I've got other case for you," she announced. "I
demand, of course, that you split your fee."
"Split fees are unethical," I said sternly, and then kissed
her, "Who's been bothering you now?"
"It's really funny and yet it isn't. Kitty was over here
today."
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I knew Kitty and I grimaced. The last time I saw her she was
playing her usual good Samaritan role. She married a wealthy man
and the marriage turned a little sour. So she finds her pleasure in
doing as much good as she can with her social prestige and her
money. I like Kitty, but she usually finds good works for her
friends to do.
"She hasn't found another old woman trying to trick a young
man into marriage, has she?" I asked.
Kitty had once brought me a middle-aged widow who urgently
wanted to marry. She'd started an affair with a young man, taking
him as her protege. The man was a young artist; and she bought some
pictures from him and also got some of her friends to help.
Then she'd used her help to get the man to become her lover.
it was a disagreeable story. The woman appeared very pleasant and
cultured, but she really was an unscrupulous hell-cat. The artist
was a handsome young idiot, and, like many creative workers, he had
little common sense about finances or about his social life. It was
simply that most of his intelligence went into his work. He drifted
into the affair, and the woman persuaded him that she was using
contraceptives. Then she told him that she was pregnant and they
must marry. I gathered that she had used other wiles without
success. Part of the time the boy simply did not know what she was
getting at. He really thought she was interested in his work and in
himself only as an artist. He became her lover because he thought
that would make her happier. He never dreamed of marriage until she
came out flat-footed with the demand.
He went to Kitty in horror. She felt responsible, for she'd
bought some pictures from him and had introduced him to the other
woman. Kitty came to me.
"The old hag has her hooks on him and she won't let him go,"
she said with brutal frankness. "And he's still got enough ideals
and chivalry to think that he must marry her if she wants him to.
He knows that it's her fault, but he feels that if she loved him
enough to do a thing like this he ought to marry her and give her
what happiness he can. Then he feels indebted to her.
"Understand," she went on. "He isn't the gigolo type. He
really has talent, if not genius, but he had a lot of hard luck.
And this old dame looked like a god-send to him. She's clever and
she arranged it so that he wasn't suspicious of what she wanted
until too late. I should have guessed what she was up to, but I
didn't think that he was so dumb, and I thought she merely wanted
an affair."
"Well," I asked, "why doesn't he marry her, and play her own
game. He can wait until after the child is born and then sue her
for divorce."
"You don't get it," she responded. "I told you he wasn't the
gigolo type. Probably she'd soon tire of him, but I don't know.
She's the sort who would feed on youth. But even if she'd let him
get a divorce soon, she'd absolutely ruin him first. Alone, he
might get to be a great artist, but he won't if he marries her."
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I talked to the boy, and I saw some of his work. He hadn't
fallen yet for his patroness talk about an easy road to fame and
fortune. He was bewildered at her failure to understand that he had
to have rest and solitude to do any work. He was already in a bad
physical condition from too much drink, late hours, rich food and
hectic gaiety.
"You see," Kitty told me, "the boy's not spoiled yet. But it
isn't good for young artists to have too much money. He's got to
work hard. What he needs, if he marries, is a woman who will
sacrifice herself to his art, see that he eats, sleeps and has
plenty of time to work. Mrs. D will ruin him forever in a year. And
he's good. I know about such things."
He did have a picture of a young alums madonna that haunted
me. But Mrs. D wanted him to paint pretty women, society ladies. He
didn't want to. He said there was no truth, no art, in that.
So I agreed to help Kitty. She brought Mrs. D to me, and I
examined her. She was pregnant, all right. Then I told her vaguely
that she was going to have a bad time. I gave her some medicine
which increased rather than helped her nausea. Kitty laid it on
pretty thick about how she'd lose her figure -- she was one of
those women who dieted and massaged in order to keep slim. And she
was afraid of pain. Her idea seemed to be that with enough
specialists she could somehow slide through, but I really believe
she had never intended to go through with childbirth. She probably
meant to have an abortion as soon as the marriage was performed.
But she had an abortion first. I performed it. She wanted it
kept secret and this fitted in fine with Kitty's plans. The
engagement hadn't been announced, and I pretended ignorance of the
whole business. I was simply a doctor who had been called in. As
soon as the abortion was completed, Kitty got the boy away. Mrs. D
suspected some underhanded work, but she had no comeback. She'd
asked for the abortion, and she got it. She certainly wasn't going
to picture herself as a jilted woman. And when the young idealist
learned that his fiancee had had an abortion rather than lose her
figure, he forgot everything she'd said about the sacredness of
their perfect love and its culmination in the birth of their child.
Naturally, however, I was wary of any more of Kitty's plans
for saving humanity. My role is not persuading women to have
abortions.
"What did Kitty want this time?" I inquired bluntly.
"It's a little complicated," Norma explained.
"All Kitty's stories are complicated. And I don't like your being
mixed up in them. You can get burned putting out a fire as well as
playing with one. But go ahead."
Kitty, it seemed, had a friend, a small town girl who had run
away from home, come to the city and drifted in with a Bohemian
set. Like most girls of this type, she went to extremes, or wanted
to. She got a good job and she had a couple of love affairs broken
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off before they really got started. That gave her a sort of phobia.
She felt that she must have a really modern liaison. She talked the
usual hooey about liberating herself and being utterly free.
Her set did a lot of preaching about free love and the
advantages of illegitimate children. Most of them practiced free
love all right, but they confined their love children to writing
pamphlets about them and long discussions in cigarette-smoke filled
garrets and tea rooms.
Then the girl, Clara, met a middle-aged man who was married
and had three children. He was satisfied with his marriage, but he
was still handsome and since he worked in town and his home was in
the country, he took advantage of "business conferences" to have a
series of love affairs.
Blair usually pictured his wife as a dull housewife whose sole
thoughts were about the children. He was whimsical about his own
"dreary" existence, and he kept a flat in town where he entertained
his lady-loves in the best romantic fashion.
He met Clara, and in an exceedingly short time took her for
his mistress. She was filled with ideas about the beauty of free
love and she thought it romantic to have an affair with an older
and a married man. Blair, on the other hand, had just been given
his dismissal by a married woman who preferred not to risk losing
her husband, and it soothed his vanity to immediately take a young
and good looking girl.
Kitty said that he was a romantic lover, having his meetings
in a flat decked out like an Oriental harem and going in for
poetical thoughts and tenderness. Clara immediately fell deeply in
love with him, so much so that he began to get worried, for she
wanted to go away on week ends with him and finally asked him to
desert his wife. This didn't suit him. Like most men of that age
and type, be, wanted adventure, but wanted it adjusted to a
comfortable routine, one that did not interfere with his business
or his family.
Clara suspected that he was tiring of her a little, and she
conceived the idea of having a child by him: Then, she thought, he
would remain her lover forever, she could move into his flat or
perhaps have a little place in the country. The latter idea seemed
more romantic; he could go out there for week ends and nights and
they could be closer than ever. It would keep him from having to go
to parties, which, he said, bored him, and save him from too much
time with his wife. Eventually she thought they might be married,
but that was not important.
She didn't tell Blair this until she actually got with child.
As soon as she had missed her period she informed him of it and
waited for his gratitude for what she had done. It didn't come,
Blair was tiring of her and of her demands. It had been fun to
initiate this girl into sex life and watch her respond and her
passion grow. But she was becoming too demanding, and he was no
longer as young as he used to be. He was about ready to break it
off.
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He was horrified when she told him. He urged her to do
something immediately, and offered to make all the arrangements or
to give her the money. She refused, and he then jumped at something
she'd said and broke up the affair.
Since then, she'd tried to see him but failed. And she
couldn't decide what to do.
"Tell Kitty to let her make up her mind," I growled irritably.
"You know, Norma, that I lean over backward in this business rather
than have any insinuations that I try to build up my practice by
urging abortions or even consenting to do them without A very good
reason."
"Anyhow," I added. "the girl sounds like a fool."
"She isn't a fool. She's just got some silly radical notions.
Kitty said that Blair is an utter cad, and he will deny all blame.
And Blair's wife is a fine woman. She knows about Blair, but she
takes it rather than break up the home and ruin her children's
lives. Clara just needs a little time to settle down."
"I'll talk to Kitty," I promised.
Kitty had about persuaded Clara that giving birth to a free-
love child was not the noble thing she'd thought it would be. She'd
lose her job and it would be hard to find another one when she was
burdened with the child. She was thoroughly disillusioned now about
Blair, and there was no point in having a child as a souvenir of
the affair.
"Clara had a pretty hard time when she first came to town and
I hate to see her make a fool of herself," Kitty told me. "But I'm
really thinking more about Blair' wife. If Clara has this child,
it's going to be pretty hard to keep Dorothy from finding out about
it. Clara had some haywire ideas about going to Dorothy and asking
her to give up Blair. But Blair knocked that out of her head."
"I can't see it, Kitty,", I said. "It's too risky. I'm not
going to be put into a position of persuading this girl to abet me
in a crime. If she's the fool she sounds, she'll spread it all over
town as evidence of her emancipation."
"You trusted my judgment once before," Kitty reminded me. "I
think this will teach Clara a lesson. But to be frank, I'm afraid
that she'll later go to Blair's wife and demand help in taking care
of the child. Dorothy has had enough punishment. I'm willing to pay
the fee to spare her constant humiliation, either directly or
indirectly, from Clara."
I hesitated. "You talk to the girl again," I urged.
She did, and Clara agreed to the abortion. I was nervous about
it. I figured it was a case in which we were meddling too much. And
I was right.
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But I never suspected what would happen. Clara went through
the abortion all right, although she had orgies of self-pity. She
did have some intelligence, but she was so filled with silly ideas
and so self-centered that she was doomed for trouble. I've seen
many people like that. They are so absorbed in themselves that they
utterly disregard other people until too late.
To please Kitty, I was pleasant to her. And I stressed that
this was a favor I was doing her and was not my usual practice.
That was, of course, just a line that I used on most patients to
keep them from spreading the news indiscriminately that I was an
abortionist.
But Clara took the whole affair the wrong way. She'd been
badly upset by her affair with Blair, and sympathy went to her
bead. So she fell for me on the rebound.
It was the first time this had happened to me, to my
knowledge, at least. A great many of my patients became my friends.
But the very nature of the work kept sentiment out of it.
Clara, however, was so filled with the idea that she must be
ultra-modern that she felt it dramatic for there to be some
physical-bond between us. She exaggerated everything I said to her.
She kept coming back to my office when there was no need. She
twisted what I said to mean that I considered myself her guardian.
She invited me to lunches, to dinners. She would call for me to
come to her apartment.
I was irritated, but I didn't take it seriously. I knew other
doctors who had to be diplomatic about calls that were obviously
subterfuges. I kept myself impersonal and was as polite. to her as
I could be.
Then she went to Norma and made a scene. She told my wife that
the needed my perfect understanding and sympathy; that Norma had
had several years of marriage with me, had a child by me and should
share me with her. She was positive that it was only Norma's mid-
Victorian scruples and selfishness that kept me from having an
affair. And she wanted Norma to consent to it. She said that she
had made a mistake before in not going to the wife, but she wanted
this to be open and aboveboard.
Norma kept her head and, thank God, had sense enough not to
lose her temper or to take it too seriously. But she was upset
about it and told me.
"I'm telling you this, darling, because I trust you," she said
to me when I came home. "I know that you're not having an affair
with Clara because you have more sense. I'm egotistical enough,
too, to think you have better taste. But I don't want Clara
broadcasting that I'm interfering with your life."
She grinned at me. "Darling, if you ever do have an affair,
for God's sake pick out a woman who is so charming and so beautiful
that I can see she's superior to me and you couldn't possibly
resist her. Otherwise, it will ruin my self-respect.
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I was furious. I called Kitty and told her the whole Story.
"Quit pampering that fool," I demanded, "and shut her up
somehow. Make her understand that I don't want to see her. I'll go
with you to do it. She's had too much done for her. I thought this
was a mistake."
And for once I didn't use any tact. I took Kitty along, for I
didn't want Clara to have any excuse to misinterpret that visit.
And I told Clara frankly why I had helped her and what I thought of
her. She started to act, but Kitty put an end to that by telling
her not to be a fool; that she'd done enough emoting off the stage
to last the rest of her life.
I never saw Clara again. Kitty was deeply apologetic. I heard
afterward that Clara went out to the country, got good and sick of
the rural peace she'd wanted, came back to town and got a job. She
kept her mouth shut about the affair. and that was all I wanted.
XI. DANGER SIGNALS AHEAD
At first I had been constantly amazed at my lack of trouble.
I had feared in my first case that the sheriff would come in any
moment.
Gradually I began to take it all as a matter of course and to
think myself a pretty clever fellow. I grew more prosperous. Norma
and I moved into a nice little house in the better part of town. We
felt that we could afford children.
I took as many precautions as I could in my business. My
apparent immunity was also due to the fact that any girl who goes
to a doctor instead of a quack or a midwife in such cases usually
is intelligent enough to keep her mouth shut.
Then I had a whole series of lucky breaks. Not in my actual
work. I was constantly improving my technique and I never lost a
patient. But in other ways I was lucky.
My home life continued serene. Norma and I started out with
few illusions, and we followed the French idea of a marriage for
happiness rather than pleasure. I was teased a great deal when we
had our first child.
"So you don't let your practice interfere with your home
work," a colleague told me.
Once a woman asked Norma if she wasn't jealous of my many
women patients. She had come to me professionally and noticed that
there were several unusually pretty girls in the waiting room each
time.
"Most women who come to see my husband are not feeling
flirtatious," Norma said calmly.
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Not long after that, she did have a disagreeable experience.
An acquaintance of ours came to me for an abortion. She was a
married woman, she could afford the child and I saw no reason why
she should have the abortion, especially as she was very anxious to
keep it a secret from her husband. I declined to have anything to
do With it. The woman was healthy, and I told her that she
exaggerated her fears of childbirth and that if her husband had any
objections he'd forget them after the birth of the child.
I had a feeling that Mrs. C was lying to me. It usually is
easy for a doctor to tell when a woman is keeping something back.
Sooner or later, the patient makes a slip. The "friend" for whom
they are making these embarrassing inquiries becomes a pronoun in
the first person.
Mrs. C made her slip when she said that she and her husband
were not getting along well.
I remembered the case when a woman was planning to divorce her
husband and became with child by him.
"Do you intend to divorce him?" I asked.
"Oh, heavens, no," she said hastily.
Her husband had a good deal of money and I thought that any
temporary fuss probably would be settled soon. Anyhow, I refused to
take the case.
Then she went to my wife and threw a hysterical scene, begging
Norma to interfere and get me to perform the abortion. As a final
argument, she told Norma that I was the father of the child. Norma
merely laughed.
"I said it was your business," she told me afterward, "and
that if It were your child you'd undoubtedly perform the abortion
or divorce me and marry her. That frightened her. I regret to say,
darling, that she didn't seem to desire your private attention's --
only your professional services."
I heard the whole story afterward. Mrs. C and her husband were
not getting along well, and Mrs. C had taken a lover. Since
marriage, she had let her husband take care of contraceptives and
she expected her lover to do the same. He was careful in the early
stages of their affair. Then the mutual ardor cooled. Mrs. C was
afraid her husband would hear of the romance, and the man soon
tired of her. I can't believe that he was deliberately responsible,
but, anyhow, she was caught.
Mrs. C and her husband had not lived together as man and wife
for several months. They were amiable enough, and Mrs. C hoped for
a reconciliation. Like a great many philandering wives, she was
much more cowardly about paying for her fun than the unmarried
woman. She wanted to have her cake and eat it, too.
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She finally went to a quack, he bungled the job, and she
almost died. Probably it was the best solution she could have
arranged, for her husband was so anxious about her health that he
took the blame for everything and there was no divorce. I think she
may have told him that she tried to commit suicide and that caused
a miscarriage. Faking or threatening suicide to force a
reconciliation with a husband is a fairly common trick of the
neurotic.
It may sound as if I were quibbling in this case when I had
performed abortions on married women. But Mrs. C was a thoroughly
selfish person, and there was no question of wrecking a subsequent
marriage as in Janet's triangle. C had not been unfaithful. Mrs. C
had merely tired of him and sought thrills elsewhere.
I draw a distinction between a married woman who has affairs
with single men and a single girl who has affairs with married men.
The married woman usually allows her husband to support her while
she's being unfaithful. She takes his money to make herself
attractive to her lover, and frequently uses his home for her
assignations. She usually has her affair with some man who shirks
the responsibility of matrimony. She is secretly taking away from
her husband what she has publicly promised him. Sometimes she is
endangering the future of her children.
The bachelor girl who has an affair with a married man may be
almost forced into it for social reasons. Most such girls hold jobs
which are not good enough to give them much money and prestige.
They usually come from families having little social standing. They
are unable to get single men who attract them. They come in contact
with intelligent, attractive and married businessmen. They know
better than to have such affairs but when the alternative is to sit
alone in a tiny apartment or bedroom or go to the movies with a
girl friend. I don't blame them overmuch for succumbing to the
overtures of the man and their own natural desire. Women cannot get
physical relief from prostitutes. Frequently the single men they
meet treat them with less respect and consideration than the
married men. So they drift into liaisons with an attractive and
moneyed husband.
Fortunately, Norma did not believe Mrs. C's wild accusations,
but it did start a time of trouble for both of us. I am not
superstitious, but I do believe that every person gets a few good
breaks that are due as much to chance as to hard work, and I think
we all get some bad breaks we don't deserve.
Immediately after Mrs. C's outburst, I began getting mine!
Police found the body of a once-beautiful young blonde girl in
the river. She had apparently died as the result of an illegal
operation. Detectives took her photograph to all the doctors to see
if we could identify her. She had not come to me and I said so, but
the police asked me to go to the morgue and look at her.
Eventually she was identified as an out-of-town school
teacher. Her mother saw her picture in an old newspaper and claimed
the body. If the detail's of the crime were discovered, they were
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never published. But there was a howl about quack doctors preying
on young girls, editorials in the newspapers and one minister
preached a sermon on abortionists.
It was comparatively easy to guess what had happened. The girl
had gone to a quack and had died as the result of his ignorance and
carelessness. Then either her lover or the quack had become
frightened at the responsibility and had dumped her body into the
river. I don't believe she was physically able to kill herself. Nor
could she have destroyed all the clues to her identity and effaced
her trail so skillfully alone.
I didn't like detectives snooping around, and I got the wind
up. My legitimate practice was growing and I couldn't afford to
jeopardize it as much as when almost all my livelihood came from
illegal work.
It was while the investigation into the girl's death was still
going on that the head of a vice combination came to me with a
proposition.
He beat around the bush for quite a while, but the general
gist of his offer was that I should devote all my time to his
combination which included a variety of rackets.
I was amazed at the information he had about me. He knew the
exact state of my finances, that I was paying for a new house, that
I had a wife and a child and was expecting another. He also knew
that I had performed many abortions. He made me a flattering offer
as far as money was concerned. But I declined it.
Although he'd been purposefully, vague, I knew what my duties
would be. I'd treat diseased prostitutes, perform abortions,
extract bullets and probably have to do a little facial surgery.
A year or so before I'd pulled a few wires attempting to get
a job as city inspector of houses in my town. He knew that. He
pointed out that this would be about the same thing, only on the
wrong side of the law. I am in favor of strict supervision of
houses and I'm in favor of preventing childbirth among women who
are still in the profession. But I did not intend to become a
gangster physician. Such doctors have a way of disappearing
mysteriously.
"Better think this over again," the vice lord told me. "That's
a lot of money, and people who go against us have a way of being
sorry."
"You mean you'll take me for a ride?" I asked. "Don't be
foolish. I'm certainly not going to go to the police and report
your visit. For you to kill me would be a pointless murder and
dangerous. I could leave a message to be opened in case of my
death. You don't wait a doctor who is against your organization and
would betray you if promised protection from the police. And if you
mean to rake up a scandal about me, try to do it! You may have some
vague rumors but no proof and you're not likely to go to the police
or the medical association just to satisfy a small grudge."
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He grinned at this, said that he was only bluffing, but that
I was a smart man and if I ever changed my mind to insert a
personal advertisement in a newspaper in another city and leave it
in for a week.
"No hard feelings," he said, and sauntered out.
But he left me with some hard feelings. I smelled danger. I
didn't like to be in a position where detectives called on me when
bodies were found. Of course, their excuse was that the girl might
have come to me for an examination or to ask me to perform the
operation. I didn't like to be in a position where gangsters felt
that they could approach me. I couldn't express too much righteous
indignation. To the criminal mind, I was outside the law and the
gangster was outside the law and why didn't we get together? My
fine shading of gray between the black of crime and the white of
law would be lost on my caller,
There was a chance that he had proof from some patient of mine
and could make me serious trouble. I resolved to temper my sail's
to the wind and turn down all such cases for a time.
And the very next day, I had a chance to try my new
resolution. A man and woman came into my office. They were not
recommended, that is, no other doctor had sent them to me,
notifying me by telephone beforehand and sending a letter of
introduction with the patient. Those were the cases I liked best
because another doctor shared the responsibility and the patients
were hand-picked. Such persons were responsible citizens who went
about an illegal business as discreetly and efficiently as
possible.
the situation. He was married, he said, and the man explained
while he and his wife did not live together, she would not divorce
him and he had no cause for divorce against her. She was willing to
live with him, and had never been unfaithful. He meant to keep away
from her until eventually she decided it would be simpler to
divorce him.
In the meantime, he had met this girl and they had drifted
into an affair. He meant to marry her if he ever got the divorce.
But now she was with child and he was willing to pay for an
abortion for her.
I didn't like either the man or the woman. And when all is
said about questions and promises, I must trust a great deal to
personal judgment of patients. The average doctor may not like his
patients, but it really isn't going to hurt him if they blab all
over town that his medicine did them no good.
The girl sat in sullen silence. She was unattractive, thick-
browed, with small gray eyes, too big a mouth and thick, bushy
hair. She had a chunky, peasant's figure. She stared at the floor,
her lower lip protruding. The man was glib and talkative; a little
too talkative. He was nervous, and said too much about how be was
"Willing" to pay for the abortion.
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He was rather flashily dressed, and wore a big diamond ring on
his little finger. I stared at that ring and wondered if this were
a frame-up job designed to force me into the vice combination. But
I doubted that. The girl looked too dumb and inexperienced to be
associated with a vice syndicate.
The girl didn't seem to be taking any interest in the
conversation, and I didn't like that. Unless she were anxious to
have an abortion, she might be a trouble-maker. Nothing was said
about whether she was a virgin when she met this man. That's
usually important. A girl who's had several lovers regarded
pregnancy as one of the risks of the game, and isn't so likely to,
try to force marriage. She's probably had to worry about an
abortion before, and she takes it more or less for granted. Her
feeling usually is that she's been lucky to escape one so far, and
it's up to her to stick her chin out and take her punishment.
If the man was so anxious to brag about how he was "willing"
to foot the bills, he'd probably be the sort to quibble over the
price. Besides, as I said, I had the wind up. So I told them curtly
that there was nothing doing. I offered to examine the girl to make
sure that she was pregnant but I told them they had been
misinformed if they thought I took such cases.
The man was nervously apologetic, and I went on stressing the
enormity of the act he was asking of me.
"Do you know of any other doctors who would do it?" he asked.
"I'd pay anything."
I shook my head. "No registered doctor would do it," I said.
"You might find a man whose license has been taken away from him
but who still does some hole-in-the-wall practice. However, I don't
know of any."
They went away, then, the girl still sullen, the man trying to
placate her. I felt sorry for him. It didn't look to me as if that
girl had been seduced. I couldn't imagine her believing anything
but an affidavit. I could see that he was afraid of her.
He had good reason to be frightened. Two days later the news
papers were full of the story. She had shot and killed him. She
surrendered meekly to the police and told her story. She worked at
a cheap lodging house where the man stayed. She claimed that he
promised to marry her, but I've always doubted that she was seduced
in the literal meaning of the word. Also, I didn't believe her
statement that she was a virgin when she met him.
At any rate, when she became with child she demanded immediate
marriage. Then, she said, he told her that he was already married.
Police discovered that his story of his separation was false. His
wife had divorced him several years before. However, I can't blame
him for trying to evade marriage with the sullen, black-browed
girl.
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The girl did not want an abortion, She was the animal type,
insensitive to everything except pain and passion. She was afraid
of an abortion and she wanted to hang on to her man and had sense
enough to see that if she got rid of the child she'd probably lose
him. So she proposed that they go away and live as man and wife and
have the child. He refused, saying that it would cost him his job.
She found him packing his clothes, and killed him.
I heaved a sigh of relief that I'd followed my intuition. The
man already was tired of the affair, and he would have fled as soon
as be arranged an abortion. The girl would have raised hell and
either followed him or gone to the police. Then the story would
have come out and I would have been implicated in a much more
dangerous fashion.
As it was, the police came to me and I had a straight story
for them. I simply said that the man brought the girl to me, wanted
an abortion and I refused to take the case. My Story tallied with
that of the girl.
"He promised to marry me and then he wouldn't do that," the
girl told the police. "Then he said it would be easy to fix me up,
and the first doctor we went to said that he wouldn't do it for
anything, that no good doctor would and that it would be dangerous
to go to a bad doctor."
So unwittingly my warning against abortions had sent a man to
his death. Everything I had said about quacks was true of course,
but it had been the one touch needed to set aflame the shouldering
wrath of the girl. I had made her lover a liar on all counts.
I can't say that I felt sorry. The man was no loss to
humanity. He would have left me holding the bag if I had done what
he wished. And I would have been in a damned awkward position if
the girl had killed him after I'd performed an abortion and perhaps
had shot herself, too.
All the same, it gave me a bad scare. The defense brought me
into court. It didn't do me any good to appear as a witness for the
defense in a sordid sex murder and have it broadcast that the
murdered man brought his mistress to me for an illegal operation.
I talked it over with Norma after the trial closed, with the
woman receiving a light sentence. Her counsel had pleaded emotional
insanity.
"Maybe it would be better for me to stick to straight practice
now," I argued. "After all, a lot of young doctor's do this stuff
just to get started. I've paid my debt to my father and we've got
a little money ahead."
"I don't know," she said slowly. "Remember how we met?"
Of course, I did. She had come in with a friend who wanted an
abortion.
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"You seemed to us an angel in disguise. Pearl had expected
some rather nasty man who'd treat her as if she were a prostitute.
You were so gentle and considerate that you made the whole thing a
lot easier."
"So," I grinned, "that's why you fell in love with me."
She took it seriously. "Partly," she admitted. "I could see
that it wasn't entirely for money that you were breaking the law.
You actually wanted to help people in trouble. And you did it with
gentleness and consideration and courtesy -- all admirable
qualities in a husband. It looked to me as if you had tolerance and
a breadth of vision."
She looked at me. "I'm feminine enough to hope that other
women who come to your office won't think so much of the same
things. But at the same time it doesn't seem to me that because
none of my friends happen to be in trouble now, I should urge you
to quit that part of your practice and force girls to go to other
doctors who are in need of money and aren't good enough to get a
legitimate practice."
"I was quitting chiefly for you," I said. "I didn't want you
to have to tell the children that their papa is in prison."
"You haven't been in any serious trouble yet," she reminded
me.
I knew that, but I still had the feeling that trouble was in
the air. I'm not superstitious, and there had been three times I
had skated on thin ice, the girl in the river, Mrs. C's hysterical
visit, and the trial. I have heard people say that suicides go by
threes, explaining that there usually are several persons thinking
about suicide. The publicity given the first one to take the leap
serves as an impetus for the others.
However, I began taking abortion cases again. A prominent
businessman brought his daughter to me. His story was one that was
all-too-familiar to me, although I heard it from the girl more
frequently than from the parent.
The girl was a high-school student, who had got mixed up with
a set of sensation-hunters. They were all sons and daughters of
well-to-do families and had liberal allowances. There were two or
three leaders who, had they come from less wealthy families, would
have been the moving spirits of juvenile gangs. Some of them were
children of divorce, given cars and too much spending money in lieu
of parents.
They started going to dances too soon, drinking too much,
driving too fast for a thrill. Then they took up marijuana. It was
considered a great joke to give a girl a marijuana cigarette
instead of the regular variety.
Jane Alice had received bids to all the Christmas dances given
by high-school fraternities and sororities. I have always felt that
these high-school organizations are a mistake. Their members
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attempt to imitate the college Greek-letter 'Societies' but do not
have strict supervision by national authorities, nor are the
members old enough to know how to take care of themselves.
The Christmas dances in my city were marked by a lot of
drinking, usually bad liquor, since the Christmas expenses put such
a drain on the purse of a high-school boy that good liquor could
not be included. A lot of the girls drank because they were afraid
if they were not "good sports" their escorts simply would not call
to get them or they would be wallflowers at the dance. This "good
sport" fallacy causes more trouble than any one other thing in
modern youth. The idea that popularity must be had at all costs is
another road to heartbreak.
"Her mother and I knew there were chaperons at the dance's,"
Mr. B told me. "And we were slightly acquainted with most of the
other youngsters who went. We knew that Jane Alice came home pretty
late, but then the dances lasted until 2 o'clock. Most of the kids
usually went somewhere for coffee and sandwiches after the dance..
We didn't want to keep Jane Alice from being popular by making her
punch a time-clock."
Jane Alice was one of those "average" girls who must work hard
for popularity. So she had weakly submitted to a high-school boy,
drunk and amorous. He had given her a brief rush and she felt that
she must pay with her body.
Fortunately for the girl, she was a weakling and accustomed to
going to her mother with all her complaints, her need for a new
dress, her desire for a party, for a new permanent, for an increase
in her allowance. She didn't have the courage or self-reliance to
keep her secret. The boy had dropped her after he found her "easy."
so she went to her mother and told the whole story.
The mother was shocked, but luckily she had sense enough to
keep the matter quiet and consult with her husband. They decided
that Jane Alice was far too young to marry, even if the boy were
willing, which was doubtful. Besides, Jane Alice now had a nervous,
hysterical hatred of the youth. There is a superstition that a girl
always has a special tenderness for her first lover. But this is
not always true. Jane Alice now regarded the experience as virtual
rape.
The affair had seared her back into a desire for normal
girlhood. She had a glimpse of what it meant to be a woman, and she
was thoroughly frightened and disgusted. She hadn't got any
pleasure out of her sexual experience. And the boy, who had
appeared glamorous when she was tight, now seemed only a pimply-
faced, callow high-school youth.
I have seen the same thing happen after a hasty elopement. The
girl, who was all for being an adult, wants to hurry back to the
warm protection of her family and her care-free adolescence.
So the B's decided not to tell the youth or his parents.
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"He isn't old enough to be married," Mr. B said, "and even if
Jane Alice did act the fool, he isn't good enough for her. His
parents might stir up trouble by believing the boy if he denied the
charge. We figured that the less said about the whole thing the
better."
I agreed. There was no point in letting the boy know the
results of his carelessness. It might have frightened him into
being more careful thereafter, and then again it might have made
him think that he needn't take any precaution's because if the girl
were caught her parents would take care of everything. Too, he
might have started boasting about what a man he was and how he had
knocked up the daughter of one of the town's leading citizens. The
much-vaunted chivalry of man usually comes only when he has
acquired enough sense to see the value of silence -- not only to
protect the girl but for his own benefit.
The abortion was a success. Afterward Jane Alice wanted to go
away to a girl's school, but I advised against it.
"You're asking me and I'm telling you," I said frankly to Mr.
B "Jane Alice is just a kid, but she's woman enough to get herself
into a mess of this type, and so she ought to be adult enough to
face some of the less disagreeable of the consequences."
"I know," he agreed. "That's what I told my wife. Sooner or
later Jane Alice must learn to take things on the chin. She's got
to learn that she can't run away from everything. She may not spend
her life in this town, but on the other hand she may live here for
several years. The only way she can get over the idea that she
can't face her friends is to force herself to do it. She wanted to
resign from her sorority, but I told her that would cause talk. I
think that she'll be able to avoid any wild parties and that she's
learned her lesson. I've promised her that if she finishes this
year here, she can go away to a girls' boarding-school."
I nodded. "But there's still another reason. I don't agree
with people who say that all boarding-schools are hotbeds of
perversion. But I do think that it is unhealthy to bottle up girls
who have had dates and a few sex thrills just at their most
dangerous adolescent period. It's natural for a young girl to be
restless and to seek excitement. And if she's subjected to too
strict discipline and her normal contact with boys is taken away,
she may find the wrong outlet for her energy.
"And that is particularly true in Jane Alice's case. She is
slightly over-sexed. Right now, she feels a natural aversion to men
and to sex. She feels that she got a dirty deal. That might recoil
into Lesbianism. I've seen young girls turn pervert from being
jilted, the death of their fiances or through unpopularity at a
sensitive period. Too, Jane Alice doesn't want to forget this too
easily for fear she may decide that the whole business wasn't so
bad. She needs a normal life, but she also needs the supervision of
people who know what she's done."
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Mr. B was a sensible man, as I have said. "I see what you
mean," he agreed. "I've given this matter a lot of thought, because
Jane Alice is an only child and it looks as though two fairly
intelligent persons ought to make a success of one child."
He sighed. "I've tried not to be the sort of father who
forgets all about his youth and does a lot of aimless preaching.
That's why I gave Jane Alice as much freedom as possible and didn't
blame her over-much for what happened. And I'm relieved that Jane
Alice isn't posing as a sort of young Madame X, betrayed before she
was of age and being very dramatic in the best motion picture form.
She admits it was partly her fault. I'm under no illusion about my
child. She isn't overloaded with brains. She's too docile, and I
should have realized that and instead of trying to develop
initiative I should have relied more on obedience. But it's hard
for a man to judge his own child, and it's hard to remember the
damn-fool things I did when I was young. I never got any girls in
trouble," he added, "but it's a wonder I didn't."
"Sometimes," he went on, "I think the savages handle these
things better. They pay more attention to puberty. They make a
ceremony of it and the girls have their womanhood more forcibly
impressed on them. Here we pass by puberty with a little bygienic
lecture and continue to regard the girls as children until they're
16 or 18, forgetting that from the ages of 12 to 14 they are,
physically, women."
"I know," I told him. "Parents hate to see their children grow
up. It's worse in the mothers. They feel they've gone through more
for the children and they resent their sons' and daughters' leaving
home as soon as they're able to take care of themselves. A mother
bird will push her fledglings out of the nest. But the human mother
is more possessive. The children usually are ready to leave about
the time the mother's own sex life is going or gone. And somehow
that makes it harder for the mothers. So we get a mother who wants
her big son to escort her around and tries to behave like his
sister. And we get the type of mother who keeps her daughter at
home, preaching duty to her, and begging her not to marry until
after the mother's death. What she usually means is that she can't
bear the sight of her daughter having a happy sex life when she is
lonely and her own life is virtually ended as far as personal
pleasure is concerned."
Mr. B went out after thanking me again. I heard afterward that
Jane Alice stayed in school and went in for athletics, hiking and
all sorts of outdoor sports which used up her dangerous energy. I
have never believed in the creed that children should be seen and
not heard, and I wince when a nervous mother urges her daughters to
sit in the corner and be quiet. The girls should be taught to be
well-mannered, of course, but they should have some outlet for that
well of restless energy. Otherwise they may come to me.
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XII. STRANGER THAN FICTION
About a week later I got a case that admirably illustrated Mr.
C's sympathy for the daughters of neurotic mothers.
A very pretty young girl, with a defiant look in her soft dark
eyes, came in to see me. She had refused to give the office girl
her name, and I suspected immediately what she wanted.
"You're going to say that my story sounds exactly like the
hokum in cheap magazines," she began.
I smiled. "That doesn't mean it isn't true. Nor that the
stories in magazines aren't true to life. I know a writer who gets
all his material from the correspondence of a 'lovelorn' editor.
He's accused of being unreal and melodramatic, but he told me that
almost invariably he had to tone down the facts."
"I'm in one of the usual triangles," she said. "And I'm in the
usual jam."
"Tell me about it," I invited.
"I want to begin way back. Because," she paused and gave me a
teary smile. "You see, I know something about you and I was told to
tell you the entire story because if I didn't you'd turn me down.
So I'll start with my very beginning. I was an unwanted child. My
mother had been a belle, and she made a good marriage. And then
right away I came along to spoil the fun -- and my mother's figure,
as I've had dinned into my ear's since childhood."
It was a pathetic story she told, but I don't believe it was
exaggerated. She had been paraded around as a baby and her mother
had posed as a martyr to motherhood. But when she outgrew the cute
roly-poly stage and began to have long legs and arms and be a big
girl, she was shunted off to school in winter and camp in summer
rather than spoil her mother's lies about her age.
"Mother has always claimed that she was a mere child when she
married," Dorothy said bitterly, "As a matter of fact, she wa's 24,
and getting pretty nervous about being an old maid. I was kept in
short socks as long as possible. Finally father died and left me
some money, but in mother's care, and I wasn't to get it until I am
21. I'm 20 now, but I'm still mother's little girl. I'd started in
school so early and had it so concentrated that at 18 there wasn't
any place except college she could send me. And mother was afraid
of college. I don't know exactly why. She had the old-fashioned
idea that college made blue stockings out of women and I'd never
marry. She is vain enough not to want an old maid for a daughter,
although at the same time she doesn't want me to marry because then
she'd be a mother-in-law and perhaps a grandmother. She was afraid,
too, that college would make me strong-willed. Too, when I was away
at boarding-school it sounded as if I were about 12. She never had
any pictures made of me after I was 10. But a girl at college
sounds grown-up.
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She smiled again, a smile with no mirth. "That sounds awfully
bitter, but you never had it drilled into you that it was a crime
for you to grow up normally. Mother is always talking about what a
pretty child I was and sighing. And she worries for fear I'll be as
pretty as she was. I won't. I look more like father. Well, I came
home and I started dating a little in spite of anything mother
could do. I went away to visit some school friends and I met a
young engineer. I fell for him -- hard. He loved me, wanted to
marry me. But he wanted to do everything in the traditional
fashion. He wanted to ask my mother for my hand. I was against
that. After all, I'm 20. And, I forgot to tell you, if I marry
after I'm 18, I get full control of my money without waiting until
I'm 21. Sometimes I think father put that clause in to encourage me
to marry and escape from mother."
I nodded. "Go on," I told her. I knew the girl either had to
tell her story or go into hysterics. She'd been bottling it up too
long.
"I fought against telling mother," Dorothy went on. "I knew
she'd do something to spoil it. Sandy couldn't understand. He
wanted me to meet his mother, who is also a widow. He thought it
would be nice for our mothers to get to be good friends. His mother
is a dear, old-fashioned but sweet. I knew mother wouldn't like her
and would make fun of her and I couldn't bear that. Sandy had a job
offered him with an engineering firm here and he wanted to take it
so that we could live close to our relatives. He'd been wandering
over the world, but he said it was no way for a woman to live.
Anyhow, he wanted children."
"I knew it wouldn't work," she said, almost hysterically.
"Mother would fight it. She couldn't bear to have me living in the
same town and raising a family. She'd break up our marriage, if we
were allowed to be married. I wanted to elope and go to South
America where Sandy could work. But he was tired of living there."
She smiled ironically. "Finally, I did get him to go away with
me for a week-end or so. I told him that I was modern and believed
people should find out if they are sexually mated before they were
married. He was a little shocked at first, but he wanted me, too.
After that, he insisted that we must be married right away just in
case anything happened. And he was more determined to meet mother.
So he came here. I thought that I could tell mother that we had
been lovers and shock her into letting us marry. But she beat me to
it."
She shuddered. "Oh, it's too horrible to talk about!" "I can
guess," I said. "You mother is shrewd and she saw what sort of a
man your lover was. So she told him you weren't a good girl."
"Worse than that. She first told him that I was under 18 and
couldn't marry without her consent. But he knew better than that
because I'd told him about all the schools I'd gone to and pretty
well outlined my life. But I'd never told him the truth about
mother. His own mother was so different, you know, and I hate to
play the mistreated daughter. I thought he'd think less of me and
might wonder if I weren't like her, or if I were exaggerating.
Anyhow, I am well dressed and well fed and fairly well educated. I
don't look mistreated."
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"And you were too happy to want to spoil it by talking about
your past sorrows," I suggested.
She nodded. "They seemed somehow unimportant if I could escape
them with Sandy. But when mother saw that the under-age gag
wouldn't work, she went on. She got panicky and she didn't really
mean to say as much as she did. She's apologized since. But she
told him that I didn't want children and that I was over-sexed and
she'd had to send me to girls' schools to keep me out of trouble.
That wasn't true, of course, although," she hesitated for a moment,
"I'd done some rather indiscreet things in rebellion, such as
getting drunk with the wrong people, and going on wild parties. I
hadn't been a plaster saint, but I'd never had any sex experience
before. Mother is charming, she's, a good actress, and of course
Sandy believed her. It all fitted in neatly with my frantic desire
that we have each other before marriage. Mother even told him that
doctors had talked of giving me a sterilization operation but she
had refused, thinking I'd outgrow my indiscretions."
The tears were rolling down her cheeks. She cried naturally.
like a child, not bothering to wipe away the drops. "I suppose I
behaved in a peculiar fashion, too, and that made things worse. I
knew mother was lying to him, but I didn't know what about and I
made some silly explanations designed to cover virtually everything
or anything. The next thing I knew, he told me that perhaps I was
right in saying it was all a mistake -- I told him that when I saw
him regarding me oddly. Now he's gone to South America. And," she
spread out. her hands, "here I am."
"Have you told your mother you're pregnant?" I asked.
"For God's sake, no. She'd use it as a lever over me all my
life or she'd ship me off to South America. As soon as she found
out that Sandy had gone away to work, she was sorry for what she'd
done. she'd thought, of course, that we'd live here. Then she told
me part of what she'd said and I guessed the rest and made her
admit It. Of course, it was partly, my fault. I was nervous, and
when Sandy began acting strangely I flared up instead of telling
him the truth. I was so upset I didn't know what I was doing."
"Look," I said. "You came here for an abortion, but you don't
really want one, and so I'm not going to give it to you."
She stared at me hopelessly. "You must. I thought at first I'd
have Sandy's child and salvage that much of him. But it's
impossible. I won't have any freedom until I'm 21. Oh, I've got a
little money, and I can pawn some things and pay your fee. But I
haven't enough to support me somewhere and take me through all the
trouble mother would make for me. She'd ruin it somehow."
"I don't mean that," I told her. "You're going to follow your
man. You still love him or you wouldn't want his child. The trouble
with you is that all your life you've been afraid of your mother.
You were scared, or you would have saved yourself a lot of misery,
told Sandy the truth and gone with him to interview your mother.
You were a coward then. You went away and hid while he talked to
her. So now you've got to do something more courageous. You must go
to South America and find him."
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"I couldn't. I've got only the vaguest idea where he is. And
I don't want to force him into marrying me because I'm pregnant."
I shrugged my shoulders impatiently. "And how do you think he
would feel if he ever heard the real story and knew that because of
false pride and cowardice you cheated both of you out of happiness?
You come home with me and my wife will talk to you."
The upshot of it was that Norma went with her to Sandy's
mother.
"She'll be horrified," Dorothy protested, "She's one of those
sweet, old-fashioned women."
"Old-fashioned women know a lot about life," Norma told her.
And Norma was right. She told me about it on her return.
"I almost lost my nerve when we got there," Norma related.
"The set-up was too mid-Victorian for words. And there was Mrs. S,
a grandmotherly woman with white hair and an apple-blossom akin.
Dorothy got cold feet and I had to tell the story. I meant to skip
about Dorothy's wanting an abortion, but she blurted it out. The
old lady just clucked her tongue and kissed Dorothy.
"Then she said it reminded her so much of an old woman who
wanted her daughter to look after her and so she told the poor
girl's beau that Maisie wasn't a nice girl. She wound up by saying,
'But poor Maisie didn't have your courage, my dear, or your money
and so there was nothing she could do about it.' She wasn't shocked
that Dorothy was pregnant. She just said, 'Such things happen to
the young, dear, and we who are old should be ready to help. That's
why we are here after our child-bearing duties are over.'"
Mrs. S took things into her own delicate hands, and when Norma
left she was busy getting passports for them. She had introduced
Dorothy everywhere as her daughter-in-law and she had cabled her
son that she was coming to see him and bringing along her new
daughter.
"I just told him that I'd explain later," she said. "I don't
think it best to surprise him. Sandy knows and trusts me, and he
probably has had time to think things over by now and realize his
mistake. But he's a wee bit stubborn, like all the Scotch."
I like to think of Dorothy and her happiness. She and Sandy
were married upon her arrival, with Mrs. S beaming on them. It
helps Whenever I hear abortionists described as monsters who fatten
on child murder. I have never performed an abortion unless I felt
that it was best for humanity. And I have prevented many of them,
especially in the last few years.
As methods have improved and women are wiser in birth-control
methods, more and more young women have lost their horror of the
whispered, "She got rid of the baby somehow." They come into my
office seeking an easy way out of their difficulties. But a lot of
them have gone out convinced that the hardest way might be the best
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after all. To many of them I said, "Bring your man in here and let
me talk to him. This is his business, too. Don't get too modern.
You're not modern enough to escape the oldest of all biological
traps."
There is something about a doctor's office that make's people
more humble, more ready to listen. I think it must be that each
sick, hopeless or hopeful patient leaves something of his patience
or his despair or his resignation in the atmosphere. People will
listen to things from a doctor that they will not take from anyone
else. Possibly it is because few doctors ever preach, and the
patient realizes that the doctor knows what he is talking about.
When marriage to possible, I refuse to perform an abortion
merely to cover up carelessness. The patient may regret it later.
I am not in favor of shotgun marriages, but I have had literally
dozens of cases where abortions were refused and the marriages were
normally happy. Sometimes there is a difference in social position
and moneyed prestige. A society girl has an affair with a
workingman and is caught. She hates to face the disapproval of her
family, the possible ridicule of having married beneath her. If it
was purely momentary passion, I am not in favor of forcing a union
and allowing a child to be born when a divorce is inevitable and
the child will always be under a handicap.
But if the affair has been going on for several months -- and
despite all the stories of conception after one sex act, it is a
rare thing -- then it seems to me that there is no reason why
marriage shouldn't follow, and I say so. And when two young working
people are selfishly intent on leading their own lives and want an
abortion for the girl because they are afraid the child and
marriage might interfere with freedom, I refuse to act.
There has grown up in recent years a group of modern
mistresses, workingwomen who are afraid that marriage might
interfere with their jobs, who want to artificially prolong their
youth by not having children or other responsibilities. They say
that they intend to have sex anyhow, and they indulge in affairs of
long duration. Sometimes these women actually would make poor
mothers, and in that case an abortion is advisable. At other times,
I try to exert the slight pressure that is necessary to overcome
the idea that marriage would interfere too much with the designs of
their living.
I have tried in this casebook to present a random selection of
patients. I have made mistakes. I have had women come in and blame
me for their sterility. They do not believe me when I tell them
that they have undoubtedly done something since the abortion to
cause their barren state.
Likewise, I have had wives blame me for urging them into
marriages which proved unhappy. It did no good to point out that
there are many divorces not caused by the handicap of premature
childbirth.
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I played God a little in the case of Dorothy and Sandy because
I thought it worth the risk. If she had stayed with her mother, she
might have become promiscuous out of sheer rebellion. She admitted
having gone on wild parties as an emotional relief after a quarrel
with her mother. I wanted to avoid what happened in one case that
came to me.
June's mother had been a pretty, spoiled village girl. She had
married a city man and lived happily for a while. But eventually
June's father was unfaithful to her mother. The mother discovered
it, and they were estranged. Denied his wife, the man went in for
a series of affairs. The wife had expected to find her husband at
her feet, begging for forgiveness, and became bitter when he was
not abject.
She eventually separated from her husband and he gave her a
handsome settlement. The mother now exacted the utmost in slavery
from the daughter. June in rebellion took the obvious course. She
began a clandestine affair with an utter cad. She knew what sort of
a man he was, that is, she knew that he was reputed to be "wild."
But that lent more glamour to the affair. She went farther than she
intended, and found herself in a jam. So she came to me.
"I didn't really love the man," she explained, "and I knew I
Was cutting off my nose to spite my face, but somehow I just went
on and on. If I tell mother, she'll say I'm my father's, daughter
and all the rest of my life she'll talk about how I ruined myself
and broke her heart."
"When you get out of this mess, get a job and a little more
independence," I told her. "You're too old to be so childish. I can
understand how your mother drives you to do wild things. But you
don't want to spend your life playing the fool just because you
feel you're getting even with her. You can't be happy that way."
"I know," she answered meekly. "I know i've made a darned fool
of myself. And I don't understand why I picked out this way of
trying to get even with mother. I just did. It seemed the worst
thing I could do to her."
I didn't find that extraordinary. Sex is used frequently as a
weapon by the woman. The young girl, angry at her mother, thinks
"I'll run away" and adds as a postscript, that she'll run away with
some boy her mother dislikes. The angry wife withholds her caresses
and looks around for someone to whom she can give her body as
additional punishment to her husband.
A young woman who frankly admits to 30 was talking to me the
other day about woman's use of sex,
"People talk of feminine wiles and age-old tricks," she
remarked scornfully. "They talk about women not being
straightforward about sex. How can they? You've seen what happened
to girls who tried to meet man on his own ground."
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She paused a moment. "Probably I'm malicious. But I've got so
sick of men who want my body for a night or a few nights and expect
me to be delighted because they say so and because they admit that
they like me and are attracted by me. They feel that the mere fact
that they want me should cause me to submit immediately. They never
bother to inquire whether I feel the same way or whether I object
to being shopworn. But I'm going to have my fun some of these days.
There are two or three men I'm watching and I mean to have some
quiet laughs at their expense in about 10 years."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I know about half a dozen attractive men in their late 20's
and early 30's. They're all earning enough to support a wife but
they don't want one. They say that they want sex as an adventure.
They usually want one girl as a self-supporting mistress and then
perfect freedom to date any other girls they are attracted to. The
women don't like the idea; it robs them even of the security of a
steady boy friend. They can't even count upon an escort whenever
they want one; they have to find out whether their lovers have
other plans, and it keeps them from getting a matrimonial-minded
man. I know a couple of these gay dogs who are past 40. One already
has lost his manhood and another is losing his. Now they're
beginning to see the woman's viewpoint. They have to stand by and
watch younger men get the women they want. The women their own age
don't appeal to them, and they're having the novel experience of
being a little abject, of pleading to see women, of asking small
favors."
I grinned. "I know what you mean. I've seen some of those
birds who claim they're prematurely impotent. Some of them are, of
course. But you'd be surprised to know how many men in their middle
40's, men who haven't taken any care of themselves and are in
generally poor physical condition, are hollering their heads off in
the privacy of a doctor's office."
"Sure," she agreed. "I know one man who wasn't willing to make
any sacrifices to insure a lasting companionship. He didn't see any
women worth marrying or worth giving up his freedom for. Now he's
consumed with self-pity. He sees old age approaching and not much
more fun. So he wants some attractive woman to fall in love with
him and spend her life taking care of him. There are still women
who would marry him, but he doesn't want them. He's used to the
best. And he can't adjust himself to the idea that he's no longer
in a position to take what he wants. he's like a woman now. He has
to take what he can get.
"A man told me the other day that he'd always been fair to
women; he'd never promised to marry any of them; they knew what
they were getting into when he had a sex affair with them. And he
never got them into any jams. Now he's full of self-pity because he
wants a woman and can't get her. She has never promised to marry
him, either. It never occurred to him that some of these women who
gave him pleasure may have fallen in love with him -- he was a
handsome devil -- and concealed it from pride. If a man tells a
woman he loves her, she usually feels that sometime he may get
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around to proposing. And a man has no compunction about asking the
girl if she loves him. That puts the whole affair on a higher
plane. And if she doesn't have hysterics or shoot him, he feels
that this is all right with her."
"I know," I said. "A man cane to me the anther day and asked
if I could predict how much longer he could have an active sex
life. He was beginning to weaken. I told him it was impossible for
me to tell. He was about 50, and wasn't in very good physical
condition. He said that he wanted to marry a girl of about 25. He
would do it if he thought he could have sexual relations with her
for four or five years. He said that if he became immediately
impotent, he would not feel right about marrying her, but he
thought that after four or five years of married life he could
expect her to be faithful.
"He was an old friend of mine, and I told him that he was just
laying up misery for himself. I asked him if he expected a girl of
30 to be faithful to a man of 55. He hemmed and hawed and said that
he knew she must have a sex life -- he thought in terms of sex
still rather than love -- and he wouldn't object as long as he
didn't know about it. He was willing to condemn the girl to
clandestine' affairs, to being the unfaithful wife of an old man,
in order to have four or five years of happiness. And, of course,
he would be jealous and suspicious. Most of these old men with
young wives are."
"Naturally," the woman said. "He'd tell her that he understood
her need for sex, but he'd see that she felt guilty, and he'd
torment her by trying to find out about it and telling her that all
her men friends were scoundrels."
I chuckled. "You've got him right. He then told me that he'd
let her divorce him if she wanted to -- but I didn't take that too
seriously, either. Men in that condition will promise virtually
anything. Then he said that she'd be left a moneyed widow when she
was a little past 30, and she could have plenty of time to have her
fun."
"It would serve him right if he married her and she was
flagrantly unfaithful and let him know she was waiting for him to
carry out his promise to die and leave her his money," the woman
exclaimed. "I told you I was a little soured on this sex business.
In the past 10 years, I've had several affairs. Some of them have
left pleasant memories and some not so nice. But when I try to
count the men of all ages, descriptions and previous, condition of
servitude who have made me proposition's, and men who have let me
get into trouble through their carelessness and expected me to get
out by myself, well, it doesn't seem very pleasant."
She looked at me and grinned. "I don't mean the time I came to
you, either. Larry was all right then. He did his duty. But I must
say that he was content to sit back and furnish his share of the
money and let me make the arrangements. Which is one reason why I
didn't use any of the much-vaunted feminine wiles to try to trick
him into marriage. Of course, I know it was in character for Larry
to be quiet and easy-going. But I admit that I would have admired
him more if he hadn't stood back so meekly and let me handle it."
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I laughed. "You modern girls yell for equal rights, and when
you get them you're peeved because men don't try to dominate you
and don't do everything for you."
"Well put," she agreed. "But there's another viewpoint,
Martin, in my world, where sex frequently is a casual matter -- to
judge from some of the propositions made me -- there are only a few
ways of knowing when a man really cares for a woman. I'm always
skeptical of the word, love. There are so many varieties, ranging
from momentary passion and infatuation or friendly fondness to the
honest to gosh till-death-do-us-part kind. And this womanly
intuition business has been greatly overrated. I've heard men say
that a woman always knows somehow when a man really loves her.
That's bosh. Women have a keener eye for deception in people they
don't love; and frequently they try to kid themselves and others
when they really know better.
"When it all boils down, there are only three or four ways in
which a woman can be reassured that a man loves her. And those
don't always work. One is when he offers her a wedding ring. Larry,
for instance, told me that he loved me as much as if we were
married, I always thought when he said that, 'Well, why don't you
ask me to marry you, then?' He got angry once when I said I
couldn't believe in him, and asked me whether a wedding ring were
the only way I could be sure of him. He pointed out that there
wasn't anything sure about marriage. I knew that, of course, but
what he didn't realize was that to a woman a proposal doesn't
merely meat that the man is signifying his willingness to be
branded as the woman's property, but that he is anxious that the
woman be known as his wife.. No woman like's to be told merely that
she can be sure of the man. She wants the man to want to be sure of
her. Otherwise, she has a feeling that he's a little
condescending."
"Male egotism," I explained. "So that's why you didn't want to
marry larry?"
"Partly," she admitted. "And he wasn't jealous enough. I had
no way of knowing whether this was perfect faith or utter
indifference, and sometimes I needed assurance that it wasn't
indifference. As it was, at times I got the idea that he didn't
really give a damn what I did so long as it didn't interfere with
his having me when he wanted me, or reflect on his reputation, or
keep him from his other social pleasures."
"Marriage and jealousy then," I ticked them off on my fingers.
"What are the other things a woman needs as proof of love?"
"illustrated again by Larry," she replied. "Now Larry said
later he would have been glad to arrange all the disagreeable
preliminaries for my abortion. But the point is, he didn't rush up
with the offer at the time and he didn't insist. God knows how many
times I've heard men say -- after I've expressed the suggestion --
'If I had known you wanted to go, I'd have been delighted to fix
it.' They may have been sincere, but it sounds like lip-courtesy,
especially since they didn't do anything more about it. Now I will
ask favors of men who mean little to me -- or who perhaps are good
friends of mine. But I want my lover to make offers of service
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because he wants to, not because I suggested it. And once in a
while I want him to override my wishes if he thinks it is best for
me. Now you are a friend of mine. But if I told you I was going to
get drunk, you'd shrug your shoulders and think it was my business.
As a matter of fact, you wouldn't care enough to find out who I'd
be drinking with. I don't expect more from you. But from a lover,
I'd want a little more interest in my welfare."
"You want perfection," I told her.
"No," she protested, "I don't mean that I should always be the
passive member of the couple. But I'd want some assurance that he
thought of me without my having to call his attention to me.
Otherwise, I'd never know whether he was genuinely anxious to be
with me."
She grinned. "We sound so smart we ought to write a book about
clandestine sex."
"I am," I told her. "I've kept a sort of casebook and I'm
compiling an informal record of them. I thought it might show some
of my stuffed shirt friends there's more to sex than the birth and
wedding notices,"
"How are you going to end it." she asked.
"I don't know. I've been lucky so far. I'm happily married,
with two children. Sometimes I think that the reason I am happily
married is because other people make my mistakes for me. And so far
I've been pretty lucky. Of course by the time the book comes out I
may be in prison."
"Let me finish it," she asked eagerly. "I like to come over
here and talk to you, knowing that you'll regard it as a
confessional. I can't talk about these things to the men and women
I know. It might do me some good to get it off my chest, and it
might do others some good to hear the woman's side of the case.
"All right," I agreed.
"You can present the sex situation from an impersonal
viewpoint," she explained with an ironic grin, "and I'll give the
story of the fallen woman, 20th Century style."
"So be it," I said. "I am never satisfied with endings,
anyhow. The happy ending's make me feel that if I look on the front
page tomorrow I'll see a divorce suit being filed. And when I see
tragic endings I know that presently the characters will begin to
feel that life isn't so bad after all and a good meal or a stiff
drink is in order."
And so my book ends, appropriately enough, with the first
person story of one of my patients. Its writer will remain
anonymous, without even the cloak of a fictitious first name. A
week after our talk my patient brought it to me, neatly typed. I
found it an absorbing human document. She told me that she had kept
a diary at the time. I present it in her own words.
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XIII. ONE GIRL'S STORY
When you mention the word "abortion," most people either laugh
or look avidly interested, depending on whether you are being
general or personal in the discussion.
The discussion won't be in the first person, singular, because
an abortion is one strictly feminine operation women don't talk
about. That sounds like a joke. It isn't to one who has gone
through the hush-hush business of having one.
Married women have bored we by dwelling on the details of
their sacrifice and pain in childbirth. But the unmarried girl is
silent about the torture, mental and physical, she endured to
prevent an unwelcome child entering a hostile world. Her silence is
part of her punishment. And no small part. Not for her the sympathy
lavished on the ill or the bereaved. She has to smile before,
during, and after her premature accouchement.
By my code of ethic, an abortion was the only possible curse.
My lover and I had not wished to marry, before I became pregnant.
There was no reason why accidental conception should force us into
a repugnant marriage. I had no moral scruple's against ridding
myself of the "mistake." I could see no difference between an
abortion and use of contraceptives.
At times, I felt that I would like to have a child. I even
speculated regarding its probable traits and appearance. Even now,
I sometimes find myself wondering what the child would have looked
like, figuring out how old it would be and speculating regarding
any change it would have made in my life. But thus far I'm glad
that I did not have it.
I did not want to bring an illegitimate child into the world.
I had decided ideas upon what a child's upbringing should be. It
would not be fair to myself to jeopardize my reputation and my
possible career, and the same thing was true regarding my lover. I
did not want the responsibility; neither did the father. It would
be impossible for me to even support the child decently. I had no
right to bring a child into the world under such circumstances.
I was, I believe, exceptionally lucky. I obtained, easily a
small amount of ready money. I was able to spend a short time away
from my home without suspicion attaching to my sudden departure. My
lover shared the expenses, and we were able to keep the affair
secret. At times during that dreary period when my family doctor
thought it best to wait and see if my menstruation had not simply
been delayed, I wanted to talk about my fears, to argue aloud. in
order to convince myself that I was being foolish. Again, I wanted
to try to forget the whole business. I even thought about remaining
drunk or at giddy parties the remainder of the time I must wait, I
resent my constant worry. I sought easy physical tasks which would
occupy my hands and mind and shut out thought. It was a strain to
carry on a normal conversation. I'd forget for a few minutes. and
then back would come the nagging worry.
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The doctor had thought I might have just skipped a
menstruation period, because there had been a tiny flow. As time
approached for the deciding period, I was obsessed with a desire to
get it over with. I was optimistic with the doctor. But I was
secretly convinced that I was pregnant. Time dragged and then
spurted. I had the usual wish-fulfillment dreams in which I fancied
that I was menstruating normally. They caused me unpleasant
awakenings and a dread of going to sleep. I acquired an unhealthy
curiosity about my anatomy. Was my indigestion nausea? Was a chance
abdominal pain the stirring of menstruation? I feared to complain
about any petty ailment, thinking it might be recognized as a tell-
tale symptom. Any chance joke about pregnancy made me grow cold.
Since childhood I had suffered from nervousness. Now I feared
that the additional mental strain might cause me to become
hysterical and blurt out the truth or might cause a nervous
breakdown which would make more difficult the coming ordeal.
I was in a state of complete jitters during the all-important
few days when I should have been menstruating. Then I bolstered
courage for a decisive visit to my doctor.
An hour's wait in the outer office gave ample time for
phrasing and rephrasing the essential questions. I eyed the other
patients and envied them their ailments. They didn't have to hide
their symptoms or worry about a listening nurse.
I told the doctor that nothing had happened. Afterward it was
odd to think this was the worst of many visits to doctors. Later it
became a matter of course, the way was smoothed before me, doctors
were more adroit about relieving nervous strain.
This doctor wasted no time in being tactful. He put his
fingers together and looked thoughtful. "You'd better have an
examination," he advised.
I kept up a running flow of chatter which deceived neither of
us into thinking that I was taking the matter lightly. All the time
my mind was repeating, "This can't happen to me. Not to me. This is
the sort of thing that happens to stupid girls."
The doctor probed. It hurt. I winced.
"You're pregnant all right," he said. "Two months." I felt a
little numb, a little relieved. At least I knew. But I wanted to
get out of there quickly.
"So that's that," I remarked. "I'm a fallen woman. How much do
I owe you?"
"Two dollars." He helped me with my coat and gave me a
friendly slap on the back. "I'm sorry," he observed. "It's just a
bad break."
I went out into the waiting-room. I said something funny to
the girl attendant. I met some old friends on the street. They were
genial.
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"How are you getting along?" asked a man who had once had a
romantic attachment for me.
"Just fine," I smiled. It was funny, I thought, how many
people must be saying "just fine" when they felt like the devil.
I flattered myself that I was taking all this very well. I
hoped that I could maintain my composure when I got into a
sympathetic atmosphere. I went into the hotel room where my lover
was waiting for me. I tried to keep my smile from sliding. I was
afraid my eye's were filling with childish tears. I told myself
that I must behave like an adult, facing a problem that had been
met by thousands of persons.
"I want a drink," I told him. I held the highball in my hand
and sipped it while I gave the doctor's verdict. I lit a cigarette.
I thought that it certainly helped along my appearance as a fallen
woman to sit in a hotel room with a cigarette and a highball while
I listened to what, in my hyper-sensitive condition, seemed an
interminable discussion of plans and the necessity for secrecy.
God knows that I didn't want to broadcast the news. But I felt
so ungodly tired. I wanted bed and rest and the friendly
unawareness of my family. I knew these arrangements had to be made.
But it seemed to me that the same things were being said over and
over again. I suppose they were. My lover probably was nervous,
too, although he didn't show it. His very calm irritated me.
I wonder now if I had to do it over again whether I would try
to be so gay and gallant. Probably it looked as if I were frivolous
and didn't take it very seriously. Maybe if I hadn't tried to act
so brave and efficient, Larry wouldn't have seemed so far away.
Perhaps I should have gone feminine and helpless. I don't know.
Anyhow, it was decided that I should go to a nearby city where
a friend of mine would arrange things. I live there now. I made a
suitable excuse and drove away. Ordinarily I like going anywhere
and part of the day I managed to enjoy the trip. But there was the
strain of explaining things to the friend, getting his assistance.
I had told him during my waiting period that I might require his
help. I knew that he was a friend of several doctors and would be
in a position to help.
I told my friend, and I tried to tell myself that the reason
Larry did not go along was because it was difficult for him to get
away from work, it would be doubly expensive for us both and it
would increase the danger of being found out if we were both away
from home at the same time.
I realized that there was no real need for him to go with me.
X could handle this business with more efficiency and more secrecy,
but at the same time I wished Larry had wanted to go or had asked
to come up and bring me back. That trip home was beastly lonely as
I remember It.
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I checked in at the hotel and went to see X. He was
sympathetic but a little brusque about my foolishness in getting
into a jam. He asked why I didn't marry the man. I tried making
explanations, and they all sounded foolish, so at last I said
bluntly that I didn't want to and that was that. He agreed to help,
and I went back to my hotel. Books I had brought failed to hold my
attention. The room seemed first too hot and then too cold. My
dozing was nightmarish.
There were moments that first night when the whole thing
seemed to be only a trifling incident; others when it loomed up as
a calamity and I broke out in cold sweat, remembering my cowardice
about physical pain, my utter ignorance of the whole procedure. I
had to trust blindly to X.
I told myself that it was foolish that I should be so upset.
The morning dragged while I waited for a telephone message from my
friend. On the radio a laconic female voice chanted, "Everything's
been done before. I just want to do what's been done before." The
telephone rang. "Everything is O.K.," X said.
I rushed over for a conference. A medical friend had agreed to
arrange it. But he refused to take my doctor's finger examination
verdict. There must be a laboratory verification. So I bought a
rabbit.
The rabbit cost me $15 and 36 hours of waiting.
Oddly enough this period of waiting, while nerve-wracking, did
bring a strange relief from other worries. My fate for the next few
days was in the hands of impersonal scientists. I hoped, of course,
that the test would be negative. But this was one decision I did
not have to make. And suddenly it seemed to me that I was
unutterably weary of making decisions. People had said that I was
gay and carefree, with 'nothing to worry about' They little knew of
the complications of my private life, my worrying over whether I
had made a mistake in turning down a man who loved me and wanted to
marry me in order to pursue a futile affair with a man who did not;
the constant speculation over, whether I hadn't better leave the
hole thing behind and go somewhere else, start life over again.
Finally the 36 hours were over. I went back to the doctor's
office.
"We can kill it any time now," he reported cheerfully. "Come
on into the laboratory. A magnificent rabbit, must weigh four
pounds. We'll have it for supper tonight, in a stew."
The thought of the doctor's family dining with pleasure on my
rabbit amused and yet slightly irritated me. After all, I had paid
$15 for that rabbit, and spent 36 hours worrying over its health.
I Wondered if medical etiquette required my presence while. it was
being eaten. Apparently not; and I was a little relieved, for it
would have seemed like cannibalism to me.
The doctor killed the rabbit by injecting air into its
arteries. Then he opened it, and fished out two tiny pink objects
with purple spots on them. They Were the ovaries.
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"There you are, my dear," he said genially. "Very positive
reaction. Those purple spots are hemorrhages on the ovary. It's the
only positive test. You're pregnant. No doubt about it."
He carefully put the pink objects away on a piece of paper.
Then he cleaned the rabbit in the sink and wrapped it in a section
of brown paper before putting it in a refrigerator, crammed with
specimens of one kind and another.
"I'll save these ovaries," he observed. "Some of the younger
doctors are interested in these tests, and may want to know what
they look like."
So, indirectly, I was making my contribution to science.
He telephoned the surgeon, and they amiably discussed their
respective healths and when I should appear on the scene. It seemed
that the surgeon was ready to leave his office, so I should come
the next day. This meant an extra day's waiting, of course, but
time and tide in such things mean little to the doctor.
"Now cautioned the doctor. "You must remember not to breathe
a word of this to anyone."
"Of course," I agreed.
"The surgeon is not doing this for financial reasons," he went
on. "He is no quack. But he and I feel that there are times when it
is better for humanity that some children should not be born. I
understand that in your situation it would mess up the child's life
as well as your own and that of your lover. It is a racial waste,
for your child probably would be a fine, healthy one. But I believe
we are justified in aborting you for sociological reasons."
My friend, I think, had exaggerated things Slightly in
explaining to the doctor why I could not marry. But I did not feel
it best to say anything Just then. So I went back to the hotel,
which was beginning to pall on me. I didn't think it best to spend
too much time with my friend. I realized that at the moment I was
far from an agreeable companion. I read until my eyelids would
close in defiance of my will, and my mind would refuse to
concentrate on the contents of the printed page.
The next day I went to the surgeon's office. The first doctor
had given me a note of introduction. Life seemed to be a succession
of appointments and introductions and doctors' offices.
Doctor A was a likeable middle-aged man with a friendly
manner. He frightened me at first by telling me briskly that I
would need a nurse and probably would have to stay in the city for
at least another week and possibly 10 days. It would be best for me
to get a little apartment.
Obediently I checked out of my hotel and registered in the
apartment hotel he suggested. Then I returned to his office and
waited while the reception room slowly cleared of patients. There
were magazines that I tried to read without much success, The
office attendant telephoned for my nurse.
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"You won't need her until tomorrow," she explained casually.
"You'll get along all right tonight. Then tomorrow, about 11, you
can come down here and meet her."
"Here?" I asked incredulously. I fully expected to be borne
away from the doctor's office in an ambulance. The next day I
supposed I would be moaning and tossing in my bed, yelping for
morphine."
"Sure," said the nurse. "You'll be able to walk a few blocks
tomorrow, all right. Walking's good for you, anyway."
Doctor A stood in the doorway.
"You're the next victim," he grinned. "I'll give you a little
treatment and send you on your way rejoicing."
I didn't answer. With all the joyous sensations of a condemned
man -- there wasn't even a hearty breakfast to cheer me up, for I'd
been too nervous to eat -- I walked into the office. The low tones
of the nurse and the doctor, the whispered consultations, had been
entirely too reminiscent of the death room.
"Better take off your coat and hat," he suggested,
I obeyed, and began unfastening my dress, looking around for
the traditional white nightgown buttoned down the back.
"No need to take off your dress," he explained cheerfully.
I sat down on a white table, of a type that was becoming all
too familiar, and hooked my feet in the stirrup-like circles. The
doctor squeezed some white salve out of a tube, and then I felt him
probing. "Don't I take an anesthetic?" I asked, although nothing
very painful had been done to me so far.
"Of course not," he replied, and launched into a discussion of
the jitters he'd had when his tonsils were cut out.
He was probing with some instrument now, and I winced a
little.
"I don't see how you girls stand this," commented the doctor
cheerfully. "It hurts me just to do it."
"Oh, it isn't so bad," I hastened to assure him.
He turned away and washed his hands.
"You can sit up now," he said. "That's all."
I sat up. I stared.
"You mean," I paused for emphasis. "You mean that this is all
you do?"
"That's all the first treatment," he answered.
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I felt like laughing. I felt like crying. There was such a
sudden let-down in all the courage I'd bolstered for a painful
operation. I didn't feel any different. I didn't feel as if I'd had
an abortion. It wasn't any more painful than the examinations I'd
had before.
"Sit down and get your breath," the surgeon suggested.
"But I thought you had to cut something out, and then stuff me
full of medicated gauze," I protested. This abortion business
seemed too good to be true.
"Oh, that's the old French method. That's a barbarous
business, and dangerous. I never do that any more. Nowadays I just
loosen the membranes, and let nature expel the thing in the
natural way."
He told me the name of this new method, but the word meant
nothing to me. It seemed to have something to do with heat.
"I've had thousands of cases, and never a failure yet. High
school girls, girls your age, older women -- all ages. You're
healthy and fit -- you won't have any trouble. Keep on your feet,
eat and drink anything you want, except alcohol, but don't smoke
too much. Take these two pills tonight, and your nurse will tell
you what to do tomorrow. You'll run a temperature tonight, and
perhaps have a chill, but don't worry. You'll be all right."
I was all right. I went jubilantly back to the apartment, too
jubilantly I learned later. I felt like toe-dancing. Instead, I ate
five sandwiches, drank a bottle of beer and literally quarts of
water and felt very good indeed. The high temperature came in due
time, I took the pills, which were shiny, black, deadly-looking
things. I learned later that they were merely laxatives. Then I
settled down to await developments.
Developments arrived promptly the next morning. First came the
original doctor, with the cheering news of the price, which was $50
more than I had been led to expect. I was to pay $125. But before
I had much time to worry about that, there came a peremptory
telephone call, urging, me to hurry down to the surgeon's office to
meet my nurse.
"Better get a rubber sheet," urged the first doctor genially.
"Be sure to get it right away, before you expel this thing, because
it won't do you any good afterward. And your worst is yet to come,"
be added. "You won't get off this easy."
The "worst" began within 15 minutes. I perceived now why the
surgeon had said "your first treatment" on the preceding day.
Treatment Number Two hurt more. I began to feel less gratitude
toward the surgeon. He was no longer one of the Lord's anointed
tome. He was, I thought bitterly, getting plenty for what little
he'd done. I remembered the first doctor's admonition to keep quiet
about this matter. It gave me some pleasure to feel that Doctor A
was partially in my power. I could hurt him, too. I could send him
to jail. I toyed with the idea.
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My thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of a tall gray
haired woman. She was wearing rubbers, and carried an umbrella. She
was the nurse.
"This is Miss K," said the surgeon. "She'll tell you what to
do."
She certainly did tell me what to do, and I obeyed meekly. She
began immediately by commanding me to walk back to my apartment
hotel where she ordered some groceries and hurried the maid around
with a great air of authority. Everybody around the hotel seemed to
know her. Evidently she had had numerous patients at the same
place.
The first part, and apparently the most important part, of my
program was to get plenty of exercise. My God! I'd thought that for
once in my life I'd be coddled. It seemed to me that I'd done a
God's plenty of walking. Now I felt I should lie in bed and be
waited on by this scrawny female. Was I paying this homely woman $6
a day just to make me walk and boss me around?
We walked downtown and Miss K ate a hearty lunch at my
expense. Then we shopped. We bought a pink rubber sheet for 29
cents -- the clerk said that pink was best for babies. A huge
package containing four dozen sanitary napkins of a popular brand
cost me 62 cents, a package of safety pins was 10 cents. Then we
added a 25-cent bottle of a well-known disinfectant, two shiny pie
pans at a nickel apiece and two wash cloths ditto. After that we
walked back. The nurse went to bed.
I bought two dollars' worth of groceries to feed her, and 30
cents; worth of newspapers for her to read. The newspapers would
come in handy later, anyway, she said. They did. For days I had to
lie on newspapers atop a crib sheet. A smooth sheet felt utterly
luxurious to me after hot rubber, rough towels and crackling
newspapers.
Miss K lay comfortably on the davenport while I walked the
floor, according to her instructions. Occasionally she would
inquire how I was feeling. I gathered from the conversation with
one of the maids that I was supposed to be taking treatment for
hemorrhoids at a nearby clinic. The maid had hemorrhoids, too, and
I had to listen to a long dissertation on her symptoms.
My friend purchased a small bottle of whisky the nurse ordered
for me. She thought that he was my lover, and called him "your
friend" with tactful emphasis. This amused me considerably. She was
always suggesting that I go to the movies or something with him,
and, I had to tactfully decline and stay at home with her. I surely
was taking good care of that nurse.
I escorted her downtown again at night to fill her to the brim
with expensive grub. She had a mania for cafeterias, where shed
displayed an uncanny knack at picking out the most costly dishes.
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Accustomed to walking, I took a malicious delight in leading
Miss K at a rapid pace. She had corns, I learned early in the day.
Thereafter, I was hell on exercise, except in domestic duties
around the apartment. She stopped in front of every fur shop to
gaze in admiration at the mink wraps. I reflected bitterly that I
could have decked myself in splendor on the costs of my present
pleasure-excursion. It was getting pretty monotonous, this
patrolling the city and waiting for The Pains, which were always
capitalized by Miss, K's slow voice. I vented my irritation in
malicious thoughts about, my nurse, who wasn't a bad sort at all.
Promptly at 9:30, I was sent to bed. Miss K was horrified at
my suggestion that we leave the light on for a while, so that I
could read myself to sleep. I lay there in the dark, feeling
aggrieved. I am accustomed to reading before I go to sleep. It
helps me to relax. The more I thought of it the more militant I
felt. I rolled; I tossed. By God, if I couldn't read, she shouldn't
sleep. I was beginning to have aches and pains, too. I felt very
bad.
I had to lie there in the dark and suffer in silence, because
this old dame didn't read anything but the newspapers. Naturally
she had no sympathy with night consumption of great literature. I
began thinking of all the nasty things I could say about her.
Greatly pleased with these fancies, I drifted off into a series of
hellish nightmares and chill's. My nurse had appropriated two-
thirds of the blankets. In the morning I was delighted to learn
that she had slept badly and that her head hurt. My head hurt, too.
I, hurt all over.
She cooked my breakfast and washed the dishes. Meanwhile, she
informed me that the doctor almost had pneumonia. I was overjoyed.
She forced me to walk to the doctor's office. I grew sick to my
stomach sitting in the close, hot room. My pains were worse but as
yet I knew I had not had The Pains.
I viewed with interest the entrance of a pretty young girl I
had noticed with an elderly couple at my first visit. I had thought
it odd the way they had entered the doctor's office, first papa,
then mama and daughter while papa came out. Then mama and daughter
stood in the hall while papa went back in. Daughter hadn't looked
very happy.
Today she whispered something to mama and remained standing.
I glanced downwards. By their feet ye shall know them! Her trim
pumps had been replaced by scuffed oxfords suitable for walking.
She looked worried. She glanced at me curiously. I resisted an
impulse to say, "Walking certainly is fun in this damned cold,
rainy weather, but if you get tired of it you can climb stairs or
get some lovely jolting on street cars. Come over to my place.
We've got a roof garden and we can walk together."
The doctor treated with glee the news that I felt terrible. He
gave me another treatment. I was getting along beautifully he
observed. A doctor doesn't believe beauty is only skin deep. When
be wants to flatter you, he talks about your healthy liver and
kidneys, A doctor's courtship ought to be a novel experience.
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We walked, Miss K ate a delicious lunch at my expense. I was
getting it in the neck for all the times I'd been entertained at
lunch. I couldn't remember ever having paid the cheek for any woman
before and I sure wouldn't pick out this half-deaf woman for a boon
companion. I brought her home and put her to bed. I was sick to my
stomach and couldn't sleep. It was no hardship to keep from
smoking. I couldn't even consume the three cigarettes a day I was
allowed.
"That's fine," the doctor exclaimed, clapping me on the back
next day. "We want you to be sick to your stomach. Are you holding
your meals?"
"Yes."
"That's fine," he commented. "You must eat to keep up your
strength. But we want you to be sick to your stomach. And ache. You
must ache. You're doing fine."
I wasn't really sick to my stomach, anyhow, he added. It was
my uterus being disturbed. I didn't know anything about cause, but
I knew how I felt.
Nausea returned three-fold that night. I refused to go to a
restaurant, and my nurse allowed me to purchase half a grocery-
store. She had told me previously that she had lived for years with
her mother. Mama must have done the marketing, for Miss K, who was
quite at home in a cafeteria, was nonplussed by the absence of
price signs in the grocery. She couldn't pick out the most
expensive items. It seemed to me that in my nervous condition I
should not be required to struggle with menus and marketing, along
with The Pains.
I won my fight to read in bed and I went to sleep like a baby,
after my reading, while Miss K tossed restlessly all night. She won
her bacon for breakfast, but I absolutely refused the cooked
cereals. Abortions are bad enough, without oatmeal.
The next day was Sunday, and the nausea became much worse.
About noon, we went to the surgeon's office again, and he gave me
another treatment -- like the others but much more painful this
time. During the process I burst into tears. Doctor A patted me
comfortingly on the back.
Then came the long street-car ride which the doctor
prescribed, the idea being that the jolting movement was good for
what ailed me. After that I strolled through a zoo, where I peered
at a hippopotamus in a tank of water, and watched some kangaroo's
scratching themselves. That's what their small front legs are for,
I was told: to convey food to their mouths, to scratch themselves,
and to clasp the mate.
I began to feel like hell on the way home. My nurse chattily
decided which of the town's most exclusive restaurants. would be
best, and we got off the car. Miss K lost interest in my jolting as
soon as her stomach began to feel empty., Once off the car, I
became so ill that I could hardly stand. I burst into tears again,
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and I felt a cold, deadly fury against the nurse. Was I paying her
$6 a day to drag me about to expensive restaurants, when all I
wanted was to lie quietly in bed? She suggested that I sit down on
the cold, concrete curb and relax, but it didn't appeal to me.
Finally she hailed a taxi, and I wept quietly all the way back to
the apartment.
Once in my flat, I gave Miss K a dollar and invited her to go
out for her own lunch. As soon as she was out of the room, I
defiantly ate some cheese out of the refrigerator, and began to
feel a little better. Her starched smock, the general air of
neatness and what she called genteel conversation was getting on my
nerves.
That night The Pains began. There was no difficulty in
recognizing them. They began slowly around the back and side, and
worked up to a grand climax in front. Miss K gave me a few lessons
in the ancient art of "bearing down." All the positions she
recommended seemed rather silly to me. I should stand up and put my
hands on the edge of the bed and "work!"
Early in the evening "the Water burst." This seemed to please
the nurse. I hoped that everything would come to pass immediately,
but I wasn't to be a lucky patient. I had to "work" for what I got
and hard work, too. I spent a night of feverish agony and finally
went to sleep in the wee hours. I awakened very early, deathly sick
and having more pains than ever.
"That's fine," said the nurse. She always hailed any symptom
of excruciating agony with pleasure. "I hope you vomit now," she
added. But I didn't. Just gagged and moaned loudly.
"You mustn't make so much noise," she told be, when I wanted
to read the newspapers while I was "bearing down." "The people next
door will hear you."
I felt like saying "To hell with the people next door," but I
didn't. You don't talk back to the nurse. But in my torment it
seemed a small matter whether the people next door heard me moaning
or rattling papers.
Then she made me walk. When my whole body ached horribly, I
had to pace up and down the room until I collapsed on the bed with
a chill. The apartment seemed frigid, but Miss X was a fresh-air
fiend. She cheerfully invited me to breakfast.
"Eat heartily," she urged. "It'll be good for you. You must
keep up your strength."
But the thought of food nauseated me. I lay limp on the bed.
It seemed to me that Heaven could be no more than a bed and sleep.
"If you haven't done anything by 11 o'clock, you'll have to dress
and walk to the doctor's," the nurse threatened. I chilled again at
the thought.
She gave me some quinine, but I was unable to swallow the
first capsule. It floated around in my mouth until it melted and I
got the full benefit of the flavor. But I managed to down the
second one.
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The Pains went lower now. I was put to bed and a towel tied to
the end of the bed was given me to pull. I sat over one of the
shiny pie pans. I pulled. I grew red in the face. But I triumphed.
There was a sudden gurgle just as I thought I would explode -- and
the thing came.
A wave of relief overwhelmed me. I felt a tremendous sense of
personal triumph. But the pain's were not over yet. Nor the
working. "Don't stop," the nurse warned. "If you have another pain,
work just as hard. We've got to get the afterbirth."
I worked hard, but without success. Miss K sent me to bed.
"Keep off your feet," she ordered. "We don't want to risk a
hemorrhage. Don't move any more than necessary."
Her words were needless. I never wanted to stir again. I
rested. blessed rest, until the doctor came an hour later. But he
blasted my peace.
"What are you doing in bed," he demanded.
"The nurse put me here. She said to keep off my feet. The most
blessed words of tongue or pen. And I'm obeying orders implicitly."
"Get back on your feet," he said. "There's some membrane yet
I want to see. Get up and move around."
Wearily I shook the crumbs of toast from my bed-clothes. I
crawled out of bed, the bed I wanted to remain in the rest of my
life. I walked. Not much, but I walked. The whole discouraging
process had to be gone through again.
There is a gap in the diary I kept then. I didn't feel like
writing. I didn't feel like walking either. But I had to walk. Each
day I had to walk to the doctor's office. He inquired if I were
flowing. I said I was. Then he told me to go home and walk some
more. He said I was getting along fine. I felt terrible. I was no
longer so horribly nauseated, but I was sore in every part of my
body. I alternately perspired until the sheets were drenched or
chilled all night long. Sleep was an unknown quantity. So was even
rest. The nurse had asked me whether I fainted easily. I said I did
not know; I had never fainted. But I felt if I got in crowds, I
would soon acquire the art of swooning.
I could not eat in restaurant's. I simply groaned and looked
at the food. Finally Miss K allowed me to eat in the apartment. I
walked in the roof garden. I refused point-blank to go out except
to the doctor's office. I didn't want to faint on the streets or be
overcome by hysterical weeping in a restaurant. I didn't want to
see healthy, happy people.
It is impossible, writing this later, to recapture the spirit
of dull, weary resignation, alternating with periods of frantic
worry about whether the afterbirth ever would come. I blindly
followed the nurse's orders. I even tried to be gay about it. She
said one patient had an easy time because she did the laundry. So
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dizzily I stood in the bathroom and washed out hose and lingerie.
I even laughed. I marveled at myself. I wisecracked. The nurse
enjoyed it. She made me repeat it all to the doctor. He enjoyed it,
too. He called me "darling" and said I was a star patient.
The nurse said that I would have fun doing anything. It
required little effort for me to think of things I would enjoy
more. But I was determined to be gallant, so I kept up my hectic
gaiety. It helped. It kept me from weeping.
Days lost meaning. I went in the morning or early afternoon to
the doctor's office. But he gave me no treatments. Then came
another night of sickening pain. My nerves were shattered. If I
dozed off uneasily, I had horrible nightmares. I spent a morning
pacing the floor and groaning. Part of the afterbirth came with
what seemed to me terrible straining. I took another capsule. The
doctor came to see me. Again the monotonous repetition of "Stay on
your feet. It has to come and it will. But it's being stubborn.
It'll take it's own sweet time. You can't tell from one patient to
another. It's really better to be slow. There's less danger of
hemorrhage."
Then, unaccountably, I quit worrying. I ceased straining at
every pain.
I knew that there were two things the doctor could do if I
didn't get results soon. He could give me a hypodermic which would
cause my muscles to move of their own accord and relieve me of some
of the pain and perspiration-evoking effort of "bearing down." Or
he could pack me, and that would bring the afterbirth immediately.
The last would be painful, but I was past caring about pain. I was
deadened by pain.
Suddenly I felt care-free. They wanted me to walk, didn't
they? Well, I'd walk. I'd try the doctor's latest position. But I
was through worrying. Let them worry for a change.
I slept better that night than I had for a week. The next day
I walked in the roof garden with the radio turned, on. I laughed.
I even danced a few steps. I felt better. I came downstairs and sat
up all morning. When the nurse asked me if I wanted to lie down, I
refused. I was tired of lying down. I ate some breakfast.
I prepared to go to the doctor's office. But suddenly the
after-birth came. "I don't have to go to the doctor," I said as
calmly as possible.
My battle was won. I submitted to going to bed, although I
felt fine. I wanted to go parading up and down the halls shouting
that the whole business was over. I wanted to go down to the
doctor's office and laugh in his face about this bearing down
business.
But I went to bed. The nurse telephoned the doctor discreetly.
She smiled. The doctor came to see me and drank up the remainder of
the whisky I had not needed. I felt somehow proud that I had got
through it without drinking any whisky. I told the doctor I felt
fine. The nurse went out to eat. I lay in bed and read. But I no
longer wanted to stay quiet and rest. I wanted to get up.
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Miss K soaked my breasts in camphor and tied me up tightly
with muslin, like a mummy. I looked thin-chested, The whole
business amused me. It was to prevent my breasts filling with
fluid. Some patients have a great deal of trouble with that, I was
told, and even had high fever. But I didn't. I lay in bed and read
and asked when I might get up. After all my desperate craving to
stay in bid for weeks, I now wanted to be up and going.
There was one big pain when my uterus contracted. Then there
was peace. My nurse gave me sponge-baths and washed me with
disinfectant. I smelled like rotten eggs. But I felt fine. She gave
me castor oil. I didn't even mind that. I told the nurse it was a
conspiracy to keep me in the bathroom constantly, on one excuse or
another.
I stayed in bed all that night and the next day. The next
night I was allowed to get up for a few minutes. I felt shaky and
weak and I broke out in perspiration when I moved. But there were
no pains. I had no hemorrhage. I was getting by fine.
Next morning the doctor came to see me.
"When can I go home?" I demanded. "I feel great. I don't want
to stay in this bed. My breasts aren't filling. Miss K took off the
bandage this morning. I'm all right."
"Go home now if you want to," he told me.
He shook hand's with me and departed. That afternoon I paid
the nurse. Sixty dollars -- but it, too, was virtually painless. I
felt a slight regret at seeing her go. Suddenly she seemed pitiful
to me. Poor Miss K with her life filled with patients and her
dreary home existence. I asked if she wanted the afternoon off. She
hadn't had any time off or much sleep.
But to my surprise, she wanted to spend the afternoon with me. She
had another patient moving in that night. She said I had been
pleasant. We exchanged polite statements about how nice every thing
had been. She said I got along fine and told me the troubles some
of her patients had. She didn't even mention the ones who paid her
$10 a day.
I was still weak. When I washed the dishes, I went to lie down
twice. But I was restless. I couldn't remain quiet. I wanted to go
home. Now with the ordeal over, and the danger past, I worried
about trifles. Would I be able to stand the trip? Would I be able
to carry my luggage into the house? Would my alibi for the trip.
stand up?
Miss K moved out. I read in bed until late. But it seemed odd
without her lying on the davenport. It seemed so quiet without her
asking me if I hadn't read long enough. I missed her slow voice
interrupting my reading with what at the time seemed tedious
anecdotes.
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My world had been composed of a doctor, a nurse, and a few
visits from my friend for two weeks. Now that world had
disintegrated. I felt lonely. I thought about telephoning a few
persons I knew in the city. But that would be foolhardy. I was
registered under a false name. I didn't feel like entertaining or
giving any sort of story. I felt like getting tight. But I didn't
want to drink alone. Anyhow, I was still on a diet, no milk, no
cream soups, not much to drink in the way of alcoholic liquors.
It was amazing how quickly the ordeal began to fade. It took
an effort to recall how the pains slowly surged forward, beginning
at my back and going all over my abdomen and increasing until they
were almost unbearable and then slowly going away. They had been
difficult to describe. Miss K would ask if they were worse than the
day before, but I could not tell. The day before had passed into
blankness.
I cooked a leisurely breakfast. Then I took my crib sheet, my
pans, the remainder of the castor oil, the muslin I hadn't needed,
the disinfectant and the groceries I had left, in to the girl next
door. I felt it would be somehow fitting to make a gift to my
successor.
She was a slim, pajama-clad girl with huge dark eyes and
jaunty dark curls piled atop her head. She moved restlessly around
her tiny apartment and smoked incessantly.
"You'll have to cut down on cigarette's," I warned her.
She gave me a startled look. "They hadn't told me," and she
crushed out her cigarette.
"I'd forgotten," Miss K said. "But you have been smoking too
much."
She looked in bewilderment at the pie pans. Miss K had washed
and disinfected them.
"What are they for?" she asked.
"You'll find out," I laughed.
Miss K had asked me to tell her to relax. But I knew it would
be useless. You can't relax just because someone tells you to, You
can't be calm because someone say's that it's better for you. So I
told her. "It isn't so bad."
"I'm not dreading it," she replied. I knew she was lying.
"But she says she'll be home in two or three days," Miss K
chuckled. We were old-timers together.
"That's what I said," I remarked with a grin. "Are you nervous?"
Miss K gave me a warning glance. She didn't want me to make the new
patient fretful.
"No. I'm not the nervous type. All that worries me is that I
wish it would hurry up and happen and they won't tell me when it
will."
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I laughed. It was remarkably easy to laugh that morning. I was
going home that afternoon.
"That's all that worries anyone. But you can't hurry it. just
walk and forget about time."
"My feet are sore now," she complained. "They walked my legs
off yesterday. But I'm going home by Thanksgiving. I've got to get
home by Thanksgiving."
It's a long time until Thanksgiving," the nurse soothed her.
"You'll be home then," I said.
She thanked me for the stuff . I'll pay you for it," she
offered. I shook my head. "You'll be paying for plenty of things."
She reached for a cigarette and then drew her hand back and glanced
at the nurse. Then she put her arms over her head.
"Don't do that," I cautioned. "You've', got to keep your arms
down."
"I didn't know." She meekly folded her hands in her lap.
I felt sorry for her, and I wished I could make things easier
for her. But I couldn't. She looked at me curiously and I knew that
she hated my leaving her alone with the nurse. There was a strange
kinship between us. I was introduced to her, but I didn't catch the
name nor did I ask for it to be repeated. We were part of an army
of nameless women. I rather wished that she'd been there when was
and we could have walked together and exchanged complaints. But I
went away. We both smiled. And that was that.
I thought that would be the end of my story, But it wasn't. I
went home. Everything went smoothly. My parents accepted my story
of an extended visit with friends. There was not much pain -- a
little, but nothing serious. But the nervous shock lingered on.
weak, irritable. I quarreled with my lover. He felt that I blamed
him. I felt that he blamed me. I wanted to be coddled and he wanted
to forget it.
We had several serious quarrels about it and finally made up.
I felt that it would make me out a damn fool to go through that
ordeal for his sake and then quit going with him immediately. And
he may have felt the same way. But I fancied myself neglected. I
was sarcastic. My nerves gave way, and I had tantrums, not because
I wanted to but as a reaction from what I had gone through. I tried
to stop fussing, but it was a physical and mental condition beyond
control.
I tried to explain this to him, and for a while we drifted on.
But looking back now at the wreck of our affair, I wonder just how
much effect it had on our breaking up. I believe a great deal.
Subconsciously I always felt that he should do something to make up
to me what I had suffered. I know, of course, that there was no
reason why he should. Certainly he regretted it and the whole
affair was an accident.
BANK of WISDOM
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
But from time to time whenever I felt that I was being
neglected I would find myself thinking, "After all I've gone
through for that man." And if he took another girl out on a casual
date I resented it. I'd think bitterly, "And what has she endured
for him?"
Before we had boasted that ours was a free and easy
companionship. Now I rather resented that term. I had refused to
assert my claims at the logical time but somehow I felt that my
ordeal should give me some privilege and I was exasperated when
treated as just the "girl friend." I felt like flaring up and
saying, "Oh, no, there's nothing really between us. He was just the
father of my unborn child." But I didn't. And eventually I went
away. He was a little bewildered and a little angry. But I had been
bewildered and angry too long.
I know that the episode had one lasting effect. It made me
take sex more seriously. It gave me a horror of "free and easy"
companionship.
One of the first people I looked up when I moved to the city
was the doctor. One reason was that it gave me mental relief to
talk over the case. I got rid of a lot of bitterness by dragging it
out of the past and learning that other girls had quarreled with
their lovers and that my nervousness and resentment were natural.
The doctor says that as long as he continues in his profession
there can be no logical ending for his "confessions." Likewise
there can be no real ending for my story, for there always will be
a tiny mental sear.
But now that I have come nearly to the close, there are a few
things that I would like to say to other girl's. Don't confide your
own story even to your closest friends unless you have used them
for alibis. Then better make up some other story if you can. There
will be a slight coolness or you may imagine there is, which is
just as bad. You'll be greeted with, "But how did you happen to get
into such a fix?
It's useless to make any explanation other than that accident.
will happen in the best of families. And it's better to keep
yourself in a position where no explanations are necessary.
Think it over pretty carefully before you tell your future
husband about it. He might think you didn't want children at all.
He might believe you had been pretty wild in your youth. It's
terribly easy to misunderstand these things and sometimes words
make them worse.
When you go home, ask your doctor about birth-control
information and stick to what he says. Don't change around because
some woman dishes out a lot of "absolutely safe methods." Usually
the more positive the woman, the more inaccurate her information.
I know one woman who discovered a new and pleasant system and
rushed around telling all her friends. She neglected to say that
this system depended on the woman being regular in her periods, and
that it had to be adjusted to her cycle.
BANK of WISDOM
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
117
CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
Likewise, what works with one woman may not work with another.
I know girls who get along all right with certain douches and
others who can't risk them. Before any woman convinces you, ask a
doctor.
I know that you will be irritated when you hear people talking
as if any girl who got into a jam was a fool. But realize that it
is futile for one girl to crusade against the campaign of secrecy,
scandal and disapproval waged by society. If you really feel deeply
about this matter, join an organization for that purpose. I am
annoyed when I hear women say that abortions are cheap and simple
affairs and they are confident that their doctors will help them
out if they need help. But I find it wisest to remain silent.
Similarly if you really want to give advice adopt a very
impersonal, "several friends of mine," instead of the thin "a
friend of mine" with a mass of details. Be very careful before you
recommend your doctor to anyone. Never give letters of introduction
to him. If you really want to help, make the doctor a personal
visit before you mention his name to the girl.
If you haven't become one of the initiated, let me give you a
few words of advice. Don't wait and worry if you're overdue. Go
immediately to the doctor, your family doctor. If you are caught,
ask his advice. He may help you, and thus you'll be saved a lot of
additional expense.
Don't let false modesty keep you from telling your lover about
it and asking his help. Unless he's an absolute rotter, he'll
arrange things. If he is a cad, you want to find it out. And if you
intend to marry him and have children, now is the time to do it.
I made a mistake in trying to protect my lover, and so I was
accused of being bossy. Don't repeat my error. Let him take as much
responsibility as he is willing to. That will prevent a lot of
resentment later on. Go to him first, before you go to a friend.
Then he'll feel that you trust him and later on you won't quarrel
about that. Furthermore, there's a danger if you go to a man friend
that your lover will feel that perhaps he isn't the father of the
unborn child.
This sounds pretty disagreeable but it's better than
bitterness and squabbling afterward. If your lover wants to pay all
the expenses, lot him do it. You'll have the suffering to do. But
don't let yourself get to feeling that you are a martyr, that all
men are selfish, and sex is an ugly trap. When you begin to feel
that, look around at some of your friends and remember that you are
only one of thousands of girls with secrets in their eyes and
smiles on their lips.
Don't degenerate into a whiner because you had one bad break.
But on the other hand, don't make any mistake and try to be too
brave and too gallant. If you do, your lover may think that you
don't take this very seriously and he will dismiss it lightly. Let
him know that you're scared, you are suffering and that you need
gentleness and consideration. Don't be too modern.
BANK of WISDOM
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
118
CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
And another thing. This is not the time to skimp on expenses.
Go to the best doctor you can, even if you have to borrow the
money. But don't hesitate to let the doctor know if you're hard up.
If you are staying at a good hotel, are well dressed and don't
mention money, he may charge you more than his minimum price, send
you to an expensive place to stay and give you a more expensive
nurse. Most good doctors charge according to the estimated income
of the patient.
When you're ready to leave, ask the doctor about any possible
danger from going back to work, when you can have intercourse again
and what to do if something happens. Chances are there will be a
slight flow for perhaps a month. But if you are in pain, rush right
down to a doctor; don't wait and worry.
Your mind is going to be filled with the subject. So be
careful about drinking. You're not supposed to do much anyhow.
Remember that there is no subject on which there are so many
violent opinions. The woman who talks tolerantly of birth control
and abortions may speak in an entirely different way regarding some
friend or relative.
**** ****
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