Hear My Story, Know My Pain : Women who have had abortions must speak out to put a face on choice and retain itas an option.

As the Senate considers the nomination of Dr. Henry Foster to be surgeon general, few political commentators have focused on the importance of these hearings for the civil rights of all women. Women must begin to regain control over the abortion debate by using what we all have in our control: our stories. We must give voice to the pain of the past and speak our minds at home, at work and in our churches and synagogues. We must show our friends, our spouses and our children the human face of choice and abortion. If we fear the consequences of our narratives, the religious right will continue to dictate our moral code and our choices.

My story begins 15 years ago. I was in the last stages of my graduate career at UC Berkeley. Only a few months remained before I would defend my thesis. Nights turned into days as I lived in the graduate student office with my colleagues, studying, preparing, anticipating the trick questions that would be posed by our faculty tormentors. As the anxiety mounted, I became sleepless, edgy and increasingly run down, until one day I realized that my food had an odd taste and my fatigue was mounting daily. I knew it was time to go the student health center when I fell asleep as I was talking with a friend.

As I waited for the doctor to call my name, I closed my eyes and dreamed of the day that I would walk across that stage. The elusive Ph.D. that had taken so many years would finally be in my grandmother’s and my mother’s hands. It was my favorite dream, one that I played over and over in my mind whenever I thought I could go no further.

Adela de la Torre! I woke up and entered the sterile room. A young doctor gently queried me on my symptoms. She listened carefully and took copious notes, and at the end paused to ask: “Do you think you may be pregnant?” Without a moment’s hesitation, I replied, “That’s impossible, I have a Dalkon shield IUD, I just had it checked. There is no way that I could be pregnant.”

I was wrong. I had a week to decide. Pregnancy with the IUD in place would risk my life or fetal damage. Removing it would abort the fetus. I had no health insurance, no full-time job and I was a month away from completing my graduate career. I screamed, I wept. This wasn’t fair. This could not happen to me.

But it did. As the nurse held my hand, a doctor explained to me what was about to transpire. As he suctioned, a scream leapt from the depths of my soul. It seemed like an eternity passed, but it was merely seconds. Alarmed, the nurse stepped back. Instinctively, the doctor grasped my hand, sharing for that moment the pain that I felt. As he wiped the tears from my face, he showed me human compassion, compassion that does not judge the painful choices that others make, but helps to heal the wounds.

My life has moved on since that springtime day when my world stopped. Not without regret, but with the peace of mind that I made the right choice. A choice that I will never forget, but one that was mine to make. As I tell my daughters my story, they fear such a choice. But as young women, they know that the responsibility to choose is not free from pain. They do not like their mother’s choice, but they have accepted it with the willingness to understand and the compassion to forgive.

As the moral arbiters in Congress begin to grill Foster on his credibility, let us also demand a human face to the stories of those women who sought care from this physician from rural Tennessee. Let us see if these great senators have the courage to hear poor black women tell their stories of why they made their choices. What dreams did they put on hold? I have no doubt that we will weep when we hear their stories, but we also will begin to understand what abortion really means for poor women. For decades, women have whispered their stories and felt the pain. Isn’t it time we begin to heal ourselves from these wounds?