Back Alley Birth Control

By Aujunai Charpentiair

Eighteen years old Lynn Hamilton lay deadly still as she drifted in and out of consciousness. She didn't try to call for help on the phone there beside her on the night table, as her life's blood slowly ebbed from her weak body. No one suspected a thing. She'd rather lay in her blood soaked bed and bleed to death than call her brother Arnold for help, who was downstairs in the living room watching television! She would rather die from a botched abortion, then have the world know that she had become pregnant and unwed at eighteen! Lynn would rather die, then have the neighbors know she wasn't a perfect person! She would rather lay in her blood soaked bed and actually feel her life drain away, then have others know she was carrying a precious life inside of her. An innocent life that would be ridiculed!

During the 60's pregnant and unwed of any age was looked down upon and frowned on. Lynn would be labeled a bad-girl, tramp, and outcast, among other harsh names. The community had strict rules; either abide by them or be ostracized and stigmatized. Life was extremely hard for unwed mothers. That's why Lynn had to use the "Back Alley" form of birth control. Better known as "The Coat Hanger Method."

By the time Arnold found his sister, all of her blood had seeped out of her body and the crisp white bed sheets were now an ugly cruel angry red! Lynn was dead! She had kept her secret for the moment. For one day in time, but soon the community would know, and Lynn would had died for nothing!

This is a true story. Only the names have been changed. I was a small child when this happened in my small middle-upper-class West Baltimore neighborhood. I knew Lynn very well, as did all the neighbors young and old. Us kids would go and set on the front steps in the hot summer time and talk to Lynn and all the other teenagers. We'd hop from porch to porch or steps to steps. This was the kind of neighborhood, everybody knew everybody, and if you got into trouble, or did something wrong, the whole neighborhood knew about it...and they all would reprimand you, and sometimes they'd even spank you. This was no big deal...even the teachers and principles would spank you. My junior high school principle kept a yardstick ruler in her office that she beat us with!

Lynn's death was sad and shocking. It was the talk of the neighborhood. It was pondered and wondered about. It was a time of hurt and pain. It was a time of introspection and what if! I have tried...but it is just so impossible to imagine a young woman that would actually stifle cries and pleas for help just to keep her secret. Who would consider and welcome death as an alternative...as opposed to facing a community of her peers! Peers who probably had more and worse skeletons in their secret-closets then Lynn! I have thought about Lynn often; seeing her in my minds eye, alive and fearful, and how horrendous it must have been to lay there in her bed quietly in torment...as she went about her death courageously!

So with that being said, today there is a lot of anxiety, dismay, dread, apprehension and trepidation going around over what may or may not be! What will Brett Kavanaugh do if he is confirmed as the Supreme Court Justice to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy as far as reversing Roe v Wade? Will he or won't he be a swing vote to help reverse Roe v Wade if there should ever come a time when there is a decision to reverse it?

In all actuality whether Roe v Wade is reversed or not, it will not stop a woman from getting an abortion if she so chooses too! Nothing can stop that. Either it will be done legally, or it will be done illegally, but it will be done, if the woman decides it is to be done. It was done when there was no Roe v Wade. It was done in back alleys and illegally in some doctors offices all across America! It was self performed, and it was performed by butchers. "Back Alley Birth Control" will rear its ugly head again and become more popular than ever. There will be a run on coat hangers, fake overnight-birth control pills from off the internet, therapeutic abortion kits, and all the morning after abortion pills! And of course, the back alley!

It does not matter if Roe v Wade is reversed or continues as law. Really...it is not the law of Roe v Wade that needs to be changed; but it is the heart of the woman!