Benefield: 'We just can’t go back.’ One woman’s story of a barely legal abortion before Roe v. Wade became law

“Women will die,” she said.

The debate about abortions being pushed underground is not abstract to her. Nor is the debate about women and those able to get pregnant receiving substandard care.

Or dying.

She has lived all the hypotheticals.

In 1972, one year before Roe v. Wade made abortions legal in the United States, she terminated a pregnancy. She was 18.

The Press Democrat is identifying her only as Lee, her middle name.

Today, she is 68 and lives in Sonoma County.

The abortion she had in California 50 years ago was technically legal, but just barely.

The maze of confusion, pain, misogyny and substandard health care she navigated as a teenager 50 years ago is where Lee fears millions of Americans are now today with Friday’s Supreme Court ruling dismantling Roe v. Wade.

And while some, like Lee, will make it through, some won’t.

“Women will die,” Lee said.

She almost did.

18 and pregnant

As an 18-year-old college student in California, Lee became pregnant the first time she had sex with her boyfriend of two years.

When she realized it, her boyfriend was clear: “He looked at me and said ‘You know what we need to do.’”

What he meant, in reality, was what she needed to do.

At that time in California, abortion care was legal in certain circumstances thanks to the 1967 Therapeutic Abortion Act.

But it wasn’t easy.

And in Lee’s case it wasn’t safe. And the ramifications, both physical and emotional, have been lifelong.

“I know what I have gone through at the edge of Roe v. Wade, which is what I think we’ll be at: The edge,” she said. “We are not going back to the stone ages. We deserve good medical care.”

Active in church

Active in church and a good student, she lived with her father and younger sister. The family struggled some financially.

Before Lee had sex with her boyfriend, she was fitted with a Dalkon Shield, an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) that was eventually the subject of lawsuits and a recall.

Under California law, abortions could be performed in order to protect the physical or mental health of the woman. Lee needed a psychiatrist to render the pregnancy a danger to her.

“The psychiatrist would recommend … that it would be detrimental to me if I had a baby,” she said. “This was the wiggle room.”

Lee understood fully that it was a bogus arrangement.

“It was legal but it was illegal,” she said.

The doctor was located in a neighboring city.

And she felt she couldn’t tell anyone, not even her father, with whom she was close.

She was six weeks along when she found out she was pregnant and 12 weeks in when she had the abortion.

“Too far, in my mind,” she said.

That part was not Lee’s choice. There were many steps to the process, and they took precious time.

“The hoops are extensive,” she said.

Because she was young, because she did not have a lot of money, because she felt she had no option, Lee felt compelled to work within a system that offered few safeguards.

And that is where she worries we will go as a nation now, after the fall of Roe.

“Women have to have access to good medical care or there will be those who take advantage,” she said. “We just can’t go back.”

The weight of the decision

Lee doesn’t remember a lot about the actual procedure.

But she remembers taking time, before her appointment, to study what would happen within her body.

“I researched,” she said. “I went to the library, microfiche, current articles. I was going to be who I am. I thought, ‘You are going to know, you are going to feel the weight of this decision.’”

After the procedure she went home.

“Two days later I go to school and I hemorrhaged. I started bleeding and an ambulance has to come and take me to a hospital,” she said.

She was told that part of the placenta had been left in the birth canal.

After weeks of keeping the secret, Lee had to tell her father.

“I’ll never forget the look on my dad’s face,” she said. “We had a talk. He said he wished I had told him. He said ‘We would have made the decision together, you wouldn’t have to be alone.’ He took me home.”

But Lee continued to suffer. Her body was wracked in pain. She quickly became hooked to the synthetic morphine she was given for the pain.

“My dad just said, ‘Enough, you are addicted,’” she said. “He found me another doctor.”

That doctor tried to find the source of her continued pain.

“He said everything is a mess in there,” she said. “I was afraid. I didn’t want to have surgery and be barren.”

Raised in the Roman Catholic Church, Lee wrestled with her feelings.

“I went to confession. The priest excommunicated me right on the spot,” she said.

It was another devastating blow for a woman of faith.

“When I told my dad he said, ‘Well we’ll go to a different church. He said ‘God doesn’t do that. God didn’t throw away his children.’”

Eight months after her abortion, the one that would lead to so many other procedures and surgeries, Lee’s father had a heart attack and died.

She was 19. She carries that pain with her today.

“I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to break his heart,” she said. “I loved my daddy so much. I ended up breaking his heart anyway.”

‘Just figuring out my life’

Lee continued to live in physical and emotional pain.

Soon after her father’s death, she went back into surgery. Her left ovary was removed, scar tissue was removed from her kidney. There was what Lee described as “clean up” work on her uterus.

“I did not give them permission to take my right ovary,” she said.

She wanted to have children someday. But not right then.

“I was 19, just figuring out my life,” she said.

Lee pushes back against the idea that women take abortion lightly.

“I didn’t have that overjoyed sense of relief. It was not that I had made a mistake, but I didn’t feel good about it,” she said. “I would say the majority of women I meet who have had an abortion have that feeling — there is a sense of relief but there is not joy.”

Lee eventually married. She also miscarried. She carried two children to term.

Both of those pregnancies were difficult. Lee’s reproductive organs and system were in bad shape, yet both of her children were born healthy.

In those pregnancies and in just about any health-related issue Lee has endured in the 50 years since her abortion, there is no road map for health care providers.

There was no record of her abortion in 1972 or the subsequent hemorrhaging.

“So every time I have a new doctor, I have to relive this,” she said.

She has had to contend with ongoing problems with accumulating scar tissue. She still has pain.

“It can affect your whole life,” she said. “I have had trouble my whole life because of this scar tissue.”

“If I were 67 my story would be different because Roe v. Wade would have happened,” she said.

There would have been no secrets, no handshake deals.

At 18, Lee received poor health care. She has suffered her whole life from the fallout of that poor health care.

On Friday, much of the country and the millions who are able to get pregnant were thrust backwards 50 years, to an era where health care choices are not protected.

Lee knows keenly what that looks and feels like.

She’s a hopeful person, but there is a hint of anger in her voice, too.

“This is denying a woman’s right to medical care,” she said. “You can’t deny medical care. If you deny medical care to a dog, it’s abuse.”

“If what had been done to me was done out in the open, there would have been follow up and there would have been accountability,” she said. “There wasn’t.”

Instead, there were secrets and pain and a lifetime of physical ramifications.

“Women deserve adequate health care, good health care. Why does anyone believe they don’t?” she said. “And abortion is a medical procedure.”

Without proper care, women will die.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.