A personal recollection and call to action from Ilene Kahn Power, a board member of the nonprofit Women in Film.
I’m a longtime movie producer and a board member of WIF, and as a woman in the film industry, I’m sharing my story now to highlight how urgent it is that women’s healthcare in our country does not go back to what it was like beforeMonths before I was even pregnant, I met a medical student at a party who was passing out his number to young women in case they knew anyone who needed an abortion. He was a real activist, already galvanized.
Back then, the only doctors who were performing “safe abortions” in Chicago apparently worked for the mafia, and that’s who the med student referred me to. The doctor — at least I think he was a real doctor — didn’t ask me any questions. He told me to meet him at a motel near O’Hare airport and bring $900 in cash. It was a huge amount of money at that time , but I didn’t want to ask the boy who got me pregnant to chip in.
When I checked in at the motel, I used the name “Sylvia Plath.” Even then, I had a sense of humor. I gave the cash to the doctor, and he told me to lay down on a big rubber sheet on the bed. He had a big needle that was supposed to numb my cervix. He stuck it inside me and I started to cry. “How did I get here,” I thought, full of shame. When everything was done, he shoved a packet of antibiotics into my hands and said, “You have to leave now.”I was in pain, I was scared, and I felt humiliated.
Five people cannot change the course of our lives. We have to rise up. Again. Marching is not enough. As storytellers, we have a responsibility to demystify abortion, to show that it’s not an anomaly, but a part of life. We have to be in control of our bodies, and we have to make our own choices and write our own stories. We have to vote, we have to support organizations like Planned Parenthood, and we have to keep fighting.
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