This was before Roe v. Wade, and safe abortions were hard to come by.
In 1970 I was 19 years old and a college sophomore. My sweetheart had just been drafted into the Army and was about to leave for basic training at Fort Knox, and probably go from there to Vietnam. I thought I was invulnerable, of course. A few weeks after he left I was shocked to find out I was pregnant.
This was before Roe v. Wade, and safe abortions were hard to come by. Luckily I found a minister near campus who counseled me and helped me obtain a legal abortion. I flew to California for a top-quality procedure in a hospital, and I was able to follow up with medical care when I got back on campus. We both borrowed money from friends to pay the bill (about $1000 including plane fare, which was a huge sum at the time) and it took us about a year to pay the loans back.
That was the first time in my life that I took full responsibility for myself. I asked myself what I wanted my future to be, and what I needed to do to make it happen. They were hard questions and even harder answers. But facing the problem was a huge turning point in my life. I learned from it that I needed to be the one in charge of my life. From that came everything: my college degree, my career, my eventual happy marriage and family – and most important, my knowledge that living by my own judgment is really what it means to be moral.
