I knew a woman who had an abortion. I knew her well.  She had a stepdaughter after finally marrying late.  Then she had a son whom I also knew quite well and for personal reasons of bearing a child in her forties, she felt that she could not shoulder the burden of a second child.  When she became pregnant, she found the resources to abort the fetus.

She told her son this after some years passed and he had mentioned that he would have liked to have a brother.  She did not explain why she chose to end the pregnancy but years later, he figured it out.

This exemplary mother to a stepdaughter and her only son was an expert seamstress.  She knew all the womanly chores and skills necessary to run a household after rising to be a forewoman in a sweatshop just down the street from the infamous Triangle Dress Factory that had a disastrous fire that destroyed the lives of trapped workers and changed our attitudes towards safety at work.

She was the eldest of five living children and helped care for her parents as well as earning and saving enough money to put up her life’s work as part of a partnership with a widower bringing with him a small daughter.  They married and had one son and became partners in a “mom and pop” grocery/deli shop that moved in location from one end of town to another.  This went on through World War II until they had saved enough to buy retirement in a large Victorian house in the Jersey shore.  This became their home and earlier had been partitioned into generous living quarters and four rental apartments.

The income from the rentals would be their retirement plan and the aged building would be their last home.  Her husband had a heart condition and an early heart attack that in those days required a lot of rest.  She continued her life of work and ran the house, kept a home for her husband and was the mother to her daughter and son who soon left for lives of their own.

Her work was truly exemplary, producing knitted and sewn garments, huge amounts of laundry, managing bills and work services with only a few odd remarks about the pain and disappointment in her life.  It was at an odd juncture when she told her son that he never had a brother or a sister because she had an abortion.

I have always wondered how her son’s life would have turned out if he had another full sibling.  He became very good friends with his sister despite her late difficult marriage and having two sons.  These were the only nephews the son had.

Now, the end of this story is that this woman I knew who had an abortion was my mother.  Her story was not a tragic one but I have come to understand why she could not have survived a life or bear or handle it with another child and the burden of a sick husband, two children and a business to run.

She was fortunate in that while abortion was not talked about openly it was understood that it was part of life and no one called it “killing” until fundamentalists made it a core plank in their political platform.  They insist on imposing their religious strictures on everyone else.

I knew a woman who had an abortion.  I never judged that woman.  I loved her. That woman was my mother.