My first college girlfriend, with whom I had a conversation one afternoon at the Indiana University campus bookstore, was kind, pretty, energetic, and intelligent.

AND she had a car – her father’s white Thunderbird convertible. Soon this T-Bird was found, night after night, in a field not far from campus. Contraception? Birth control pills were available at the campus clinic, but Terri wasn’t ready to be questioned by a nurse about her sexual activity.

For my part, there was a gas station on campus that had a condom dispenser, but I admit that I was only an occasional customer. We relied primarily on the rhythm method, the safest guarantee of pregnancy in history. Our luck lasted for almost a year, until the night Terri announced her period was late. Very late.

We had a difficult discussion that evening. None of us wanted to get married. We weren’t ready to become parents. Terri couldn’t imagine telling her parents. Our options were few, all bad. Abortion was illegal in Indiana and generally considered a form of murder. Abortionists were severely punished. But abortion seemed our only way out. Finally she said, “I’ll do it if you find someone to do it.” » As time passed and I didn’t know what I was getting ourselves into, I went to find an abortionist.

Within a few days, I found a phone number in Indianapolis to call. It was like a spy movie: drop a coin into a slot, listen for a few rings, then hear a voice tell me to dial a second number in 10 minutes. Then a dial tone. I scribbled down the number and glanced at my watch. Could I run the stand while I ran to a pizza place for more shifts? With luck, I would find voice and he would ask me to call another number in 10 minutes and hang up.

Again and again. Sometimes the voice would make me wait three more days before calling back. I had an argument with him. “We don’t have forever!” I told him. He wanted money, and lots of it – all from the start. Terri and I rushed to find it. Finally, an appointment was made and we left for Indianapolis.

We parked in an alley and, as instructed, knocked on the door. An elderly man appeared. He looked both ways and took Terri inside. He accepted our cash payment and told me to wait in the car. A few hours later the door opened and Terri staggered out. The doctor put towels on the front seat and helped me get him into it.

Terri bled all the way to Bloomington. The only thing she would – or perhaps could – tell me about this experience was that he had fondled her. I took her home and she didn’t want me to come in. She did not answer my calls the following days. Then she called me one afternoon, in tears. She was in pain, but didn’t think she could make it to the campus clinic. She didn’t want me to come. She just wanted me to know.

Over the next few months we broke up, then got back together, then broke up for good. Years later, I contacted her and she showed me photos of her son – at least the abortion hadn’t cost her the ability to conceive a child.

In 2017, I Googled the doctor’s name. Expecting nothing, I was surprised by two local newspaper articles about him. The first reported that he had been accused of having performed an abortion which resulted in the death of a young woman – as a result of peritonitis, an acute internal infection. The second article reported his arrest for belonging to an “abortion network”.

I share this story only to describe, from experience, the alternative to safe and legal abortion for those seeking to terminate a pregnancy. It’s a life-threatening nightmare.

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