By Burt Raabe

When I came to Bradley University in 1965, abortions were illegal and birth control pills were only about five years old. Like most freshmen, I was 18 years old with little, well virtually no, sexual experience. I soon learned how to date and talk to girls about intimate subjects. What I heard sometimes were traumatic experiences about getting pregnant and having an abortion.

I heard these stories from young women I became close friends with. I have no idea what percentage of young women those days went through this ordeal, but I was surprised to meet any. Bradley is a private school and the population was made up of children of middle and upper middle class parents. The dorms were gender separated and there were curfews. So parents were assured that their children would have a chance to mature safely and focus on education.

When a woman found out she was pregnant, she was terrified. Her parents didn’t shell out tuition for her to go away to Peoria, Ill., to get pregnant, so she would be determined not to tell them and not hope for help from them. The boy was either scared or would deny, often accusing her of having other partners. Sometimes he would have friends say they also had sex with her. This was before DNA testing.

Abortion was illegal, a crime, but it was still performed . . . by criminals, in cheap hotels or private hideouts where no questions were asked. I heard different versions of the experience, and they all sounded quite traumatic. There was no access to counseling then, so the victim had to deal with it for years before she could get any kind of help.

There were undoubtedly botched abortions resulting in sterility or even death. The judgment and shame associated with abortion kept all a secret.

There is a missing link in the abortion controversy both 50 years ago and now. That link is the male, the boy. Somewhere along the line, the impregnator drops out of the story. In our patriarchy, we dump all the shame, guilt and responsibility on to the young woman. To be fair, many young men do the right thing and take responsibility for their actions and become partners in raising their child either by marriage or by being in their child’s life.

Is the condition before Roe vs Wade what we want to go back to? I see male politicians who are not old enough to have experience of that time making moralistic statements about a very complicated and tragic subject. I think it would be helpful if these men who wish to be leaders would make statements about male responsibility.

The most compassionate position on abortion is that it should be accessible, safe and rare.