I didn't want to bring an unwanted child to term.
Earlier, I had told the young man I was pregnant. He backed away, unable to speak. We were not in love.
I saw him from afar recently, the first time in 40 years. He was married with children and had a prominent career, a robust figure and gray around the temples.
He looked as if he had a good life. I wondered what would have happened had the time, or our feelings, been different.
During the sexual revolution in 1968, sex was plentiful, without fear of AIDS. Birth control was not widely available, and abortions were illegal. Few talked about sexually transmitted diseases.
Before my troubles, a high-school friend told me that she "went away" to a home for pregnant girls, put the baby up for adoption and returned to finish her senior year. She was haunted by her loss.
A few years ago, the friend was contacted by the son she never knew and was joyous at the reunion, meeting his wife and daughter. She still keeps in touch with them.
But when my period was late, I panicked. I made up a story, borrowed a wedding ring and went to the doctor to get enough God-knows-what pills to bring on my monthly cycle. They didn't work.
My parents would never have paid to send me away to have the baby, nor paid for an abortion. More likely, my parents would have killed me. As for keeping the baby, my mother didn't like children.
I was on my own. I understood the moral dilemma, just like my former classmates in a religious college on the Main Line, who also chose to terminate.
After much soul-searching, I borrowed a few hundred dollars to handle it my way.
The unintended consequence of "free love," the cry of the '60s, was horror.
Those with no money, or knowledge of where to get such a medical procedure, tried to induce abortions themselves, or turned to quacks. Some women died trying. That's when the metal coat hanger became popular.
Women ended up in hospital emergency rooms, bleeding and with infections.
