By Lorri Greene
Before Roe v. Wade — the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States — a different story played out, one shrouded in silence and marked by tragedy. This is the story of my best friend and college roommate, and countless women across the country.
It is a story of back-alley abortions, a time when women died while the world — men and sometimes women, too — looked the other way.
In 1966, I was in college. My friend and roommate, Linda, found herself pregnant. Birth control pills were not yet widely available, nor were legal abortions an option. Linda’s boyfriend abandoned her to face this alone, and at 19, she was terrified. We were all terrified.
Word spread of a doctor who performed abortions. They called them “back-alley” procedures for a reason—dangerous, underground operations carried out in secret and in fear. Linda didn’t want to go through with it, and neither did we. But she had no choice. We took her.
The procedure was done, and we brought her back to our apartment. But within an hour, Linda started bleeding — profusely. Panicked, we rushed her to the nearest hospital. The doctors quickly deduced what had happened. They had the power to save her, but instead, they left her on a gurney. There were empty beds. But they left her there.
She bled to death in front of us.
We begged for help and pleaded for someone to intervene, but our cries were ignored. We were young—too young to fully understand that to them, Linda didn’t matter. We didn’t matter. We didn’t realize that, to the hospital staff, we were just dirty hippies who got what we deserved.
We didn’t know that hospitals were supposed to preserve life, no matter the circumstances. And we certainly didn’t know that they had made the decision not to treat her.
And so, in 1966, Linda died in a hospital in Fullerton, California. Later, a nurse offered condolences, but not without reminding us that it was Linda’s fault — she had, after all, chosen an illegal abortion.
This war on women is not new. If you think things are improving, take another look. The U.S. is moving backward, and women are once again in the crosshairs.
Lorri Greene is a retired psychologist living in Cardiff-by-the-Sea.
