by Carol Hofmann, The Cut
DEC. 28, 2021

In 1962, I got pregnant. It was what would now be called date rape. He was a 28-year-old advertising executive who’d been introduced to me by a friend from Lord & Taylor, where I worked as a receptionist in the beauty salon. I was 18. He said we had to stop at his apartment before dinner because he’d forgotten his wallet. His younger brother was staying with him and watched while the rape happened. I told no one.

When my period didn’t come, I had to tell my mother. She gave me milk of magnesia and sent me to Coney Island with enough money to ride the Cyclone four times. “That should do it,” she said. It took an hour and a half to get there on the IRT, and the famous roller coaster was the first ride I saw as the train rounded the bend into the Coney Island station. I’d always been terrified of roller coasters, so I couldn’t sit in the first car. I thought maybe that was why I was still pregnant a week later. My grandmother, who lived next door to us and was the janitor of our building, told me about her abortion. She used a wire coat hanger while squatting in her bathtub. That worked for her, but I was too scared to try it.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/pre-roe-vs-wade-illegal-abortion.html