Counseling other men helped Jim Sollisch process his feelings about a girlfriend’s abortion. He also learned a lot about the power of words — from the other side.
A Life-Changing Decision
Thirty years ago I got my girlfriend pregnant. That's how I thought of it, how I said it back then: "I got my girlfriend pregnant." Note the language of ego and possessiveness, as if it were all about me. In my defense, I offer this caveat: It was also the language of responsibility.
We were in college. To my relief, she didn't consider any option but abortion, which is the only option I would have considered had it been up to me. Her choice allowed me to do what men do best -- take action. I made the appointment. I raised the $300. I borrowed a car from a friend to take her. I filled her prescription for antibiotics.
But she also asked me to do one thing that required no action. In fact, it required just the opposite. She asked me not to tell anyone. Not a soul. And for years I kept our secret, wanting to tell someone almost every day about what we had gone through -- the machinations of hope that her period would appear, the stress of lying to my parents, the fear for her health. Instead, I strained against my pledge of silence every time the subject came up. And it came up a lot on college campuses in the 1970s.
To ensure their children's survival (and the species'), our female ancestors selected mates who would stick around. I don't know if my girlfriend was operating on primal instinct or was simply a brilliant strategist, but her request solidified our relationship. If I wanted to talk about it, I had to stay. She taught me intimacy and loyalty at a time when other guys my age were mastering pickup lines and promiscuity.
My girlfriend's abortion changed my life.
At the Front Line
It's 1979; I'm training to be a paraprofessional counselor at the Pregnancy Information Center on the campus of Kent State University, in Ohio. I'm the only English major among the 30 trainees, most of whom are studying psychology, social work, or nursing. I am here because my girlfriend had an abortion and I couldn't talk about it. Maybe this will help me process the experience. Of course, I can't tell anyone. I am still bound by my oath.
During training, I meet someone new. We marry after graduation; a year later, my wife becomes the director of an abortion clinic in Akron, Ohio, and hires me part-time to counsel the men who accompany their girlfriends, wives, sisters, daughters, and friends there. Finally freed of my secret (I figured the statute of limitations had expired with the relationship), I can tell the men my story. It feels good to be a responsible male protagonist, a sort of role model.
It is the early 1980s; Akron has just passed a stringent parental notification ordinance. The ACLU and Planned Parenthood have sued, and right-to-life protesters have flocked to the city. They harass our patients, taking their pictures and blocking their path. In Indiana, a clinic director is abducted. Doctors receive death threats. My wife and I follow the news with a mix of dread and fear.
If you worked in an abortion clinic in 1982, you know that terrorism in America didn't start with Timothy McVeigh or Al Qaeda. I began to escort patients through the lines of picketers, shielding them from the violence of the protesters' language, a biblical mix that drew no distinction between the sinner and the sin, that promised love while threatening eternal retribution.
I was repulsed yet attracted to the picketers in a way I didn't fully understand. I had never been close enough to feel the breath of true believers -- or the truly crazy -- before. They shouted at me; I shouted back. They called me a killer, and I called them self-righteous lunatics. They quoted scripture; I quoted the Constitution. In some odd and profound way, we became connected to one another. I have since realized that all true enemies share a deep bond. Driving to work, I would pray they weren't there and then feel disappointed when the sidewalks were empty. I became addicted to the adrenaline that propelled me through our confrontations. I dreamed of discrediting them. I dreamed of hurting them. And finally I dreamed of understanding them.
