John Karls’ Personal Experience With Abortion

[johnkarls]

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It was early summer 1967. Yours Truly had just graduated from Harvard Law School and was taking the 6-week Review Course before sitting for the NYS Bar Exam on July 13-14 and then reporting for the U.S. Navy’s Officer Candidate School in Newport RI by noon on July 15.

[1967 was at the height of ramping up from 20 thousand military “advisers” in Vietnam to 625,000 U.S. military personnel IN COUNTRY Vietnam, which did not include (1) all of the U.S. naval personnel on the ships offshore – not only aircraft carriers but also smaller combatant ships that were tasked with bombarding coastal villages, (2) all of the U.S. air force personnel who flew and supported the B-52’s from bases in the Philippines that “carpet bombed” from high altitude Vietnam’s “free fire zones” or (3) all of the Brits, Aussies, South Koreans, etc., who also sent military personnel to fight in that war. So it was no surprise that our Universal Draft Law would have compelled any able-bodied male less than 26 years of age to serve -- indeed, even the Peace Corps was NOT an alternative because President Kennedy and his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver who was its founding Director, did NOT want the Peace Corps populated by a bunch of draft dodgers!!!]

Yours Truly had just met 12 months earlier while both were Summer Interns in Washington DC the woman who would become his wife of 33 years.

She had just graduated from Wellesley College in June 1967 and had always dreamed of entering the Foreign Service to become a career diplomat.

Though she had decided that for any woman in those pre-Women’s Liberation Days, it would be wise first to acquire teaching credentials as a fall-back career if the Foreign Service proved to be populated by too many MCP’s (Male Chauvinist Pigs for anyone younger than our generation).

So she was set to start the M.A.T. program at Harvard Ed School in September. [Not to be confused with its M.Ed. program which still exists -- the long-defunct M.A.T. program comprised an M.A. degree in your major, hers was history, from the regular Harvard Graduate School with enough electives from the Ed School to meet the minimum K-12 teaching requirements in most states.]

Sorry for such a long digression.

But it is necessary to understand why she made the decision she did.

After all, she was NOT interested in short-circuiting her career dreams by getting married!!!

And even if she had been interested in marriage, she had not focused on whether Yours Truly was adequate marriage material!!!

So she was very distraught to find herself pregnant in the early summer of 1967!!!

I would have been delighted to have married her on the spot!!! [Though it did cross my mind that my family of origin might not approve of the circumstances, but being a newly-minted attorney who was no longer on the parental payroll, their possible views were no longer pivotal despite being concerning.]

For my part, I was “strong as horse radish” that it would be unfair to our baby to bring her/him into the world under such circumstances unless both of us were ready to lavish love and attention on her/him.

So, newly-minted lawyer 5.5 years before Roe v. Wade, I arranged for an abortion.

In those days, the “big three” birth-control methods were the same as they still are today = prophylactics, IUD’s (Intra-Uterine Devices), and The Pill.

Though in those days, The Pill was new and many women worried that in the years to come, it would be discovered that The Pill had disastrous as-yet-unknown side effects.

And following the discovery of HIV/AIDS a decade or so later, prophylactics became important as the primary defense against STD’s in contrast to IUD’s and The Pill.

But what was little known then and is still little known now even if you Google IUD’s, they were/are not only a primary birth-control method but they were also featured as the abortion-method-of-choice for first-term abortions.

Why???

Because IUD’s, though most web-site descriptions will dance around the issue, were the 1960’s equivalent of today’s “Morning After Pill” -- both of which are usually classified as birth-control methods but both of which, in fact, are methods for killing newly-conceived fetuses.

For those of you who can’t find the information after hours of Googling which usually produces some vague assertions about how IUD’s are designed to kill sperm, the unvarnished truth is that IUD’s are designed so that normal body movement will cause the IUD, like a sentry on patrol, to scrape 100% of the uterine walls so that no newly-fertilized egg can attach itself to the uterine walls and begin to grow. Or if the woman is already pregnant, to scrape the uterine walls and cause the young fetus to become detached.

So other than psychological scars, a first-term abortion using an IUD is no more dangerous than using IUD’s as your primary birth-control method.

For anyone who is wondering --

Six months after our abortion in June 1967 (i.e., December 1967) my to-be-wife of 33 years did marry me.

Though for 12 years she still wanted to have a career without children. [During those 12 years she developed high school curriculum materials for the Center for Global Perspectives, a small non-profit organization closely associated with The Asia Society and, like The Asia Society, receiving significant financing from the Rockefellers.]

And when I finally persuaded her to start a family (Michael was born in 1979 and Hilary in 1982), she became the working-from-home co-author of America’s best-selling World History Textbook which went through 6 editions while our children were growing up, most of which were published by McGraw-Hill with National Geographic illustrations. [The first edition was published by Robert E. Merrill Publishing which was taken over by another now-defunct publishing house, so the textbook survived two “redundancy cuts” which always occur following a merger as the merged publishing house decides which elements of the theretofore competing lines of texts to eliminate.]

And for anyone wondering why there was a three-year gap between Michael and Hilary, there was a miscarriage.

The reason for mentioning that is the common perception, until it happens to you, that the chances of a miscarriage are small, perhaps 1 in 100.

The odds are actually about 25% - 30%.

And if we had had a miscarriage in 1979, we would probably have been so devastated that we would never have had children.

So for anyone who is planning to start a family, BE PREPARED.

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WHETHER I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DISCLOSE

Within the last year, conversations with my son Michael about abortion led to the disclosure of the experience of myself and my ex-wife. And, as could have been predicted, Michael was appalled at the realization that he had a potential sibling who would have been 12 years older than he. [The subject of the abortion has never arisen with my daughter Hilary.]

So you might be wondering about my right to disclose vis-à-vis my ex-wife.

During our marriage, she frequently confided in friends about the abortion. And even discussed it with the Rev. Dr. Thomas Stiers of the First Congregational Church of Greenwich CT while I was serving as a Deacon there. [Outside the RCC, there is no concept of Confession, so the only reasons for her confiding in Rev. Stiers were psychological.]

However, it must be conceded that her reasons for confiding in friends and Rev. Stiers probably related to a feeling of guilt, even though she was never religious herself.

So I was in no position to begrudge her the right to confide in others.

However, third-term abortion is a serious societal issue. And I would hope that she would not begrudge me, after all these years, to offer our experience in the course of our group’s consideration of such an important matter.