The idea is to keep it personal, so here's what I know.

I am 52 years old. When I was born, abortion was illegal. We had girls who "got in trouble." Girls who "had to get married." "Shotgun weddings." Quite a few of my cousins "got in trouble" and "had to get married." Guys "paid for their mistakes" and married the girl they got in trouble, or they paid for a back street, back alley abortion, which the girl did or did not survive. Some girls whose guys didn't pay for their mistakes went away for a while to stay with a relative and returned, changed. If you were that girl's close friend, you might found out that she'd had a baby, and had given it up for adoption. Sometimes the girl chose to keep the baby. Of course she couldn't hold her head up again. Of course all the men would come around, because they knew she was "easy." A "slut." A "round heels." There was the living proof, in the form of a kid--somebody else's kid, that few men of the time would want to raise. Real men didn't pay for somebody else's mistake. And the girl would work a job, or two jobs, to support herself and her child. Or worse, she might--whisper it--go on welfare. Her kid would grow up and go to school, and every day she or he might hear that name, "bastard." It wasn't just a curse word then. A bastard was a kid with no father and a mother who was a whore.

One of my cousins came from a very devout Christian family. She Made a Mistake. She was "going with" a guy--the stories I heard were that he was some kind of salesman, which was supposed to explain why he bailed when he got her "in trouble." She didn't tell her parents. She was afraid to. Their community would have approved their casting their daughter out of the house at the very least, and where could she go? She had no friends she could ask about the dirty back rooms and the men who charged big bucks for the service (and I don't think she had that kind of money, not in our family). So she tried to abort herself with a knitting needle.

Her son was born anyway, with emotional and learning problems, and growth problems. He was the size of a four-year-old at the age of seven.

When I was small, my favorite television show was "Romper Room." In 1961 Miss Sherri led my sisters and me through games, teaching us to be Do Bees and Don't Bees. At the end of the show (and this was my favorite part), Miss Sherri looked through the Magic Mirror to see all her friends who were watching. (I know you'll be surprised when I tell you I wanted that mirror.) Then Miss Sherri disappeared. We got a new teacher on the show, but she wasn't as perky and nice as Miss Sherri.

Years later I found out what happened. Miss Sherri got pregnant, and she was having trouble sleeping. Nothing was working for her (people were a lot less careful about pregnant women and medications then), so her husband gave her a sleeping pill he'd gotten over in England, something called thalidomide. When the news broke concerning the thousands of babies born with birth defects to mothers who had taken Thalidomide, Miss Sherri decided to do the smart thing and get a medical abortion.

She was interviewed by the Austin Texas newspaper regarding Thalidomide. Her intention was just to warn other women away from the drug, but her mention of her planned abortion soon became the issue. She could not get a proper medical abortion, though under the circumstances she had a legitimate reason for it and her husband had agreed to it. She lost her job on "Romper Room" and any other career she might have wanted. In the end, she got her abortion in Sweden. She could afford to, barely. Most American women couldn't.

By the time I went to college, in 1972, we had Roe v. Wade, and I was sexually active. Because I had yet to see the college gynecologist, my boyfriend and I were using condoms and spermicide. My period was well over a week late. I was headed to the phone booths, my dime and the abortion ad in my hand. There was no question in my mind about whether I was doing wrong or not. I had been raised to believe my body was mine. I had made it out of poverty to college. The only way I could stay out of poverty to finish college and get a career. I could no more support a child at that point than I could support myself, and I didn't want to pin my boyfriend of two weeks down. Every step I took toward those phone banks, I thanked everyone involved for Roe v. Wade and that clinic whose ad I held in my hand.

I decided to stop in the ladies room next to the phones for one last look. My period had started. I sat there and cried, and still I thanked Roe v. Wade.

I've never had an abortion. I've known women who have had one, two, and three, for every reason you can think of. Some are guilty. Some regret, but would have made the same decision. Some just say, "Hell, yeah, and I'd do it again!"

I remember that trapped, breathless feeling I had, thinking of all of my cousins who "had to get married," and I thank the Supreme Court of that time for our right to choose.

Don't let us get slack, folks. Don't let us lose this. You may never need it, but what if you do--and what if it's not there? What if you have too many kids or just enough right now? What if you're raped; what if you can barely support yourself; what if you took or were given the wrong drug; what if you carry a deadly gene? (Mine is Huntingdon's Corhea, with a 50/50 chance of being passed on to a carrier's kids if the carrier has it, and the carrier may not know until long after s/he's had kids.) What if you're ill and a pregnancy puts your life at risk?

What if some other poor soul has one or more of these issues and needs help? What if she needs to know she isn't trapped? What is fair to her, and to that unborn child? Isn't it better to have a child born when it's wanted, when it will be healthy, when it can be cared for?

Vote for choice, because that's what it is. Each of us gets to decide what's right for ourselves. We get to choose to let the next woman decide what's right for her. And so on, woman by woman, each exercising her own conscience and her own power over her own body.