The Way It Was

Eleanor Cooney’s article, “The Way It Was” was very unique. Reading it gave me a very different feeling and impression about abortion, than anything I had ever read about abortion before. That being said, I really liked the approach she took. Because she grew up in a very different time, I appreciated the examples she used because it allowed me to put myself in her shoes and back in the 1960s where her steps towards getting an abortion were so different from the way it works today. Because abortion is still not a simple matter today, I think we forgot how much harder it would have been for women 30 or 40 years ago. But something to keep in mind is that even though going to the doctor and physically aborting a child has become easier, making the decision to do so will never become easier. This is a part of the article that I think Cooney could have expanded on further. While describing her situation, she took all of the emotion out of what was going on and simply relayed the facts. And while this may have been a good writing technique, it made it seem like she did not care at all about what she was doing to her body. When she discusses why she didn't originally tell her mother about the pregnancy she says, “Not calling her in the beginning wasn’t because my mother was a prude or religious or anything like that”, and this kind of bothered me. Being religious or a prude are not the only guidelines for a mother not wanting her child to have an unwanted pregnancy or an abortion. Both are emotionally and physically dangerous and I can imagine neither of which is something a mother would want for her daughter.

I think an interesting thing about this article is that she did not write it as a precautionary tale of what can happen when you have to or need to get an apportion. She simply wrote about her experience with as little bias as possible. Some bias is inevitable in a topic as heavy and controversial as abortion, but I think she did a good job in relaying the facts as opposed to making an argument. By writing this article in the form of an essay superimposed with a story, made it even stronger. Having made it a story would have made the reader either sympathize with her or dislike her, but by throwing in facts and statistics, she avoided distracting the reader with her doctor visits and personal relationships.

My favorite part of the article comes towards the end when she lists the types of women who seek and have sough abortions. This type of list was expressed in the film, After Tiller, and I remember appreciating it then too. I hate the stereotype that only dumb, single, teenagers, are the ones looking to get an abortion, which is why I really appreciate when films, articles, books, stories, lecturers, anyone at all, expresses that this is not true. Any woman with the ability to get pregnant can get an abortion. It is really as simple as that.