What I saw in someone else

My story goes back to the Fall of 1970, when I was a freshman student at a Junior College. At that time, I took the required English composition course as a freshman student that was a part of the required curriculum for freshman students. My story has to do with my teacher for that English freshman composition course, and what I believe was the detrimental effect that abortion had on this young woman and. myself.

During the course of the fall quarter of 1970 when I took my freshman English composition course, one day Betty (not her real name) casually mentioned the fact that she had an abortion while she was a graduate student. At that time, I knew virtually nothing about abortion, and so Betty's off-hand comment completely went by me with no real understanding on my part as to what abortion was really all about.

This is where my story really begins to get quite interesting. Betty, though quite a brilliant woman with a seemingly promising academic career in front of her in the Fall of 1970, nonetheless had a number of serious personality problems that would, in time, destroy what looked like at first to be a promising career as a college English teacher.

Betty's primary problem was a highly volatile and unpredictable temper that made her a highly difficult person to work with and have any sort of friendly relationship with at the time that she was teaching English at the College. Looking back on this situation from this point in time, the thing that really strikes me was the fact that what really set off her volatile temper was any mention of children, birth, or pregnancy. Any mention of these matters would really set her into a very violent temper indeed, and she would get verbally abusive, using coarse and obscene language, and even threatening to become physically abusive to whoever was talking to her at the time.

I really think, now looking back on this situation from this vantage point, that Betty was not handling the emotional stress of killing her unborn baby well at all, and she was unconsciously reacting to the stress of killing her baby by violently reacting against any mention of those things that reminded her of the abortion that killed what was probably the only child that she would ever have. Does abortion have a detrimental effect on all who are affected by a woman who had an abortion? You had better believe it!

I hope that my testimony regarding what I remember from my early college days will be helpful to you in your work to end abortion on demand in America.