Lost

Helen Garner, Jo Wainer

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780522852318
• eBook ISBN: 9780522864069
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

'It is chastening to read these bald tales, shockingly direct and unvarnished. Each story contains matter enough for a novel. Each one is a window onto a larger life, a broader world: a tantalising view of endlessly unfolding complexities.'-Helen Garner

Twenty years ago, Dr Bertram Wainer, the abortion reform doctor and campaigner, placed an advertisement in a newspaper asking women who had illegal abortions to come forward to tell their stories. Their personal testimonies and the accounts from doctors and nurses are published for the first time in this collection.

Women had to draw on deep reservoirs of courage and determination faced with the fear of illegal abortion. This collection tells of some of those acts of courage and the difficulties society placed in women's way. Moving and candid, these stories uncover the hidden history of abortion in Australia.

Emily

Emily was 19 when she discovered she was pregnant. It was the early 1980s and abortion was legal in Victoria.

I have decided to tell you my story. I refer to it as a horror story. Many girls who have abortions have them early enough, and do not ‘see’ what is being aborted; I gave birth to a partially deformed foetus and I saw it.

It happened two years ago. When my ‘little friend’ failed to arrive that month I was only a little worried. I saw myself as different from everybody else. I thought of myself as a ‘special’ kind of human being, who’d been brought into this life for a special purpose in the future. This was my fantasy. I was positive there were no other girls exactly like me—I rode motorbikes, played electric guitars, the drums, piano, clarinet, mouth organ and so on. I have a surfboard and a spear gun, I drive a Bedford ex-show van and my general nature is so different from anybody else I know. Therefore, because I thought of myself as ‘special’ and ‘different’, I believed that I would never fall pregnant. But I was wrong.

I hate children. I especially hate babies. They are all mouth, and all they do is take from you. They ruin your figure by leaving you with an enlarged stomach covered in ugly stretch marks. Why women want to have babies and end up looking like a big ugly lump of blue vein cheese is beyond me. Half the time, when children grow up, they end up hating you. I know that many women can’t stand their children and wish they had never had them. They feel depressed and angry because they have wrecked their bodies for nothing. I would never get myself into that situation. I want no regrets in life.

It was July when I first knew I was pregnant; it was conceived in June. Sometimes I think I can pinpoint that fatal night.

July was coming to a close. There were only a few more days left and then August would begin. Now I began to worry a little more. Things weren’t right: I was tired all the time, and coffee, which I normally thrived on, began to make me feel sick. I became moody. Normally I am a very shy, quiet, polite person but suddenly I found myself snapping at people. Anyone who got in my way would be pushed aside and sworn at. My behaviour was appalling, totally out of character.

Two days before August I was still hoping to see signs of my blood, but in my heart I knew it was useless hoping. I now feared the worst. August arrived, and I began to panic. I told myself ‘It can’t be so’, ‘It can’t happen to me because I’m too nice’. Had my luck finally run out?

I would cry every night in bed. I looked for other explanations of why my ‘little friend’ hadn’t yet arrived. Amenorrhea was one possibility, but I didn’t think so. I had never had trouble with my periods before. Physically, I was too normal. Besides, I had all the symptoms of being pregnant.

Pregnant. I even hate the word. It is ugly. That hideous thing inside of me was invading my sanctity. By this time I had been beating myself repeatedly in the stomach. I did this a few times every day. I also starved myself.

You are probably wondering why I didn’t seek medical help. Here is why: I had never been to a doctor on my own before. I am an incredibly shy, anxious and extremely nervous person. I find it very hard to communicate with people. It takes me years before I am able to talk to a person freely and with ease. So how was I to confront a doctor, a complete stranger, and explain my problem? A problem that is so personal, embarrassing and, in my eyes, disgusting? I tried to picture myself explaining this to a doctor but I couldn’t. If I went to a doctor I knew he would examine me. I did not wish to be humiliated. I did not want to be belittled. I wanted to avoid embarrassment, even though that is what I feel now when I think of what happened at the hospital.

Besides, it was my secret and mine only. I wouldn’t tell anyone, no matter what. I thought, and still think, that falling pregnant is scandalous. No one ever made me think this way, it is just my own personal view. I dared not tell a best friend because I don’t trust anyone. If my friends found out I would be ruined. I would never face them if that was to be.

I dared not tell my boyfriend, but as he was constantly with me he, too, had noticed the changes in me and had become very worried and concerned. Later, when it was over, he told me that he had an inkling of what was wrong with me all along.

Sometimes he would say to me, ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

‘No,’ I would snap back at him and then give some explanation to account for my strange behaviour, which sounded so convincing that he believed me.

Sometimes, secretly, I would wish that he did know so he could understand what I was going through, which for me was sheer hell.

I would talk in riddles. Through my ambiguity I would ‘tell’ him what was wrong with me but fortunately he was not clever enough to ‘see’ the admission and took the things I said the innocent way. He never stopped to read between the lines. So the secret remained my own.

It was my problem, so I decided to deal with it on my own. I didn’t need anyone’s help. I could handle it—or so I thought. I would try to get rid of the monster myself.

I starved myself. Normally, when I had done this to lose a little weight, my stomach would go flat. Not this time. When I undressed to have a shower I’d look at my slightly swelling stomach and burst into tears. It was this kind of evidence that made me stop pretending that everything was all right. When this happened I would begin to furiously beat my stomach with both hands clasped together into fists. I would cry and beat myself until I was exhausted and defeated. My stomach became a mass of dark bruises. I wished I was dead.

Sometimes I would push my stomach in with my hands as I took a deep breath, pulling it in as far as I could. With my hands I would sort of massage my stomach. I could feel with my hands what seemed to be a ball in my stomach, my womb. I knew that what I was actually feeling was the foetus. This horrified me as more concrete evidence of the situation I was in. It was not just some bad dream or nightmare I was having; it was real.

I worked in the city and at lunchtime I would go down to the big bookstores and over to the sections marked pregnancy and childcare. I would spend my lunch hours flicking through the pages of books about pregnancy and miscarriages and abortions. I thought that, maybe, by treating myself badly I would have a miscarriage. In the books about pregnancy I would read about all the things you shouldn’t do while you are pregnant, like smoking, drinking, not eating. I would go home and do all these things.

I smoked marijuana. I drank straight whisky. I took pills, handfuls of them. I starved myself. I ran myself into the ground. I even took some heroin. I found my mother’s female syringe and used that. I would fill it up with hot water and add chemicals like methylated spirits and a bottle of liquid fluid labelled liquid paraffin. I did not know what this was or what it was used for. I had no idea what it might do to me if I used these things but surely it would be harmful enough to ‘kill’ the alien body inside me. I mixed these substances together with hot water and inserted the nozzle into my vagina and squeezed the bulb containing the mixture, hopefully, into my womb.

The pain was intense, and I would try to put up with it but I had to stop. I did that while I was lying in a hot bath (normally I shower but I read in a book that a hot bath could cause miscarriage). At other times I used the female syringe in the shower too. I would sneak it into the bathroom with me and fill it up with just hot water on these occasions and use it.

It hurt terribly. I used to make up the mixture for the syringe while my family was out and I was in the house alone.

Once I ran the bath and prepared the chemicals. When I decided to stop because of the unbearable pain, I got out of the tub and let the water down the drain. At this point I was still calm. I stood naked in the bathroom. All of a sudden I screamed. I screamed and screamed because I could not stop and when I could stop myself from screaming I screamed some more because I wanted to. I was also crying. I was probably hysterical.

I don’t know for sure, but I think you could say I had a ‘nervous breakdown’. You see, every night since I missed my period I had been crying softly in my bed, so no one in the house could hear me. Being home on my own was the outlet I had been waiting for. I had the opportunity to let loose, to let all the pent-up fears, tears and anxiety out. That day, I released these dormant emotions. I was frightened and scared.

I wanted to kill myself all the time—it was all I ever thought about. I had told my boyfriend once that if I ever became pregnant I would kill myself. The reason for this was so that I wouldn’t have to be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life. I knew that my life would be ruined and I wanted to avoid the way I feel now. I still wish now that I had done what I originally intended.

When I gulped down pills in order to try and induce a miscarriage, I did not care that I, too, could die. One of us had to. If I could not kill the alien invading my body, I would kill myself. I would wonder whether or not I would be alive to see my twentieth birthday, or summer, which I always looked forward to. Time was running out. I bought a book by an author named Alvarez, which was about suicide.

I thought of ways to kill myself. So that my parents wouldn’t have the shock of finding my body I thought I could ride my motorbike down to my favourite beach or river. Both were peaceful spots, and there I would lay down and overdose myself with sleeping tablets. I’ve always wondered how people could cut their own wrists; I found myself wanting to do that. I was desperate. But before I tried anything, I would just wait a little more. After all, I could not let myself be beaten by a mere child.

I tried to think of other things I could do to induce miscarriage. I thought of jumping off the garage roof, hoping that a bad fall might be harmful, but I never tried that as I was always too tired to go out into the cold.

One morning, shortly after I had douched myself with the hot water, I went to work and, as usual, went to the ladies before going into the office. When I had finished I noticed a small red lump of flesh had passed out of me. I looked closer before flushing. This, I thought, was a good omen, a good sign, indicating that things were finally coming to a head.

I immediately brightened. I felt partially relieved. I thought that what I had seen may have been something to do with the foetus dying or coming apart or something. When nothing more happened in the ensuing days, once again I returned to my depression and suicidal thoughts.

I read a book called The Other Side of Midnight in which the main character, a beautiful young girl, became pregnant and aborted herself with a coathanger. I decided to try the same, but with a skewer. I would do this at night. I took the skewer and inserted it inside me and pushed. It began to hurt so I told myself that I had to bear the pain, to be brave, like the young woman in the story. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried again, but I couldn’t. I got scared. What if I did perforate myself and start to bleed? I expected that to happen, but how would I explain the mess to my parents?

I tried again, probably the next night, and this time, with my eyes squeezed tightly shut I slowly pushed the skewer into me with both hands. Suddenly I thought I felt something puncture or tear within me. I pulled it out again quickly, expecting to see blood. There was none.

I put the skewer away and cried myself to sleep. I made up my mind to try again, and to keep trying until I succeeded. At this time I was reading a big, thick, heavy hardcover novel, Peyton Place. Next time I try this, I thought, I will insert the skewer to the point where I can’t stand the pain any more. And with the skewer held in place with one hand, I’d take the book in the other and hammer it home. But I never tried this because of what was soon to happen to me.

One day after work, I came home depressed as usual, and just lay on top of my bed with my head turned to the wall. My father came in and told me that he and my mother had constantly heard me crying in the shower and in bed at night and that they were very worried. He asked me what was wrong and I told him nothing.

When I had come home from work that day I had noticed a small blood spot on my briefs and I was hoping that this was perhaps a good sign.

My father asked me if I was pregnant. He went on to say that if I was I could tell him and they would help me get fixed up. I thought of the blood spot I had seen and told him I got my period that day. I believed I was telling the truth this time. Before he left my room, he said he would really like to know what the problem was so that he could help me. If I was pregnant they would not be angry as those things are expected to happen to a daughter. And, if I ever wanted to talk to him, he would listen. He is so good, my father, but I could not tell him. I did not want him to be ashamed of me, or to think of me as some sort of dirty little tramp.

My relationship with my boyfriend also suffered. I did not want sex any more, because I did not want him to notice my stomach. But one day, after a long period of time, we did have sex, but I couldn’t stand it as I ...

Table of contents

• LOST
• CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE STORIES
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• Amy
• Julie
• A. J. Cunningham
• Kelvin Churches
• Sarah
• Jenny
• Emily
• Belinda
• Bette
• J. W. (‘Hoppy’) Johnstone
• Kim
• Deborah
• Nell
• Lorraine
• Donna
• Melanie
• Judy
• Bess
• Alice
• Jane
• Beverley
• Christine
• Gillian
• Mollie Jamieson