“Thousands of girls have climbed up stairs and knocked on a door answered by a woman who is a complete stranger, to whom they are about to entrust their stomach and womb. And that woman, the only person who can rid them of their misfortune, would open the door, in an apron and patterned slippers, clutching a dish towel, and inquire, “yes, miss, can i help you?”
I had been casually looking for this book (which was strangely expensive on Kindle, although the price seems to have dropped now, and unavailable at my e-library) when I happened upon it at the beautiful little bookshop Wild and the Sage.
This is the true story of Anne, a single university student in Paris in 1963, who discovers she is pregnant, knows she cannot have a baby, and goes about seeking an illegal abortion. It is harrowing.
I won’t go into all the details of her journey, but each chapter is harrowing in its own way: the doctors she visits, the unhelpful advice, the friends who don’t help and the friends who do, the (sort of) boyfriend who — it will not surprise you — faces exactly zero consequences. Before the internet era, it was all word of mouth and guesswork motivated by sheer terror. For example: she heard by word of mouth that there was another woman who had been in a similar circumstance; Annie waited for hours outside a building where she suspected this woman took classes, in the hopes of seeing her and getting some information. I cannot read this without my stomach lurching – the panic she must have felt, while being unable to do anything but wait.
Several of her observations stuck with me deeply. Annie Ernaux has had 40 years to distill her trauma into a clear-eyed assessment of the society that would have let her die. She plainly exposes the social frameworks that trap women; for instance, she knows that people will ask why she felt the need to tell her story, since this was a different era and we have progressed (?) as a society. Her answer: “Former victims tend to remain silent on the grounds that “now it’s all over,”’ and become “surrounded by the same veil of secrecy as before.”
‘As was often the case, you couldn’t tell whether abortion was banned because it was wrong or wrong because it was banned. People judged according to the law, they didn’t judge the law.’
After weeks of trying to find someone who can provide an abortion, she succeeds, but nearly dies. The only people who actually helped her were her roommate and the abortionist in a literal back alley. She notes that after the ordeal, she is speaking to a doctor who somehow learns about her situation and he says, “Oh you should have talked to me! Didn’t you know that so-and-so right down the road could have helped you?” Infuriating. As she rightly points out, when the actual danger is over, everyone imagines themselves willing to help. But hardly anyone actually did.
I think this book is required reading, no matter what your personal beliefs about abortion. In 93 pages, it rips your heart out while laying bare so many of our assumptions (“back alley abortions wouldn’t happen today,” “only evil women get abortions,” “europe has always been so progressive” “abortion only affects women,” “the sexual revolution made everything better/worse,” etc.) In Ernaux’s story, it’s impossible not to see the double standards, the well-oiled gears of the patriarchy turning, turning, turning and catching this particular woman in a corner where violence is inevitable. It’s impossible not to see that people create and condone this, through their inaction and their unwillingness to imagine a different world.
‘I realize this account may exasperate or repel some readers; it may also be branded as distasteful. I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth. Moreover, if I failed to go through with this undertaking, I would be guilty of silencing the lives of women and condoning a world governed by male supremacy.’
