Abortalia
Paula Rego Abortion Series triptech 1998
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/triptych/zgFe_gT7f3XLfw?hl=en-GB
Abortion becomes part of people’s lives in a myriad of ways.
Here are three stories.
(The doctor who performed the abortion in the first story was Henry Morgentaler, a Montreal-based physician who was arrested several times before the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country’s anti-abortion law in 1988. Recently, a Montreal Park has been named after Henry.)
* * *
when he left for the summer
she was his lover
when he returned in September
she was pregnant by another
he helped her decide
when most still considered abortion infanticide
long after he would wonder
what he would have done
if he had been the one
x x x
theirs was a casual bond
of each other they were fond
the attraction was mutual
common respect, nothing unusual
when they met again
unexpectedly, they had known not when
she confessed to having ended
the life of a child unintended
he did not know what to feel
rancour or relief?
anger or grief?
helplessness or irrelevance?
he did not know what was real
x x x
already with a family
he met another lady
who unexpectedly
ended up expecting a baby
he persuaded her to terminate the pregnancy
for this was only shortly
after his wife in childbirth had lost a son
- her only one
almost thirty years later
she would have been his grown-up daughter
he thinks of her almost every day
wishing there had been another way
not accepting why
whether she would live or die
was his to decide
knowing that she would have come to be
as wise and as much a beauty
as the woman in whose womb
briefly she would bloom
Click to read in Spanish
Click to read in German
