None of your business

On this 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I have to say that I've never known a real woman who's viewed an unexpected pregnancy as an opportunity to make a choice.

"Opportunity" and "choice" aren't words that spring to mind when you're searching for phantom bloodstains on the toilet tissue or praying that this is the month with 35 days -- or wishing you hadn't decided to trust a condom that's been living in your sweetie's wallet through three ice storms and enough heat to warp several dozen Blockbuster tapes.

No, abortion is something that women do alone, and they do do it alone. Even when they've been impregnated by the type of guy who will drive them to the clinic and pay for parking and hold their hand in the waiting room.

Abortion is an alone thing in a way that having a baby isn't. When you decide you're going to have a baby, the world bends toward you like flowers seeking sun. The federal government showers you with tax cuts or food stamps. Strangers want to touch you like you're a rock star or the dalai lama.

When you decide to have an abortion, in addition to the anxiety, the fear of being blown up at the clinic, the somewhat painful surgical procedure, the medical bills you're embarrassed to submit at work, the hemorrhaging and cramps, you also have a secret to keep for the rest of your life.

This is but a brief tour of the "alone" part. I've never known a woman who hasn't had some regrets about having an abortion, at least at some point in her life -- say when she's 35 and Mr. Right is still ensconced firmly below the horizon and even Cosmo's screaming that her reproductive clock is ticking. Or when she finally joins AA and lies awake all night balled up in sweaty second thoughts.

But nobody has the right to exploit these regrets. Abortion is an alone activity. And no matter how much some women regret having gotten abortions, almost all of them would do the same thing again in the same circumstances.

This is why American women aren't committing mass suicide, even though some 42 percent of us have had an abortion. Abortion is not an easy thing, but it's definitely a part of our lives.

I envy pro-lifers the simplicity of their beliefs. "Choose Life." "Mommy Don't Kill Me." And that lapel pin favored by preachers: a tiny pair of feet sticking out from the chest (presumably, the rest of the little body is burrowing inside, above the impregnable heart).

Then there's the shotgun, aiming at the abortion doctor's heart. Or the pipe bomb, aiming at the nurse's face. I know I'm expected to make distinctions between what the law-abiding anti-abortion protesters say and what the radical anti-abortion protesters do, but I also know this: All of them are calling all of us murderers. It's simple, right?

Radical protesters actually operate like the pro-life movement's Klan: They do the dirty work so the people marching outside the Capitol this week -- the priests and ministers and their flocks -- can stay squeaky clean, even as their words inspire hate. I know it sounds harsh to say this about the gawky schoolboys and the chattering schoolgirls in plaid skirts and knee-high socks and windbreakers. They're "nice," clean-cut kids, bursting with moral certitude. They're also marching through the streets calling people murderers.

It all may look simple. But it's anything but simple when the same choirboys and schoolgirls stumble in a soggy mess of hormones and hairspray and lip gloss, and end up shivering in the parking lot of some clinic praying that none of the anti-abortion protesters outside will recognize them. This happens every day, not only to naive, windbreaker-wearing, lip-gloss-using schoolgirls, but to the biggest, most established anti-abortion politicians in the world. Ask Bob Barr.

This year at the Capitol in Atlanta and at the Capitol in Washington, politicians who have obtained safe, legal abortions will rage against safe, legal abortions for their own political gain. They'll tell terrible lies about abortion causing breast cancer. They'll make some women with breast cancer feel terrible for having had an abortion. They'll exploit other women who had breast cancer and died.

Luckily for them, abortion providers still won't turn their daughters and nieces and granddaughters and wives and sisters away.

If I ran a clinic, I wouldn't have the patience to be so even-handed. I'd bar the door to anyone who called me a murderer. That's why I don't have anything but this advice to pro-lifers on the 30th anniversary of legal abortion: Show a little more respect toward abortion providers; there's an excellent chance you'll need one someday.

And leave the rest of us the hell alone. Abortion is an alone activity.

letters.atl@creativeloafing.com