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1. Caroline (South West England, 1966)
It was easy enough to explain the headaches and the nausea, Caroline thinks. At fifteen, she’s already well-versed in diplomatic excuses, ready to smooth away any unpleasantness that should arise. Her father’s temper is just a bit of heat, a bit of silliness; her mother’s drinking is a funny little habit, and nothing worth noting really. And if the smell of sausage and oatmeal has made Caroline ill three mornings in a row, that’s nothing more than her monthly visitor. Easily explained, neatly elided. Quickly forgotten.
By the fourth day, though, Caroline is stuck in the loo, on her knees and vomiting. She hates mess, and this is starting to feel very messy indeed.
For fifteen years, Caroline has known exactly what life has in store for her. After school, she will marry well, and drink heavily; eventually, she will produce a handful of perfect heirs for some well-heeled husband. She hopes he won’t be terribly awful, but she’s not optimistic about it. Everyone involved will be unhappy; everyone involved will be immaculately dressed.
This is the plan, and Caroline is determined to see it through. She has yet to encounter any suitable alternative.
By the end of the week, she gets the name of a doctor in the local village, famous among the sixth-form girls who speak about him only in whispers. She rings him up and listens carefully to his instructions. When she knocks on his back door, he welcomes her in, gives her a pillow, and tells her to lie back on the rough wood of his family’s kitchen table.
That night, back in her dormitory, she grits her teeth through a few hours of terrible cramping, which he had warned her to expect.
“Oh, it’s just this business of being a woman,” she tells the other girls. “Menstruation is such a fussy business—awful, really. I don’t know why any of us do it.”
The next morning, while everybody else is eating breakfast, Caroline burns her sheets in the incinerator, one after another. She never thinks about it again.
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2. Gerri (Louisville, Kentucky, 1971)
In high school, Geraldine is observant by nature and careful by necessity. Her father is fumbling, demanding, and not especially bright. Her mother is a genius. But Geraldine’s father is the one who wears the crown of laurels; he’s a powerful lawyer, and friends with all the boys at the state house. Geraldine’s mother is smarter than any of them will ever be, but nobody seems to know it.
Lillian spends her days playing mah-jongg with the other housewives of Louisville, planning fundraisers for the V.A., the church, the elementary school. They exchange recipes and sewing patterns. The house is always spotless and the food is never especially good.
Geraldine has one goal, which is getting into Radcliffe College, and one friend, whose name is Margaret. At school, she tells the teachers to call her Gerri. Anything to sound more serious. Anything to help ensure that her life will look absolutely nothing like her mother’s.
Gerri doesn’t date boys—there’s no point, not when she’s smarter than the rest of them anyway, even though she knows better than to show it—but Margaret does. Margaret is almost always going steady with somebody or other and that doesn’t matter to Gerri, not at all, until the day Margaret shows up at Gerri’s house, crying.
Gerri hustles her into the garden shed, and Margaret explains that she’s pregnant, three months along. She’s being sent away to a home for unwed mothers. She’s leaving first thing in the morning, already has a bus ticket. She doesn’t expect Gerri to write.
There are rumors about how to take care of these things, even in Kentucky, but Margaret says it’s too late, because her parents already know, and so does her priest, and anyway she’s heard that women get sepsis and die all the time from that kind of thing.
“I’m sorry for leaving you alone,” she tells Gerri, eventually. “I’m sorry about that most of all.”
Margaret isn’t at school on Monday and Gerri doesn’t bother making any new friends. When she’s sixteen, she eavesdrops from the second-floor landing as her mother asks her father about lipstick stains on the collars of his nice white shirts. She hears the slap and runs downstairs, but her father has already left the house, the door slammed behind him.
The months go by and Margaret never returns, and Lillian never asks again about the lipstick, and Gerri thinks about what it would be like to burn down the garden shed, her father’s office, the Kentucky state house.
It’s January of Gerri’s junior year of high school when her government teacher mentions that there’s been some major legal news out of Washington. She gets her hands on a newspaper and looks for the word “abortion,” discovers that the story has been shoved below a full-page obituary for President Johnson.
Not just Louisville, then. Not just her parent’s house. President Johnson died in Texas, and Harry Blackmun wrote the opinion in Washington, and Margaret disappeared without a trace.
Gerri sits in the library alone. She wonders if anybody ever escapes from the whims of men.
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3. Cyd (Chicago, Illinois, 1972)
What Cyd loves about reporting is that she gets to be blunt. She isn’t an especially nice person, nor does she want to be, and when she writes about traffic jams and city council meetings, she just gets to tell things exactly as they are. No muss, no fuss. This is a quality she appreciates in herself and in others.
She’s walking through the newsroom, skimming a press release from the mayor’s office, when Betsy from the copy desk pulls her into the supply room.
“Hey, Cyd. Sorry for all the cloak and dagger. I heard you might need an abortion,” she says. This is true.
Betsy hands her a folded paper, tells her to call the phone number and ask for Jane.
“I went to them two years ago—you won’t believe how professional they are,” Betsy tells her. “It’s two meetings, they tell you exactly what they’ll be doing, and they’re happy to answer questions.”
Cyd had heard tell of this, but she’s glad to get verification from a trusted source. She thanks Betsy. They get back to work.
That night, she calls the number. Within a few weeks she has an appointment date and a counselor named Miriam. Cyd is wary—she isn’t in the mood for therapy, doesn’t really want to talk about her feelings—but it doesn’t turn out to be like any counseling that Cyd has ever heard of before, in the best way.
They sit on a couch in Miriam’s living room, a baby on Miriam’s lap.
“We want to make sure that you understand your options, and that nobody is pressuring you into this choice,” Miriam tells her. “Have you had time to think about this?”
Yes, Cyd tells her. The boyfriend is no longer in the picture. She wants a career. She doesn’t have the money to travel to New York, and she’s heard good things about the women of Jane—she’s heard the Jane ladies know what they’re doing.
“That’s true,” Miriam says. “Now, I’d like to explain what will actually happen during the procedure. Is that alright? Feel free to ask me any questions.”
“Sounds good,” Cyd says, and it turns out she has several. It’s like reporting, she thinks, only this time it’s about her own body. Miriam, Cyd finds, is an exceptionally well-informed source.
Cyd has an abortion on a Tuesday afternoon, in a repurposed apartment. She wishes her regular obstetrician were this willing to answer questions. She wishes she could report on Jane, on these exceptionally competent women. They are self-taught and steadfast. They do not suffer fools gladly.
Fifteen years later, over lunch, Gerri tells Cyd that Baird wants a baby. Cyd doesn’t ask any questions. She already knows the answers.
“I’m sure Baird will want a boy,” Cyd says, after a while. “But if he doesn’t get what he wants—I’ve always liked the name Miriam.”
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4. Willa (Houston, Texas, 2005)
The thing about a courtroom, Willa thinks, is that it’s a lot like a theater. There are heavy velvet curtains, separating the judge’s chambers from the audience, and they look just like the ones at Willa’s high school, from last fall when the drama department put on Twelve Angry Men. The bailiff is exactly right for the job, Willa thinks, approvingly. He looks bored and restless—that fits the character exactly right.
Willa’s lawyer, on the other hand, doesn’t look at all like Willa would have guessed. First of all, she’s a woman, and second, her suit jacket has spit-up on the back, and third, her hair is in a fraying braid, rather than a severe bun. She doesn’t seem very lawyerly, is the thing.
Still, she’s helping Willa for free, and Willa knows better than to reject good help when it’s offered. Willa has been in the foster care system for five years, and she’ll take all the help she can get. She knows she got unbelievably lucky to be placed with her current foster mom, who didn’t totally flip out when Willa came out of the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test.
She did think, for a little while, about what it might be like to have a baby. There are lots of pregnant girls at Willa’s high school, and a whole wing of the building is set up for daycare, for the babies whose moms come to school part-time, still determined to get that degree. It wouldn’t have been that crazy. Probably not even surprising. Foster girl makes stupid decision, doesn’t use a condom, gets pregnant—that’s a tale as old as time.
The thing is, though, Willa doesn’t really feel like she should be taking care of anything right now. She can barely take care of herself. She likes the idea of a baby in the abstract, but she would hate the idea of a baby in reality. She doesn’t want her body to change and she doesn’t want to lose any sleep, and honestly, labor sounds absolutely horrific. Willa doesn’t want stretch marks. She wants to write a screenplay.
So Willa asked if she could get an abortion, and Susan said let’s think about this and are you sure and it’s your decision, but then they found out that Willa would need parental permission, because she’s still fifteen. And of course that wasn’t going to happen, but Susan said I can ask around and Willa said thank you, and that’s how they ended up in this courtroom, with a free lawyer who knows phrases like “judicial bypass” and “in loco parentis.”
Willa tries to pay attention when the judge asks her questions, looks to her frizzy-haired lawyer for reassuring nods, and somehow—somehow—it all works out in the end. When they leave, Susan tells Willa you can write a play about this one day, and Willa nods. The lawyer is already gone, running to her next appointment, and Willa realizes she didn’t even get to say thank you, and so she ties to puts a wish out into the universe that her lawyer will notice the spit-up stain on her blazer soon.
Susan can’t take the day off of work, so Willa has to take a bus home from the women’s health clinic, and that’s definitely a narrative low point, in Willa’s opinion. But that night when Susan gets home, she makes Willa a bowl of ice cream and rubs her feet. They watch the movie Erin Brockovich on the living room television, and if Willa cries a little, she wouldn’t even be able to explain why.
She thinks Julia Roberts is an exceptional actress.
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5. Rava (New York City, New York, 2007)
Rava wanted the baby.
It’s been almost a year of IVF consultations by now—weekly appointments with the fertility doctor, endless hours spent on the phone with additional specialists, and thousands of morning vitamins. Rava talks to her ob-gyn’s receptionist more often than she talks to her sister. The tops of both of her thighs are dotted with a small constellation of bruises from nightly IVF injections, meant to stimulate egg production, though it still doesn’t seem to be enough.
Rava learned to self-administer the injections, barely winces anymore, because Kendall still works late, most nights, and that’s just the way things are. He works late, but he still comes home smiling, and he kisses each bruise, and he’s steady—and sober. Things could be worse. She’s very grateful.
Still, it’s hard not to feel devastated, here in the doctor’s office, when they get the news. Ectopic pregnancy. Early detection. “What it comes down to is, the egg was fertilized, but it isn’t viable,” the doctor explains, gently. “I’ll give you two some time alone, and then I’ll come back to explain our next steps.”
The doctor closes the door behind her, and Rava starts crying, and Ken takes off his suit jacket and climbs up into the hospital bed. He holds her very tightly.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she feels him shake his head against the nape of her neck.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he tells her, and now she knows he’s crying, too.
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6. Tabitha (San Francisco, California, 2020)
When Tabitha thinks about California, she always imagines sunshine—but San Francisco is cold and drizzly. Outside the hotel window, the fog rolls by in thick waves, and for a minute Tabitha pretends she’s been teleported back to Scotland.
She’s been staring out the window for an hour or so, enjoying the lingering effects of a strong blackberry-flavored edible, when Roman gets back to the hotel. They’re spending a week together in San Francisco, where Roman has been tasked with cozying up to some of the bigger West Coast shareholders in advance of the proxy battle. Tabitha is ostensibly here to pick up some new clients for her public relations firm, but those plans evaporated into the fog earlier this week after her doctor’s appointment.
“Give any good blowjobs today, babe?” she calls out, as Roman goes to wash his hands in the bathroom. “Oh, I blew their fucking minds,” he shouts back, over the sound of running water.
Tabitha knew he would say that. She also knows that when Roman comes out of the bathroom, he’s going to flop dramatically onto the couch, putting his head in her lap so that she can stroke his hair. This is the kind of thing that Roman likes do to, but only when he’s hundreds of miles away from his father.
Tabitha knows lots of things—including that her relationship with Roman, such as it is, is coming to an end. She’s okay with that. It wasn’t ever meant to last forever. Roman knows that Tabitha sleeps with other people, and Tabitha knows that Roman isn’t really joking about his raging crush on the company lawyer, and none of it is really a problem, even though none of it's especially ideal. She understands the crush, at least. Gerri’s hot.
Here’s something else: Tabitha knows that Roman is secretly very gentle, but only when he thinks nobody is looking. He’s also very lonely, and not nearly as deviant as people think. He didn’t really want her to play a dead body, she thinks. She just isn’t sure if he knows that. Above all, Tabitha hopes that they can find a way to preserve their friendship, even after she moves out in a few weeks.
She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Roman freezes, his head still in her lap. He sits up slowly.
“Hey, Tabs,” he says, slowly placing his palm on her shoulder, as though he read about providing comfort in some sort of instruction manual. “Are you…okay?”
She takes a deep breath.
“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry to worry you. I’m—fine, actually. It’s been kind of a long week. I’m pregnant.”
Roman blinks at her, like an owl.
“It’s not yours, obviously,” she adds, and he lets out a sort of half-laugh, half snort.
“Right,” he says. “Obviously.”
They sit in silence for a little while, but Roman eventually cracks, just as she knew he would. He asks her if she knows what she’d like to do with it, and looks relieved when she says she does.
Roman offers to go with her to the hospital, but she tells him that isn’t necessary. There are two pills in her purse, ready and waiting. She’ll take the first one tomorrow morning, the second one twenty-four hours later. She’s only six weeks along.
“So, the baby isn’t like—a baby,” Roman says, tentatively.
“I mean, it depends on who you ask, babe,” she says. “What do you think your dad’s television networks would say?”
Roman scoffs, looking outside the window, where the city is still completely obscured by fog.
“Those guys are morons,” he says. “My dad wouldn’t give a shit. He’s probably had like a hundred abortions.”
Tabitha suspects he’s probably right, but it doesn’t lift her mood, really. She looked it up on an app—at six weeks, the little clump of cells inside her is about the size of a grain of rice.
To be clear, she’s absolutely sure of her decision—she doesn’t think she’ll ever want to be a mother, and she definitely doesn’t want to be one now. But still. She isn’t planning on telling her parents, who watch ATN every night. She isn't thrilled about it.
In the morning, Tabitha finds Roman pacing the living room, gesticulating wildly, listening to someone talk rapidly on his cell phone. She waves to get his attention, and he startles, then hangs up the phone.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for you to hang up,” Tabitha says. “Shouldn’t you be at your meeting?”
“Fuck those guys,” he says. “They can deal with Karl. I have boyfriend duties to attend to.”
“Roman,” Tabitha sighs, but she’s smiling, and so is he. “You know I’m going to move out when we get back to New York, right?”
“Yeah, whatever,” he says. “Those are details. Do you want some water?”
She does.
Tabitha takes the first pill, and then she settles in to watch some trashy reality television. She grits her teeth through the cramping, bleeds just as much as the nurse had predicted. She doesn’t have any regrets.
She wakes up from a nap on the second day when Roman comes into the bedroom with another glass of water.
“So, Gerri says I have to apologize,” he says, sitting down on the mattress. “Because you were asleep for kind of a while, and I was getting sort of nervous, so I ended up…telling her everything? Which, not cool of me? But you told all the Pierces that I can’t fuck, so maybe we could be, like…even?”
She thinks about it, sighs.
“Fine,” she says. “But that was a terrible apology.”
“I know,” Roman says, happily bouncing into a prone position on his half of the bed. “Gerri says I need to work on my apologizing, too.”
Tabitha finds herself laughing for the first time in two days, wishing she knew Gerri a little bit better. “Did she have any other wisdom to share?”
“Yeah, actually,” Roman says. He looks down at the blankets, then back at Tabitha. “She said she was glad you had safe options.”
Tabitha smiles. She’s glad, too.