196: My Abortion at 11 Wasn’t a Choice. It Was My Life

Allison Langer  0:04  
Music. I'm Allison Langer.

Andrea Askowitz  0:05  
I'm Andrea askowitz, and this is writing class radio. You'll hear true personal stories and learn how to write your own stories together, we produce this podcast, which is equal parts heart and art. By heart, we mean the truth in a story. By art, we mean the craft of writing no matter what's going on in our lives. Writing class is where we tell the truth. It's where we work out our shit. There's no place in the world like writing class, and we want to bring you in today. We bring you the final story and our seven part series called our abortion stories. All these stories are meant to get you motivated and inspired to go out and vote yes on amendment four, which will bring abortion rights back to Florida. So about a month and a half ago, we did a live show in Miami featuring all seven stories that you have heard on the in this series, all the stories are amazing, they're heartbreaking, they're beautiful, they're heartwarming, they are triumphant, and they cover all aspects of the abortion story and healthcare. We brought you one a week until the election, which is in seven days on november 5, 2024 if you're listening after November 5, please keep listening, because the story you're about to hear is amazing and informative and brilliant, both in terms of content and craft, and all the stories in this series are, if you're just tuning into this series, please listen to episode 190 to learn about how our live show came to be. But I want to say really quickly that Rabbi Greengrass from Beth om enlisted us. She said, We need a show about abortion stories. And what we did was we got 19 organizations, and those are all listed on Episode 190, to bring out their people and to give money and to support the show. And we played in front of 386 people. That's how many tickets we sold, and it was a standing ovation, amazing crowd. Thank you for being there. If this is your first time listening to writing class radio, please go to Episode One and listen to Allison's story, because that is our origin story, and that tells you why, why we know that stories change lives.

Allison Langer  2:46  
Today's story is by Nicole Walker, whose story tells us everything we need to know about why she writes and why she wrote the story back with Nicole story after the break, we're back. I'm Allison Langer, and you're listening to writing class radio. The next story does mention molestation and rape. Here's Nicole Walker reading her story. My abortion at 11 wasn't a choice. It was my life

Nicole Walker  3:13  
on August 18, 2022 two months after the Dobbs decision came down from the Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade. I wrote an essay for the New York Times. I predict that my 17 year old daughter will become a doctor. I wrote she knows everything about the gut biome, dopamine and herniated discs. She does not look away at times others might like when my mother unexpectedly texted me pictures of a cyst she had removed from the back of her head sitting bloody in a specimen cup. That's exactly what I would do. My daughter said, you have to show people. I don't mind looking at such things, but I would like a little warning. But here I offer no warning except to say that, if not for the existence of Roe versus Wade when I got pregnant, that conversation with my daughter would not have happened. My family and I would not have our lives together at all. This is my story, and ask you not to look away in 19 1982 when I was 10 years old, a 14 year old boy molested me. He was supposed to be babysitting me and my younger sisters. After the twins went to sleep, the babysitter and I sat on the couch watching mash, he started crossing my arm, then my neck, then he took off my shirts and my pants, then his clothes. He lay on top of me and had intercourse with me. I had a vague idea of what was happening. I didn't really know how wrong the babysitter situation was. I was flattered by the attention, but also confused. I. Why me? What does this mean? Was he my boyfriend? Why did we have to keep it a secret? He continued to molest me for more than a year. I haven't always used the word molest. I felt too much guilt and complicity. I'm still prone to feeling both. I'm not sure if that's a product of the molestation, or if it's just my personality, or if the two can even be disentangled. When I was 11, he impregnated me. He used the active verb with me as a direct object, intentionally to get pregnant. Suggests he threw the baseball and I, knowing it was coming, caught it. I did not mean to catch anything, nor did I know how to avoid doing so. My mom was already worried that something was wrong with me. Figured it out. Are you pregnant? She asked, How did she know? Maybe it was pure motherly intuition. In 1983 abortion was legal across the United States. I did not feel lucky to get an abortion. I felt like garbage. The babysitter did not have to go to the clinic. The babysitter was not shamed and shunned by our community. Most people didn't even know what he had done. Only my mom and I were subject to the shame of entering that special building for that special procedure, although no one in the neighborhood or school talked to me about it, I could feel the electric gossip surge around me. The freedom to choose wasn't what I experienced in 1993 83 my abortion wasn't a choice. It was my life. If If I had been forced to give birth, I wouldn't be texting my mom about her the removal of her cyst. I wouldn't teach at Northern Arizona University. I wouldn't be working on a book about climate change. I wouldn't be married to my husband or have my two children. I would be a prisoner subject to a body's whims, and not my body's whims, but the whims of a teenage boy who, as best as I can tell, experienced no consequences when Roe versus Wade was overturned, I felt the prison gates fall around me, around my daughter, pregnancy and childbirth change life trajectories. How could someone decide what direction my life, these kids lives should go. I was so angry, I was so disempowered, and I felt like I relegated to a second tier citizen. How could my daughter or her friends believe they had powerful voices when they had no voice about what to do with their own bodies? So I came out with my story in The New York Times, whatever shame I had held onto from that experience dropped away the moment I wrote my story, when I published the article, I was sure to get hate mail, but I didn't. I got words of support. The strength of your truth is palpable. Your imagery makes a hot button topic real and personal. Cathy wrote, This is brave. This is magic. You are a badass. Wrote Liz, thank you for opening up to the world, for sharing the grief and pain and social opprobrium that are visited on young women for their decisions they make, and thank you for giving a personal account of how the Supreme Court has violated our trust. Wrote Josh, the connections that I made transform my relationship with what had happened to me, all the shame I'd felt for having been sullied, duped and ostracized, disappeared. The word abortion didn't signal spoilage or scum, because I could shape my story on my own terms. Whatever detritus that had attached to me from the molestation or from the abortion fell away. It was my story to tell, and telling it to a million readers was the most empowering moment of my life. I cannot predict what my life would have been like if I had been forced to give birth when I was 11 years old, but I don't think it would have been as various or as surprising. A few months after Roe was overturned, I was invited to speak at the College of the Holy Cross about my books. The audience was composed mainly of undergraduates and Catholic undergraduates at that they only wanted to talk about the New York Times piece. They didn't ask why I wrote the article. They asked if I was okay after I'd published it. They asked what the response had been. They asked what was the hardest part telling about the abortion? I said the hardest part is that everyone expects it to be hard. A local reporter interviewed me and asked if I had a photo of myself at 11. For the first time since I wrote the article, I broke down. It's one thing to tell the story of a girl at 11 who went through these things, but to. Look at her photo of a girl at 11, and to see her alone and scared, so on the verge of something so life defining, or worse among younger having no idea what was coming, I think. What if she had been forced to continue that pregnancy? What would the next year's photo look like? I wouldn't have been able to recognize that girl. Now I can look at the 12 year old girl's photo and know that she's been through a lot that with time and love and community, she could be here on this stage with you. You

Andrea Askowitz  10:54  
I think this is one of the best stories I've ever heard, ever, ever,

Allison Langer  10:59  
I mean, like we've heard it a million times now, and every time I am mesmerized.

Andrea Askowitz  11:04  
It's gorgeous. It's everything. I so appreciate it, because it's everything that we do. It's about writing. It's about this situation. It's about making sense of this situation. She brings up trajectory a bunch of times. I heard it this time it like it's this through line in the piece, she says at the beginning like she doesn't know who she would have been or before that actually, she talks about how she wouldn't have been able to have this conversation with her mom or her daughter, like and then that just keeps coming back. And that is brilliant storytelling where this idea of trajectory comes back more than once. That's just one of the things that I thought was so gorgeous. I want to go through it from the beginning. But what do you think

Allison Langer  11:56  
her voice and the way she sees the world, her life. First of all, it's so healthy that to me, is why this story one of the reasons why the story needs to be heard and passed around, because I feel like a lot of bad shit happens to everyone. It's the way we move forward after these things that really make us who we are, and we get the benefit of seeing her all these years later, like when she says, 1983 I'm like, Jesus I was in high school, you know, like dancing and trying to be cute, and no idea of anything in the world, like me having a baby at that time and trying to raise a kid. Holy shit. Uh

Andrea Askowitz  12:41  
huh. And that was one of the things she's she brought up later. Like, she her life wouldn't have been as varied or various and interesting. I know God,

Allison Langer  12:51  
and I will say that, obviously, there are plenty of people out here, out in the world, people listening, that have had babies young, and they've managed. And I really hate, like, oh, how do you get through something like that? When people say that about anything hard that happens, because we do. But in this, this situation, I'm so glad she had the choice. Really, isn't

Andrea Askowitz  13:13  
it interesting how she said, and that's the name of the story, my abortion at 11 wasn't a choice. It was my life, and she says that in the middle of the piece, but right, I am also glad she had the choice. But it was her life. It changed her life, and it would have changed her life both ways. So we asked all the storytellers in our show why they write, or why they wrote this story. And this is this, is this? This whole essay answers that question. She wrote to take back the the story, to take back the pain, to make it hers. And it sounds like it really worked. Sounds like when she got her story published, or even before she got it published, like, just writing the story, the shame melted away, and then putting that story in front of a million people, like, what a coming out.

Allison Langer  14:07  
And that people were like, Oh my God, was it hard? And then she's supposed to, like, be, yeah, it was so hard, you know, like the expectations for for us as we move through life, like, it's okay, if you it's not hard. She did it, and she feels good, you know, but it's the expectations are often, what guide us sometimes. And this narrator did not let expectations guide her

Andrea Askowitz  14:30  
that line, the hardest part was thinking. That was everyone thinking that it was going to be hard, though she did expect to get hate, hate letters, but she didn't. She got support and love and what a beautiful how Thank you world for for treating Nicole Walker with love and kindness, for coming out with this story.

Allison Langer  14:54  
It is possible she did get mean, mean notes, but those didn't stick with her. She. Ignored those, and they do always come. I mean, I've had that experience. I haven't been in the New York Times, but in the Washington Post, I had been told, Do not read the hate mail, because people are evil. And what I loved about this narrator is we don't even know if she got any because it was inconsequential whether she got it or not. From her point of view, she

Andrea Askowitz  15:22  
did not exactly. She didn't get she didn't get hate, she got love. I believe that she did get love. I'm believing in humanity right now. I love it. I love from the very beginning, she wrote in the New York Times that she predicts that her daughter is going to be a doctor because she does not look away. And then a few paragraphs later, she directly addresses us. This is my story. I ask you not to look away. There's something so satisfying and so beautiful about that writing.

Allison Langer  15:52  
She's a master storyteller. I mean, this is what she does. She's a English she's in the English department at NAU she's a I think she

Andrea Askowitz  15:59  
created the creative writing department, or the creative writing program at Northern Arizona University. I mean, she is brilliant. She taught me how to do a braided essay. But I want to stick with this for a second just a few other parts of the story that just like gut me every time. Is the way that she describes the molestation. She really goes through it, but she tells us her mentality. She's an 11 year old kid. Is he my boyfriend? Why do we have to keep it a secret? I am 100% inside her brain. That's not easy to do. And then she also talks about like, how she had the hardest time using that word that molest, because she felt so guilty. And then she asked, this is the thing about this narrator, she's so brilliant. She asked these questions, was that the product of the MO The guilt? Was the guilt the product of being molested? Or was that just her personality? Or is it impossible all these years later, to disentangle those two things, because the abortion wasn't her choice, it was her life, and now it's woven into the fabric of who she is, and Jesus, did she tell it like it is? Right there she felt like garbage. That's another gorgeous example of beautiful writing that word that's not a special word. It just says everything about how she felt. What about the part where, where she's like, I would be prisoner subject to a body's whims, and not my body. Like this kid didn't as as far as she knows, have to go through any of this stuff? No, of course not. Of course not. Oh, my God. And then

Allison Langer  17:45  
at that moment, I was like, well, she could have called him out. And just in case anybody else is thinking that, because yes, obviously the guy could have been arrested. But that in itself, is a whole other nightmare for people who have been victimized. So for anyone out there that's saying that they should have done that, go fuck yourself, right? I don't know. I don't like that.

Andrea Askowitz  18:07  
I didn't even think about it. But it is possible that people would think like, why didn't they press charges? Why didn't the parents go after the kid or whatever? But I don't think it's part of this story, but I get your anger. So then she gets to the part about childbirth changes trajectories. And she'd already talked about her trajectory, and then the writing changed her trajectory emotionally. And then at the very end, she's like looking at herself. So it's sort of like adult Nicole is talking back or looking back at kid Nicole, that part and seeing her at 11 and then 12, yeah, oh my god. And again, the landing, I say again, because I think we mentioned this in the previous episode with Derek Cook, how these stories are joyous in a way, they're badass. They are triumphant. I don't know any other word to describe it, but this, the last line is like, now I can look at my 12 year old girl photo and know that, oh yeah, she does. She talks about her, and know that she's been through a lot, but that with time and love and community, she could be here on this stage with you.

Allison Langer  19:22  
Oh, my god, yeah, it's super powerful, super Thank you for listening, and thank you, Nicole Walker, for sharing your story with us and with the world. Nicole Walker is an English professor at NAU which is Northern Arizona University, and she is the author of eight books, hello. Can't even get one published. You can find her at Nicole dot Walker. You can find her on Twitter at n i k walk, Otter, okay, that is whack. Anyway, that'll be in our show notes. And she also has a website and I k walk.com Com. So some version of Nicole Walker is where you can find her. And if you're like me, just go click on something on the show notes.

Andrea Askowitz  20:09  
And I recommend that you do find more Nicole Walker, because her writing is so brilliant. Yeah, she's brilliant. I want to thank you for listening and ask you to tell your friends what you learned. And if you live in Florida or Arizona, where Nicole Walker lives, or one of the 11 states where abortion is on the ballot, please talk to as many people as you can, and please vote on November 5 in Florida, vote yes on four, and please share this episode.

Allison Langer  20:42  
Ray writing class. Radio is hosted by me, Allison Langer and me Andrea askowitz. Audio production by Matt Kendall, Evan serminsky and Aiden glassy at the sound off media company. Theme music is by Kenny corade. There's more writing class on our website, including stories we study, editing resources, video classes, writing retreats and live online classes. If you want to write with us every week, or if you're a business owner, community activist group that needs healing, entrepreneur and you want to help your team write better, check out all the classes we offer on our website. Writing class, radio.com Join the community that comes together for instruction, an excuse to write and the support from other writers to learn more. Go to our website or patreon.com/writing class radio, a full list of our sponsors and a link to donate to yes on four can be found in our show notes. A new episode in this series will drop every Wednesday until the election. There's

Andrea Askowitz  21:41  
no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and sharing our story. Everyone has a story. What's yours?

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  21:53  
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