Time to drag out my "Life before Roe v. Wade" story again. In the sixties, my mother was the office manager for the largest talent agent in Los Angeles at the time, Ashley Steiner. If you watched "Mad Men," she was Joan, with a less complicated private life. 1/9

The secretaries were, nearly to a soul, unmarried, attractive and young. They were all women. They were all pretty. The male clients were handsome actors, their bosses the agents were confident men accustomed to negotiating for, and getting, what they wanted. 2/9

My mother had numberless small jobs she did as the office manager, but mostly she was a fixer of problems. Unexpected pregnancies among the secretaries was a regular problem. My mother had a person she trusted down in Tijuana. The "Girl" would leave Friday after work, 3/9

be back at her desk, pale but possibly wiser, Monday morning. Her married boss or the client would be out a few hundred bucks. My mother told me the girls who didn't come to her, who tried to find an abortion on their own, didn't always come back. 4/9

Even some degree of fame didn't necessarily protect the woman. A friend whose family has been in the business for generations told me her grandmother had an abortion in the forties, by something the studio recommended, then got on a train to Los Angeles. 5/9

She nearly died from a hemorrhage on that train.

Statistics tell us most American women seeking an abortion already have a child and are not in the position to care for another. Outlawing abortions will not mean they suddenly have money. They will still need the abortion. 6/9

They will find someone cheap and willing to do it. 7/9

Many will die. 8/9

Scratch an anti-abortion argument long enough and you get, "So what? She put herself in that position." So they are saying if women die they, at best, do not care.

At worst, they think it's a reasonable punishment. 9/9