It was the Fall of my college freshman year and Ellen, a fellow coed (with whom I am still friends) had a copy on her book shelf. Just as we would laze around dorm rooms analyzing album covers while listening to music, my fellow dorm mates and I would flip through Our Bodies Ourselves with equal intensity, ingesting every morsel.
Written in plain detail with line drawings illustrations and some photos, it described a woman's anatomy, sexuality, birth control, being lesbian, abortion, pregnancy, miscarriage, and much more with clarity and frankness that rattled my sheltered teenage experience. The pre-Internet world along with my catholic school education created a moat around knowing myself as sexual being whose body was my own. Our Bodies Ourselves finally lowered the drawbridge into a wider world celebrating women and sexuality.
Our Bodies Ourselves was just in its 4th year of printing but it already stood as a significant resource. Previously, in the Spring of my senior high school year, a guest speaker addressed my classmates during religion classes. The visitor was a young, married woman who was a school alum. She must have been in her early to mid-twenties, but to my 17 year-old self, of course she projected as someone much older.
Her presentation's core message was to abstain from sex and "save yourself" for marriage. I recall her manner as pleasing, earnest. I also remember feeling separated from her message since she was married which translated into 'old' which translated into not relatable.
At the intersection of intention and reality, this chaste effort fell flat.
Earlier that year, a classmate, Maureen, a girl who sat behind me in homeroom for almost four years became pregnant and left school to have her daughter. Maureen was boisterous, joyful, outspoken, a free thinker, and smiled through every day.
One day she arrived on campus at lunchtime to catch up with a group of us as we sat outside at our usual spot. Maureen was in her third trimester. She joked with us like always and the appreciation in being together was mutual. But her visit was cut short when one of the faculty, having spotted her on campus, abruptly and awkwardly shooed her off telling her she was not permitted on school grounds.
I recall that dismissive moment so sharply. This was no stranger. It was Maureen. She was our beloved high school friend. Yet, now she was unwelcome because she was pregnant. She represented the great unclean. She was shamed.
It's no leap to see the fear her situation gave to school faculty. Maureen did not 'save herself' for marriage. She did not represent the only option offered catholic school girls. Fear drove the shunning.
Where was love for Maureen? Where was the kindness? Where was the support?
It infuriated me and scared me.
I thought about Maureen when the visiting alum spoke to us regarding abstinence. While this woman promoted one lone path of 'purity,' it seemed so narrow and unfair for the bright light that was Maureen. I felt conflicted, not about Maureen, but about a philosophy of fear and unreasonable choices. Maureen, who made a brave, life changing choice became unwelcome to the very school which taught a now skewed value system: be chaste and, if you 'fail,' be damned.
Which is why paging through Our Bodies Ourselves months later as a first semester college coed became a sort of protest to small thinking. It was the first time I understood that I was in charge of my body and desires whether I chose to have sex or not. I controlled what I did with my body. I felt celebrated. I felt empowered. And I had options. Shame had no place in sexuality.
A couple of years later I ran into Maureen at a local shop. She had her sweet toddler daughter with her. I don't remember what we said but I do know what we felt. We were two young women incredibly happy to see one another. Maureen's effervescence sparkled as it always had. A teen pregnancy didn't break her nor did the disrespectful lack of mercy from her religious high school.
Maureen is one of my early heroines. She navigated hypocritical shame and she decided about her body. She chose to have her baby at a time when she could have chosen not to have her baby. The important point, to me, is that she had a choice - her choice!
I am forever grateful to the women who wrote, published, updated, promoted, supported Our Bodies Ourselves for so many years. Their clarity helped mold mine.
I am pro-choice.
My body.
My choice.
Mine.
NOTE: Here is the pdf of the 1970 course booklet "Women & Their Bodies" which became Our Bodies Ourselves.
https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/cms/assets/uploads/2014/04/Women-and-Their-Bodies-1970.pdf
NOTE: On April 2018, the board, founders and staff of Our Bodies Ourselves came to a decision that Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) no longer had the resources to continue paying staff to develop health information and collaborate on translations and adaptations with our global partners. As of October 1, 2018, OBOS transitioned to a volunteer-led 501(c)3 and scaled back OBOS’s core work to two primary activities: advocating for women’s health and social justice and providing limited technical support to OBOS’s global partners.
Since its inception, OBOS has had a tremendous impact on the lives, health, and human rights of women across the world. https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/
