What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir

by Cohen, Alice Eve

  Dr. Wong, at New York Hospital, was an expert on Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Her beautiful young associate Dr. Melina Christopoulos wore a short white robe over her red miniskirt and thigh-high black boots. Her Greek-accented breathy voice enhanced her hot-chick-in-a-doctor’s-robe look.

  “All you need is love for baby,” says Dr. Christopoulos. “Do not worry for CAH. Like diabetes, but easier. No shots. Give one pill a day, or she will die. So easy. All she needs is love and one pill. CAH girls are strong and athletic. Many grow up to be lesbians. But I think your baby does not have CAH. I think her penis is from estrogen pills Alice took during pregnancy. I will look at baby on day she is born. If genital ambiguity, I will take her to emergency room to rule out CAH.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Alice,” says Michael.

  I don’t share his confidence.

  At home, I read the twelve-page patient information insert from my hormone prescription. “Do not take during pregnancy. . . . Deformities in newborn rats when taken during pregnancy. . . . Abnormal masculinization of female genitals.” The pill I took every day for the first six months of pregnancy caused this baby girl to have a penis. And who knows what other injuries, as yet undetected, she has; what cancer time bomb might detonate?

  “You’re overthinking this,” says Michael, accurately.

  What have I done? Fourteen years ago I’d longed to get pregnant and have a baby. Fourteen years ago, I knew I would take care of my baby from the beginning of my pregnancy. I would never bring a baby into the world this way! I’ve injured her. Let me start over.

  But start over is my not-so-secret code for abortion, and it’s too late for an abortion, and this is too terrible a thought to tolerate now that we’ve all said yes to this baby and yes to being a family.

  “She’ll be our baby, she’ll be great, we’ll be great,” says Michael, and he means it. But he can tell he’s not getting through to me. He can tell I’m tumbling into an abyss, and it scares both of us.

  I had been unhappy before, but I had never thought about killing myself. I’ve never been able to watch violent scenes in movies. I usually close my eyes before the shooting starts. Now when I close my eyes, and sometimes with my eyes open, I see violent scenes in which I play the central, fatal role.

  What I Know

  1. I’m having a baby girl in three months.

  2. Unless she’s premature.

  3. She probably has a penis.

  4. Genital surgery can change her penis into a clitoris.

  5. Surgical correction is recommended by the AMA.

  6. Surgical correction is considered unethical by people with genital ambiguity.

  7. She may have a fatal disorder.

  8. She will be a lesbian athlete.

  9. I have uncontrollable thoughts about killing myself.

  10. I have too many responsibilities to commit suicide.

  Scene 2

  Yom Kippur

  “On Rosh Hashanah it is written. On Yom Kippur it is sealed.”

  Aware of my suicidal fantasies, Sue called her well-connected friend Erica, who called her well-connected aunt Charlotte (a chapter president of Planned Parenthood), who called her brother, Erica’s father (a well-connected doctor), who pulled some strings for me to see Dr. Raushbaum, a feared and revered abortion specialist at New York Hospital.

  I go to synagogue two times a year, on Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur. This year I started Rosh Hashanah in the metal cylinder of a CAT scan. I would spend Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of fasting and atonement, in Dr. Raushbaum’s office arranging for a late-term abortion. It was ten days after I found out I was pregnant.

  Michael came with me. Seventyish and stout, the doctor sat in an old leather chair at a heavy wooden desk, heaped with unsteady mountains of papers. He chewed on an unlit cigar and inspected us over his beakish nose.

  “Tell me exactly how it came about that you are six months pregnant but you didn’t find out about it until last week.”

  I told him.

  “Your story is remarkable. Your doctors are incompetent idiots.” He leaned over his desk, rolled his cigar around with his tongue, and glared at me. “You’re also an idiot! You were in denial for the past six months. Every woman knows subliminally when she’s pregnant. You must have felt the baby kicking, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He dismissed my protests with a snort, a wave of his hand, a roll of his cigar. “Let’s get to the business at hand. Tell me why you requested this urgent meeting on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the day God decides who is and who is not inscribed into the Book of Life. Not that I care, I’m an atheist.”

  “I don’t want to have a baby. I’m depressed and terrified. I had no prenatal care for the first six months, and the baby was subjected to drugs and X-rays, a CAT scan—”

  “Yes, and?”

  “—And she’s a female but she has a penis, and she might have CAH, a fatal salt-wasting—”

  “Yes, and?”

  “—And I’m scared I’ll go into labor any day and the baby will be premature and severely disabled and—”

  “Yes, and?”

  “Why do you keep saying, ‘yes, and’?”

  “Is your life in danger?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His thick eyebrows joined to form one thick line. “I don’t have time for stupidity. Why are you in my office? I can’t legally put words into your mouth. Exactly how depressed are you?”

  “I think about killing myself.”

  “Thank you! I’m sorry you’re so unhappy, but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Since you’re contemplating suicide, the mother’s life is in danger, which is the only way you can get a legal abortion. Not in New York State, which has no exception to the twenty-four-week limit. You could, however, have an abortion in Wichita, Kansas.”

  I can’t think of a less likely place for liberal abortion laws. I’ve been to Wichita. My very first solo tour, when I was twenty-eight, was two weeks in south-central Kansas. Antigay and antiabortion protesters accosted travelers in the airport with leaflets and recruitment entreaties.

  “In Kansas, if the mother’s life is in danger, an abortion is legal up until the twenty-eighth week. Seven days from today. Do you want me to call the abortion clinic in Wichita right now?”

  I nodded. He called Wichita and scheduled an abortion for Tuesday, in one week.

  “Now it’s in your hands. You can call and discuss it with them. You can think about it for the next few days before you decide. Meanwhile, I’ll get you an appointment with Dr. Carrie Rosenbloom. She is the only doctor you should be seeing for this pregnancy. The best high-risk obstetrician in the country.

  “I already called her. She wouldn’t see me.”

  “She’ll see you, because I’ll tell her to. And let’s get the goddamn penis question straightened out. It’s hard to read a sonogram. It’s a bunch of gray dots on a screen. Your guy might have thought he saw a penis, but maybe he saw the umbilical cord, or some other gray specks. There’s a guy here who’s the best sonographer in the world. He’s going to look at the baby. But he’s Catholic and a right-to-lifer with eleven kids, so don’t let him know you’re considering an abortion.”

  “He would allow his religious beliefs to affect the way he reads a sonogram?”

  “Of course he would. A doctor is a person. We see what we see through a variety of lenses—the lens of science, of politics, religion, our personal passions. Reading a sonogram is not an exact science. If you mention abortion, he’ll view the ambiguous gray dots on the screen through his right-to-life lens, and I guarantee you he will not see a penis.”

  Raushbaum swiveled his chair toward Michael. “What do you think about all this?”

  “Me? Oh, Jesus . . . a lot of different things. I’ve seen Alice in the throes of this terrible unhappiness and . . . I don’t recognize her. And I think her . . . misery is actually less about having a baby than it is about losing her f
reedom to choose. She feels imprisoned, and it’s . . . it’s making her go crazy. So for the first time in my life—and I come from an extremely conservative, antiabortion, southern Christian family where the abortion issue is totally black and white, no room for discussion—I’m sick just imagining what my family would even think if they knew we were talking to you about—For the first time, I’ve had to genuinely think about abortion rights. It’s always been an abstraction. I’ve been politically in favor of choice, but uncommitted on the personal side. Because it’s suddenly so real and imminent a question in our lives, I . . . for the first time I understand the importance of a woman’s right to choose. But the equally compelling personal truth for me is that there’s a baby. Our baby. My baby. And I don’t care if she has a penis or two penises or a salt-wasting disease or three heads or . . . I can’t stand the thought of this baby being aborted. So if Alice has an abortion, I won’t go to Wichita with her. And I might not be here when she gets back. I’ll have my own unbearable sorrow about losing this baby, about endorsing this decision. I’ll have that sorrow for the rest of my life. But I don’t want Alice to kill herself. So she should do what she needs to do. That’s what I think about all this.”

  Dr. Raushbaum nodded at Michael, leaned back in his leather chair, chewed on his cigar, and looked at me.

  “I have a two-year-old grandson. He’s cute, but I get bored of him after twenty minutes. It takes forever to raise a child till it’s old enough to be interesting. I couldn’t do it again. But I’m not you. I wonder what you’ll decide.”

  “I don’t see a penis! I see a large labia and a large clitoris!” shouts the evangelist sonographer from New York Hospital at the gray shapes on the monitor. He knows the referral has come from well-known abortion doctor Dr. Raushbaum, who considers him the best sonographer in the world.

  “I see a small penis and partially fused scrotum,” declares the sonographer in Boston, whom Dr. Rosenbloom considers the best sonographer in the world, to whom she has sent me for a third opinion.

  Michael and I halfheartedly pretend the four-hour drive home from Boston is an ordinary outing. We don’t talk about the contradictory, inconclusive readings we’ve gotten from the world’s greatest sonographers. We don’t talk about Wichita. We listen to the radio, switching to stations with the best reception as we drive south. I briefly get National Public Radio.

  “In the next few weeks, somewhere in the world, a baby will be born. And that baby will bring the world population to six billion! The UN has prepared a report called ‘The World at Six Billion’ in response to the global attention to this historic milestone and widespread concerns about overpopula—” The rest of the story is obscured by static.

  “I hope our baby isn’t the six-billionth,” I say, contemplating the terrible possibility of giving birth in the next few weeks, considering my options.

  “Yeah, I’m with you.” Michael sighs, surfing stations. He turns off the radio. We drive in silence for a while. I watch scenery fly by. The trees in Massachusetts are beginning to turn color.

  “I’m performing at that conference in Cleveland this week.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “I know, the timing is terrible.”

  “Yeah.”

  I look out the window and mope. We drive a bunch of miles.

  “Michael ...”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to have to do something besides touring.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If we have a baby, you can’t be on the road so much.”

  “That’s how I earn a living.”

  “I know, but I get the feeling you expect me to stay home and take care of the baby full time while you keep touring. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Thinking? I’m not thinking. I’m reacting. I’m dealing with the fact that you’re very pregnant and very confused about it. So I’m sorry I haven’t been planning a career change in the last two weeks, I’ve had other things on my mind.”

  “I can’t raise a baby alone, with you on tour all the time.”

  “What do you suggest I do instead?”

  “I don’t know. Something closer to home.”

  “Okay. No more touring, ever,” he says in his most sarcastic voice.

  We drive for miles in silence. The green blur of trees is punctuated with flashes of red.

  “I’ll just get an office job and sit in a chair until I die.”

  “—I’m not saying you have to get an office job.”

  “Of course you want me to get an office job. It’ll be really good for our family. Hey, my father worked at an office job he hated for forty years, and then he died. No reason I can’t do that too. It’ll be great—”

  “You don’t have to get an office job.”

  “No, of course not. Because you know exactly what job would be right for me.”

  “Stop it.”

  I turn on the radio and surf channels. All I can find is a religious station.

  “—President Clinton twice vetoed the bill, but Republicans on the Hill are preparing for a new fight and plan to reintroduce Partial Birth Abortion Ban legislation in Congress next month. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush is proving himself a great friend to the Christian Right because of his outspoken support for the bill and his unwavering antiabortion—”

  “Ugh.” I turn off the radio. “I hope abortion isn’t illegal by Tuesday, or it’s the coat hanger for me,” I say, in an attempt at gallows humor.

  Michael doesn’t say anything. I shouldn’t have said anything about the abortion, certainly not a joke. We drive in silence. I imagine myself at home with a baby—a single mother in practice, if not marital status—Michael on the road, calling home now and then.

  “You say you really want this baby. But you can’t just say that and then go all over the country all the time.”

  “I’ll never leave our apartment again.”

  “You want complete freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, and that’s been great up till now. You don’t want to grow up, it’s who you are, I’ve always loved that about you. But it makes me wonder if you’ve really thought about what it means to be a father, and if you really want this, because you can’t have complete freedom and take care of a baby.”

  Michael starts to speed up. “I’m trying to support my family!”

  “I know that. If you could just find something that doesn’t take you away from us so much of—”

  “Like what? I have no idea what else to do!” His foot presses heavily on the pedal. “Tell me! Tell me! What? Obviously you know. Tell me what I have to do!”

  “I don’t know!”

  Michael is driving really fast, aggressively passing cars on the highway.

  “Pease slow down. We’ll talk about this later.”

  “Later when? Later after Wichita or later before Wichita?”

  “Tonight. As soon as we get home.”

  He’s driving so fast, I’m scared we’ll crash. I cover my face with my hands.

  “Slow down!”

  He does. We drive a bunch of miles in silence. Connecticut, the Constitution State, welcomes us with a blue highway sign. I turn on the radio and we listen to NPR for the rest of the drive.

  Scene 3

  The Wichita Option

  The Wichita Women’s Health Center telephone receptionist, with her friendly midwestern voice, explained the late-term abortion procedure. “Yes, ma’am, first they’ll anesthetize the fetus so that it won’t feel anything. You’ll be sedated during this. Then the doctor will inject the fetus with a lethal drug—it will be painless to the fetus, ma’am. In order to make the delivery safer for you, the surgeon might sever the arms and legs of the fetus, of course after the lethal injection has taken effect. It’s not a fast process, you have to be prepared for that, ma’am. It can take up to five days. Your cervix will be dilated over a on
e-to-four-day period. Then the doctor will induce labor, and the delivery will take place under sedation. . . . Yes, it’s most likely that you will deliver a dismembered and stillborn fetus. . . . Yes, I know this is not easy to hear, Ms. Cohen. Then we dispose of the remains, unless you wish to make alternate arrangements. Some women choose cremation or burial.

  “I do need to inform you, as well, ma’am, that there is antiabortion hostility directed at our center. There are protests outside the center every single day. We have had some violent incidents. I must advise you to make reservations at the one hotel in town that is safe and secure for our patients. You should reserve a room right away, while you are contemplating this decision. And there is only one taxi service in town that will be safe and secure to take from the hotel to the women’s health center. You will stay in the center for two to five days and then stay at the hotel for another two days to recuperate. During that time, you can come into the center to be seen by our doctors and our counselors.

  “We recommend that you have someone come with you, Ms. Cohen. It can be painful to go through alone—physically and emotionally. But if you don’t have someone with you, our counselors on staff will be available to talk to you before and after the procedure. We accept virtually all insurance policies. . . . Yes, even the Oxford Liberty Plan. . . . You can change your mind, even the same day. We are here to serve the needs of our patients.”

  “I wonder what I would do if I were in your shoes,” said Dr. Rosenbloom, while looking at the sonogram on the video screen. “You and I are the same age. I have no idea what I would do. By the way, I can see why you didn’t feel any kicking. The placenta is positioned at the front of the uterus, so it cushions the baby’s kicks. You probably thought you had gas.”