Full Circle Sharing
Special Sunday Edition
Hello, good day, just feeling a little anxious over here - so I wanted to share something I just read on the subject of abortion. Fun, right????
But actually please read it? It’s very good, very smooth, and I promise it won’t feel like homework.
This article is so compelling, and one of the best things I have ever read on the subject. I can’t not share it, and huge thanks to Eleanor Cooney for writing it.
It’s funny when, as an adult, you finally connect the pieces of your life and suddenly it all comes full circle? Personal story alert.
For example I recently learned that my family doctor, the doctor I saw from birth into adulthood, the close family friend and ally to my grandmother, the genial man who, when I was anxious, prescribed me a magical placebo medicine that calmed my whizzing brain - was the vanguard of real talk advocacy for abortion access for Canadian women. In fact I learned about it in Dr Jen Gunther’s fantastic book, Blood, which I highly recommend.
His name was Doctor Morton Shulman, and I only really knew him as…my doctor? Who always made time for me when I needed him. He was a straight talker, and a great physician, always calm, always listening. He let me swim in his pool, would offer me unlimited Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (his favorite chocolate treat if I am recalling correctly) out of a giant crystal bowl and had a preserved tarantula on the wall of his waiting room that fully mesmerized me.
Prior to being my family doctor, in a small practice on a quiet street in west Toronto–Dr Shulman was the Toronto coroner, and as such, was called to investigate the deaths of the many women who died from botched abortions. In fact he was a fierce public safety advocate across a wide range of issues, and it is important for you to know that the television show “Quincy M.D.” WAS BASED ON HIM, PEOPLE.
Supposedly he also offered to adopt me when I was a baby: my parents were high school kids at the time, everyone was struggling, and I’m not sure this part is true, I only know what my grandmother told me.
It is family lore that my grandmother “knew a guy” who could have performed an abortion had my mother wanted to, and now I guess I know how. In a puzzling act of rebellion, for which I owe my life and THIS VERY SUBSTACK, my mother did not opt in, and here I am, and that’s how the story goes. I am entirely unsentimental about the offer my grandmother made at the time, because really who wouldn’t have? And still, here I am, tippity tapping on my computer, physically ill thinking about all the people who woke up today pregnant, scared, and without options.
I feel emotional.
Things are different now, but they are also the same.
Caring about women’s bodies is just in my bones I guess. Maybe Dr. Shulman dosed me with it in that magical green placebo syrup, I don’t know. All I know is, the stakes are so high in this election that my teeth are chattering. I’m sharing the article link again here, in case you missed it.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
Stay safe everyone.
Xo
Sam
Thank you Sam for this. I was lucky in having to get an abortion during the time it was legal and there were clinics for women. I cry for women now.
Thank you so much for existing and for sharing your thoughts and humor weekly. I live you from afar.
Wow Sam!
Tears in my eyes that you are a gift that might not have been.
Thank you for this vivid testimonial.