Motherhood is a Vocation, and Vocations are Voluntary

“What was it like?” whispered the woman behind the curtain. She lay in the adjoining bed and was about to have an abortion; the French writer Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), who had just come from having one, was able to describe it. In her diaries, Nin recounted her occasionally stormy love life, and also her experiences, impressions and thoughts during an ‘impossible’ pregnancy. 

In April 1934, she consulted an illegal abortionist - which however ended in failure. Nin was still pregnant and later had a miscarriage. She became pregnant again in August 1940, and this time she found a doctor. At the time, common medical practice included anaesthesia, but none was used in her case.

During her recovery, the next patient was being prepared. Nin overheard the other woman speaking with the doctor. In her diary, Nin discusses the injustice of what a woman goes through, which is forced upon her by a patriarchal society, the guilty conscience instilled in her, the existential anxiety, the physical and psychological pain. She writes about the humiliating deceptions and life-threatening risks women face when they decide not to have a child. Nin feels helpless, hunted, condemned: “The abortion is made a humiliation and a crime. Why should it be? Motherhood is a vocation like any other. It should be freely chosen, not imposed on a woman.” 

Read more here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/11/anais-nin-abortion/

Einleitung:
The Frenchwoman Anaïs Nin was a model, dancer, writer, psychoanalyst and famed diarist: “The diary began to take on an invigorating significance that was vital to my life, and this had nothing to do with literature. It became more than just a companion which kept me from getting lost in a foreign country where I did not speak the language, it was also a source of emotion that helped me come into contact with myself. It was a place where I could speak the truth, and where I did not have the sense of being watched.” She also writes about her abortions and the imposition of motherhood on women.