To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am writing this letter because Kelly Goode's article in The Crimson has moved me to tell what I believe to be the crux of the issue of abortion as it is peculiar to the Harvard-Radcliffe community. I am very sincere in my conviction that abortion needs to be taken out of the shadows to which it has been removed in fear and shame and from which recesses it can only be perceived of as guilt-ridden, treacherous and murdering and which for the woman who has chosen abortion have become a series of stopping places on an arduous journey toward continued self-doubt.

Many of us are acquainted with abortion whether through the experience of a friend, a missed period or personal confrontation with the choice itself. One need not have had an abortion to understand its trauma, and one should not, once one has become acquainted with it, bury it. And so, I am writing for the women who have had abortions as well as for the one, like myself, who could have them.

I am convinced that it is ignorance that has placed the taboo on abortion, a taboo which prohibits the admission of it and even the discussion of it. Ignorance breeds nothing less fearsome than fear. And abortion is not something to be feared.

Abortion is a horrible thing, as it gets experienced by women today, that must be understood and accepted by looking it boldly in the face as an operation that women seek in self-defense against their own bodies so that they may continue their educations at Harvard-Radcliffe, their careers in the workplace, the nurture of ones already born in a family.

But abortion at Harvard-Radcliffe is not really a question about when is the right time to mother. Abortion is not even about self-defense and a woman's night to near own body here. Here at Harvard-Radcliffe abortion is really about guilt and secrecy.

It is about praying when you aren't religious and about going to the bathroom every half hour to check you underpants, hoping that there will be red, a brown spot. It is about fear and pay phones and pregnancy tests at UHS, urinating into a plastic bottle first thing in the morning and then spending the rest of the day waiting in Lamont until 4:00 when the test results can be called for from the pay phone. It is about waiting on the phone sometimes for 20 minutes until a nurse practitioner is available to announce the results and present you with your options.

It is about the next months of silent agony when you don't tell your roommates; you don't tell your boyfriend; you don't go near UHS; you try to think it's not true; you try to think you'll have a miscarriage; you sleep all the time because you're tired and your body feels swollen and you hate yourself and there's nobody to tell it to and nothing you can do about it. Until you have to do something about it. And then you have to do it yourself. With no help; take this body and its dreaded power and rid it of its mistake; or go away and watch it swell and give birth to another parson you have to take care of, and never have a life of your own until it takes care of itself; or give it away and always wonder when you see kids on the sweet who look like you if it's yours or might have been.

Then you go and talk to Nadia Gould and she tells you about abortion, motherhood and adoption, and you go to Cabot and look at fetuses in the books there and walk homes to your room still not telling anyone because you know they'll think you're stupid, forgetting how many times they've worried for a few weeks about a late period and begun to think about abortion and dream about marriage and single motherhood and babies and been relieved in the end when the blood flowed again.

Finally your boyfriend or your best friend figures it out or senses something or just asks and you cry maybe for the first time and tell them and hope they'll tell you what to do, staring at them, waiting for it to be all better and to go away. They tell you that of course you'll get an abortion because you can't stop your education; it's just the wrong time; it's a sad-sad thing that's happened to you. They make the appointment. They spend a lot of time with you.

And then it is time to go to the clinic. The doctor says not to eat after midnight on the night before. Not to drink either. He tells you that the clinic opens at 7:30 and usually gets crowded by mid-morning, so you set the alarm for 6, and you go to bed early and lie there most of the night, thinking about waking up and finding blood on the sheets or having cancer and dying or dying on the way to the subway tomorrow morning.

There aren't many people there at 7:30, but by 8:00 they are coming in; women with children; women carrying babies; women in their 40s, 30s, 20s, teens; women with husbands, mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, alone; woman crying; woman smoking; woman staring. The receptionist takes your name and your money and tells you to sit down somewhere and wait, wait for her to call you.

There aren't any magazines--only women about to have abortions, in chairs in a big room.

You hear your name and you go in, feeling empty, like you haven't eaten and you don't want to, and a doctor and a nurse lie you on a table and put your feet in stirrups and do things with soft warm hands that scare you until they give you the sleep you asked for and you wake up somewhere else, recovering and alone, feeling fine and betrayed in a strange place.

For some there are cramps. For some there is bleeding. For some there is vomiting and other things, the nurses say as they put kotex and aspirin and pain pills and sleeping pills--as if they would cure the bewilderment--in a bag and you leave.