Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

I got to read a little of the book "A Freewheelin Time" by Susan Rotolo, gf of Bob Dylan in the 60’s.
Of course, I scooped out her writing on the abortion they had…I was disappointed but I guess I should not have been surprised at what she wrote.

Although she says she went back and forth with the decision, there is no doubt she did not want a child. She was young, their relationship was not going well, and "this was a complication we had not anticipated". She says was feeling confined and a child would have made her more so.

Abortion was illegal in those days but through an underground network they were able to find  a "good doctor who risked everything by secretly performing abortions in their offices or clinics".

She goes on to say she became depressed and wanted to sleep reality away. After that "the intensity of the bad created a weight that flattened the good we had together".

I do not doubt that her abortion had a major impact on her nor do I doubt it was a hard decision, but she seems to lament that it was illegal more than anything else and she is definitely in favor of abortion. She makes it seem like Dylan was not crazy about the idea, although I am sure in the midst of climbing to fame he went along. I wonder what his views are on abortion.

Hers was not an easy place to be and she seems to have been on her own from a early time in many crazy situations with parents who were communists. I felt sorry for her in reading the book knowing that somewhere in her head, like countless other women, the abortion is causing her pain.