Pre-Roe Story of a Woman Named Sherry Matulis

Pre-Roe Story of a Woman Named Sherry Matulis

"I was 23, pleasantly married, the mother of two planned-for and

well-loved children (the number later grew to five) and working

nights… One night, I got off the 1:20 a.m. bus and started my usual

trudge home… He must have been waiting close to the building, in the

shadows. I didn't see him until he was on top of me, and I still

remember very little about the act itself…because when he threw me

down on the blacktop, my skull cracked and I blacked out…

Most of my clothing had been torn off and scattered… The knife was no

longer there, but it had been, and my guts were oozing out of a neat

X… I managed to survive. Only to find myself wishing, about a month

later, that I hadn't.

I was pregnant. And I was not pregnant by my husband. I was pregnant

by that fiend. And I could not stay that way.

My doctor would not help me, so I feigned migraine to get a

prescription for ergotrane… I went on a two-day castor-oil diet and

lost five pounds and a quart of hemorrhoidal blood, and nothing else…

I detested the taste of alcohol, but I held by nose and downed two

pints of Everclear…

My husband was ready to stick me in a straightjacket. He wanted me to

go through with the pregnancy - or rather, he wanted me not to kill

myself, or to be killed by the only sort of abortionist that was

available at the time…

But…I knew that had I given birth to a child conceived under those

circumstances, I would not be able to look at it without remembering.

And remembering would mean hating all over again. And I wasn't willing

to put myself or a child through that…