Wild Feed

A few years ago, on a random Tuesday night Facetime call, my grandma shared a story she had never told me before. I thought I’d heard all her stories, several times over. To my surprise, she told me that she worked at an abortion clinic in New York in the 1970s. She didn’t offer this as some grand revelation. In fact, she was far too casual for my liking. I just stared at her, half shocked, half amused that I’d spent years working as a reproductive justice advocate without realizing she’d done it first. My grandma didn’t and still doesn’t think of herself as radical. To her, it was simple: she was a nurse who cared for women who needed abortions. It was what needed to be done, so she did it. This was just another one of her many jobs in a decades-long career as an operating room nurse.

When my grandma recounted her time at the abortion clinic, she remembered one patient in particular: her neighbor’s daughter. Terrified to see her family friend in the waiting room, my grandma took her hand and stayed with her throughout the procedure. She cried telling me this story, heartbroken that my generation faces the erosion of rights she once quietly protected.