I was in Detroit twice last week. With a few days off from school, I decided to go to the abortuary on a Tuesday morning, which I have never done before. It was very much like a Friday or Saturday morning. About five women went in for appointments. At the time, none would stop to talk to us. The father of one of the babies, however, did talk to Alicia for quite a while. She tried for about a half hour to get him to go in and bring out the baby’s mother. Even though he was hurt, and even cried, for the longest time he would not move from behind the steering wheel of his van. Finally he did go in for a few minutes, then came back out and returned to his van. It was maybe 30 or 40 minutes later that the mother came out and the whole family left together.
On Thursday I met with a woman who had received our pamphlet when she had taken her daughter for an abortion at Summit. After viewing the ultrasound, they left Summit and called us. I went to their apartment on the east side, near the river. The young woman who is pregnant is 17 years old. She lives with her mother and brother. The mother has pulmonary hypertension. She wears an oxygen tube, but still tries to take care of her family. The apartment, though, was very dirty; the 17 year old doesn’t seem very capable. With the demands on the electricity made by the oxygen tank, the family’s electric bill is over $1,900. An immediate need, the mother said, was groceries; the daughter made a specific request for fruit, so I knew the request was genuine. I went immediately to the local grocery store, but the great challenge remains–raising some of the money to pay the electric bill.
