Her body, Her choice, Her feelings.

When reading Gwendolyn Brooke’s “the mother”, my biggest takeaway was how neutral, yet emotional her tone and wording remained throughout the entire poem. I used two words throughout my annotation, grief and relief. I feel like when women go through abortions, these two feelings can definitely be running very high, even simultaneously despite being almost parallel in meaning, which is how the author was feeling. I took the perspective that it was an older woman reflecting on what could have been, not necessarily regretting her choice but definitely thinking about it and maybe questioning it. Something else I took away was the poem was written in 1945, abortion rights were more limited and publicly being pro choice was much more frowned upon. If the speaker lived a life in modern times, would her tone change? Would her perspective on her choices change? It also made me think about how abortion rights aren’t even progressing today. With the overturning of Roe v Wade, not every American woman is even legally allowed to have an abortion today.  This also made me think of a video I saw where a now thirty-year-old woman told her story. She said that she got pregnant at 17, had an abortion, and then had a child at 25. She said that she doesn’t necessarily regret her choice, but she thinks often about what could have been as a first child after having a kid. She mentioned that she is so grateful to have even had the choice to have an abortion and mentions from one person who was in that position, the importance of knowing you safely are allowed to have that choice is vital, and she thinks it is so unfortunate that not everybody is offered that opportunity.