Hills Bro. Coffee heiress Harriett Hills Stinson is urging women to come forward and speak about their abortions, as she has done.
I want women to speak out as well, but the type of stories I expect to hear when women do start coming forward about their abortions are going to be a little different from hers. Unlike the wealthy Ms. Hills, when I have heard women recant their stories, they are told painfully and are not free of regret.
On the rare occasions when there has been a lack of pain in the retelling, the pain was replaced by something sinister, like minimisation or denial.
Harriett Hills Stinson may be surprised to find that many women whom have had abortions (forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level) may not have much in common with her story.
Harriett Hills Stinson, 85, a prominent member of the wealthy San Francisco family that founded Hills Bros. Coffee, says it took a push by GOP conservatives to cut funding for family planning and abortion services to move her to reveal a long-held personal secret: She once had an illegal abortion.
“I’ve never regretted it,” Stinson told The Chronicle this week. As a mother in her 20s with three young children, Stinson said, she came to the decision that “for the sake of my family, it was not right for me to have a fourth child.” Now, she said, “I’m hoping women who have had abortions will come forward.”
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