A great article on the Haven Coalition, I group I volunteer with and that I’ve written about many times before on this blog (so forgive me in if I’m repeating stories that you have all already heard from me). For those who aren’t aware, Haven is a New York City grassroots organization that provides housing for low-income women traveling to New York for second-trimester abortions. This author examines Haven from a Jewish perspective, and explains why her work is a mitzvah.
What moves us, what made us both instantly say yes when a friend emailed us about becoming Haven hosts, are the Jewish commandments to help and protect our neighbor, to shelter someone who is in—again, liberally interpreted—danger. And the notion of tzedakah, which is not an act of magnanimous charity—”Here, pitiable one, make yourself comfortable in my fabulous Brooklyn home!”—but one of justice: giving the poor their due.
Because for all our fretting about how changes on the Supreme Court and in South Dakota will affect Roe v. Wade, for far too many women and girls the right to abortion already exists only on paper. The legal and economic barriers that make it difficult, even impossible, for women to carry out their own reproductive choices trap the most vulnerable members of society: the poor and working class, the young, immigrants, and those without people around them to bail them out. Access to abortion—access, not just the in-principle right—is a fundamental matter of social and economic justice. The word “choice” doesn’t even begin to cover it. We, the Jews, are the people commanded to take care of the widow and the orphan. Shirley is 41, confident, single, and black; Elena is 19, shy, and Polish—she hasn’t seen her parents in Warsaw for two years. The only things they really have in common are that they are poor, they are pregnant, and they are in my house.
The first girl I met through Haven was 14 and came to New York with her mom. I was living in the dorms at the time, and so was a “coffee shopper” — I’d pick the women up at the clinic, then either sit with them in a local coffee house until their host arrived, or transport them to the host’s home. The thing I remember most acutely about that first meeting was the discomfort. It’s a situation where there is simply nothing to say. I sat there wanting to tell that little girl that I thought she was strong, that I admired her, that I wished I could see where she ended up. Instead we talked about school, what her hobbies are, and what she wants to be when she grows up. She talked about wanting to go to business school and eventually open up her own hair salon. She told me she loves to sing. She apologized for not being excessively chatty, saying, “I usually talk a lot, but it just hurts right now.”
At one point she got up to go to the bathroom, and her mother looked at me and said, “She made a mistake. She shouldn’t have to pay for it for the rest of her life.” Her mom also told me about one of her other daughters who gave birth at 16. She loves her granddaughter, she said, and her daughter is smart and hard-working and supported at home, and so a few years later she was able to get into Temple and is getting her degree. But their family — and this little girl — knows that pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing is no cakewalk. She’s seen it, and while she knows it’s possible to pull yourself up, she doesn’t want it for herself.
When she came back from the bathroom, the girl told me that she and her mom are best friends.
Right before graduating from college, I wrote this as part of an essay about Haven:
I volunteer for Haven two or three times a month, and every time I find myself walking home from 30th street back to my apartment on 14th instead of taking the subway. The walk clears my head, especially now when the nights are long and dark and cold. I go over their stories again and again, trying to figure out where to put them, what to do with my frustration and my anger and my sorrow. I haven’t figured it out yet, but meeting them has certainly been a pivotal aspect in my own self-exploration. Thinking about their stories makes me want to act, to push harder for gender equality and reproductive freedom. It further mobilizes me to do what I can to counteract the various levels of sexism, racism and classism that polarize our society. On the most basic level, though, I find myself often thinking about the women I meet through Haven, and I can’t help but wonder where they are.
It’s strange to be an onlooker to what might be an important event in someone else’s life. It’s strange how these stories stick with me, how I still remember exactly what each one of these women looked like, where they were from, what their stories were, what we talked about. Maybe it’s strange that I still think about them.
But I can tell you what some of the other people who’ve stayed with us have volunteered about what brought them to New York. The 20-year-old who slept here last month got pregnant while on the Pill—hey, someone’s got to be that 1%—but was later sent home from the E.R., without an ultrasound, having been told she’d miscarried. She was secretly relieved. After all, she was raising a 2-year-old and her sister’s kid, her boyfriend was on his way back to jail for violating probation, and she was working full-time at Staples to put herself through Katharine Gibbs. Only thing was, the doctors were wrong. The 14-year-old Mexican girl didn’t tell her parents she was pregnant (the condom broke) because her dad had started drinking again and she didn’t want to be a burden. Only when she realized she’d have to travel to New York did she confess. She, her mother, and her father all slept on our sofa bed, lined up like little dolls—and that sight both warmed and broke my heart.
Everyone has a story. Like Lynn, if they share them with me, I listen. But I never ask, because it’s really none of my business. And on an individual level, it doesn’t much matter — I don’t believe that there are “good” and “bad” reasons for having an abortion, and on person’s choice given then circumstance is any better than the next. But when we look at patterns of anti-abortion legislation, we see that most of these women aren’t exactly “choosing” to wait.
I can tell you why other women “wait,” too. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. counties lack abortion providers, thanks in part to Buffalo-style harassment of doctors. This is why it makes me want to spit poison darts when people like State Sen. Bill Napoli of South Dakota claim that “most” abortions are a matter of “convenience.” Then you’ve got parental notification and consent laws, Most minors hosted by Haven come with at least one of their parents—and the ones that don’t have good reason not to, like the ones with a parent in jail, whose whereabouts are unknown, or who has threatened, convincingly, to kill them if they get “in trouble.”
These roadblocks mean—and this, people, is the evil plan—that women often find themselves in their second trimester before they know it. And then they’re really in a bind. The cost of an abortion goes up from about $350 at 10 weeks to more than $1000 after 20. Even the cost of a first-trimester abortion may be more than a family on public assistance receives in one month, according to the National Network of Abortion Funds. On the way to my house from the clinic, Shirley threw up her antibiotics. She’d been told to take them on an empty stomach, but she hadn’t eaten since the day before. I doubt this was because she wasn’t hungry.
If you live in New York City and would like to help, you can email havencoalition@gmail.com. Feel free to email me as well if you have questions you’d rather not post in the comments.