Two Tragic Family Stories—and why we feel about abortion as we do
by Richard W. Coffen | 18 February 2025 |
Story one: Waterbury, Connecticut
Grandpa Roberts owned and operated a brass plating factory at the beginning of a dirt road. About a half mile up the same country lane stood a three-story clapboard house, which he also owned. Here Annette and Lester Hayward raised 10 children.
Among the older daughters was my Aunt Ruth, allegedly the best-looking of the girls. And she knew it! Ruth was experienced, if you know what I mean. While in her late teens Ruth accepted the offer of the owner of an auto dealership in Springfield, Massachusetts, to be an au pair for his three young children. He was divorced but had won custody of his offspring. It’s difficult to know which job Ruth enjoyed most: nanny for the children or paramour for their daddy.
Ultimately, Ruth’s dual profession ended, and she returned to Connecticut. In Naugatuck she was courted by George Springer, who’d been taken by her good looks. After a few dates, they tied the knot. Soon Aunt Ruth became pregnant with her first child—namesake Ruth. In a year and a half more the couple became the proud parents of Carol. Finally, she gave birth to yet another girl—Betty.
Aunt Ruth began a meager “savings account” in a mason jar, which she situated in the back of her icebox. Here she’d plunk a nickel or dime, and if she felt rich, she’d deposit a quarter or even a half dollar.
World War II roared in Europe and ultimately the United States got involved. George was inducted into the army and shipped overseas as a combatant. He did his best to keep in touch with Ruth, but correspondence was spasmodic, and some got lost en route to New England.
Ruth missed George’s erotic attentions. Then her good looks caught the eye of swashbuckling Harry, a local attorney. Oh, he’d been married for nearly a decade, but the physical appearance of his ever-faithful wife didn’t compete with that of Ruth, whom he met during a surprise encounter. So, while George was away, Harry and Ruth would “play” at night, as Harry’s wife thought that a bustling business kept her husband late at the office.
The trysts continued apace. Then Ruth’s period failed to arrive. Another month sped by (with more trysts) with another missing period. Then a third! Aunt Ruth was pregnant as a result of her secret rendezvouses with Harry after Betty, Carol, and Ruthie were asleep in their bed. George, of course, remained at the front lines in Europe.
Aunt Ruth’s voice betrayed how upset she felt when she phoned Harry (at his office) and broke the news. Because of his prominence in the little city, where most everyone knew everybody else, this was very bad news and mustn’t find its way into the local grapevine. He promised to stop by that evening.
Ten p.m. rolled around, the girls were sound asleep, and Harry crept up the stairs to Ruth’s apartment. Opening the door to his soft tapping, she fell into his waiting arms. He quietly shut the door, and his eager hands groped Ruth’s body—her pregnant body.
After an intense stint abed, Harry led Aunt Ruth into the bathroom and helped to lift her legs over the rim of the tub. She hadn’t really noticed, but Harry was grasping one of her wire hangers. His deft fingers moved from her body to the hanger, which he untwisted and shoved into her, twisting it inside her womb.
The sudden volcano of blood shocked him. Yanking the hanger from Ruth’s innards and tossing it aside in the tub, Harry quickly left his lover still standing in the tub, quickly opened and closed the apartment door, and surreptitiously fled the premises. Never to be seen again—at least by Aunt Ruth.
She managed to step up and over the edge of the tub, grabbed a blanket from her bed, and hobbled to a wooden rocking chair in the living room. Soon she began shivering inside the now blood-soaked blanket. Goosebumps erupted across her body, joining the blood that somehow didn’t clot very quickly.
It was 6 o’clock in the morning. Three girls groggily sprung from their beds and expected to walk through the living room and into the kitchen for some breakfast. But . . . There was Mother, still ensconced in that blood-soaked blanket. A trail of blood led to the bathroom and into the tub!
“Mother!” No response. “Mamma!” Not a movement. Ruth was dead.
The girls ran downstairs and pounded on their neighbor’s door. Sally did her best to keep up with the three girls as they raced back upstairs. It was she who phoned for an ambulance. It was she who tried to reassure Ruth, Carol, and Betty. It was she who phoned Aunt Ruth’s oldest sibling, Aunt Val, to let her know about the three now-orphaned girls.
Aunt Val ran to her Pontiac and drove nervously from Waterbury to Naugatuck. Hugging her nieces, she assured them that all would be OK. (Val, aware of the coin-filled jar, had checked the ice box.The jar had disappeared. Sally, whom Ruth had confided in, had stolen it!)
With regard to Ruth, Val put two and two together. However, after confiding in her mother, the two kept the cause of Ruth’s death a secret—for decades. Betty went to stay with Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Malcolm for a couple of years. Carol spent a year or so with Aunt Dot and Uncle George, my parents. Ruth was 17 and was on her own.
Dot had married George, had given birth to a son (me), and ultimately became a pastor’s wife. While in Berrien Springs, Michigan, she and George were temporarily caring for Annette (my Grandma Hayward), who was by that point suffering dementia—or as we said back then, “senile.”
One afternoon, Grandma said to Mother: “Wasn’t it a shame how Ruth died?”
“What do you mean, Ma?”
“She bled to death from a home abortion.”
That evening Dot phoned her sister Val. She reported: “Val, you’ll never guess what Ma said in her delirium today! She said that Ruth died from a home abortion.”
The secret about the lethal abortion was out! Val explained the details. Depending upon how one counts, five generations were affected by this coat-hanger abortion.
Story two: Nashville, Tennessee
About two decades later, Dick and Jane were married. This was followed by a year at the Adventist Seminary, and some two years as Dick served as a pastoral intern in Massachusetts. While in Worcester, Jane gave birth to Baby Bobby and a couple of years later to Baby Ronny. Like many new mommies, Jane dealt with postpartum depression. However, it didn’t abate, and the couple didn’t recognize the symptoms.
While en route to an editorial position in the South, the foursome stopped to spend a night with Jane’s parents (her dad was also a pastor). The next morning while Jane supervised (to put it kindly) Dick in repacking their new Chrysler, her dad whispered to his son-in-law: “Is she always like this?”
Dick replied hesitantly: “Yes, but she’s a good girl.”
Dad explained: “I know, but that behavior isn’t normal.”
The four displaced Yankees made it to Nashville safely. Dick’s new employer, Southern Publishing Association, had inherited a house from a former (deceased) executive. It was vacant. The young family thankfully rented it while they searched for a more suitable abode.
Meanwhile one morning, while Dick was at work, 18-year-old Joe Stitz sneaked into their house while Jane (in her slip) was bathing Bobby and Ronny. Unbeknownst to Jane, Joe had been incarcerated at a nearby facility after having been pronounced guilty of attempted murder. This fateful morning, Joe had escaped and had raped the cook, who was heading for her car at the very moment he’d sneaked from the facility.
Walking in the neighborhood where Jane and Dick lived, Joe tried to gain entry into the house across the street, but the lady of the home refused to open the door. He managed to enter the house next to the place Dick and Jane were renting. The garage door had been left open so that Larry, the older son, could leave for work. Larry, of course, hadn’t heard Joe exploring the first floor. At that time, Joe picked up a knife he found in the kitchen and exited the home.
Jane heard something—no, someone—scuffling in the hallway. It was then she saw Joe. She picked up Baby Ronny, who began screaming, and left little Bobby in the tub. Joe attacked Jane while Ronny continued to shriek from fright. He demanded money. Jane explained that the only cash on hand was for church. Because it belonged to God, it wouldn’t do this invader any good! He wanted the money anyway.
Joe punched Jane, pushed her onto the bed, unzipped his pants, flung himself atop of her, but failed to penetrate. Still clasping the few dollars that he now had, he fled. Jane called the police and then phoned Dick at work. Dick arrived home before the police got there. Jane’s face was bruised; blood was caked around her mouth and nose. The police found the stolen knife. It was behind the hamper in the hallway—just where Joe had flung it as he fled. The police arrested him at the corner café, where he’d bought a cup of coffee—with God’s money.
Dick and Jane drove to the local precinct, where she had to identify Joe from a lineup. Dick worried that she wouldn’t do the job because of her immediate trauma. However, without a moment’s hesitation, she pointed at Joe, who was immediately incarcerated, again.
Mary, Jane’s supervisor (a clinical counsellor) gave Jane some of the psychological tests she used with paying clients. After assessing the results, Mary phoned Dick at his work. Jane was suffering from bipolar disorder. She’d even mused about suicide! Jane’s pathology was outside of Mary’s expertise, so Jane began having sessions with another counselor, whom she’d phone even after business hours and sob uncontrollably. Prayer and diet had little curative effect on Jane’s illness. However, after years of counseling and medication, her depression has remained under control.
A change of perspective on abortion
As a result of these two experiences, Dick and Jane have a different perspective on abortion. Aunt Ruth wouldn’t have died had she undergone a medically performed abortion, which would have saved her life and preserved her motherhood. Carol once told me, “I cannot forgive my mother.”
Also, because of Jane’s psychological state, another pregnancy and delivery from a rape would have been devastating—possibly triggering her suicidal feelings.
Dick and Jane don’t favor abortion as a means of contraception. There’s “the pill” that Loretta Lynn sang about. Nonetheless, they now think that under various circumstances (age and/or health of the mother, for instance) abortion might be a good alternative. As Dick’s major professor Herbert Douglass used to say, “In some circumstances, it can be wise to choose the good instead of trying to opt for the better or the best.”
Here’s an analogy you might find helpful. An acorn isn’t an oak tree but can become a tree. Neither is a fertilized ovum a person, although it can grow into a person. Here are some statistics. On average, of 200 ova, during intercourse a sperm might fertilize 168. Sixty-nine percent of those ova will die—they are spontaneously aborted!
Additionally, both of us feel that more often than not too many pro-lifers seem to abandon their pro-life stance once an infant is born. Too many it seems, eschew welfare payments to poverty-stricken mothers, favor capital punishment, own military-style weapons, bear arms in warfare, murder abortion providers, and rejoice when violent attackers on our national Capitol have their crimes pardoned and are freed from incarceration. “Consistency, thou art a jewel!”
Richard W. Coffen is a retired vice president of editorial services at Review and Herald Publishing Association. He writes from Green Valley, Arizona.
