ABSTRACT
The March 15, 1992 New York Times ran an article about a twenty-three-year-old unemployed single mother in West Virginia who became pregnant as a result of date rape. 1 Due to federal policy, she had trouble locating an abortion clinic but finally found one four hours away in Charleston. They told her she was seventeen weeks pregnant, and they performed abortions only until sixteen weeks, so they referred her to a clinic in Cincinnati that would perform an abortion up to nineteen and a half weeks for a cost of $850. When she went there one and a half weeks later, however, they said that she was actually twenty-one weeks pregnant so referred her to a clinic in Dayton that would perform the abortion for $1675. She refinanced her car, sold her VCR, borrowed money, and went to Dayton. They said that she was a high risk patient because of an earlier Caesarean delivery and that she would have to go to Wichita, and it would cost $2500. "I just didn't think I could manage that," she says. "Now that I know I have to have it, I'm Irving to get used to the idea . . . I'm not thinking about adoption, because I've never understood people having a baby just to give it away. So I've been thinking a lot about trying to love this baby the way I love my daughter." Can we say that this woman has freely chosen her role as mother?
