“Please God, please. Noooooo. Please—don’t let …”
Julie cried silently to herself, mouthing the words without tears. She read the testing stick: Pregnant. She knew her decision would have to be quick. The sniffers would come around soon enough. The short round rolling robots perceive DNA and the pregnancy hormone in particular. “God,” she closed her eyes. She had hoped for the relief that life as she knew it, as she had planned it, as she foresaw it, would go on. She wanted no one to know her secret, her mistake.
She confided in Miranda, her college roommate. “What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t want to have it,” Julie answered somberly. “I want to finish college.
“I don’t believe I should have to have it.”
“You have to have it,” her friend replied. “You have no choice. None of us do. Not anymore.”
Looking through the blinds, Julie was in a daze of fear and panic. She thought of Romeo, the way he made her feel. She, they were in love. How was she going to tell him his life was over, too, at least for a year? That was the sentence for males who impregnated a female but could not afford the baby. One year in prison. The sniffers determine paternity.
“This was not supposed to happen,” Julie said. “Why can’t this be my private life, my decision, the way it used to be?”
“You don’t have a lot of time,” Miranda warned.
“You think I don’t know that?!”
“You have maybe a day before …”
“I know, before the sniffers come around,” Julie finished the scenario.
That would be humiliating, chased down by a whining silly round robot or several. Then everyone would know. And that was the point.
“This should be private. Why should my parents know? I’m an adult.”
“Well, they pay for your college,” Miranda reminded, then apologized as she hugged her friend.
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They heard a knock on the door. It was Romeo. Miranda opened the door, cautiously scanning left and right then quickly pulled him inside the campus apartment. “What’s going on?” he asked playfully. Miranda looked away while walking into the other room.
Julie looked at him and took a breath. “I’m pregnant.”
She wiped tears from her eyes.
“Oh … that’s … that’s not what I expected to hear,” he replied awkwardly. “How …”
She chuckled behind tears, “You know.”
They stood silent before Romeo approached Julie, embracing her tenderly, enveloping her, breathing in her sorrow, entering into her shame. “Look,” he whispered, “we can leave, go to California. It’s legal there. No questions asked.”
“How are we going to suddenly leave in the middle of college? Those sniffer hounds probably already know.”
“Let’s go right now.”
“I need to think.”
“You’re not thinking of keeping it?” Romeo asked. “You know how we’ll be treated. We’ll be locked up until the baby is born.
“I don’t want that,” he commanded. “We don’t deserve that. No one does, especially young people with our whole lives ahead. We shouldn’t have to be parents until we want.”
Sometimes, Julie thought, Romeo spoke with such passion, like he was a born leader and could take charge and protect her and everyone who felt powerless to fight the system. Julie realized why she fell in love with him. It wasn’t just chemistry and attraction. She admired and respected his entire being. In her mind and heart, they would marry.
But she didn’t want to marry yet and not for being pregnant. Maybe in a few years. She wanted that time for Romeo, too. They could be parents later when they could afford it, when they wanted to bring a new life into this world.
And now pregnancy could change their lives but not before placing them in separate facilities for a year. She knew the law. Pregnant girls could marry or move into a mandatory facility until the baby was born. She could keep it only if she could afford it. The community would place her in a job. The fathers of unplanned pregnancies got a tougher sentence if they could not afford to provide for the expectant mother and the unborn baby: one year in jail. It was punishment because males know better. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” Youth of their generation saw the signs everywhere since junior high.
———————————————————————————————————
“We’ll marry,” Romeo proposed.
“No, it won’t work. We have no money to keep a baby. Maybe when we graduate and are able to get jobs. But not now,” Julie said, starting to weep.
Romeo looked through the blinds, knowing the sniffers would eventually roll around the corner, detecting. The couple had little time to think or plan.
“How about your parents? Can’t they help us?” he asked.
Julie shook her head in fear. “My parents can never know this!
“They would not understand.”
“What? A couple in love?” Romeo said tenderly, stroking her hair. “They know about that.”
“My parents cannot know this,” she asserted, end of subject.
“Our parents were lucky living young when your life was your business not the government’s,” Romeo said, sarcastic and envious thinking of the freedom.
President Roberts, the first woman president, ran on a platform of abolishing abortion and punishing both the mother and father of pregnancies if they could not afford it, even stiffer penalties if they tried to induce miscarriage or abortion. Parents, family, friends, churches and social organizations could come to a couple’s aid by providing funds to pay for health care as well as the baby’s first year of life. But anyone caught participating in an abortion, for any reason, any age female, would be punished and imprisoned.
“Look, I know someone who knows how to get you some pills,” Romeo said quietly, adding slowly and softly, “that would induce miscarriage.”
“You mean an abortion?” Julie said flatly, quoting the government’s policy.
“Miscarriage. Whatever. It used to be routine in the U.S. before the law changed,” Romeo said.
“Those were the days,” Julie said, cracking a smile.
Thinking about the option, to swallow some pills until she cramped and bled, she asked, “How will we get away with that?”
“There’s a solvent that comes with it. No one would know.”
“I’d know.”
“You sound like you want to stay pregnant and …”
“Have a baby?” Julie said. “We haven’t called it a baby yet, like we’re supposed to.”
“It would be easier to just marry,” Romeo told her. “No one cares if you’re pregnant and have to.”
Julie sat down on the sofa, finally the weight of the world off her shoulders. “I don’t want to have a baby now,” she decided.
“Get the pills.”
———————————————————————————————————
California broke away from the U.S. due to the Roberts’ law, seeing it as unjust and inhumane. Julie researched online the small nation by the sea, studying the demographics, realizing the impossibility to remain a peaceful small North American nation due to overcrowding and every kind of earthly battle from floods to fire to daily earthquakes. She didn’t want to leave Texas or America. She thought of Canada; it was legal there, too. But … the sniffers are everywhere across the U.S., roaming freely, more so at night, their tiny gears whizzing at a high pitch … only females could hear.
“The land of fruits and nuts,” she said to herself with a laugh, remembering something she heard about California from old TV characters a couple generations ago.
California had high unemployment due to a large migration of ex-patriots. The cost of living was out of this world. And money was the root of her problem as well as for Romeo. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she began to sing an old song by a California band.
The sniffers could not be heard. They hadn’t picked up on Julie yet.
An hour later Romeo tapped on the back window. Julie lifted the window as he pulled himself in. The apartments were not closely monitored like the dorms. College kids had more freedom … to make mistakes.
“This is all you need,” he said.
“I thought love was all you need,” Julie quipped mindlessly, reading the instructions.
She popped open the bottle and hesitated.
“The sniffers! I hear them,” she said.
They scratched at the door like a pack of wild dogs, intent on seizing their prey.
“You!” Julie said as Miranda appeared from the bedroom. “You told?”
“Hey, it’s the law. I had to,” she said with a steady tone. “Besides, the reward money will pay my final year.”
“Let’s go out the back,” Romeo said, grabbing Julie, still clasping the pill bottle.
“No,” she said, standing silent, gazing through Romeo helplessly. “It’s over.”
———————————————————————————————————
The walls were blue with white clouds. She thought she’d died and was sailing above the world. She closed her eyes and gave the final push cued by the doctor. The baby was born, a girl with loud lungs, the picture of health. Julie smiled, happy to be a part of this miracle of life. The baby was briskly taken to another room. Julie was confused but understood her baby would be sold to a loving couple who could afford her. The government would make sure of that.
“Julie, down,” the matron said, instructing the young woman to be still as she was wheeled back into her cell.
She received twenty years for attempting an abortion. Romeo received ten years for providing the illegal pills to Julie. They could finish college in prison and even earn other degrees. For good behavior, their sentences could be reduced to a third of time served.
———————————————————————————————————
“Dear Julie, I love you and want to marry you. Let’s marry behind bars. There is no one else for me, just you! Please say you will. I know the baby was born. What was it? Did you see it? How are you coping? In my dreams we are together and I feel your embrace and I am so happy. Please hold me in your dreams! Write me soon. Your Romeo”
Julie read over the letter with no expression. Prison left her little time to sleep let alone dream. She was exhausted but had many chores to do, her punishment for years to come. The walls and floor of her cell were gray cement. The matrons were hefty and strong. Their voices were all she heard. Inmates were not allowed to talk. Julie hadn’t heard her own voice for months. She had been nesting alone in a baby room for nine months. Her sole focus was on the new life growing inside her. That was her commandment and duty.
After the birth she would begin paying her debt to society. She scrubbed toilets, mopped floors, painted the warden’s office, sewed pillows in the factory, attended college classes and studied. The female inmates, from girls to teens to women of child-bearing years, all serving time for attempted miscarriage or abortion, received their meals alone in their cells. They were not to congregate or communicate with each other. Their punishment had to be severe. The ladies must feel the scorn of society. And the younger generation needed to know how stiff the punishment for abortion would be. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” The slogan was on a government poster with a couple kissing in a heated embrace. The picture seen across the nation was captivating, a romantic moment. How did the government think that picture would instill abstinence, Julie wondered.
In the imposed silence, Julie sometimes could think to herself. She didn’t think of Romeo anymore. She grew to despise him. She had to kill their love. Everyone she knew would know her crime. She never spoke to her parents though they often came to see her in prison. She thought of the millions of strangers who did not care about her and whether or not she got pregnant and wanted an abortion. Then again, just as many felt her life was their business only when she was pregnant and sought to terminate. To them, science proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that human life—physical and spiritual—begins at conception.
Whatever Julie believed did not matter. In the back of her mind, she heard a woman’s self-assured commentary from another era: “You don’t have to have a baby if you don’t want. Your body is your business.” The tears stung now. She cried for her mistake, for unintended pregnancy, for the new law changing abortion to a crime of murder, for the loss of privacy, for never knowing the baby she had to have.
She envied women of the old days when they took to the streets to make abortion legal once upon a time. They held their signs high: Abortion on demand! Mothers, daughters, grandmothers all marching together. Abortion was illegal then, too. They were so brave, she thought. They marched for a reason. What was it, Julie wondered.