Constance Callinicos , well known feminist involved in issues of women's rights.published American Aphrodite. Becoming Female in Greek America. Pella Pub.Co., 1990

"I slant my writing toward the Greek American woman's view of whatever concern I address in my writing. So little is said about any of the women who grew up Orthodox, but, since I am of Greek descent, I choose to focus on my own background as a framework for writing on the broader issues which affect all women of the world

"She just needs someone to pick her up at the airport and take her to the doctor's offices. It's on Park Avenue. I'll give you the address. Drop her off there. When it's over, one of her relatives from Astoria will pick her up and take her home with them. Can you do it?"

Anthoula (not her real name) didn't speak English. She was here from Greece only two years, with a husband and two pre-teen daughters. Her husband owned a small business. My mother had befriended her at the local Greek church. When she found herself accidentally pregnant, Anthoula approached my mother with the confidence that her newfound friend in Ameriki would be able to assist her. Greek women do these things for each other, privately and discreetly. "Thelo ektrosi. Xeris yiatro?" ( I need an abortion. Do you know a doctor?) A simple request to fill. One woman doing a favour for another. Except that this was Ameriki, not Athens, and, to her shock, this woman found herself in a country that did not unilaterally provide safe, clean abortion. In fact, in our home state, women and doctors who were participants in pregnancy termination procedures could go to jail and were routinely reported to the authorities.

Without offering any of the gorier details, my mother tried to explain. Anthoula was quite impatient. "Of course I know it's not legal. It's not legal in Greece, either. That doesn't mean you can't have one." It took quite a time for my mother to convince the incredulous woman that no, there were no doctors that would perform clean abortions "under the table" in their offices the way they did in Athens and that she would have to travel hundreds of miles away from her home and immediate family to another state where abortion was legal. Furthermore, that she would have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to a Park Avenue doctor who would perform the procedure in his office. She had terminated a pregnancy once before in Greece a number of years before, so she was not afraid. But the absurdity (it seemed to her) of having to travel so far alone and go to a strange doctor was a little unsettling.. Not to speak of the inconvenience of making arrangements for her family while she was gone, even if it was only for the weekend.

That was where I came in. Newly married and living in Queens, I was to be her "contact" in New York, her safe passage from the airport to the doctor's office. I, too, knew the woman. She was a distant cousin of my father, "patriotissa" from Roumeli. She came. My toddler son strapped into his car seat, I drove to La Guardia, picked her up, dropped her off on Park Avenue. I hugged her, wished her luck. she waved goodbye, the white slip of paper with the doctor's name clutched in her one hand, her black leather handbag in the other. We chanced to meet some time later, when I visited Mama again, and went to Sunday service. The incident was never mentioned.

At the time (1972) not being as involved in the women's movement as I later became, I didn't think much of what I had just done I look back on the incident now, and realise that my mother and I were part of an informal countrywide network, a pre-Roe vs Wade underground railroad. Women aiding women who needed a clean, safe abortion which could only be obtained legally in very few states.

My mother's involvement was philanthropic, as was all her "help" of Greek women she befriended. It was personal. It was political. It was emotional. Each woman she helped was a tiny reweaving of the fabric of her own life which had been unravelled at the age of twenty three. The year she almost died of the haemorrhaging which resulted from a botched back-alley abortion. I still think with tremors of the terror of a young woman, taken ill, collapsing in a pool of her own blood. More terrifying yet is the memory of myself, her firstborn, a helpless three years old, whose baby siblings are both crying upstairs, and whose Mama is lying there on the floor and will not wake up.

Happy endings abound in life as well as in fiction. My Papa came home and rushed her into hospital. Recounting the story later my mother described the hushed conversation at her bedside with her family doctor, who admonished her to say nothing, no matter what, about what had happened to her. Even to the police she remembers only having enough presence of mind to shake her head, over and over, refusing to speak to any of her interrogators, and her doctor coming in afterward.

Then the visit of her own Mama. What vulnerable young woman lying in a hospital bed does not yearn for the arms of her Mama, especially the one who has stared Charon in the face? The door swung open, she recalls, and her tiny Mama greeted no-one in the room. She marched directly to the bed, swung her arnis high and slapped her daughter once, then again. "Dropi, dropi (shame, shame)". My mother has never forgotten the brutality of that very short period of her life. She claims to have forgiven my Yiayia. I do not for a moment believe that she could forgive. She says she has, only she knows, for sure.

A hotly debated issue, this one of abortion. Highly emotional, and black and white shouting war "For us, or against", each side exhorts. Both present their own set of facts wedded to emotionally charged symbols: photos of bloodied women dying alone in hotel rooms vie for attention against the photos mangled foetuses enlarge a hundred times for graphic realism and effect. Hard to remain unmoved. Hard to be objective. And I admit it, unequivocally, as sure as I live and breathe and have borne four children ( one dead at birth I would have just as soon aborted than have gone through the hell I went through alone in a hospital bed in Athens in 1965).1 am a partisan in this war. I am a guerilla, have been since I was three, and will be until I expire this life and go on to the Eternal One. I declare myself pro-life. The life I defend is that of EveryWoman.

There is no question in my mind that the fundamental basis upon which rests Woman's freedom, her ability to educate herself, her mobility, her self-actualisation, her very survival as human being is her control over her own body. It is her first ownership, this body, if she can be indiscriminately violated first by forced insemination (as in rape or incest and some marriages) and then by forced pregnancy and childbirth, then all other "rights" which she possesses might just as well be given over as moot. Carrying and bearing a child is not just a serene bluebirds and blue-skies nine month "wait" for an inevitable "happy event" for the family involved. It is an irrevocable altered state and subsequently transformed life.

The process of pregnancy and childbirth is welcomed and happily endured by those of us who choose it (and choose it again). It is the passage we are willing to undertake because we view it as the culmination of love shared. Others choose completion of pregnancy even if there was no love. We who choose await with joy the being beautiful to us placed on the belly as soon as she emerges from the birth canal, eyes wide open and greeting her new Mama (and Papa, for these days, Papas assist births). I chose it four times. And gladly would do it again, if I could.

But not all choose it. Not all are sentimental about it, or feel it as a religious duty. That is the very core of the debate. A woman must be allowed to choose, and she must never be prevented from choosing her Self first if that is what she deems the best choice FOR HER. It must be a private decision, not one made by government, her church, her temple, or her mosque. Extended families, even husbands and lovers cannot be allowed entrance without her permission into this most private of domains, where a woman and her soul wrestle with what is best FOR HER.

You, my good Orthodox ChurchMan, who so piously read the "Prayer for Abortion" over the bowed, contrite head of my 23-year-old mother of three infants (one of them a frightened three-year old little girl), who demands her "confession" and "forgives" her "sin"; you who so mellifluously pontificates on Sunday mornings, outlining the "responsibilities and duties of a good Christian woman": have you felt the desperation of the woman who has borne three children in less than three years by a man who refuses to use birth control? And do you have any alternatives for the "problem pregnancy" of a woman unable to push her exhausted body through yet another pregnancy and childbirth?

Have you, I wonder, my Parish Priest, felt that kind of suicidal desperation, ever in your life? How many countless smiling churchwomen have you dealt with in your pastoral life, including the one you love and sleep with every night? And how many of these women's lovingly offered (freely given) labours have you and your Bishops and Archbishops, profited from, yet know nothing of what they might have hoped for or dreamed of besides becoming "Manna" and "Panayia" as you set them up to be?

What is the meaning of "sin" as it refers to this exhausted flower who "does her duty" to -her family, to her church, and must come to you to be cleansed, when all she could think of was "no more, no more, I will jump into the river first"? Who is sinner? Who is sinned against when her own mother's love turns to abuse in defense of your piety? Who will forgive you Your transgressions against women dead of illegal abortion, against orphaned children, your offense against God when you read a "cleansing prayer" over the head of a child-woman whose only sin seems to have been the sin of self-preservation.? And who was sinned against twice, once by the butcher who made her bleed almost to Death's door and then again by the one who decrees that her God sees her as "dirty"?

Who is sinner and who sinned against when "prolife" priests read blessings over the heads of our budding young sons, then sends them off to strange countries to kill other human beings, or be killed or to be maimed? Who sins when poor mothers cannot feed their children and must beg for shelter?

Notwithstanding what Lili Bita calls "a still puritanical and patriarchal society which has not changed a bit, in my opinion," on the subject of planned births and unplanned births, the Greek-born woman has a distinct advantage over her American cousins, She controls this aspect of sexuality. She does not bear children she does not want, her right to choice a given that crosses class lines and cuts through economic status.

Rural or urban, Greek women support each other in this matter, and a willingly complicit medical establishment (peopled by female physicians, many more for a much longer time than in America), historically has not turned its back on them. Abortion involves money, yes, but it cannot be denied that the Greek woman (and her European and Roman Catholic Central and South American sister) has a long tradition of control of this part of her life. The sexual double standard prevails, and the same doctors make lots of money on surgical virginity. But clean, safe abortion is and has long been a given in these countries, as has availability of abortifacents. The difference is that it has only in recent years been legal and public.

"The average woman in Greece (this includes rural areas as well as urban) will have three abortions in her lifetime," says Athenian feminist Maria Maghiorou. "Abortion is legal now, but even before it was readily available. Most any doctor would oblige you, or if she/he didn't, there was somebody else who would."

Greek women have used abortion and abortifacents for decades as the best and most private form of reproductive control and family planning. Sex education is now more widespread than before. One of the good things that came out of the PASOK years was the great awakening for Greek women and profound societal change. Even so, Melina Mercouri stated "laws can change, but tradition will not." Open talk of sexuality is still taboo in most circles - secret abortion is the preferred option rather than communication of one's needs for limiting family size to one's partner.

The sacrifice of sexuality is not a price my mother's generation will pay. Celibacy? Then why bother getting married? Yet, birth control is a touchy issue with the Greek American man of the second generation, because he is still operating under the old Mediterranean mode which says the more kids a man has, the more Man he is.

Does the Orthodox Church in America influence decisions on family planning? Decidedly not, they reply to a woman. What does the Church have to do with that? It is a private decision, mine and my husband's . Most of these women were and are devoted to their churches and to the Greek community, work hard for them but they draw the line at their bedroom doors. A more significant influence on family planning decisions is the husband's attitudes regarding birth control, particularly the subject of Manhood and its meaning. Or a couple is influenced by a desire to produce a son, notwithstanding that they may already have four daughters!

"Women in Greece have always been more progressive on women's medical issues than Americans," my 46 year old Greek born friend Mena tells me. In most Greek families, women have been responsible by default for the management of family planning - husbands did not wish to deal with the issue and even today, are often not told of abortions or abortifacents. Mena relates to me "It's an accepted fact among us (at least the women I know) that a woman will not bear a child she does not want. No one disputes her right to say that and act upon it. That's not to say that we don't want any children, but we have them when we want them. There is a feeling among native Greek women that these issues are none of their men's business, "What has pregnancy to do with men?" is a commonly asked question. It is only recently in Greece that the concept of "honest communication" between couples on sexual matters is considered appropriate and non-threatening to the woman. Some matters were best left among women, if only for self preservation.

For patriarchy and the institutions that administer and oversee its ideological agenda and guarantee its hold on power, the issue is not one of "life" or the taking of life. If that were so, then the very same powerful religious and secular male voices representing and interpreting its stance against abortion rights and access to birth control for women would be equally vociferous in standing against war, racism, famine, the politics of food distribution, shelter, health care and the senseless and needless deaths of starving children throughout the world.

The issue of abortion is not one of "Pro" or "anti" Life : it is an issue of control. Any political system which exists to exert and hold power, both psychological and political, will be threatened by the powerless, the isolated and the heretofore easily manipulated taking back what they gave up - control of their own lives separate from the doctrines, dogmas and ideologies of the group in power. Women taking control of their bodies and building political bases envisioning a different world built around that fundamental right : rape, incest, and all other forms -of violence against females and their children (including such barbarisms as female circumcision) being declared internationally unacceptable aberrations of human behaviour; the perpetrators and supporters of a wider structure which condones these acts of violence being declared unacceptable partners in our lives; economic dependence and the ability to feed and raise our children free from threats to ours and their very existence being demanded as our "right to life" - all grave threats indeed to a system which has heretofore been able to count upon our silent compliance, our smiling assent. .

Abortion rights activists ( men as well as women), peace activists, animal rights activists, human rights activists: we work for the living, for life. How and when religionists, fundamental or otherwise, care to define the beginning of "life" in the womb, or to define "sustainable" life outside the womb and to impose their views upon their supplicants is their own business. But our bodies are our own business. The United States is a pluralistic, democratic, secular nation of many and diverse peoples and beliefs, dedicated to tolerance of these variations and a strict separation of religion and state.

I am willing to accept that certain people's religious beliefs are counter to mine, and that we can disagree and peacefully co-exist. I am not willing to accept the encroachment of their religion and their "Holy Law" into my most private domain, that of my uterus, and my sexuality. Pro-choice as law does not force termination of pregnancies. Pro-choice as law does not condone or accept forced completion of pregnancies. And 1, as many lately awakened pro-choice supporters, including Greek Orthodox Americans among them, will not cast my vote for a march back into the Dark Ages.