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Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict

von Irene Vilar

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676391,669 (3.18)5
Irene Vilar was just a pliant young college undergraduate in thrall to her professor when they embarked on a relationship that led to marriage--a union of impossible odds--and fifteen abortions in fifteen years. Vilar knows that she is destined to be misunderstood, that many will see her nightmare as an instance of abusing a right, of using abortion as a means of birth control. But it isn't that. The real story is part of an awful secret, shrouded in shame, colonialism, self-mutilation, and a family legacy that features a heroic grandmother, a suicidal mother, and two heroin-addicted brothers. It is a story that looks back on her traumatic childhood growing up in the shadow of her mother's death and the footsteps of her famed grandmother, the political activist Lolita Lebr#65533;n, and a history that touches on American exploitation and reproductive repression in Puerto Rico. Vilar seamlessly weaves together past, present, and future, channeling a narrative that is at once dramatic and subtle. Impossible Motherhood is a heartrending and ultimately triumphant testimonial told by a writer looking back on her history of addiction. Abortion has never offered any honest person easy answers. Vilar's dark journey through self-inflicted wounds, compulsive patterns, and historical hauntings is a powerful story of loss and mourning that bravely delves into selfhood, national identity, reproductive freedom, family responsibility, and finally motherhood itself--today, Vilar is the mother of two beautiful children.… (mehr)
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This book did not elicit the kind of emotional response that I normally look for from titles such as these. I felt a bit detached from the story the whole way through, perhaps mirroring the way Vilar seemed detached from her life and her choices--at least in the telling. ( )
  sashathewild | Jul 2, 2023 |
The book is traumatic with a capital, bold T. At one part about 1/3 of the way thru, I threw the book down in disgust and decided I was done. You are warned.

Impossible Motherhood by Irene Vilar has received a lot of press and been a topic of debate on many a listserv due to the subtitle "Testimony of an Abortion Addict." When I first found out about this book my first thought was "Oh shit." Many people, including Vilar, believe that this book will be used by anti-abortion activists as proof of women using abortion as birth control and thus a reason for the procedure to be banned outright.

But if you read Impossible Motherhood, you'll soon discover that abortion is the hook not the heart of the story. Rather you find a sad story of a young woman thrust into an adult world and quickly found herself in a situation most of us would probably fall apart in as well. Depression soon engulfed her life, althou it was most likely merely lurking in Vilar's life after her mother's suicide.

While Vilar's life is more dramatic than most reality shows and it sometimes hard to believe, it does make you stop and wonder what you would do in her situations, especially as each abortion occurs. She falls in love with a bully 34 years older than her who "enlightens" her that children and family weigh you down, so a free and independent woman must remain child-free and thus is her excuse for multiple abortions.

Interestingly Vilar claims the label of feminist. She reads feminist authors and talks about them. She finds some strength in them, but talks about how feminism had no answer for her. And honestly I believe she is correct.

What I took away from this book was that while so many of us will fight to the death for abortion rights, many of us would shun Vilar from the movement due to having 15 abortions. She turns to the same people in her life. Would you stand by her abortion after abortion? I honestly don't know. One or two we can support, but after that many of us start to blame the woman for not taking care of themselves, not protecting themselves, etc.

Another interesting aspect of this book is that this is Vilar's second memoir to cover the years she spent with her ex-husband (the bully). In her first, she talks says it was the happiest time of her life. Obviously in this one she takes a difference view of her marriage. With the number of memoirs being written by younger people (anyone under 50, I'd say) I think there is a lot that could change. Perhaps not as dramatic as Vilar, but think about how you looked at your 20s at age 30 then perhaps 10, 20 years later.

Do I think you should read this book? I'm not sure. It made me think and made me furious. The abuse she suffered in her marriage is what sticks with me far more than her abortions.

Politically you should read this book because I believe it makes a great case of why abortion can't be stopped by legality, if a woman wants one, she will get one. I also think the anti's will use this book and we should be aware of what Vilar actually says.
  roniweb | May 30, 2019 |
This is an intense book. It's a memoir, it's not a political manifesto or a propaganda tool for or against the issues of abortion. It's simply one women's story told in a way that centers around her relationships, pregnancies and abortions.
I don't think you come out of it feeling one way or the other about abortion, I certainly didn't. But you hear about the complexity of a woman's story.
It's an intense book, but if your into memoirs, it's worth a read. ( )
  ariahfine | Feb 6, 2014 |
I bought this book with a question in my mind of why a woman would put herself through so much pain, terminating the growing little life forms inside of her. It is an incredibly difficult book to read - one that I may not have been so anxious to pick up if I had known about the painful story inside. While reading the book, I found it difficult at times to not judge her harshly - after all, there were several could-have-been children who she herself decided to terminate and it does seem like she willingly puts herself in extremely sad, sick situations. At the same time, just by reading her story I could sense the pain of the events in her life as very real and intense and I know I´ll never fully understand what it is like to go through what she´s been through. Some will feel there is absolutely no excuse for deciding to abort but as for myself, I feel I shouldn´t judge because I will only ever know my own experiences. I am one human being of billions, and just like every human, in many cases I can´t truly understand why people do harsh things. The best I can do is read about it and listen to other peoples´ voices.

A bit about the author, Irene´s, past:
With her mother having abandoned her and having committed suicide, an alcoholic father, drug addicted brothers, then becoming involved with a man in whom she desperately seeked love and approval, (she always wanted to please others) a man who never wanted that kind of attachment with her and who would dismiss her wishes and desires (becoming a mother, being successful in her career, as unimportant, ridiculous even), Irene has had a tougher time in life than me and I can almost feel her pain. She writes well, and honestly.To be with someone who doesn´t even acknowledge that happiness or the attempt to achieve it for his partner´s sake as well as his own would be incredibly stressful and lonely. There is enough negativity in the world as it is. But this woman, Irene, was young and hadn´t experienced much. (Like I said, maybe not an excuse, but a factor in her incredibly hard life - I´m fairly young myself but I find it harder to blame a young, inexperienced person who has grown up with so much sadness and negativity). Her much older man was ¨teaching her¨about what mattered in life. He did not want her baby and he told her so outright. She would get pregnant, feeling good and fantasizing about motherhood, until the fetus would become too large, until it had been in the womb for too long, and then reality hit and she felt like she had to abort it to keep the man she was absolutely sure she loved. This became a habit, an addiction even, as she says. The high before the low before the sense of calm. Over and over.
I´m glad I read this book. It is really difficult to read, though. There is so much pain and confusion and self-hatred and guilt all in one big cycle. Thank god she broke that cycle at the end and found some of the peace she was searching for in motherhood with another, less depressing and overwhelming man.
Even after having aborted so many times, by reading Irene´s story I could understand how very human she is and how she really does deserve peace and motherhood, a different style of life not marked by obsession, hurt, and constant doubt in herself.
I do not think that her way of dealing with all the crap in her life was permissible - the abortions. I think that would be a horrible, sick way to deal with anything really. And she is the only one who can really assume responsibility for her actions. It is only natural that she suffer not only for everything she´s gone through, but also for her own decisions.
If you have any preconceived notion about this woman before picking up her book, I suggest you actually do take the time to read it to at least base any opinions on what you end up reading, which is likely different in some ways you wouldn´t have imagined.
I know I´ll never be able to claim that I know the author or that I´m familiar with her struggles - I myself have grown up in a different era, in a different country - I´m a completely different individual and I could never imagine going through abortion under any circumstance - but I´m glad I read her book. It´s an eye-opener that reminds me of the importance of compassion toward others, the need to really think before we let our ego-centrism take over and cloud our judgment. Irene has more than paid for her unfortunate, brash and horrible choices in the past and I hope a lot of that pain and depression has faded.

Quotes:
By Robin Morgan in the foreword:
xiii - ¨…we stuck it out, validating the very lies we´d been taught about inherent female masochism. ‘We rejected identifying with other women -even many lesbians did so (Gertrude Stein, Elizabeth Bishop), because only men were fully human, only men possessed the agency to act on life. Each of us desperate to be the ´exceptional´ woman in her Great Man´s judgmental eyes strained for power, for voice itself, through him.¨

xvi - ¨Our own bodies have been taken from us, mined for their natural resources (sex, children, and labor), and alienated/mystified…¨

In Irene´s story:
p. 45 - ¨Nothing was sacred to him (her lover-partner) but the ability to smell the rat. In less than an hour I learned that families were nests of suffering, education a farce, books an absurd attempt at eternity; love a recent invention, God a dream gone sour.¨

p. 51 - I had not thought of birth control. My only thought that night I had sex with him in a car was of making sure I was not in the way of a man´s pleasure and my running.¨

p. 52 - Anything that interrupted my obsessive thoughts brought me back to a desperate and frantic state. I was not alive when he wasn´t with me.¨

p. 53 - ¨Would he be astonished to find out that I never stopped thinking about him from morning to night? No, he probably knew, I thought, and the humiliation was comforting, almost reassuring, as it lit the flame of a death wish.¨

¨I basked in the thought of killing myself, in the same way I would make love without birth control without thinking about the consequences.¨

p. 67 - ¨Holding hands kills desire, he said to me when I, timidly passing my shopping bag to him, reached for his hand, and held it in mine. I quickly let go and thought that this one piece of advice, like not showering together or not brushing our teeth in front of each other, might be some genius secret knowledge one had to learn, for the sake of a future.¨

p. 72 - ¨How could I explain I had no money? How could I say I needed to wait until I found Alba to borrow it for the fare_ .. Irene´s husband believed that in order for a woman to be ¨free¨and independent, she could not depend on a man for money - only on herself - even though at this time Irene was very young and like many 20-year-olds she didn´t have much in the way of money. Later, on page 82, he tells her,¨I don´t want to step into the father role. It´s important that you keep your independence and remain a free woman.¨To me, at 20, she´s not a woman at all.

P. 83 - He tells her, ´´If you are grown up enough to have a child, you are just as fit to be a single mother. But I will not be a victim of your displacement.¨…Someone should have told him it takes two to have sex and make a baby and that condoms exist! Not very smart for a 50-year-old professor.

p. 87 - ¨He had a weakness for sadness and tragedy and women at the brink of self-annihilation. It was a weakness I would learn to exploit to perfection.¨

p. 95 - ¨What mattered was that he was free, he was with me, and I, his courageous little woman, was intent on being as free as he was. He was very proud of me. My life would be something I would look back at late in my years without regrets. Ada had joined the ranks of the cowards (by becoming a mother). I was going to abort my third pregnancy.¨

p.96 - ¨My pain and the death springing within me were working material (or nothing more than writing, in his opinion). Beyond that, I did not exist. This belief allowed, among other things, for a second-trimester fetus to be as disposable as I was.¨

After a decade of such a destructive, twisted relationship, Irene grows up, and assumes responsibility for her life, something that many in her family were never able to do. She realizes, ¨For most of my life, I heard others far more clearly than I did myself. This could sum up my life.¨

Her thoughts when she went in for abortions:
p. 203 - ‘ I would go in and out of denial. At times I would forget I was pregnant. Other times I could think of nothing else. I would stop eating. By the time I lay in an abortion clinic waiting for the procedure to begin, I would feel nothing but disgust and shame… I always said to myself, ´This has to end.´¨

During her sixteenth pregnancy with a child born just days later, a midwife talks to her:
p. 214: ¨She asked if I wanted to see my cervix. She inserted a speculum, opened it wide and placed a mirror at the entrance, facing me. I had no scar tissue whatsoever, she said. I would definitely deliver to term. I remember holding back the tears and saying to myself, who is this woman, God bless her. A gesture of kindness and reassurance from a stranger is heartbreaking.¨ ( )
  xandreax | Nov 10, 2013 |
Stupid girl. Creepy man. Lots of psychological blah-blah. I do understand something of what she felt, but isn't that what psychotherapists are for? ( )
  picardyrose | Sep 9, 2009 |
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Irene Vilar was just a pliant young college undergraduate in thrall to her professor when they embarked on a relationship that led to marriage--a union of impossible odds--and fifteen abortions in fifteen years. Vilar knows that she is destined to be misunderstood, that many will see her nightmare as an instance of abusing a right, of using abortion as a means of birth control. But it isn't that. The real story is part of an awful secret, shrouded in shame, colonialism, self-mutilation, and a family legacy that features a heroic grandmother, a suicidal mother, and two heroin-addicted brothers. It is a story that looks back on her traumatic childhood growing up in the shadow of her mother's death and the footsteps of her famed grandmother, the political activist Lolita Lebr#65533;n, and a history that touches on American exploitation and reproductive repression in Puerto Rico. Vilar seamlessly weaves together past, present, and future, channeling a narrative that is at once dramatic and subtle. Impossible Motherhood is a heartrending and ultimately triumphant testimonial told by a writer looking back on her history of addiction. Abortion has never offered any honest person easy answers. Vilar's dark journey through self-inflicted wounds, compulsive patterns, and historical hauntings is a powerful story of loss and mourning that bravely delves into selfhood, national identity, reproductive freedom, family responsibility, and finally motherhood itself--today, Vilar is the mother of two beautiful children.

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