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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: September 8, 2002
Latest Update: September 8, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Story of an Abortion:
Reading for Illocutionary Force.

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, September 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Dear Jeanne,

I would like to comment in regards to the lecture in class about abortion. I am aware that everyone is different and thinks differently; therefore I would like to share my story about the abortion I had when I was a teenager. I was just a girl that had no idea about the importance of education and the power of knowledge. I was too egotistical, sleeping around, and nothing was more important than me.

I came to this country when I was 7 years old, not knowing English at all. Because I didn't know how to read or write when I got to middle school, I dropped out in the 7th grade. No one could stop me; it was my life (that's what I would tell my mother). If I had had that child, who knows how the child might have suffered. I know now that the more educated you are the higher the chances are for your child to succeed in life, and I don't mean mere survival; I mean to understand how this institution we call the world functions and how to empower ourselves with knowledge.

I am now in my twenties, and happily married for several years to a wonderful man (my best friend). I quit my job two years ago to go back to school. It took me 25 years to realize that life without knowledge is no life at all. Just recently we found out that my husband cannot have any children.

I don't regret having that early abortion. How was I going to manage to teach that child about life when I didn't know it myself? It was not taught to me ever, and maybe that was because it was not taught to my parents. Now I am more aware about life and the mysterious effects of so many beliefs. This knowledge makes all the difference in raising children.

I might adopt or become a foster parent. Perhaps that child will have a greater chance to succeed in life, and pass that on to the next generation. That is one way this society will become a better place to live in.

Thanks to all of you who read this in good faith, in the interest of the illocutionary force of transforming ours into a society that recognizes difference and the harm that can come from denying those differences. (Reference: Maria Pia Lara, Moral Textures, Introduction.)

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I ask that you read this story as a performative act. Let the narrator disclose her deepest feelings, and in the reading explore your deepest feelings also. This is a performative act in which both of you are changed, and moved a little closer to the undersanding one of the other. We had begun such a discussion last week in Sociology of Law. Let us continue in the interest of transforming our society into one of tolerance for all. Maria Pia Lara calls such engagement in story telling an illocutionary force, through which she believes that women can and will transform the world. jeanne. September 8, 2002.