A Righteous Man

 

Photo by john crozier on Unsplash

Mary Koch studied the pregnancy test strip for the long minute that it took to process its consequences.

Pregnant. But how?

This was the third time. The first had given birth to Marla, her four-year-old daughter. The second one ended with an abortion.

Why aren’t the God damned pills working? She wondered.

She sunk into a depression. She would have to travel to New Mexico for an abortion that she could not afford. Trying to raise another child on the pay of a server in a bowling alley cocktail lounge was not an option.

She took a mental inventory: time off work, travel, the gynecologist’s fee. The cost was overwhelming. Her depression deepened.

During her second pregnancy, she had complained to the pharmacist who sold her birth control pills. The pharmacist assured her that the Food and Drug Administration evaluated and certified the pill under conditions required by the US government.

“Some women have a genetic resistance to the drug’s ingredients, but if you feel something is wrong with the pills, here are some people you can contact about the problem,” he said.

He handed to her brochures from the US Food and Drug Administration and the Pharmaceutical company. Both said the same thing: her complaint about the effectiveness of the pill was one of the pill’s failures against millions of successes. Sorry.

She turned to one of the Highway Bowl Lounge’s regular customers. Leon Marshall was known as a streetwise homeboy with a hand in everything from drugs to gambling to the sale of illicit firearms. Leon gave her a number for a back-street midwife who performed illegal abortions in one of the fiercest anti-abortion states in the country. Mary borrowed money from Robert, the bar manager, and met the midwife, who three days later performed the procedure in Mary’s apartment.

Minor complications set in — bleeding and a low-level infection. She missed days off work. Leon gave her a loan to help her get through the ordeal, and she was soon back to work and able to pay Leon, then Marla’s babysitter, then Robert, the bar manager. Leo first because of his reputation as an underworld figure.

An investigation into the midwife’s activities had turned up a list of women she had served. The state rounded up and jailed all of them pending trial.

People from the state’s attorney general entered the cocktail lounge, put Mary in handcuffs, and took her to the county jail.

Mary had no money for bail. A state judge found her guilty of securing an abortion in defiance of state law and with the aid of an unlicensed midwife. The court turned her daughter over to state custody and Mary went to prison in a remote part of the state, where she committed suicide by sawing through a vein in her wrist with a plastic butter knife.

Evan Leland, the pharmacist, read about the event in the Morning News and for a moment felt pity for the poor woman. He took no pleasure in knowing she was in hell, though he knew his role in the affair guaranteed his place in heaven.

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