Lucy, was born with an underdeveloped brain. She was a beautiful little girl - at least to me and my husband - but her disabilities were severe. By the time she was two weeks old we knew that she would never walk, talk, feed herself, or even understand the concept of mother and father. It's impossible to describe the effect that her five-and-a-half-month life had on us; suffice it to say that she was the purest experience of love and pain that we will ever have, that she changed us forever, and that we will never cease to mourn her death, even though we know that for her it was a triumphant passing...no one can tell us why Lucy was born the way she was. There was nothing genetically or chromosomally wrong with her. Her condition, we have been told over and over again, was a fluke. Consequently, no one can promise us that it won't happen again...Stories like mine are not about rights; they are about need - need, because I had to stand by helplessly while my six-pound daughter arched rigid in seizure that no medication could control; need, because she died fighting for breath in my arms. Precisely because I loved her so, shouldn't I have the right to think twice before bringing another such child into the world? The irony is that if so terrible a decision comes for me, I honestly can't say what choice I will make. But I do know that no one else should have the right to make it for me" (Armstrong).
             Byllye Avery had a legal abortion in 1973. In 1974 she helped to found the first abortion clinic in Gainesville, Florida. In 1978, she was instrumental in opening one of the first freestanding birthing centers in Florida. In 1981, she established the National Black Women's Health Project. The essay excerpted below was published in 1991: "I wasn't married at the time I got my abortion. It was after my husband died. He had a massive heart attack at thirty-three, and I was left with two little kids. They were young, and I certainly wasn't abo...