THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BEING AN AMERICAN WOMAN

I'm fifteen and flat on my back ready to get an abortion.
There's the sheet and wall whiteness of heaven
and a plaque: Where murder is possible for convenience sake.
My gynecologist whisks in to unstrap my feet
from the stirrups.

                      "I'm sorry, Miss, we've just developed
your x-rays, and it seems your potential baby has two heads.
Please come with me.  There are some complications..."

I'm thinking this is all the more reason I should quickly 
and quietly undergo this abortion.  A wash of guilt comes,
then subsides as do the faces of the pimply father
and my parents all who, I was assures by the clinic,
can find out nothing about this.

I'm lead to a room like the ones movie-detectives grill
murder suspects in.  I'm offered a cigarette 
and say yes.  There's a priest, a cop, my woman gynecologist 
and a Government Man who says, "I'm afraid 
your abortion has been denied." 

                                           I'm in a panic,
turn around and, expecting to see my parents, see only a locked door.

"You can't do this to me," I'm saying as the Government Man 
says, "Oh yes we can."

                          And when I ask, "On what grounds?"
he pulls out a form from his files I recognize from sixth grade:
an insurance company promised my parents $1000
for each missing limb, $2000 for each missing eye, 
and $5000 for the loss of the life of their child.
The insurance was cheap, $10 I think, and my parents 
opted to buy it.  On the back there was a part for kids to sign,
and, as the Government Man points to my younger signature
sprawling off the dotted line, I realize there was something
in small letters I apparently failed to read:

"This form clearly states that as a proud American
you will submit to anything involving your body parts
that would better the status of your country..."

"But Mr. Government Man, I was only eleven!"

"Perhaps you are aware, Miss, that several youngsters
with two heads are already living in Russia?"

"Yes," I say, "I guess I read about that."

"And what is your IQ?" the priest asks.  (I remember 
my teacher, the ones the kids called Flat-As-A-Board Ms. Ford,
who pasted bumper stickers on our classroom walls
spelling the word women in ways that didn't include the suffix 
men: We'Moon, Womon, Wimmin... She pulled me aside 
after the test in junior high and said, "Do you realize
your IQ is higher than any males in this school?")

"I don't know exactly what my IQ is, Father,"
I tell the priest, and I don't.

"Well is it true that you're a genious
according to standard testing results?"
The Government Man leans forward like a lawyer.

I say, "I'm not sure."

And the priest says, "Evasiveness is as sinful as lying."

The gynecologist then looks at my belly
and motions me to stop smoking.

The Government Man is all of a sudden as perky
as a salesperson pushing vacuums.  "Think of it!
A two-headed genius!  Perhaps your child will be 
the first child in space."

                               "But wait.  Wait a minute," I plead,
hoping I've found my loophole.  "I don't remember
consenting to any x-rays...And that's how you found out 
about the fetus having two heads.  Isn't all of this very bad 
for my baby's health?  She'll be deformed now...I must insist
upon having this abortion.
                                No one answers.
I'm strapped with a seat-belt into a wheelchair
against all my protesting, "Hey, I can walk..."

The priest is saying, "A woman cannot deny her biology
without offending God.  Please, Miss, rejoice in your gifts."

Then I'm pushed down a long round corridor as pink 
and receptive as a vagina.  And another room at the end waits,
full of empty glass jars and, for me, an empty glass coffin
just like the one snow white slept in.

Girl Soldier