It’s very hot in Florida in the summer so I decided to lighten my reading load until fall rolls around, or the first under-90-degree day, whichever comes first. Then the Booker long list came out, and I was finally able to get the new Julia Phillips novel from my library (sorry, Julia) so I went back to more consequential stuff.
But then Sandwich became available and since it had 140 holds when I first located it on the Brevard County Library site, I put Bear aside (sorry, Julia), resumed by light-reading-only plan and took up Catherine Newman’s latest. She’s not a writer I was familiar with prior to this book.
Sandwich concerns a family of four, plus a longtime girlfriend and two aging grandparents, and their annual vacation at a bungalow on Cape Cod. Does this not scream “BEACH READ”? Of course it does. But what it should have telegraphed to me was “THIS BOOK IS ALL ABOUT ABORTION.”
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Almost right off the bat we have a vomiting girlfriend, Maya, so we know the abortion discussion is coming up. There it is on page 77, when Maya tells family matriarch Rocky that she’s not sure what to do about this baby like she was when she got pregnant in high school.
“Having an abortion was a super easy decision then,” says Maya. “I got it done during a free period between chem and Spanish.” She laughs. “Those were the days!”
But Rocky has an abortion lurking in her past that, despite her having worked as an “escort” at an abortion business and declaring that she’s a feminist and “an advocate for reproductive rights,” has actually been breaking her heart for 20 years.
She had that inconvenient and unexpected pregnancy when her second child was not yet a year old. She was so tired, possibly suffering from post-partum depression and mad as hell that her cis-male husband can’t “chestfeed” (I intuited that part). So, she has a secret chemical abortion, which expelled her child from her womb in bloody clots she passed while swimming alone in the Atlantic Ocean. (I’ve never had an abortion, but this would not be my choice of locations. Had she been in New Smyrna Beach, she would definitely have been bitten by a shark).
She unloads this secret first on her daughter Willa, but they’re swimming in “the pond” then and you know how sound carries (Newman makes sure we understand this) so of course Rocky’s husband Nick overhears. Eventually, she gets around to telling him too.
Here’s where a pro-lifer like me had some hope for the book. The abortion devastated Rocky. She got pregnant intentionally a year later with a replacement baby, which is something I know from my colleagues at Rachel’s Vineyard some women who have had abortions do. But she suffers a miscarriage with this one, returning to the pharmacy for some more misoprostol, knowing what’s in store. Both “ghost babies” continue to haunt her.
As she explains to her husband, finally, “… afterwards, I was so sad. I was too in love with the babies to survive the fact that we weren’t having another one - that I’d chosen not to. And I just wanted to get pregnant again. It was a kind of possession. That pregnancy had set something in motion, and the only exorcism was going to be pregnancy. I was desperate about it. I was so sorry. So regretful. The moment I swallowed that pill! I would have given anything to get it back.”
She knows the due dates of both of her ghost babies and marks them every year.
For a moment, I was over the moon. Acknowledgment that abortion is a devastating act with lifelong consequences! Joining Rocky’s voice to the courageous women of Silent No More, Operation Outcry and others who stand up in public and say abortion was the worst choice they could have made!
I couldn’t believe the New York Times gave the book a good review. When the pregnant couple announced they’ll be getting married and Rocky figures out the bun in Maya’s oven will be four months old at the wedding, I really thought I was on my way to a happy ending.
But no.
The last page closes with the wedding and these three devastating words: “There’s no baby.” There’s also no explanation of where that particular human being went, but we can guess.
What is the takeaway here? Is it that abortion is awful - as Ellen Burstyn has said, as this young woman in the UK so eloquently says - but it has to remain legal? That this monstrous procedure that’s been wrecking lives legally in our country for more than 50 years has to remain available so our sisters and daughters, wives, mothers, and friends, can sabotage their happiness, too?
I had a beautiful, fearless friend named Nancy Tanner who would stand outside the annual “celebration” of Roe v. Wade in Washington, D.C., holding her Silent No More sign that said, “I Regret My Abortion.” Every year, at least a few of the women heading in to sip cocktails and hear speeches about the wonders of legal child killing would approach her close enough to whisper, “I do, too, but I keep it to myself.”
Tweet This: This book (Sandwich) is all about abortion.
Newman does not keep her feelings to herself in Sandwich. She boldly tells the truth about abortion and its aftermath, and then drinks a toast to the bride and groom, with nary a thought, or a word, for the dead grandchild missing from the celebration.
Editor's note: Leslie Palma is the Communications Director for Priests for Life. This is a Pregnancy Help news original article.
