"Lucky Girl" by Bridget Potter

In the short essay Lucky Girl by Bridget Potter, the author shares a personal experience about when she was pregnant at the age of 19 in the year 1962. During the 60's being pregnant at a young age was not a pleasant situation. Young unmarried women would often be shunned by their own family and friends and sent to home for young pregnant women. One would think that they could simply get an abortion to solve their problems but they could not, for it was illegal at the time. Potter included her struggle into finding a way to prevent the pregnancy from continuing by trying remedies such as hot baths and drinking caster oil. Eventually Potter's only solution was to find a place where she could get an illegal abortion before it was too late. Potter continues to go into detail about her experience and being a lucky girl to have survived her illegal abortion in Puerto Rico. With such a detailed, serious topic Potter's audience are mature young adult women who might be going through the same situation, but less extreme. In the 60's a young women in Potter's situation was lucky to even go through an abortion and survive, whereas today it is much safer. As mentioned before how it was shameful to be pregnant at such an age and not married back in the 60's, today it is still not favored, but it is more accepting than it was before. Potter tries to communicate that women today are more lucky than they were back in the 60's. Potter uses statistics and her personal account as well, to communicate this idea. Potter is a good communicator considering that she was in TV production for the first forty years of her career. Now living in Manhattan and Wassaic, New York, Potter is writing her first memoir/social history book that takes place in the 1960's, inspired by her essay Lucky Girl. Potter did accomplish her purpose due to the comparison of today's subject of abortion and how it was in the 1960's that she explained, using statistics and her personal account.

Feminist pioneers fight for their rights for legal abortion in the 1960's

Excerpted from "All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s"

Author information from: The Best American Essays: 2011 Edition