When I was in high school there was a girl in my English class who “got in trouble” and was sent away to visit her aunt in some far off state.  We were scandalized.  Did she have an abortion? Who took the baby? How could she let this happen, we whispered, as if we never put our own pure and righteous selves at risk for a hasty trip out of town.

But that was in the days when we were more hypocritical than compassionate, and I’m not just talking about gossipy teenage girls.  That’s why it’s hard to believe that all these decades  later we could be regressing and in the future be telling stories about how it used to be when there were safe places girls and women could go for help in making very tough choices.

Like this one.

Elizabeth was single, in her 30s, working as a writer and a teacher with a city apartment.  As she says, “I had a very nice life.” She was conscientious about birth control and when she discovered she was pregnant she was horrified. She said she liked the man a lot. He was attractive and intelligent.  But she doubted he would want to marry her. Besides, she didn’t consider herself ready to have a baby.

She went to the Planned Parenthood clinic in her town intending to get an abortion. And there she met a counselor who changed her mind. “She was very warm and very kind. She had children. She’d had an abortion herself. She asked me questions like, where was I in my life? How did I feel about this pregnancy? How would I manage as a single parent.”

Elizabeth left Planned Parenthood that day conflicted about her original decision.  “I needed to go home and think about it. This time I felt differently,” she said.

She said this time because Elizabeth had two previous abortions. Her diaphragm had failed her those times, too.One abortion was done at a Planned Parenthood clinic when there had been no question that it was “neither the right time nor the right man.”

The other was at a hospital in Eastern Europe where Elizabeth was teaching and it was a terrifying experience. “I remember screaming and being held down. There was no anesthetic.” The hospital conditions were so grim the staff washed the surgical instruments in the same hot water used to boil the noodles for lunch.

Now with another abortion pending Elizabeth went back for a second  meeting with the Planned Parenthood counselor. Plus she started seeing a psychoanalyst. Neither of them told her to have a baby or not have a baby.

What they did, Elizabeth said, was “help me see someone I didn’t know I was. That I could have and love a child.”

That baby is now her bright wonderful grown-up son and Elizabeth is a grateful defender of Planned Parenthood.

“I owe that woman. I wouldn’t have gone ahead if some indifferent person had been there.  She  listened to me. She saw me as a worthwhile young woman at a fork in the road. She helped me decide I didn’t want to miss this chance and that what I needed in the end was to have a child.”

Maybe you are someone who used to say that things would be different if more women were in Washington. Maybe then politicians would stop playing games over women’s bodies and be clued in to the need for safe and legal abortions.

Maybe with women in charge there would be a greater commitment to end sexual violence. Maybe women at the top would put a priority on taking care of everybody’s families. All kids would get health care. Grammy need not worry about becoming a bag lady.

At least, that was my thinking. But the more I hear from this crop of women Tea Party candidates I’m terrified. Whose side are these women on?

It reminds me of a young female colleague who was so happy to work for her first woman boss and then later sighed, “She was the worst man I ever worked for.”

There’s a part of any feminist who is cheered when women boldly and passionately declare themselves for public office. It takes guts and we need more women at the top.

In general, I want to say “Go, girl.” But in the case of some of these GOP women candidates, I’m more often sputtering, “She thinks WHAT?”

Sharron Angle, the Nevada Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is so fiercely against abortion that she thinks a young girl impregnated by her father should have the baby. Two wrongs don’t make a right, she said. Lemons, she said, “can be made into lemonade.”

Same with Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware Republican Senate nominee, backed by Sarah Palin – some call her a Sarah Doll. O’Donnell says no exception for abortions even if the woman was raped.

Here’s another who is no friend to women, especially older women.

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, who loves the Tea Cozies, calls Social Security and Medicare a form of welfare. She’s said if her crowd were in control they could get rid of Social Security over one long weekend. And then on Monday throw how many older women out in the street? More women than men rely solely on Social Security to live. Perhaps Bachmann never expects to get old. Or poor.

These sisters are not looking out for the health and welfare of girls and women. They are the kind of sisters who put on their fancy dresses and made Cinderella stay home and clean toilets.

Anne Coulter, the uber conservative commentator and Tea Party cheerleader,once said that the United States would be a better place if women had never won the right to vote. (Meaning too many women vote for Democrats.) You might remember Coulter as the nasty one who mocked the widows of 9/11 who pushed for a government investigation into the attacks. Coulter called the widows self-obsessed and said they were taking advantage of their husbands’ deaths to gain notoriety.

These are scary women and they don’t make sense to me. They go on about what they would take away but not what they would provide.

Like most Tea Party types, they say they want government out of their lives. O’Donnell makes fun of laws restricting soda pop from school vending machines. Are there no obese pre-diabetic kids in Delaware?

So, would they get rid of regulations on car seats for babies? Mandatory school attendance? Who would fix their roads, put out their house fires were there no government? Or do they think government’s greatest role should be to order women to have babies?

But now I have another question and it’s for the Democrats. Got any more ready-to-run sisters?

The proposed ban on covering abortion, part of the House health care reform bill, has drawn predictable reaction. But one of the most dismaying responses is from those who think it won’t really happen. I understand hoping and wishing that that is the case but that’s not how the anti-choice people work. They think they have conquered the House of Representatives. Now, on to the Senate.

Each restriction on abortion, and this would be a big one, is one step closer to making abortion illegal. And then it’s Tijuana, here we come. Right back to where we started from.

“You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Were Congress to somehow boot the Stupak anti-abortion amendment from a final health care delivery plan, which would be a great relief, do we really think the anti-choice crowd will shrug and slink away? Look how much they’ve already won. They managed to hijack the health care debate and turn it into an abortion battle. They interrupted a complicated national conversation on how to provide health care to all Americans including the millions without health insurance and put the focus on their single cause.

Opponents of abortion said, “You want choice? Here’s your choice.” And then they had their way with a Democrat-controlled House over the objection of its Speaker, who also happens to be a pro-choice mother and grandmother.

The Stupak amendment will apply to only those women who buy health insurance in a government subsidized insurance plan, but why are these women expendable? Plus, their numbers are just going to grow as people change or lose jobs and employers dump their group coverage. Some day there might be no insurance coverage at all for abortion and what would that mean to the hospitals, clinics and doctors who provide them? Would they disappear too? And then?

We know that one. The rich would find a way to get abortions, and low and middle income women would be stuck. And on their way to Tijuana.

You call that health care reform? No, it sounds more like a triumph for the Catholic bishops, the radical religious right, the good old boys in Washington and your basic patriarchal rule.

Of course there is a provision that a woman could buy a separate insurance rider to cover abortion, like you can add earthquake coverage to your basic home and property insurance. And how might that advertisement be written? “You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Maybe the anti-abortion amendment was a ruse to temporarily placate abortion foes. Maybe fair and equitable thinking will prevail.

Then again, people said California would never vote against gay marriage.