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.”

Planned Parenthood has come up with a big pink sign that it plants next to Republican campaign placards. It says, “Women are Watching.”

There’s been plenty for women to keep an eye on.  The Republican chant to take this country back apparently includes taking back some basic reproductive rights for women.

We’ve heard it before from the Republican front. They don’t trust a woman to choose what’s best for herself and her family when it comes to baby-making. They seem to think that that family planning should be practiced only by God.

If you are a woman and you are watching you might wonder what century does this backward brotherhood come from? What country are we living in? If you are a woman living in a so-called backward country that looks to America as a model of freedom, you might be asking, what’s going on, sisters?

Of course the abortion debate is standard Republican rhetoric. One candidate brings it up and they all follow like a chorus of neighborhood dogs barking at the garbage truck. And enjoying it as much.

Oh good, here comes abortion, let’s all get crazy.

But this time around they added in this unbelievably dumb idea that birth control is a bad thing. Rick Santorum was clearly the alpha dog on this one, declaring that contraception is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Wait a minute, Rick. Think back to your sex ed years, although maybe you had parental permission to skip class. Doing things in a sexual realm without contraception is a license to cause unwanted pregnancies and invite terrible diseases including AIDS.

Santorum says it should be okay for states to make birth control illegal. And how would he do this? With diaphragm detectives, pill police, a raid on the rubber aisle at Rite-Aid?

It’s tempting to turn it into a bad joke except that being the  champion of non recreational sex plays well with the Christian Conservative extremist vote. And yes, I know that bloc includes women.  But for women who believe in keeping the government out of the bedroom and ob-gyn clinics, this patriarchal playlist is disturbing.

After the New Hampshire primary Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, told Rachel Maddow the Republican primary is “absolutely a race to the bottom for women, where they are trying to outdo themselves on who would be the worst president for women.”

The Republicans have long tried to paint Planned Parenthood as abortion central, ignoring that its services include safe sex counseling, cancer screenings and preparation for pregnancy.  They would eliminate Title X, the federal program that gives low income women access to family planning programs. They would prohibit American health agencies operating in foreign countries from even mentioning abortion. Rick Perry is crowing over Texas forcing doctors to show a sonogram to any pregnant woman before she gets an abortion.

Maybe when the pack of GOP hopefuls thins down to a couple of real candidates they’ll have to talk about issues more crucial than who’s toughest on women bodies.

Like what jobs the job creators are ready to offer. What to do for people without health insurance. How to protect the country from more ruin by banks and big business. What’s better than Social Security and Medicare.  How to give all children, including poor kids, an equal chance.

On this,  women will definitely be watching. With the same eye on Democrats and President Obama, too.

Lately I’ve been turning to news about women in other countries instead of my own to feel better about gender progress. Women in Saudi Arabia get the vote.  Libyan women help lead their revolution.

So, what have we done for ourselves lately?

I know it’s relative. American women have many freedoms. And Saudi women still can’t drive. But of the best places in the world to be a woman, the United States currently ranks number eight, said a Newsweek report.

It helped to meet up with Jackie Speier, the Bay Area Democratic Congresswoman who earlier this year delivered what some dubbed “the speech heard round the world.” Jackie, you’ll remember, told a colleague he didn’t know squat abut women and abortion. Then she stood on the floor of the House and told her own story about having to abort at 17 weeks due to a medical complication.

It was a purely spontaneous reaction she recalled at a recent talk I attended.  In the debate over funding Planned Parenthood New Jersey Republican Chris Smith read graphic descriptions about abortion. When he started in about a leg being pulled out and sawed off Jackie said she had to scrap her intended speech and take him on.

After it was over she said she was “kind of trembling” but the response was overwhelmingly positive. John Lewis, the congressman from Georgia, told her it was the most incredible speech he’d heard on the floor.

“He said it took him back to when he was a young boy and his aunt one day appeared with blood all over her dress. His mother took his aunt to the hospital and she never came home again.”

With Jackie’s help Planned Parenthood held onto its funding. It also gained a huge increase in members.

Most people first heard about Jackie Speier in 1978 when she was shot but survived the massacre at Jonestown which killed her boss Congressman Leo Ryan. She’s no lightweight. She walks into a room with her big smile and pile of auburn hair and starts talking about how we’re really in trouble, especially women, and she has some ideas.

In her talk at a women’s networking organization in Sonoma County, not all women, not all Democrats, Jackie brought up two more issues that get her going.  Rape in the military and sexual trafficking.

She’s been collecting accounts of soldiers raping soldiers and has started telling them one story at a time on the floor of the House. There’s an Army sergeant who went to her military chaplain and was told the rape might have been God’s will and she needed to go to church more.

Jackie said: “I cannot stand that a soldier could be the object of violence from another solider, more than from the enemy.”

She’s also working to toughen laws against sex trafficking in this country, which she said has increased with the internet and since drug cartels began taking over. She told about a 16 year old girl who was forced to have sex from 10 to 14 times a day.

At a time when the communication skills of many government leaders seem to range from equivocation to hiding under their seats, it’s so refreshing to meet a Jackie Speier who is unafraid to speak the truth to power.

Jackie said, “I may not be senior enough to get things through committee but I can use the floor of the House.”

Not surprising one of her guiding quotes is, “Well behaved women seldom make history.”