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Gary Isaacs
In “Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict,” editor and literary agent Irene Vilar shares her controversial story of having had 15 abortions in 15 years. “My story is a perversion of both maternal desire and abortion, framed by a lawful procedure that I abused,” she writes in the book.
Vilar points to several things that led to her “addiction”:
- Her mother’s forced sterilization and subsequent suicide
- Moving from Puerto Rico to New York at the age of 15 after her
mother’s death - Her father’s addiction to alcohol and gambling and her 2 brothers’
addictions to heroin - A controlling, “borderline abusive” relationship that started with her
professor, who was 34 years older than her, when she was a
freshman at Syracuse University
Here, she talks to TODAY Moms about why she had so many abortions and how motherhood eventually saved her.
Q: You say that having 15 abortions was the result of an addiction that you had, specifically, an addiction to mutilating yourself. Can you explain this?
A: The pathology I developed came from a huge problem of distrust. I grew up with a mother who was depressed and self-destructive, after she was sterilized by an American experiment that sent her home with no hormonal treatment and an addiction to valium. She was a woman who modeled lack of control and was married to a man who had total control over her. There was an invisible monster in my house so when I turned 15, I had to leave [Puerto Rico] and go to America. The idea was to rebel like every other teen – but my case became pathological. When a mother kills herself in front of you, what that does to trust and your relationship, your sense of the world is horrific.
[In college] I fell in love with my literature professor. He was a philosopher and self-proclaimed feminist who wanted no children and thought that women should be sterile if they wanted a career and a true life of freedom. So for me, my relationship with my body was a way to defy him and rebel. No one can make an anorexic eat -- that’s how they have control. Similarly, I could get pregnant by “forgetting” to take my birth control. I could bring it on myself and stop it myself with no responsibility. Pregnancy was my high, and abortion and the shame that came with it was the down side.
Q: What do you say to people who say that calling it an addiction is just a way to excuse your behavior, or a way to get attention?
But a lot of people that can’t get past the morality issue say that I should be dead or in jail. It helps that I expected that because I did a lot of research to write this book. In my research I understood very well the ramifications of the abortion subject. What I have come to see from this is that in a way I’m being asked – I’m being told -- that I should remain unborn. In the book I’m trying to look back at the disorder and make sense of it. But some people feel there is no space for spiritual metamorphosis, no space for my rebirth, no space for healing.
My two second-term terminations shook me psychologically. The overall feeling I have about the terminations is a problem of morality which I cannot resolve. I was reckless with my body and the fetuses that I carried. I will live with that everlasting mourning. It’s not a statement that I’m guilty in the religious sense, but more a moral and ethical sense. To be clear, I am pro-choice, but that’s the dilemma and the weight of the accountability that I try to give testimony to.
Q: You now have two daughters, ages 5 and 3 with your second husband. How does your experience impact you as a mother?
A: Motherhood is a validating experience in the most authentic way. I lived a life of servitude and subjugation, I was in an unequal relationship and looked to the wrong alliances for safety and protection. Now I can find that through being a mother. My family sent me mixed messages – there was love and caring – but then abandonment and neglect. I try to avoid that mixed message with my children.
Today, as a mother who has spent most of the last ten years trying to investigate my actions, I read books on psychology and infant development, searching for all the ways I can protect my girls from everything, including me. I’m haunted by visions of them at 15, alone in a foreign city feeling inadequate, unloved, staring at shop windows while sophisticated looking women pass by. I don’t want my daughters to live the anguish of feeling trapped in the wrong body. I don’t want them to ever succumb to the dismembered life of a false self. I don’t want them ever to lie on a stretcher at an abortion clinic. Their fate depends, to a great deal, on me.
Q: Will you explain your story to your children?
A: A time will come when they will be ready to know about this part of their mother’s life—hopefully my testimony will be seen as one of resilience and hope for any difficulties they encounter in life. I hope that through my mothering they will grow up to be tolerant, compassionate human beings.
Q: So what’s next for you?
A: I’m in the process of writing my next book, “Middle of The Night,” about being a mother and the continuous healing I’m engaged with through motherhood. But family is my main profession right now.
Read an excerpt of "Impossible Motherhood"
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