PRIVATE PASSAGE
At prochoice meetings, you hear people trying to figure out how to beat the prolifers at their game. I heard one woman shout, “Let’s kick some prolife butt!” A few of us toyed with the idea of patenting “Abort Prolifers” bumper stickers. But when you come right down to it, it’s difficult to one-up a crowd of screaming moms, grandpas, men of the cloth, and little kids chaining themselves to the doors of a medical clinic. Chaining oneself to the Constitution doesn’t have quite the same effect.
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The play’s strongest moments come in the scenes where we see through Drew’s eyes the events that led to Phoebe’s death. Phoebe brings Drew along for moral support as she takes a frightening journey in search of an abortion. We see their fear as Phoebe learns of her pregnancy, share their horror as Phoebe and Drew go to a prolife center that has been fronting as an abortion clinic, and see the despair in Phoebe’s eyes as she is refused permission to have an abortion by a grotesque collection of judges. At the moment when Phoebe takes the abortion into her own hands with a knitting needle, it is impossible not to be horrified.
