A Volunteer Escort Collects Stories From Outside an Abortion Clinic

After an early traumatic experience with her reproductive health, Wendy Rawlings finds herself, at 50 years old, offering support to patients at a women’s center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

I remember reading this story when it was first submitted, and I knew right away that this was something I wanted to publish. The essay, now a Creative Nonfiction Classic, first appeared in Issue 67 with the headline, “No One’s a Virgin.” It is a complete narrative capturing a situation and problem that is topical and important — more so than ever as we approach two years since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade — and it does so in a series of scenes that are dramatic, compelling and fused with action, with characters that are alive and believable. Wendy uses all the storytelling tools available to a good true story writer: dialogue, vivid detail, conflict and point of view, techniques that enhance the reader’s interest and compel them to keep on reading. Because the essay is written in the first person, we never lose Wendy’s voice and presence — we not only learn what she thinks and feels, but what she sees and experiences. “No One’s a Virgin” was perfect for the magazine and an ideal example of the essence and the potential of creative nonfiction.

—Lee Gutkind, co-founder of Creative Nonfiction

Illustration by Issy Manley

Just after my mother learned she was pregnant with me, and a few months before she married my father, she was prescribed a drug, diethylstilbestrol (DES), intended to prevent miscarriage. The pregnancy was unplanned, and she had never before miscarried; my mother’s doctor simply gave her the pills and ordered her to take them.

DES caused my own reproductive organs to develop irregularly in utero, as was the case for many other thousands of “DES daughters”—women whose mothers were prescribed the drug in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Candy Tedeschi, a nurse and activist for people affected by DES exposure, examined me when I was a teenager and explained that the irregularities in my reproductive organs caused by DES would make conceiving a child difficult. She declared my cervix cockscomb-shaped, one of about five possible irregularities in the cervixes of DES daughters. The drug has since been banned for use on humans.

I had my first pelvic exam at thirteen so that I could be tested for clear cell adenocarcinoma, a cancer linked to DES exposure. As a virgin, I found being examined with a speculum so daunting that the doctor prescribed me Valium to take the day of the exam, and I was allowed to wear my new Walkman. I cried during the exam and felt humiliated, though I had done nothing to cause the circumstances in which I found myself. This early experience with my reproductive health may be part of the reason I find myself, at fifty, volunteering as an escort at a women’s clinic in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.