It’s mind-blowing that Irene Vilar is today a mother of two, said Manuel Roig-Franzia in The Washington Post. In a new memoir, the 40-year-old literary agent claims to have long been “an abortion addict.” Beginning
at age 18, she had 15 abortions in 15 years, most while married to a Syracuse University professor 34 years her senior. He didn’t want children, Vilar says, and she fell into a pattern of “forgetting” to take her birth control pills, experiencing the “high” of a brief pregnancy, then terminating it discreetly. “I wanted control over my body, and the way I chose to have control could not have been more terrible,” she wrote in a recent essay. In Impossible Motherhood, she reveals that she underwent the final three abortions after divorcing the professor—even though the would-be father wanted a child.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Is the Gaza war tearing U.S. campuses apart?Today's Big Question Protests at Columbia University, other institutions, pit free speech against student safety
-
DOJ settles with Nassar victims for $138MSpeed Read The settlement includes 139 sexual abuse victims of the former USA Gymnastics doctor
-
14 recent scientific breakthroughsIn Depth From photos of the infant universe to an energy advancement that could save the planet
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”