{"id":8061,"date":"2004-01-26T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2004-01-26T07:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/ursula_le_guin_on_motherhood.html"},"modified":"2004-01-26T07:00:42","modified_gmt":"2004-01-26T07:00:42","slug":"ursula_le_guin_on_motherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/ursula_le_guin_on_motherhood.html","title":{"rendered":"Ursula Le Guin on motherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

She spoke, along with the wife of the governor of Oregon<\/a><\/p>\n

Le Guin, best-selling author of “The Left Hand of Darkness” and many other novels, said she had an abortion as a young woman, and has been a strong supporter of abortion rights ever since.<\/p>\n

Like Oberst, she said it’s difficult to convey the deep changes that occurred for women over the three decades since Roe v. Wade, the federal case that legalized abortion. She compared being pregnant and 20 years old in the 1950s to living under fundamentalist Islamic law. <\/p>\n

If she hadn’t disobeyed the law and had the abortion, Le Guin said, she never would have went to college or met her husband as the two were sailing on a ship for England as Fulbright scholars. <\/p>\n

“I would have been an unwed mother with a 3-year-old in California,” she said, most likely living off her parents and “unmarriageable. Another useless woman.” <\/p>\n

That means her three wanted children would never have been born, Le Guin said, choking up. “I can’t bear the thought.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She spoke, along with the wife of the governor of Oregon Le Guin, best-selling author of “The Left Hand of Darkness” and many other novels, said she had an abortion as a young woman, and has been a strong supporter of abortion rights ever since. Like Oberst, she said it’s difficult to convey the deep…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nUrsula Le Guin on motherhood - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/ursula_le_guin_on_motherhood.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ursula Le Guin on motherhood - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"She spoke, along with the wife of the governor of Oregon Le Guin, best-selling author of “The Left Hand of Darkness” and many other novels, said she had an abortion as a young woman, and has been a strong supporter of abortion rights ever since. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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