A Legal Kill

Irene Vilar has written a memoir titled Impossible Motherhood claiming an unusual addiction to ... abortions? Yeah, right. American Abortion Addict: 15 Terminations, 17 Years:

A woman has admitted to being 'an abortion addict' after having 15 terminations over 17 years.

Irene Vilar said she had the abortions not from poverty or fear but as an extraordinary act of rebellion against her 'controlling' husband who did not want children.The 40-year-old's confession has unleashed a torrent of attacks from anti-abortion activists on the internet, including death threats and demands for her to be jailed.

The cycle of pregnancies and abortions, which began when she was 16 and ended when she was 33, was also punctuated by several suicide attempts.

Vilar is not some harsh looking NOW activist, or what have you. She is a strikingly pretty woman who apparently was something of a child prodigy. She began going to college at age 15, and managed to marry her 50-year old Latin American literature professor (ole!) just one year later. Vilar would have you believe that she began her "addiction" as a way to rebel against her oppressive husband. I say BS; I was getting a literature degree around the same time as Vilar. If there was a "Latin American literature professor" anywhere in the United States who wasn't a loudmouthed "progressive" back then, I'd like to know his name.

The attractive one-time academic prodigy attended a boarding school in New Hampshire and was accepted into a New York university when she was only 15. A year later, she fell in love and married a 50-year-old Latin American literature professor, who she says was opposed to having children.She claims he bragged that his relationships never lasted more than five years and told that having children killed sexual desire.In response, Mrs Vilar said she rebelled by 'forgetting' to take her birth control pills.

In the beginning I was taking pills and I'd skip a day or two or give up one month,' she said in a television interview. 'I'd think I'll be better next time.'But slowly, my days took on a balancing act and there was a specific high. I would get my period and be sad, then discover I was pregnant, being afraid, yet also so excited.'She claimed she had the abortions so her husband wouldn't leave her although she failed to reveal whether he knew of the terminations.

Vilar is a typical American feminist: liberated and exercising "choice" by day; cringing and weak before her glamorous husband by night. And, her family history suggests a tendency towards self-destructive acts, political and otherwise:

In her book, Mrs Vilar also revealed how she is haunted by a tragic past. Her grandmother, Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, was jailed for 25 years after storming the U.S. Capitol building with a gun in 1954. She was convicted of attempting to overthrow the government and was jailed for 25 years before she was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

The author was eight when her mother killed herself by jumping from a moving car and died two days later. Her husband had been driving while her tiny daughter had made a pathetic attempt to hold her mother back.Two of Mrs Vilar's brothers became heroin addicts.

Vilar, in other words, has (or had) major psychological problems rooted in her family's self-destructive history from Grandma "Che" to her mother who killed herself in front of her to the brothers who wasted away on heroin. Rather than destroy herself, Vilar has repeatedly destroyed the innocent souls unlucky to have been nurtured, however briefly, within her womb. This is a shameful thing, yet there are undoubtedly those who would be moved by her grotesque story. One can only imagine what her two "live birth" children will think of this. "Sleep with one eye open" would be my advice.