John Turturro reveals that his grandmother died after a botched abortion
Turturro emphasized that restricted abortion access is something "that affects us all"
Aux News Abortion
Like so many, John Turturro has a personal connection to the protections offered by Roe v. Wade—and strong feelings about the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the ruling. Decades before the landmark 1973 decision, which guaranteed a federal right to abortion, Turturro revealed his grandmother Rosa died while trying to terminate a pregnancy.
“I lost my grandmother because she died during an illegal botched abortion,” Turturro told Rolling Stone. “So that informs me on the whole history of abortion. And I was very interested in that [subject] because the death certificate says ‘manic depressive psychosis — contributory: exhaustion.’ It doesn’t say ‘botched abortion.’”
Turturro said he learned the real story behind his grandmother’s death while exploring his Sicilian heritage for the PBS series Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates. Although Rosa’s public death certificate indicated very little about the end of her life, Turturro’s mother gave him the real story: In 1927, pregnant with a seventh child she knew she couldn’t afford, she tried to induce abortion using an herbal tonic her sister promised would “take care of it.”
“My grandmother went into septic shock that evening, on fire from the poison burning inside,” Turturro said.
Turturro used Rosa’s tragic loss to exemplify the effect restricting abortion access has not just on childbearing people, but their loved ones as well. When his grandmother died, Turturro said, his own mother lost “her mother, her home, her family, her sense of safety and security, and most of her childhood.”
“We have all suffered from women not being in charge of their own bodies — the pregnant women, first and foremost, but also their extended families,” Turturro added. “The right to choose affects us all. A woman must have the right to plan her life as she sees fit. Abortion is a terribly difficult decision for anyone, but it is a personal one and needs to be protected. I wonder what my mother’s life would have been like if abortion had been legal and her mother had the support of a group such as Planned Parenthood. What would have happened had Rosa lived?”
Although Turturro acknowledged he’s far from a celebrity activist, he also made it clear he won’t withhold his true opinions, especially on matters like Roe.
“I’m not an actor who goes and talks about all the political things because I feel like I’m just a regular citizen like everybody else,” Turturro explained. “But I think you can do things in your work that maybe could represent your point of view in the discussion.”
25 Comments
See? Even Jesus thinks abortion should be safe and available.
Jesus was a Jew; he always thought that.
Something something 8 year olds
My great-grandma had an illegal abortion during the Depression. She was fortunate enough to live in a big city, so she was able to pay a doctor to do it. Apparently, he performed the service for a lot of women in the neighborhood she was in. There’s more abortion in our ancestors’ pasts than people know or will admit.
The podcast Criminal did an episode on the Clergy Consultation Service, an underground coalition of NY priests, nuns and rabbis who used their right of confidentiality to organize abortions in a pre-Roe/Wade world – they would check out physicians themselves (posing as future parents), arrange referrals and transportation and make sure everything is happening out of state so that the government never catches wind.It’s a wild story for sure, but it also perfectly encapsulates that the issue isn’t as black-and-white as right wing goons would want everyone to think and that the right to abortion is recognized even by people who should, in theory, be vehemently opposed.
There’s more abortion in our ancestors’ pasts than people know or will admit.Indeed:
Yeah, I worry that pregnant people will resort to poisons like pennyroyal if they get desperate. It’s a common plant. I grow it in my garden and it wards off things like fleas. But I wouldn’t recommending consuming it… Unless you’re anxious to destroy your kidneys.
I’ve got much better ways to destroy my kidneys.
Like Kurt wrote in his journal about it, “It doesn’t work, you hippie.”
Pennyroyal OIL (not the tea) will induce an abortion/miscarriage. The problem is that it’s a crapshoot whether it will also induce organ failure, since it’s essentially a poison in that concentration. It potentially will damage/destroy both the liver and kidneys. So it’s not something you really want to play around with.
It’s been said before but it needs to keep being said. Making abortion illegal does not stop abortion, it makes abortions unsafe.Thousands of women are going to be maimed and killed because of the cruelty and ignorance of the radical right and the illegitimate Supreme Court they have inflicted upon the vast majority of good Americans that abhor their extremist views.
It’s not like the pro-life Republicans even care about that. Died outside the womb? Tough shit. They would say.
Hell, they’ll enjoy it because the sinful women got punished.
and much like their idiotic contrarian views towards Covid, there is NO amount of dead women who will cause them to change their minds because of all the “babies” they’re saving (once again, cognitive dissonance is a powerful force of nature). I don’t understand why any woman of child-bearing age, even someone who would never get an abortion, aren’t outraged at the contempt of the GQP for their lives. I don’t see how the GQP can see this as a viable long-term strategy–it seems almost nihilistic in a way–but they’re not exactly known for their forethought or intelligence.
I’ve seen the social media posts from the “pro-life” crowd and they know this and don’t care, and many of them actually make edgy jokes about how “funny” these concerns are. Punishing women/transmen is the point— especially “liberal” ones (they think only libs seek abortions).
If not abortion than something was going to get her. She was a grandmother after all, grandmothers tend to die.
my evangelical cousin told me she supported t***p because he was “pro-life” (and she’s not the only evangelical to tell me they supported him and/or opposed Hillary because of this stance despite having to “hold their noses” and vote for him, which is a direct quote from one of them). When I pointed out he was only “pro-life” because he was pandering to evangelicals and I’d bet folding money he had paid for more than one abortion (or more correctly, told a model to get one and then not reimbursed her for it), she did the “la la la I can’t HEAR you” thing all the pro-t***p evangelicals do when you call them on their bullshit. Then she tacitly admitted to having an abortion (which probably happened because she was married to an abusive dickhead and didn’t want another kid to further complicate things) and “didn’t want others to experience that pain,” which I’m sure she intended to sound magnanimous but just struck me as incredibly patronizing and selfish. I think that was the last time we spoke.
why are you censoring trump
Tell your cousin I hate her, thanks in advance.
I’m not too crazy about her myself either which is why it’s been ~5 years since we last spoke. The best was when I complained about t***p winning and she accused me in so many words of “sour grapes” LOL. No, I just don’t want some shitty moron con artist running the country, call me crazy. The arrogance that dipshit reignited in so many people who in no way, shape or form have done anything to be entitled to that much arrogance is definitely one of his most irritating “accomplishments”.
“The best was when I complained about t***p winning and she accused me in so many words of “sour grapes” LOL.”
I’ll bet she has much to say about the results of the 2020 election!
if I ever talk to her again I’ll be sure to ask LOL. Actually she is one of the most non-confrontational and yet passive-aggressive people I’ve ever met (unless she thinks you agree with her of course) so she’d probably be mealy-mouthed about the election but then snark about why a woman is leading the J6 committee. Her mom (my aunt) was my first taste of the crazy racism at the heart of Cult 45; I’ll never forget her proudly speaking up about her support for t***p (much to the shock of our family) because “he understands us” (compared to Obama), and we all know what that’s code for now don’t we. The way evangelicals like my cousin and aunt just leaped right into bed with t***p still boggles my mind but at least we now understand their motivations a lot better now—another minimized minority with delusions of grandeur who t***p made to feel “seen” and despite being one of the most ungodly people in every way, they have deified him without a molecule of irony.
Then she tacitly admitted to having an abortionI’ll never cease to be amazed at how easily people can rationalize their own choices while actively seeking to prevent others from having the same opportunity.
that was literally what I was thinking when I responded to her. What gives you the right to want to take away that right from someone who might not feel the sadness or shame or whatever you felt, but in fact might feel immense relief that their life wasn’t permanently changed for the worse? But then when I pointed out what the life of that unaborted fetus might be like–poverty, possibly unwanted by the mother, etc.–the conversation really went off the rails LOL, because then of course the mother ALWAYS falls immediately in love with the baby, they instantly get money and support to raise it, there are people lined up around the block to adopt it, etc. The pro-life fantasy world kicked in.