Dr. Robin Dizard

Abstract

I’ll take us back to 40 years ago when I was 25. I was living in Chicago in an apartment with my husband and my toddler of about a year old. We had a birth control failure—my diaphragm slipped. At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I want to emphasize this because in so much of the antiabortion rhetoric there is the characterization of the woman or the girl as lunging for a choice and as not quite in charge of her own fate. Really, if my experience is any guide, that’s not true—or not always true. When I realized I was pregnant, my husband and I talked. He was very adamant that we could not have afforded and could not make room in our lives for another baby then. I was uncertain and wavering.

Dr. Robin Dizard, Ph.D., has lived in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband Jan for over 30 years. She has two children and was one of the founding members of the Amherst Women’s Liberation collective. She spent many years working on behalf of women’s issues, especially women’s rights. Dizard holds the position of Professor of English at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, where her primary academic interests are in African-American, Caribbean, and multiethnic U.S. literature.

Dr. Robin Dizard was interviewed by David Cline on June 12, 2004.