If These Walls Could Talk is a film that examines the issue of abortion through three different time periods: 1952, 1974, and 1996, and each story takes place in the same house. Through the three different characters, the audience views abortion from three different angles. The story that takes place in 1952 is about a young woman, Claire, who is a recently widowed nurse. During a grieving period of drinking she has a one night stand with her brother-in-law and becomes pregnant. Her only choice seems to be an illegal abortion. Claire faces sexism with a doctor at work when she tries to ask for help. The male doctor had no sympathy for her what-so-ever and pretty much said it was all her fault. Claire finds it difficult to find a safe way to have the abortion because the safer it is, the more it costs. This is where her class comes in to play. Even though she lives in a nice house, she is now only bringing in her paycheck, which is probably not very much. She has no family to turn to except her in-laws and she could never let them find out. Unfortunately, her sister-in-law does discover the news and tells Claire that she needs to leave this town and have it somewhere else... how could she shame the family like that? When Claire tells her about abortion, Becky (the sister-in-law) looks at her in disgust and leaves the house. I think this is how many of the women during that time period viewed abortion. Society thought of it as a moral sin, the woman was a horrible person for doing it. Those that did have an abortion never told anyone and lived with shame inside themselves. This attitude forced women who wanted abortions to go to extreme measures: trying to do it to themselves, going to "back-ally" doctors, or paying hefty prices. Women during this time period were dying and becoming infected due to such unsafe circumstances. In the end, Claire had a man named Tom come to her house to perform the abortion for $400 cash. It was done on her kitchen table. Tom did not wash his hands or disinfect his tools. When Claire began to question him, he almost left. It felt like he was treating her as just an animal or something, like she did not matter in the world. The man was very degrading. The operation looked very painful and he said there may be some cramping and bleeding. It turned out that Claire had massive hemorrhaging and she may have even died.
