The website www.schizophrenia.com is an extraordinary website for family members. It has message boards for parents, children, spouses, and siblings of people who have schizophrenia. It also has links to well-chosen articles on schizophrenia.

On each message board, you will find letters to and from people who are in your shoes. The boards are monitored, and the tone is positive and helpful.

I completely agree with Mr. Wakeman--it's ludicrous for anyone, male or female, to expect to control what goes on in their own bodies. God is the only judge of that, and we must not oppose His will.

If, for example, Mr. Wakeman one day develops prostate cancer, he must regcognize that it is God's will--God wants that cancer there, and I for one will joyfully stand in Mr. Wakeman's path should he try to reach a cancer center to have it cut out.

I will do this because it would also be MY will that Mr. Wakeman's cancer should grow and prosper, and what gave him the silly notion that he could be in charge of what goes on in his own body?

I became pregnant in 1965, at age 18, and desperately wanted an abortion. I contacted old friends, begging for help to find a doctor who would do this.

My father read my mail, and confronted me. He explained that abortion was a terrible thing, and I must NOT do this! He reminded me that I already had "too much independence for a female," and that having a baby would "break your goddamned spirit."

That settled, he explained that I had now proved myself to be a woman of low moral character. He beat me up, then tried to rape me.

For complicated reasons, the rape was not carried all the way through, but he did manage to thoroughly terrorize me.

A few days later, he took me to a New Year's Eve party at the home of a woman who had bought one of his dogs (he was a professional dog breeder and trainer).

We arrived late, when everyone else was inside the house. The dog was loose outside (a Russian wolfhound). He whistled and beckoned to it. All I saw was a white blur with fangs.

I raised my arm instinctively, protecting my throat. I still have scars where the dog's teeth penetrated my heavy wool peacoat, thick sweater, and long-sleeved dress. I fell to the ground, not realizing yet that my earlobe was torn and bleeding.

I heard my father chuckling.

I finally did manage to get an abortion. It freed me from my father (I had no other parents, my mother and stepfather having died two and three months earlier, catapulting me into my father's arms). I thank God for the abortion that let me leave his house forever.

Eight years later, I married a wonderful man and we have two daughters, now grown. I had PTSD from my father's attacks until it was finally treated in my mid-40s.

I get livid whenever I hear the anti-choice folks promoting their vicious lies. They are the cruelest people I know. They prey upon women who have had abortions--blasting them with propaganda until they are in huge psychic pain, then blaming the pain on the abortion, and finally using them as "poster" women in their anti-choice crusade.

Date rape.

Elizabeth Davies

I'm beginning to wish I hadn't written in the first place. I can hardly believe I just stooped to responding to that meanspirited letter. It is not the writer's business how I became pregnant.

He/She managed to put me on the defensive, and now I'm flooded with memories of the events around my mother's grim death and my stepfather's suicide, which I would prefer not to be thinking about.

Aaarrrgghh!

Elizabeth

The reason Bush hasn't been impeached yet? CHENEY. Why get rid of an idiot when his replacement would be a madman?

I've observed ECT. What twitches is *not* the whole body. It's part of one hand. I've seen it work for many people, to relieve intractible depression. I've also seen in (like so many medical procedures and meds) over-used. But it's a godsend for many, many people.

In my generation, girls were allowed to play basketball. But we were forced to play on *half* the court, and to follow *girls' rules,* which restricted the types of plays we could do. The rationale (according to our gym teacher and girls who echoed her wisdom)was that girls are fragile creatures who must be protected from their desire of play by boys' rules.

I never did find out what boys' rules were, apart from being allowed to use the entire basketball court. I never developed an interest in sports. Same goes for baseball--which for girls in my generation was restricted to softball.

So they killed him.

Words fail me.