A 40-year-old woman who calls herself an "abortion addict," claims she terminated 15 pregnancies in 17 years, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Irene Vilar, who is a series editor of the Americas at Texas Tech University Press, is now the happy mother of two young daughters – but that wasn’t always the case.
When she was 16, Vilar met a man 34 years her senior, whom she would eventually marry.
This event began her roller coaster ride of conceiving and terminating pregnancies over the next 17 years, she explains in her new memoir, "Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict."
Vilar describes her first husband, Pedro Cuperman, as "a disturbingly handsome man," who believed "families are a nest of suffering" – and having children was off the table.
She said he chose her to be his wife because he thought of younger women as "unformed . . . unfinished, with not too many wounds."
Cuperman declined the Times’ offer to comment.
Vilar rebelled during her relationship with Cuperman by "forgetting" to take her birth control pills. When she would find out she was pregnant, she would feel joy at first, then panic – because she didn’t want to lose her husband.
So each time she got pregnant, Vilar would have an abortion, always feeling a mix of relief and despair. She also tried committing suicide several times during her marriage.
"Of course, this did not mean I wanted to do it again and again," Vilar said. "A druggie also wants to stop every time."
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