The Abortion: A Historical Romance 1966 is a novel by Richard Brautigan, first published in 1971.
A nameless, nerdy recluse lives in a very special San Francisco library where anyone can submit a book they've written. Little kids, first-time novelists, and Brautigan himself come to submit their creations. The protagonist, while a friendly man, has not been out in the real world since taking the job, preferring to live among the books. That changes one night when Vida, literally the World's Most Beautiful Woman, comes to drop off a book she wrote. She and the narrator hit it off almost immediately, and she moves in with him. All is fine-until he gets her pregnant. Because this is pre-Roe. v. Wade, the only way to get an abortion is to go down to Mexico to meet with a veterinarian who will do the procedure "no pain, all clean". Our narrator goes along with Vida out of love for her, but finds it awkward in the outside world he knows nothing about.
Tropes Appearing In This Novel:
- Back-Alley Doctor: Averted with Dr. Garcia, who has slightly unorthodox methods but high ethical and professional standards. The narrator tells the tale of taking his girlfriend Vida to a veterinarian's office in Tijuana, Mexico for an abortion in the days before Roe v. Wade. To sterilize his surgical tools, the doctor douses them in tequila (but, surprisingly, does not partake of said tequila himself) and then heat-sterilizes them with an acetylene torch. He reassures his patients that his procedures are "no pain, all clean", and you can take that to the bank.
- D-Cup Distress: Vida has looked like that since she was eleven, and men have had car accidents or even killed themselves over her beauty. She wanted to be a ballerina, and fantasized about a Body Swap with her pixie-like sister.
- Kindly Vet: A very unconventional example. We never see Dr. Garcia interact with animals, unlike every other instance of this trope, but we do see how he treats the humans who come to him for illegal abortions. He takes great care in keeping his place and tools clean, averting the Back-Alley Doctor trope in that he actually cares about his patients' safety. He helps the protagonist and Vida, as well as a young, pregnant teenage girl who is brought to him by her parents. Given how gentle he is with them, it's reasonable to assume he's nice to his animal patients too.
- Metafiction: Richard Brautigan appears at the beginning of the novel, giving the narrator a book called "Moose".
- No Name Given: Not once is our protagonist's name mentioned. The lack of naming is possibly to make it easier for the reader to put themself in the narrator's shoes. We know he can't be Brautigan himself, since Brautigan appears in the book.
- Production Foreshadowing: Richard Brautigan actually was working on a book called Moose which he never finished. note The scene in which Brautigan visits the library and gives the narrator "Moose" was likely meant to be this.
- Race Fetish: Foster loves Native American women. This is actually important in the second half of the book: as he has a tendency to get his native girls pregnant, he has to procure abortions for them often, which is how he's able to arrange Vida's appointment with Dr. Garcia.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Vida is literally the most beautiful woman on earth — by American standards. She's tall, slim, has "Playboy-furniture" legs and huge breasts. Inside, she is an elfin, delicate creature and wanted to be a ballerina, but instead became trapped in a body she feels is a "grotesque, awkward machine". Since she was eleven years old, the men around her have imploded simply from being in her presence. They're so distracted by her that they have car crashes or fall downstairs; they commit suicide because she won't go out with them. She writes a book about what it's really like to have the perfect body, decides to donate it to a mysterious library filled with books no one reads, and there she meets the librarian who, though enchanted by her beauty, is not driven insane by it, and is actually able to listen to her story.
- Teenage Pregnancy: One of Dr. Garcia's other patients is a terrified girl who comes in with her parents. It's part of Brautigan's Author Tract that all kinds of people need abortion access.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: Vida is the perfect American piece of ass. "She was developed in the most extreme of Western men's desire in this century for women to look: the large breasts, the tiny waist, the large hips, the long Playboy-furniture legs." However, it has caused several deaths, including that of a man who crashed his car because Vida's beauty distracted him. She hates it and feels it is not her, and wanted to be a ballerina.
