Gail DiMaggio lives in Concord.

A friend challenged me to write about reproductive rights because, she said, “You’re old enough to remember.” She had a point. The young, of course, never experienced what women faced before Roe. And for a lot of people around my age, the old stories have lost their emotional edge. But I do remember what happened to Julie.

1967, my senior year at Connecticut College, Julie lived two doors down from me in the “coop dorm.” I remember how Julie liked to be funny about that and everything else. She’d change the sign-up list for kitchen duty to read “scullery maids,” compare her scrambled eggs to joint compound, add a Texas twang (she was from El Paso) to her French recitation. At the same time, she was brilliant, finished high school in three years, was scarily fluent in three languages. She wasn’t beautiful in a conventional way, but there was so much spark in her. So much life.

In January, she fell for a Coast Guard cadet, a first classman three years older. Julie did falling in love full throttle. She “cherished” everything about him, she told us, his hair, his eyes, his lousy French accent. And when the year ended, and he shipped out, Julie spent the last weeks packing for Texas and being sad. She did sad full throttle, too.

By September I was married, a first-year teacher, and I didn’t even try to reach Julie until a note arrived from her roommate saying they were going to “hold a service.” It took a dozen phone calls to track down the story you’ve probably already figured out. Julie had left campus pregnant, met a guy in a seedy, El Paso hotel for what was called “a back alley abortion,” hemorrhaged, and died.

I know some people’s reaction will be something along the lines of, “Well, she shouldn’t have.” We’d all agree I think. Her friends, her teachers, her family. And I can’t explain why she didn’t tell one of us, or at least her mother, except some combination of shame and desperation. Maybe she panicked thinking how this pregnancy meant the end of everything she’d worked so hard for. Of course, maybe she was right about that.

She was eighteen. She wasn’t wise yet or clued up or particularly courageous. She was Julie with her big laugh, and her shining eyes, her flawless French and her passionate confusions. That Julie. The one we’ll never get back again.