Outline for Freshman Comp Essay

Question at issue:	Did you agree to an abortion to appease a sister?
Question at issue:	What did you fear?
Question at issue:	Are a bomb and an abortion detonated the same?
Possible thesis statement:	Maybe not a sensible idea to allow someone else to determine the future.
Refined thesis statement:	Maybe not because appeasement, some historians say, (endnotes) started World War II.
Possible topic sentence:	To acquiesce to an abortion or a war becomes expansively problematic.
Possible evidence:	Irrational to follow the middle sister who never wanted you near.
Possible evidence:	For example, she sequestered you in the attic,
	swearing on your life she would do it again if you told.
	She knew no one would believe you: you—still a week from four years old.
	Afterwards, you learned silence. The tilt of gravity, the blankness of it, blue cold on the edge of your sky.
[Possible evidence]	Because for example, three decades on. The abortion still suspended in resin like a tiny scorpion, transforms anger into amber.
	Because in my body, this was motherhood’s last stand.
Counter argument:	But you were already adult, your mid-twenties.
Counter argument:	Did she hold a knife to your vagina, conduct the surgery herself?
Refuting argument:	She chauffeured me there, commented on my blistered toes.
Counterargument:	But you walked into the abortionist’s office, undressed, welcomed the plastic mask of anesthesia. (You wanted this.)
Refuting argument:	Yes. The abortionist was handsome. Bronzed in an orange kind of way.
	And they flirted and laughed well, spoke of island travel.
	Then as if at the moving pictures, I disappeared
	into the gallery seats. Watched another show.
	My sister gave him her number— she’d make the appointment, the follow-up.
Refuting argument:	Wanted out. Wanted none of it. None of this ever happened.
[ ]	To wake and have no memory—
[ ]	Locked away without a way.
[ ]	If I didn’t make the choice but it was the right choice.
	If I made the choice but it was the wrong choice.
	If I could go back and find my own way.
Unintended consequences:	The rest of my life.
	I will never visit Paris or acquiesce again.
	For two decades we have not spoken.
Possible conclusion:	Yes. No. Yes. No. War of the abortion comes and goes.
Possible conclusion:	Mybodymmybodybodymyboymybodymy bodymybomb—