I just visited with a friend who has HG (e.g. morning sickness that makes you want to die), and it brought back all of these old emotions from my own HG pregnancy. On the way home NPR was running a story on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the combination was just extremely unpleasant.
Being pregnant broke me and overwhelmed me, physically and emotionally. I don't really know how to explain it, other than I suddenly had some first-hand empathy for drug addicts because in those weeks I would've done almost anything to feel better. I found myself at one point vomiting into a storm grate in a parking lot as a bunch of teenage boys looked on, and I walked away with bile on my shirt and wet pants because I had lost bladder control. It was a place of humiliation and despair that I have never experienced before or since. And I'm sharing it on the internet because even then, I never considered an abortion.
 |
| But I guess there are worse bad days |
A lot of people think that the abortion debate is just another overreach of Church into State. I am an above average religious person, but it wasn't about heaven or hell for me. It was just visceral. Every time I was sick, it was a reminder that a cluster of cells was still alive, still wanting to be alive. My baby didn't even have a heartbeat, and my body was already radically changing to be its life support.
It's a different magnitude, but it's essentially the same moral arithmetic that you do when you give blood. I will be uncomfortable now so that someone else can live later. That's the entire abortion debate in a nutshell for me. And so while I take the stance that abortion should be an option, I don't know why they need to be easy.
When Texas proposed changing the rules around abortion clinics, pundits bemoaned how difficult it would make it for low income women to get an abortion---some would have to drive upwards of 3 hours to get to an abortion clinic. Now there were some major problems with that legislation which needed to be challenged, but it wasn't for that reason.
If someone could've magically made my nausea go away, I would have crawled three hours both ways. I would have scrimped pennies and sold everything I owned to take a plane ticket to Nepal and hire a goatherd to guide my wretching body up the Himalayas. So I'm going to just own the title of self-righteous expletive when I say that if you can't summon the funds and willpower to accomplish a three hour drive, you don't need an abortion, and you're probably short-sighted if not completely self-absorbed.
That gastrula who made me so sick became my son. I waded in the river Styx and I came out on the other side with the little boy that tells me to wait when I close his bedroom door at night, saying "Momma kiss?" Yes, Love, I'll give you a kiss.
gastrula: n. a point in development where the baby looks like a cross between a snowman and an amoeba. The cells are clustered into three layers: the ectoderm which will become the skin, brain, and nervous system; the mesoderm which becomes the muscles, cardiovascular and skeletal systems; and the endoderm which will make up the lungs and gut organs. Occurs in humans around the 3rd week, about the same time that "morning" sickness starts in many women.
I didn't really know it then, but that interaction is why I chose to keep hurting. Why I chose to just keep breathing, and hold it together for one more hour every hour. Yes, my son deserved to live. But more than that I deserved to have a son. And all of those women who feel like they just can't -- deserve to have those children too. So to take that option from yourself needs to be a serious undertaking. Labor is spontaneous, but abortion should be labored.
I'm not really trying to convince anyone that my opinion is right. Mostly, I just wrote this to explain why I'm really incapable of understanding why abortion needs to be easy. My experience being pregnant was just too rough for me to forget it or leave it aside when I approach the issue.
-Stephanie
Abortion is a tough topic because it is an emotional one; however I think we have failed as a society by making it a women's right issue and not an accountability issue. I completely support a woman's right to make her own choices. Which is why I think it is important that she choose whether or not to be sexually active, whether or not to utilize any number of hormonal or physical contraceptive devices, and whether or not to be aware of her cycle and plan accordingly. I strongly support education in all of these regards so that women understand the choices they are making. What I struggle with is that except in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother being in serious hazard, abortions are avoiding the consequences of a series of choices that woman has already made. We live in a world where people don't want to take responsibility for the choices they have made. That is why we cheat on tests, lie to employers, and accrue large amounts of debt. We want what we want without the consequences and it just doesn't work that way. For me abortion is the worst of these offenses. Children take all that you have to give and then some. I cannot imagine raising a child without familial support and especially a wonderful father and husband; however not having that does not make it ok to terminate the potential person. We have to be accountable for the choices we have already made and either choose to allow another family to raise that child or rise to the challenge and become the parent that child needs. I know it isn't as simple as that, but it should be. We need to educate women so they can make good informed choices about their own bodies and then expect that the natural consequences of those choices will follow, not provide an easy way to avoid accountability.
ReplyDelete