Early in December of 2003, I discovered that I was pregnant. This was joyous news, for my husband and I had been trying but not trying to have a child. It was scary. It was wondrous. It was mind boggling to know that I now had a life growing inside of me. I felt instantly connected to this new life. I would speak to it often when alone so it would know my voice and hopefully understand how much I love it already. It was strangely comforting knowing that I was never alone. I tried my best to take good care of myself. I’m not really good at this, as I will often put others needs before my own. But I knew now it wasn’t just me that needed to be healthy, so I began to take care of me. To say that I was happy would be majorly downplaying the continuous burst of joy that overwhelmed my heart. My husband and I agreed that we would wait to spread our news. We knew that sometimes things happen and we waited to make sure everything was good before we told the world.
As Christmas neared, we discovered that this feat would be a lot harder than we thought it would be. So we made a decision to announce our news creatively. We purchased “I love Grandma” and “I love Grandpa” bibs and wrapped them as presents for the soon to be seven grandparents. Christmas day we traveled to four places and delivered our special news. Everyone was so pumped by the news that I couldn’t tell them I wasn’t feeling well. I tried to ignore the painful cramps that traveled down my lower back and made me feel like my uterus was pushing itself out. I convinced myself that it was just severe constipation that was brought on by the prescription prenatal vitamins and some water and roughages would fix me right up. I couldn’t bear the thought that I could quite possibly be on the verge of letting everyone that we just told, down.
The day after Christmas, I returned to work at my retail job. Shortly after I began my shift, the light spotting I had been experiencing that morning became heavier. I began to fear that I was losing this new life I had loved from the start. My husband began trying to contact my doctor and I was trying to get my boss to help me cover my managing shift so that I could go and get checked out. Unfortunately my boss at the time, though a woman, didn’t see the urgency of my needing to go leave to see a doctor. My concerns were met with others telling me some bleeding happens. So I struggled to remain chipper to the customers and tried my best not to reveal the pain nor the anxiety I was feeling inside. I tried to hide my many trips to the bathroom. Each trip, praying that the bleeding had stopped. Finally after several hours, I got another manager to come in early so that I could leave.
Later that day in the emergency room, I discovered that my worst fears were reality. I was miscarrying. Though my body was still acting pregnant, the “tissue” that had been the life I was carrying was leaving my body. That was why I had been cramping so very badly. My husband and I found ourselves sitting in a room for hours with a container of “tissue” on the counter. “Tissue” that we believed had been our forming child. I stared at the contents of the container that didn’t resemble a human feeling heart broken and empty. I blamed myself. I must’ve done something wrong that caused this to happen. I must’ve drank one too many caffeinated drinks, worn to high of heels, didn’t eat healthy enough or maybe I was broken. It took me a long time to realize none of these things were the case.
A few days later, a supposed friend invited me out under the pretense of getting my mind off of what had happened. It was while we were in a store that I found out this was really more about something else. She cornered me and started interrogating me on why I had not shared my pregnancy news with her. I explained that we had only known ourselves for a few weeks and had decided to not tell anyone yet. That later as a couple, we had decided to announce it to our parents on Christmas right before we miscarried. But no matter how insistent I was that this was a personal matter and choice on how we shared it, my friend believed that my news would affect her wedding plans so I had been required to share it with her. She worked incredibly hard to make me feel guilty for the decision my husband and I had made. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. I knew it then and I know it now. This whole experience had been the worst thing I had ever been through and haunts me even now as I am a mother of two.
With this experience in my history, some might find it strange that I am a pro-choice advocate. I will say that just like everyone else I do not love abortion, but I do understand the need a woman has to be able to have that choice be a legal and safe option. I understand what it is like to have a life inside of you pass away. So I would say that the choice to end such a life would be an incredibly difficult one. A difficult personal choice that should remain between the woman, the father if he is not a rapist, and her doctor. The government (mostly lead by men) should not have the ability to take that choice away from her. We don’t see them making laws that control a man’s reproductive parts so why feel the need to tell a woman she can’t make a necessary decision regarding hers?
I have witnessed a “public figure” (I use that term very loosely) get bent out of shape because the Gillette commercial encouraged men to be their best selves. This commercial, if you haven’t seen it, touches on bullying, sexual harassment and assault. This male “public figure” became triggered that this commercial was telling him how to raise his boys. So triggered that he posed in a field with his three children. He and his young boys held firearms while his daughter, weaponless, posed in a pretty dress with a flower headband. He posted this picture exclaiming to Gillette that he would raise his boys as he chose to. But within days of this post, he began to argue that abortion shouldn’t be legal that women shouldn’t be allowed to commit murder. Literally sending the message to the world that don’t tell me to teach my sons not to sexually assault women but if a woman is assaulted, I will tell her she can’t have an abortion. So why is it that we women shouldn’t be allowed to have a choice on what happens to our bodies? Why is it that himself and others like him believe that our rights can be so easily ignored?
But what about the lives of the innocent? Isn’t a person a person no matter how small? People have asked and argued with me. Here’s the thing they may not realize. I know all of those arguments. I know them because I used to give them myself when I was a self-righteous sixteen year old who was pro-life and ignorant of just how difficult this choice was to make in either direction. It wasn’t until I realized that I couldn’t look a woman in the eyes who had been brutally raped and tell her that she had to carry her rapist’s child to term. I realized I couldn’t use the excuse of you can just give it up for adoption, as I realized what kind of life that could mean for the child. How could I look a woman in the eyes and say I know that your child has severe medical issues and would spend every day of its life in complete and utter agony but you must allow it that agony? How in the world could I feel justified in telling a mother who may have another child that her life or her need to mother her other child(ren) is not as important as the life forming inside of her? How could I tell a woman who doesn’t have the means to raise the child that she must have it? I know how some view those who receive government assistance. I know how this current administration wants to strip away that very aid that the mother in need would get. And crazy enough those are the same people that will tell her to have the child. But once it is outside the womb they could care less in ensuring it survives. Thus this group of people are not pro-life they are merely pro-birth. As a wise woman said, “They can’t actually say that their intent is that women must be punished for having sex whether or not it was consensual. To actually admit this instead of speaking of the innocent lives lost, wouldn’t bring many to the cause.” I realized that I couldn’t demand any of those things I listed above. I realized that it was not my place to judge nor my choice to make. I will tell you now that these decisions are too difficult and too multilayered to be placed into black and white scenarios.
The truth of the matter is that abortions have been occurring since way before you and I or even our grandparents existed. Making abortions illegal will not STOP them from happening when they have been used long before they were made legal. The fact remains that when abortions are made safe and legal and are accompanied by safe sex education and birth control their numbers actually decrease. The amount of lives lost are lowered. No one likes abortion. If you are against them then it’s simple, you have the CHOICE not to have one. But the key is that you have the CHOICE. That choice is not something you should try and take away from others because you don’t like it. I have been lucky in my life that I have never been in a position to have to make such a decision. But I can tell you with every ounce of truth that is in me that if I ever found myself there I do not know what choice I would make. Each one of us wouldn’t know for sure either unless we have walked in those shoes.
“Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom that said he was in love.
He said “Don’t worry about a thing, baby doll I’m the man you’ve been dreaming of”
But three months later he say he won’t date her or return her calls
And she swear, “God damn, if I find that man I’m cutting off his balls,”
And then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walking through the door.
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner and they call her a whore.
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes
‘Cause then you really might know what it’s like to have to choose.”-Everlast
