My state, Colorado, is one of the states where the right-wingers are trying to get abortion on the ballot. I was told that Ohio is even trying to outlaw some birth control. My view on the subject is unpopular even among liberals but I feel the need to voice it.
Two and a half years ago, on a hot July weekend, I lay in a hospital bed at the end of the maternity ward of Boulder Community Hospital. I was not there to have a baby. A routine medical exam had discovered a large mass in my womb. Most of the time, the womb does not have to be removed in such cases. In my case, the womb was not saveable. Around me, in the maternity ward, women were readying to have babies, either speed walking the hospital or recovering from births.
Many people listen to this and feel a kind of pity for me. The hospital put me in the end room alone perhaps to give me a sense of privacy in my tragic time. But in actuality, I was breathing a sigh of relief. I wanted nothing to do with that other life.
I grew up in Western New York suburbia in the 1970's and '80's, which could be a post card for those who think nothing is better than having a yard of green grass, a swimming pool, a dog, and a houseful of kids. The neighborhood was reasonably close knit and there was even a field where the kids played ball in the lot adjacent to ours. The area was very Republican, conservative. There was a feminist movement outside of our region, in the larger nation but my neighborhood was stuck in the '50's, the men generally went out and worked, the women generally stayed home and raised children, baked cookies, cleaned the house and hosted kids' birthday parties. Again, many see this life as very idyllic. But even when I was young, I could sense it was not. Alcoholism was rampant among the hard working men. They got together; they got drunk. I could see the toll the life of a homemaker was taking on the women, the undercurrent of desperation among them.
When I was around 7, my mother decorated the house for a baby shower for a friend while my father took my brother and I to see the Finger Lakes region to keep us out of her hair when she entertained. A year later, the friend in question brought her baby over. Her older daughter was very good with the baby, knew what to do, thought it fun. I wanted nothing to do with the child. I think even then, I made the decision that I would not fall into the same trap the women of my neighborhood had fallen into--motherhood. It made no sense to me. Like I said, my views are not popular. It would have been nicer to have said that I could not stop holding the baby and it was great fun to have around. But that was not what happened. Even then, I did not want children. When I was a little girl, I avoided playing "House" and other popular little girl games. I found them excruciatingly boring but those games were designed to prepare the girl for a life of rearing children in suburbia, not for making a life she really might want. I remember my dad begging me to ask for a doll for birthday or Christmas and finally I relented and the doll just ended up collecting dust in the corner only to be taken out once in a blue moon. I was not supposed to be a person, I was supposed to be a role.
There was a lot of pushback on the part of my family and my peers. School was a living hell for me when I was in my teens. My family took me for psychological testing. It turned out I was healthy if scared. I guess the rest of the world was crazy. My peers wanted to have kids when they grew up. They said that children are so sweet and innocent and pure. I remember these sweet, innocent and pure children slamming me against a parked school bus because I had glasses and looked nerdy. So much for sweet, innocent and pure. I still wasn't convinced. My parents were concerned for me. I didn't want to get married. I didn't want kids. I was the fly in the oitment with their world view. They thought I would live a very lonely life.
I did grow up. I did get married. My husband is more amenable to children than I am but he still doesn't want kids of his own. His sister, on getting married, was pressured by relatives to the point of rude and uncalled for to have children. Yet I made it clear that we would be child free. I am lucky they were accepting of it. My terror I might conceive, though, almost ruined my marriage for I am the one who avoids friends with small kids and complains about noisy babies in restaurants. To be confined with a small child 24-7 would be a living hell for me. Not long before I got married, there was a newspaper article about a woman who should not be put in charge of a child starving her three year old grandson almost to death then played tennis with him as the ball against the basement wall when he reached for food.
Before I had surgery, people told me I was young and that I would change my mind once I figured out the ol' biological clock is ticking, a rude and arrogant thing to say to someone since it assumes you know more about what is in their heart than they do. Before my surgery, the topics of abortion and birth control were visceral to me, topics of great terror that I would be stuck with a kid I didn't want. Notably, shortly after the surgery, I was in a restaurant. Closeby was a table with a group of religious-right. The children were loud and running wild. The mother had this desperate look in her eyes that she looked almost to the point of breaking. I worried for the lives and the health of her kids that she was pushed so far by a group of men in her family who didn't give a shit for her well-being. I thought I was seeing the birth of the next Lizzie Borden.
Now that I see a little more clearly, I see that the institute of parenthood is very twisted up, warped. There is little wisdom in teaching your daughters young to grow up to be mothers. It takes a great deal of strength in the face of a lot of prejudice to be break free of that early training and decide not to have children. Yet it can be the most humanitarian choice a human being can make not to have children. Any moron can become pregnant or get a woman pregnant. God's teeth! This nation has more kids than it can take care of and the birth rate is in decline! That is why I believe that the pro-choice stance is important, in part because someone who does not like kids should not be forced to have one for that kid will not be well loved or happy. It shows that one who dislikes children can show more love and compassion to children than one who "loves children so much" they think they are being humanitarian in "saving the unborn babies".