As you probably know, the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade is coming up this Tuesday, January 22. Already the fetus fetishists are up in arms, doing their usual anal best to intimidate women into bearing children they can ill afford to, all to promote their 'ideology' and to perpetuate misogny throughout America.
This matter is of great personal interest to me, not just ecause of when it falls in the calendar.
You see, January 22 also happens to be my birthday.
More afer the fold...
I have had anti-choicers ask me "well, what if your mother had been able to abort you because of that horrid ruling?"
My reply: First of all, I was born in 1963, before Roe, so it woudln't have happened. You see, my mother is a nurse. Back when I was a child, she was an RN, and she worked the ER and saw firsthand what a botched illegal abortion looked like.
Second, I was a wanted child; my mother was a good Catholic who knew that bearing children was 'expected' of her, and I suspect that marriage and child-bearing was her protection from what her parents really wanted her to do; join a convent and become a nun.
Fast-forward to when I was a teen. My mother decided to quit work at a local hospital and work for Planned Parenthood. This is when things became interesting; we started to get death threats from the local 'pro-life' organization. These 'good christians' were so concerned for my mother's immortal soul that they felt they had to promise to kill her and myself and my siblings to 'save' us. Our house and property was repeatedly vandalized. Each time my mother called the local police, they shrugged indifferently and told her to 'get a different line of work'. Eventually they simply stopped responding to her calls and she began carrying a gun in her purse.
Yes, her 'profession' put her at odds with the Catholic Church, but the final thing that made her leave the Church was when the Priest suggested she commit suicide because she was a 'lost cause' in his eyes.
To this day the local Planned Parenthood clinic is beset by these 'christians' who practice their brand of domestic terrorism unchecked by the local police, who seem to think that 'protect and serve' only applies to people who think the government has the right to tell women what they can do with their bodies. Getting appointments is a challange because they are always short-staffed and cannot keep people working there. I have had several appointments cancelled because the Nurse Practitioner has 'health issues' which has become a code for 'she got another death threat today and is afraid to come to work again.'
So, I sit back and read the rantings of religious extremists who condemn the ruling and spew hate and threats against anybody, man or woman, who refuse to bow to their absolutist demands. I celebrate my birthday not so much grateful that my mother chose not to abort me, but grateful that she has devoted her life to understanding women who do find themselves needing to make that choice and conselling them with compassion and helping them make that choice with dignity.