Welcome back to Connect! Unite! Act! This week will seem a bit direr than most, because to pretend otherwise denies the reality everyone currently faces. There are a huge number of Americans who do not remember life before Roe. I don’t, and I’m fast closing in on 50. I was still only an infant in 1973 when the ruling occurred. So I never lived in a world where it was not an option.
I grew up in a very religious household, and my parents were of course strongly opposed to abortion, as was our family priest. As a kid, I accepted my parents’ views. My mother, who had six children, did so at great risk to herself. She battled cervical cancer and had challenges during every pregnancy. With the birth of my baby sister, on Christmas day in 1980, she would have her fourth C-section. We gathered around to share gifts Christmas morning before she went in, and even as a young child, it was made clear that the expectations were that mom may not come home, but we would have a new sister. I’ve got to tell you, as a child, I wanted my mom and a new sister, not one or the other. As an adult, I realize the choices my mother made for our family and for her beliefs. What made all of it so special was that she had a choice. Every child born after Roe was a child she chose to have, even at personal risk to herself.
I drive by signs in Kansas that read “choose life” and I always think, the only way you can “choose life” is if you are provided options as well as respect for your own beliefs. When you take those away, no one is “choosing” anything. They simply have no options. I knew I was a wanted child. So did my family members. I’m not so sure about those born after the current ruling—and how would you feel? My mother had no choice, so here I am?
What is convoluted as well is how we determine and establish what choice is and what choice means. I was watching the Selling Sunset reunion this morning, and was shocked and saddened to learn that Maya, a realtor on the show, delivered a stillborn child at 38 weeks pregnant.
I’ve known two people in my life who have endured such incredible pain. One was a friend whose child was stillborn in the sixth month of pregnancy. It was traumatic. There were a ton of tears, hurt, and guesswork as to what she may have done wrong. She did nothing wrong, assured the doctors, it just happened. Because carrying a stillborn child to term would be fatal to her, she underwent a medical procedure that is banned under most restrictive abortion laws.
The second time I experienced something like this was an even greater trauma. Early into a pregnancy, a coworker discovered they would be having triplets. But one of the three would not be able to survive to term due to a condition that can best be described as “not conducive with life.” The doctors recommended “selective reduction,” I believe, in order to help make sure that the other two would survive to term with the best shot she would have at healthy childbirth.
They had been trying for some time to have children with fertility plans, but they did not expect triplets. Now, they would be in a position where one of the three could not survive. If they did nothing, none of the three would survive.
These are the complex decisions that exist between a family and their doctor. They are tough. They can be heartbreaking. They aren’t taken lightly. I didn’t see anyone blasting music and celebrating as they prepared to go to a clinic.
Republicans on Twitter and elsewhere are celebrating this idea. It is easy to find videos of Republican men talking about why being forced to carry to term is the right answer. It is easy, very easy to talk in hypotheticals. “Well, if it were my wife...,” they say, but it isn’t. Frankly, we lost track of the fact that there is no universal situation and health care is not identical for everyone.
We talk about Connect! Unite! Act! as a way for us to connect with each other. There are very few things that connect us like the love for our partners and for our families. We just don’t want anyone to be harmed, and we want to do the best we can to protect the people we love. It is a defining characteristic, I believe, of most of humanity. We want to believe we are the good guys in our own story, that we are looking out for each other.
That’s why anti-choice organizations refer to themselves as “pro-life,” but get back to me on the number who are donors of bone marrow, organs, and blood for strangers. I would bet they would do it for a family member, however. That’s great. It also exemplifies the problem with attaching “pro-life” universally by one set standard. Because to me, pro-life might mean saving a woman from a child they can’t carry. Allowing her to give birth to twins instead of potentially none. It means not prosecuting women for miscarriages.
Ok, with the hard stuff out of the way, I want to point out we are having the Daily Kos 20th anniversary Cheers & Jeers gathering via zoom, please send me KosMail if you would like to attend!
Just some of my thoughts on this week.