Why Roe V. Wade Is Not Enough
Fri Jun 22, 2007 at 10:33:31 PM PDT
Crossposted at: http://www.myleftwing.com/...
In light of the many pro-choice-oriented diaries that have been coming out lately, I thought it would be fitting for me to share my story; this debate is often seen in such impersonal terms, but for many women here it's a very personal issue. I've seen three sides of it myself: adoption, legal abortion, and illegal self-induced abortion.
It is my hope to start a dialogue with the fence-sitters, the "safe, legal and rare" advocates, and those who would argue that federal money should not be used to fund abortion.
More below the fold. WARNING: GRAPHIC
When I was 19, I became pregnant after my live-in boyfriend of 2 years refused to take me to Planned Parenthood (a 20-minute drive, and I had no car) to get my Depo shot (his calendar had it marked for the following month). I'm allergic to latex and spermicide so there was no real question of a backup method. Suffice it to say, sex was had during that month, not all of it consensual. Lo and behold, I go in for my next checkup, and I'm pregnant (and my calendar was right).
At this point my boyfriend was rather angry. When they called us in to talk about our options, he basically said "She doesn't have any options," and marched me right out of the clinic. At that point...well, I didn't have any options. No money, no transportation, no family to count on, nothing.
So I suffered through five months of morning sickness, prenatal checkups, Medicaid paperwork, all the while trying to hide the pregnancy from everyone because I really truly didn't want to acknowledge or celebrate it. I kept working as a volunteer firefighter because it gave me a warm place to sleep at night away from him. But at five months I started to show, and everyone noticed and told me I couldn't ride calls or sleep in anymore. So I was pretty much consigned to go sleep at the father's house. In the meantime, his anger had just been building.
The first night I slept there, he punched me in the face and stomach. He finally revealed to me that he didn't want the baby any more than I did, but he couldn't have permitted me to have an abortion (his dad's Muslim). He felt that it was perfectly ok to force me to endure 9 months of pregnancy and risk my life and health so he wouldn't feel guilty about letting me kill a fetus. I looked at him...and it's a look I'll never forget to this day...as he knelt over me, bruised, crying, after he'd asserted his total power over my body and the decisions that ought to be mine to make. And then he raped me.
The last three months of the pregnancy were a nightmare. I was constantly in pain - either from the beatings and rapes, or from the contractions that always seemed to start in earnest when I was stressed or dehydrated. I spent probably half the time in the hospital. I always denied the "domestic violence" question, despite clear evidence to the contrary; I spoke to lots of social workers, but I wanted nothing to do with them.
My daughter was born on August 1st, 2002. God only knows what trauma she endured before she was born; I know she endured quite a lot of NICU trauma after birth to correct a tracheoesophageal fistula. But I also know the family who adopted her, and I believe that they will do their best. I celebrate their gain, but I wish that I had truly had the right to choose.
My second pregnancy was at 22. I was newly married, we were a dual-active-duty couple, both young and still not ready for kids. But...birth control precautions started to slip a little bit for newlyweds..soon enough I was pregnant. Luckily, in Southern California, Planned Parenthood is everywhere. We got there in time for a medical abrtion, and the people there were very kind and caring. The cost wasn't even that bad. I struggled emotionally somewhat with this decision, but in the end it was the right thing to do, and most of all, it was my choice (Cali PP didn't even let partners into counseling sessions).
My third was at age 24, due to rape. We were about to leave on deployment, we were getting drunk and rowdy down in san diego, and some of my "shipmates" decided to spike my drinks with some substance. I wake up in their hotel room naked in a ball in the corner by the heater, bleeding and in pain. The room is empty. I can't report this - the Navy is, shall we say, not exactly receptive to claims about druggings, and would be more likely to send me to mast for adultery and illegal drug use than to punish my "shipmates" for rape.
Medical was of course closed that night, but when I went the next morning to ask for the morning after pill, they said they didn't carry it. I have trouble believing this, and the corpsman could have been lying, but it's not exactly a subject I want to push. I just hope and pray. But 2 weeks later, I come up pregnant.
They don't do abortions on Navy ships. Period. It's not even like a ground base in Iraq, where you can go beg some old midwife to do it for you and hope she doesn't kill you in the process...nobody does them. And they wouldn't fly me off until I hit the 20 week mark (oddly enough, that's the mark where abortion expenses skyrocket and hardly anyone provides them). So I tough it out, fuel and hazardous materials and all, try to do my job as best I can while attempting to eat what passes for a balanced diet of green, yellow, orange, brown, red and pink slop.
At 20 weeks, they fly me home. I check on abortion providers in my area. Only one does them at 21+ weeks, and the cost is $3000-5000. Not pocket change. Don't have it, can't get it, and even if I did, can't just take 2 days off work at the clinic's convenience. All this time I'm just screaming "Get this thing out of me!!" but nobody will listen. Finally, in an act of total desperation, I take matters into my own hands. I use a knitting needle through my (luckily incompetent) cervix to break my amniotic sac. I'm hoping to induce labor, but nothing happens...so after a few hours of gushing fluid I go to the ER. They tell me that the pregnancy can't be allowed to continue because of the risk of infection, that the baby won't be viable either way because of its age, and that I can either wait for labor to start on its own or I can let them induce it. I go with the induction.
That was the most godawful painful experience of my life (far worse than my daughter's birth). It was traumatic for me, for the doctor, for the nurses...I felt terribly sorry to have put them through that, to make them deliver a stillborn baby. But it all could have been avoided simply by allowing medical abortions on navy ships.
The weird thing is that I don't regret that one. I'm angry. I'm angry at the military political climate that punishes rape victims. I'm angry that the War on Drugs has been taken so far that a young military woman, showing all physical signs of rape, has to fear drug charges for having Rohypnol in her system. I'm angry at the govenment's refusal to provide any kind of care for deployed soldiers and sailors - in fact, their deliberate effort to keep sailors and soldiers deployed until it's too late to access care.
And I'm coming full circle here - I'm angry at the man who wanted to force me to bear his child, but didn't want to raise it. I'm angry at the clinic that called him in for my options counseling. I'm angry at the law that made me have to get him to drive to that clinic in the first place instead of just walking to my general practitioner. I'm just foaming, steaming, hopping MAD!
I suppose my point in all this is that we need to start working to go a whole lot farther than Roe v. Wade in the protection of women's reproductive rights. Military women, battered women, disabled women and minors get the worst deal - but we're all affected. So what more can we do?
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