I can’t believe we are going so far backwards in the USA and globally, after fighting so hard for women’s rights for so many years. The Alabama anti-abortion bill really hit a nerve. It seems to me the legislation is being crafted by people (majority party of white men, in many states) who are so far removed from the REAL nitty-gritty truth about pregnancy, birthing and motherhood that I needed to “girlsplain” it to them.
Dear Legislators:
Listen up: no one is PRO-abortion. We are anti-FORCED BIRTH. I assert that I am strongly pro-life BECAUSE I am pro-CHOICE. If you think that being “pro-life” is simply about outlawing abortions and even filing criminal charges against doctors and women who choose to end a pregnancy, I have some questions and observations for you.
Why is the incubation of a small lump of tissue with an inconclusive chance of survival more important than the safe, healthy, thoughtful, deliberate, meaningful life of the fully viable living, breathing person outside of whom it does not exist?
Why do you assume that a female—who may be described as anything from a barely-pubescent child to a near-menopausal woman—who makes the excruciating decision to terminate an unplanned pregnancy has NOT come to that conclusion with the full blessing of her god? (Insert your personal name for God here, according to your beliefs.)
Can you TRULY, FULLY imagine looking into the face of your: daughter/sister/wife/aunt/ mother/friend who is pregnant after being: raped/forced/pressured by a stranger or intimate partner, or molested by a: priest/uncle/father/brother/coach/caregiver/”harmless” family friend—CAN YOU JUSTIFY looking into that haunted face and insisting that it was God’s will this act was perpetrated on her, and that she must now endure the humiliation and potentially lethal process of carrying and delivering that criminal’s spawn? The experience of being raped, drugged, pressured or molested by someone who you should have been able to trust is incomprehensible to any woman or man who has not been through it.
Consider the following.... based on almost any casual conversation with those for whom childbearing is far from their life circumstances, and based on the demonstrated ignorance (via interviews) of politicians pushing their socially regressive agendas: the magnitude of the experience of enduring nine months of pregnancy is also incomprehensible to any woman or man who has not been through it. It may include weeks of daily vomiting, back pain, heartburn, crushing fatigue, tender swollen breasts, stretch marks and potentially unhealthy weight gain, plus a whole host of other physical challenges. It will definitely include giving up most of the medicines that could alleviate the symptoms just listed, as well as giving up many ordinary foods and beverages the unaware non-pregnant man or woman enjoys daily. The pregnancy can cause unexpected medical complications such as gestational diabetes or preeclampsia (life-threatening swelling & high blood pressure) in previously healthy women, or worsen any diseases or physical difficulties they had before becoming pregnant.
After many months of discomfort, the birth itself happens. The pain, terror and physical trauma of pushing a multi-pound infant through a tube of sensitive tissue that was once as small as one finger+one thumb is the culminating violence of birth; or perhaps that process fails and instead ends with a sharp knife slicing through skin and muscle. The experience of giving birth is one of the most intense and potentially deadly experiences any woman can endure.
The process of labor may start and stop initially; may happen in a short intense time or may stretch over eight, twelve, twenty-four, even forty-eight hours. Usually, the tender tissues at the outer end of the “birth canal” tear or must be cut—the stitches and swelling are only one of the discomforts after birth. Another real danger is life-threatening hemorrhaging after the placenta and baby are delivered, if the super-stretched uterine muscle doesn’t quickly shrink back to near-normal proportions. Plus, exposure to bacteria in the post-partum environment is a big risk factor for infections of internal organs or incision-sites of episiotomies or C-sections.
Almost immediately after the marathon effort of giving birth, the new mother must endure one or two more emotionally-charged situations....
She must learn how to feed the infant. If she is breastfeeding, the learning curve involves several weeks of trial and error, including overcoming any structural problems with her nipples or the baby’s ability to latch. The rest of it involves very brief periods of time when the newborn is NOT crying waiting for the milk to come in; then the pain of engorged, over-full breasts; constantly sore, damp nipple skin, with possible mastitis infection. Even once the process is mastered, newborns often need to be fed every 2-3 hours for the first three months of life—which means sleep interrupted as often. If the new mom chooses bottle feeding instead, she must learn to wash and sterilize all the bottles, nipples, caps and mixing equipment to prepare, refrigerate, then heat-to-serve bottles on demand for the same 2-3 hour feeding rotation. And the same care must be taken for all breastmilk pumping equipment, which may be necessary to encourage adequate milk production, and will be necessary once the standard brief maternity leave is over. (Assuming the mother has a job, or perhaps high school classes to return to.)
If she has chosen not to keep this newborn—whether or not she was forced by law to carry and bear—she is faced with the moment of handing it to a stranger and signing away her rights (having been stripped of her INALIENABLE right to say NO to forced labor!).
Whether or not any woman has a hoped-for child, or bears one due to loss of her rights to choose, the risk of post-partum depression is also very real and unpredictable. This may begin soon after birth, or within the first year or two. This type of depression has all the dangers of depression in any person – suicide, self-harm, neglect of the infant—with the added stigma of shame in failing to achieve the cultural myth of perfect, automatic, unconditional maternal love.
The physical, emotional, and psychological issues tied up in the entire process of pregnancy—especially any hard, traumatic facts surrounding the conception itself—are huge for EVERY woman, for EVERY pregnancy. They are endured with love and patience—at best!—when that woman wants and is able to care for a child, when she has a partner/spouse and other family & friends supporting her. If instead you add the heavy strain of an unwanted pregnancy to the social and financial burdens already facing a very young woman, a poor woman, a disabled woman, a woman with existing children she struggles to provide for—this enhances my argument that being pro-choice is very much about being pro-life.
Not all, but many of the most adamant anti-abortionists who have been working tirelessly and passionately to end all access to safe, legal abortions are doing so in the name of “Christian” values and beliefs. Many of them also use the rallying cry of “individual responsibility” to end all of the social “safety net” provisions available to those who need assistance. Why is it that the “individual” they want to hold responsible is not the man who was the child’s co-creator, but the fallen Eve they feel obligated to shame?
Such self-proclaiming “Christians” would cut taxpayer funding for WIC food assistance to low income families, cut funding for access to health care, cut funding for Head Start and early childhood education programs, cut food stamp allowances, cut reduced-price school lunch programs, cut after-school day care programs for working parents, cut education assistance for teen moms to complete their schooling, and on and on. They also seem to object to science-based sex education classes, object to free condoms in schools or any other proven programs to discourage teen pregnancy. They object to health insurance plans that pay for contraception for adults.
Where is the logic in cutting back on all the things that make it easier to AVOID unwanted pregnancies? Where is the human logic or Christian compassion in cutting back on all the things that would make the lives of the children who are the result of unplanned pregnancies—and the moms who are burdened with the lifelong care of such children—barely even tolerable? Where are all the concerned “Christians” who want to really help families through all the struggles associated with dropping out of school, playing catch-up economically, inability to find affordable housing or childcare, or even find a job that pays a living wage?
Finally, where is the outrage, outcry, shaming and felony convictions for the MEN WHO CAUSE UNWANTED PREGNANCIES????
If forced-birthers want to outlaw all abortion, thus ensuring a physical, emotional and lifelong financial burden upon any woman who gets pregnant unwillingly, then the equal justice should be physical castration for rapists or incestuous molesters; vasectomies for the “careless” fathers who took no equal responsibility for birth control; automatic child support required for the children who result—but NO contact with those children who are the result of rape.
If you are human, you have experience with your own parent-child relationship. If you are also a parent or a sibling, then you know the huge emotional range of family dynamics. If you are adopted and/or never knew your biological parents; if you were parented by toxic, mentally ill or abusive parents, then you know the horrendous cost of a hurtful, flawed relationship.
Where was God in all this? Some pastors, priests & philosophers answer that God was right in there with you, weeping beside you. It takes a lot of strength, willpower, counseling and the luck of finding other supportive relationships to overcome some of this inherent baggage. Can you truly justify a belief that every fertilized egg is sacred and all that matters is being born, not the quality of that life?
So, in summation, I ask: how is there any social good in ending access to safe, legal abortion? Where is the justice in forcing women to be mere incubators, to subjugate all their own plans, needs, ambitions, desires and the best gifts they can offer the world when the same law forces NO BURDEN upon the men who are at least equally responsible?
God is weeping in Alabama tonight.