Background: Before you start reading about my Dentist-Office experience, I just want to give you some of my past experiences with medical staff. I live in the reddest county of my state and deal with everyday experiences of, shall we say, audacious religious assumptions, all the time. But it is a beautiful place and the people (most of them) do mean well.
Yet, I’ve had many experiences where I have been given religious tracts and cards in the hospital and when I was told I had a life-threatening condition, the doctor gave me an invitation to his church right there in the Doctor’s office. Those are only a few examples. So let me tell you what happened yesterday (October 13):
Just got back from the Dentist. It was the first time I was there since the Covid began.
I was a little stressed because this morning, my kitchen sink got stopped up and I had tried to fix it, but was unsuccessful.
But I tried to relax as the Dental Hygienist (Jean) started to clean my teeth. She is a nice woman who has cleaned my teeth before. She has told me she belongs to the same church as my Dentist, so I already knew that about her.
Anyway, in the middle of cleaning my teeth, she started talking about the Senate questioning of Amy Coney Barrett today. She said “it should be interesting.” She had never spoken of politics before to me! For some reason, I thought, WOW, maybe she is pro-choice! She asked me if I had listened to any of the Senate hearing.
I said, “Yes.”
She asked me how Barrett’s answers were.
Anyway, when I had a chance I said something like, “She is keeping her answers very vague. Everybody knows exactly why she is being put forward for that Senate seat.”
She kept cleaning my teeth. “It’s so interesting...” She said.
I probably shouldn’t have, but I asked her why she thought it was interesting.
That’s when she said “Both sides are so passionate about their point of view.”
I said that I had listened to some of it, but Barrett’s answers upset me and I couldn’t watch the whole thing. I told her I had liked Judge Ginsberg.
She said, “Yes, Judge Ginsberg was someone who ‘broke the glass ceiling’ for women.”
Then she said she was “pro-life” and thought abortion should be illegal, and that it was ‘murder’ of a ‘baby.’ She asked me if I believed that and I said, “No, I believe that a woman has a choice about what happens in her own body.”
I asked her if she wanted to put women who had abortions in jail.
She said, “no, that’s not what this is about.”
I told her, “that’s exactly what this is about.”
Then I told her I had had an abortion when I was very young, and my sisters had each had one, too. And I asked her would she want to put us in jail?
Again, she said, “no.” And she said, “But it is murder. I have 2 daughters and when I look at them and ask ‘which one would I abort,’ there’s no way I could choose.”
I said, “That’s not equivalent.” It was hard to answer while she worked on my teeth!
Eventually, I told her I did not regret my abortion, but it was an awful time for me. I was young. But it was my choice. I was glad I had a choice. I also told her that I had to take a friend for a back-street abortion before it was legal, and that was much worse.
I said “These things are going to happen whether it’s legal or not.”
She said, after a while, “I have trouble about things like rape, though.”
“That’s where you draw the line?” I asked her.
“Yes.” she said.
She worked on my teeth some more. She was very gentle.
After she was done, I told her I appreciated she still worked well on “a murderer’s teeth.”
She smiled and said “I love everybody, no matter who they are.”
“You are a good Christian, then” I told her. “I find they are quite rare.”
We exchanged a look that said more than words.
She finished up and my Dentist came in. “Take care,” Jean told me as she left the room, “It was good to see you again.” “Good talking to you,” I told her. She smiled and nodded. “Yes.”
So then that was the last I saw of Jean......
Whew. Why do these things always happen to me when I got to the Doctor’s or Dentist’s? ;-) At least I was as honest as I could be with her.
Maybe she will think about things a little differently after our exchange. I can only hope so!
If I had more time, or we were in a longer conversation, I could have explained my belief system and also the circumstances of my life when my decisions were made. But, alas, I was limited in the way I could communicate, and was in a bit of a compromising position. I did my best. I can’t think of any other way I could have handled it.