Election Day

This election season has been excruciating to me.  The few short months since my family's traumatic and extremely personal loss have been marked by the rallying cries of clueless politicians against logic, science, considerate planning, and family freedom. 

It was this season that rape was divided into "legitimate" rape and the assumed illegitimate rape -- you know, the kind that renders a woman pregnant.  The kind she was presumably asking for by wearing that cute outfit.  It was the season of restrictions against abortion across the country, flying in the face of previous supreme court decisions.  And, completely illogically, this has been the season when anti-choice politicians have taken it upon themselves to also oppose responsible and strongly supported methods of birth control, too. 

This article about sums it up -- and it was written weeks before one politician claimed -- falsely -- that, thanks to the magical modernity of medicine, abortion is never needed to save a woman's life.  (It absolutely still happens, FYI.)  Since then, too, we've heard that a woman who gets pregnant after rape is just part of god's plan. 

I am, mercifully, not a rape survivor.  But I am the survivor of a devastating and uncommon family tragedy in which my baby, Laurel, is better off dead than she would have been alive.

We told the doctor that, should our baby be unable to eat, we did not believe in placing a feeding tube.  We would like to write up a do-not-resuscitate order, and deny artificial feeding.

We were told that we could decline restarting of the heart and the ventilator, but that we could not decline a feeding tube.

Let me say that again: we were told that we could not refuse to have a tube stuck into our baby's stomach when she was unable to eat for herself for lack of appropriate brain tissue to coordinate the action.  That we had to feed our baby and keep her alive when she had nothing to look forward to but constant, migraine-like pains for the rest of her existence.

That is bullshit, and Hub and I both knew it.  I want my readers to know it, too.  Of course we can refuse a feeding tube.  But not at a hospital.  At a hospital they will slip it in anyway.  At a hospital, as soon as the shift turns over, your DNR will likely go ignored.  Nobody gets in trouble for restarting the heart of a baby whose parents have insisted against it. 

We would have to take Laurel into our home in order to protect her.  We would have to keep her well out of the hospital in order to let her die as peacefully as possible.  Comfort care.  We could supply it ourselves.

In doing so, we might attract the attention of the doctors we had worked with and the social workers already lined up to be in our home every day once Laurel arrived.  Just taking Laurel home to refuse the feeding tube could have sparked an investigation.  Elsie could have been taken from us for the duration of the fiasco, maybe longer.  We might be deemed unfit parents.

It was not a good place to be.

Though I am not a rape survivor, when I hear politicians confidently talking about how bad abortion is, how awful these stupid mothers are, how little we value the lives of our babies, it brings me to my knees.

I want to reach through the computer and shake them.  I want to scream:

"You don't know!  You have no idea what you would do to save your sick baby.  A mother would do anything to save her child.  Anything!  You don't understand, you vile, miserable old man!"

Then there are the cries of EUGENICS!

"Only someone emotionally removed from this situation could be so academic about it.  If I was a eugenicist, I would want to force other people with mutant babies to end their pregnancies.  I do not.  I only want to support families in this terrible situation no matter what they choose.  We all make the only choice we can live with.  That isn't eugenics!"

My words fall on deaf monitor, and on an ignorant population.  I can't blame them, really.  Who wants to stare that square in the face: a mother would do anything to save her baby, even if it meant destroying her.  It isn't neat and tidy, and it doesn't make anybody feel good. 

***

Today I voted.

I voted against my senator who supported the tyranny of religious institutions stepping between healthcare providers and employees seeking birth control, and who supported the measure that denies medical coverage of abortions for anyone on government payroll, even when they will die without the intervention.  Thanks for your service, but come up with the cash quickly, or die, ladies. 

I voted for a presidential candidate who I know will support family freedom.  Fluctuations in the economy are expected and acceptable.  Fluctuations in my basic rights are not. 

Most importantly, I voted for Massachusetts 2, death with dignity.  Unfortunately, it could not have been used to help Laurel.  It is only for adults who are able to ask for the help themselves.  But it will save somebody, and it is a start.  I cried filling in that circle. Freedom over our bodies, even making radical choices in sad circumstances, is the greatest and most basic freedom of all.

Tomorrow, this season of my hell will be over.  People will take down their signs and I won't be constantly reminded of my misunderstood circumstances anymore. 

I wish so very deeply that my daughter will grow up into a world where her body and her most heartfelt, loving, brave choices are not fodder for political debate.  Vote your conscience.  If you don't know what that is, think hard.  It's simple.  Do unto others...