Politics

I hate politics.  Doesn't everybody?  Perhaps.  But very few people hate politics this week quite as much as a woman who once needed and obtained a third trimester abortion.

As longtime readers here know, I am that unlikely woman.

When most people hear "congress is going to vote on a 20 week abortion ban, later this week..." they change the channel.  When I hear it, I go PTSD and talk to the voices in my head for a week.

I lost a loved and wanted baby because she was so ill that I could not live with bringing her into this world alive. I have been grieving her for two and a half years.  I lived, for a long time, in fear.  In fear of complications.  In fear of domestic terrorists.  In fear of rejection from my community.  It's been a devastating ride -- and yet, it remains the best decision I've ever made for myself or for my family.  My abortion is my life's bravest and truest act.  It has broken me down and built me back up again, full of fierce love.

Politicians want to make a criminal out of me, not so much because they "value life," as they would have you believe -- but because it is POPULAR.  The criminalization of me is popular.  The imprisonment of my doctor, my savior, would be popular.  The politicians don't care one iota for my baby girl, nor do they care about me or my husband or my living children, nor the dozen or so sisters of circumstance I've met in my support network, but they care a great deal about riding this wave of popularity.

And so they vote.  Leering and smirking and making sure they get on record saying the meanest, most spiteful things they can muster, they vote.

I always hesitate to write about late-term abortion on my blog.  It's a very divisive topic.  I don't want to drive everybody here away, but I'm going to write about it tonight.  I'm not writing for the politicians.  I have nothing but curses and bile for them.  I'm writing to the regular, everyday people with love in their hearts.  That is to say, this is for almost everyone.

I want to tell you all that I understand why, the later the abortion, the more uncomfortable it makes you.  Very late abortion makes me uncomfortable, too.  Mine is the latest abortion I have ever heard of.  I delivered my baby on the last day of the procedure, 36 weeks, 0 days of pregnancy.  One week shy of full term.  I have been uncomfortable for two and a half years.  It's okay for you to be uncomfortable, too.

I want you to understand that I used to think the abortion issue revolved about the metamorphosis
of a bunch of cells to an embryo to a fetus to a baby.  I don't think that anymore.  Mine was a baby.  A whole, beautiful, adorable, baby -- bigger than many who live.  I am talking about babies here.  Not just any babies -- I am talking about MY baby.  My daughter.  My forever baby girl.

I want you to know about my abortion in all the hard detail, because as painful as it is to read it (and it is painful to read it), it is not the violent spectacle that you are probably imagining.  My abortion began, after a full day of counseling and testing, with an injection to my baby's heart.  One shot.  One, compared to the many that would have welcomed her to this world had she been born live.  I imagine it hurt a bit, but she did not seem to protest.  As her heart slowed, and as her body settled, I held her close and warm in my womb.  I serenaded her with my heartbeat.  I surrounded her with my love.  I cried big tears.  I sorely missed holding her in my arms, and I reminded myself, to a baby, the womb is better than any arms.

She did not feel the next three days of my induction.  She was not there to witness the crushing power of my womb, nor the constriction of my pelvis as it stretched around her.  She did not hear me moan.  She never wailed her displeasure at the cold, dry air.  I delivered her, whole and slippery and still.  Her birth felt completely natural, for there was no anesthesia available.  When I viewed her sweet little body, my heart told me, "She isn't here.  This isn't her.  She's already gone."  And she was.

I want you to think about the idea of fetal pain, and to open yourself to the unpleasant reality that there is pain in this life.  There is pain in a birth, for both mother and baby.  There is pain in maintaining good health (inoculations, pap smears, tending cavities), and there is pain, inevitable pain and suffering, in illness and in death.  Is there pain in the womb?  Probably.  I don't know when it begins, but surely before the 36th week.

Long before my abortion, still looking forward to a healthy baby, I used to feel my baby moving, but not with the deliberate, responsive motions of my eldest.  This baby was always jittering, jerking.  I later learned that seizures were a symptom of her disease.  She was seizing in the womb.  Was that uncomfortable?  Did that cause her pain?  Probably.  Was her death uncomfortable?  Perhaps.  But if I had delivered this baby live, in the few short months or years she could live, I am certain she would have suffered more.  Fetal pain is sad.  It is something we hope to avoid.  It is also limited in a way that living pain, outside of the womb, is not.  Never let anybody tell you he cares about fetal pain if he doesn't give a hoot about living pain, too.

Lastly, I want to touch on eugenics, because it always seems to come around to eugenics.  You know, Hitler tried to breed a super-race.  Part of his terrible plot was to eliminate the weak, the disabled, the helpless.  He used abortion as a took to these ends.  It was an abomination.  He was racist, ableist, antisemitic, and downright evil.

I am not Hitler.  I do not want to wipe out all the children with brain malformations on the face of the planet.  Quite the contrary, I want to hold them up, help them thrive, support their healthcare, support their families.  I want to form connection with families who have chosen to end pregnancies to spare their children disability, and I also want to make lots of new friends who have chosen to bring their disabled babies into this world and do the best they can.  I want to be there for the families who never get any choice, but face the illness or disability of a child after birth.  OF COURSE I want all of this.  I am the mother of a disabled child.  Of course I want to befriend other mothers of disabled children.  Of course I want to build a better world for those who live with disability.

I won't pretend it isn't difficult for me to form relationships with mothers of special needs children.  Sometimes I see my daughter in their children, and I wonder, "what if..." and I go home and have a good cry.  Mostly, I just fear their judgment.  They have faced hard choices, too, and sometimes it's more comfortable for them to vilify me than to accept me.  And so I do the only thing there is to do when I feel uncomfortable and vulnerable:  I open my heart, put faith in my fellow man, trust in myself, and give them my love.

That is what I'm asking of you today, when late-term abortion is on the table, and always, when life is hard and messy and you're feeling uncomfortable and there isn't one clear right answer for every situation:

Open your heart.  Put faith in your neighbors.  Give them autonomy over their own hardest crises.  Trust in your own goodness, believe that you know better than your legislators.  Most of all, give your love generously.

You don't have to choose whether to love my baby or whether to love me.  You're allowed to love us both.