A nun, a priest and two guys walk ....

up and down in front of an abortion clinic. I only wish I had a funny punch line.

In five days people without uteri and those people who have dedicated their lives to celibacy will descend on the clinic where I had my abortion to commemorate Lent by protesting at an abortion clinic (why just give up sweets when you can harass women on what may be the most difficult day their life?). Odd, you would think these people would be familiar with the Biblical injunctions to “judge not lest ye be judged" or “let ye who is without sin cast the first stone” but apparently not so much. They feel compelled to pray in public despite Jesus’ description of hypocrites who love to pray ... on the street corners to be seen by men.

When not praying, these protesters hand out misinformation leaflets stressing the alleged medical complications of abortion (the CDC estimates that less than 20 women die annually in the United States as a result of abortion), as well as the spurious link between abortion and breast cancer. Mixed in with the erroneous medical data are offers to help women sue their abortion providers for medical malpractice and Bible verses.

Many abortion clinics have escorts, women and men who shield women from such protesters. “Bubble zone” laws vary greatly from state to state and on private versus public property, but in some cases the protesters can get shockingly close to patients as they enter the building. For liability reasons, the clinics rarely organize the escorts themselves. Your local NOW chapter may organize it, as is the case where I live.

If you live in a state with an inadequate zone, shoot off an email to your Congressperson urging them to support stronger clinic access laws.

Hey TLC How about abortion stories?

Perhaps when I next travel to the West Coast, I can do a TV series pitch.

Since having my abortion, it has become the experience through which pretty much everything reproductive is refracted

Yesterday, while frolicking in an indoor kiddie play place, I chanced to overhear a conversation between a dad with two kids, and a woman who I initially took to be a grandmother. Somehow the two had struck up a conversation and eventually revealed that both families had been created via IVF. I immediately thought how wonderful that the stigma of infertility had been lessened so much that virtual strangers would discuss their intimate reproductive histories in public.

Tonight, I happened upon yet another TV show focusing on a "mega family." These folks, my age BTW, have 12 kids ranging from 19 to 1. Despite recent media focuses on the "new" big families, such people represent a very small fraction of the population of the United States (depending on how you define large family of course, but 4% of women have five or more children by the age of 44, the cutoff used by demographers when calculating fertility rates).

The truly remarkable demographic shift of our time is the number of women who never bear children (about 20% of women have no children by the age of 44). In an era of increased reproductive technologies, it seems reasonable to conclude that a large number of these women have chosen to remain "childfree" "childless" or whatever label they choose to apply to themselves. Through birth control and yes, abortion, these women have curtailed their fertility.

So TLC, Discovery Health, Lifetime, where are the show about those reproductive choices?

because having a uterus of ones own does count for something

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Pancreas and my right to an abortion - two things I never linked in the past.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (henceforth RBG), with her white lace color, so Elizabethen in that sea of old men, like the Virgin Queen herself, had surgery for pancreatic cancer. Ever the tough old broad that she appears, RBG vows to be back on the bench when the court reconvenes in three weeks. I really hope so.

The dissent she authored in Gonzales v. Carhart cut straight to not only the heart the stunningly paternalistic majority decision, but the weak legal reasoning on which Roe V Wade so precariously rests. Her stirring defense of women's reproductive rights as more than "some vague or generalized notion of privacy" but of "a woman's autonomy to decide for herself her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature," was an articulate explanation by someone who, you know, actually has a uterus, and conceivably (get the pun?) could have had an abortion.

Sadly RBG's prediction years ago that she would be joined soon by sister justices proved overly optimistic. Apparently while women comprise the majority of the population of the United States, they need only a little more than 10% representation on the highest court in the land.

TMI?

It is hard to believe that it has been just a week since my abortion. I saw my therapist, which while tearful, proved helpful.

Still I cannot resist posting that one of my fav blogs is contemplating the messy realities of women’s bodies and asking whether it is all TMI. Not surprisingly, as I blog my abortion, my answer is no. Truth to power as the Quakers used to say, or maybe you prefer the more contemporary, Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Anyway you put it, information is good, more information is better and there is no such thing as TMI. Women’s bodies have too long been shrouded in myths. Women need to speak their reality.

Life before Roe

Today I taught Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement for the fist time since my abortion. Normally I try to be very even handed in my approach but I am fairly certain that it is safe to say I got more than a little passionate about the subject. Coincidentally, another class happened to be covering the origins of the nineteenth century women’s rights movement and I managed to work in the “private” talks about “voluntary motherhood” that Elizabeth Cady Stanton used to give in the afternoons to women when she traveled to speak publicly about suffrage.

Want to school yourself on life before women had the right to control their fertility and their pregnancies?

There is a great book, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade written by journalist, Rickie Solinger.

A more historical approach can be found in Leslie J. Reagan’s carefully researched When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973

There are also some wonderfully courageous physicians who give presentations about the reality of life before Roe.

Finally HBO made an amazing documentary, If These Walls Could Talk, that dramatized three historical epochs. You can find youtube clips, but make sure to look for the first If These Walls Could Talk. The second is about lesbian life (another great topic :).

Why I will continue to write

Many years ago, in an undergraduate women’s studies class I read Kristen Luker’s now classic Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Those were the hot days of the abortion wars, yet Luker’s careful nuanced analysis not of the rhetoric or of the leadership, but of the beliefs and attitudes of activists on both sides of the struggle made perfect sense to me. Luker showed that abortion is not about reproduction so much as it is about how individuals view the organization of society, the relationships between women and men, the function of religion in society, and the other beliefs that comprise what we often call a world view. Ruth Rosen, another fabulous scholar whose writings I have long admired, makes a similar point about contraception in her recent article about the exclusion of family planning funding from the economic stimulus package. It all comes down to how you define women’s primary function. Are women people just like men, or are they meant foremost to be mothers?

I have ruminated on how my blog must read to the “other side.” I do not think anything I say will change anyone’s mind, mostly because I still believe that beliefs about abortion are largely dictated by two fundamentally clashing views of the world. What I do hope is that by giving voice to one woman’s experience of abortion I can move beyond pithy slogans or religious injunctions to show the feelings and thoughts that accompany abortion. Because that is what abortion really is, a medical procedure that individual women understand in unique ways, filtered through life experiences, religious beliefs, philosophical underpinnings and all the other myriad factors that make up the way people make sense of the world. Banal generalizations and sweeping statements serve only to fan the flames of dissent.

So I have decided to continue to chronicle my abortion process. The professor in me cannot bear to let this teaching moment pass. I also think that the unfolding experience abortion is something few women have shared. There are many fine sites on which women can share their stories, but the longer process is invisible.

I already know that I am going to gradually break the silence and anonymity I have sought. As long as I hide, I will feel a sense of shame. I anticipate also that there may be moments, perhaps the monthly anniversaries, perhaps my first period, who knows, that revive the memories of my abortion.

The comment function is turned on. You cannot post anonymously. I reserve the right to eliminate any posts I find offensive. Start your own blog if you disagree :)

abortion wars, a middle ground?

Is it just my personal experience, or is abortion everywhere in the news right now?

Fascinating piece on pro-life advocates who are taking a new tactic, attempting to reduce the number of abortions, rather than over turn the legal right to get one.

However, lest you think things are approaching a sane and sensible debate, the issue is becoming hotter on the international stage.

Random Ironies

About a week before I found out I was pregnant, my son stated campaigning for a sibling. He has since stopped.

His sister picked up with a counter slogan incessantly repeating “mommy I want you. I need you” as if to emphasize that she was not getting enough attention.

I continued to use condoms diligently long after I got pregnant. It really was the ONE time we didn't and we should have been safe. How ironic if it turns out that my 40 year old body is in peri-menopause, as I thought, and is just randomly shooting off eggs?

I learned that my physician would not perform my abortion the day after the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the day on which President Obama rescinded the global gag rule. I know how I will commemorate my abortion, through pro-choice activism every January 22.

Birth, it is everywhere….

I am so tired these days that I fall asleep by 9PM, usually with the TV still on, and wake up some time in the middle of the night.

Two nights ago I awoke to a TLC special about that Duggar family woman giving birth to her 18th child, followed by a special wedding edition of the show featuring their oldest son, who promised, along with his new bride, to let God decide the number and timing of their children. More power to them. The kids in these huge family seem well mannered and happy, albeit living a worldview that is completely foreign to me.

This morning I awoke to Anderson Cooper reporting on the birth of octuplets at 31 weeks. While the doctors are largely celebratory in their press conference, Anderson reports that of the last set of octuplets, one died shortly after birth.

Neither incident effects me in the least. These are women exercising an extreme choice that I would not pursue, but I would not try to stop them.

ahhh memories

During my college years, the right to an abortion was under severe attack. Operation Rescue tried to shut down clinics and pro-choice supporters would attempt to stop them. In the build up to Webster, there were many marches and rallies. These were some of my favorite pro-choice buttons. You can still get them here.

The Medical Professionals

Because I have taught about the issue of abortion for years, I was well aware that the number of physicians who perform the procedure is small. However, I was not prepared for my own encounter with the medical establishment.

When I first called my ob/gyn office, the receptionist could not seem to wrap her mind around the fact that I was calling to schedule an appointment about an abortion. She repeatedly referred to my appointment as the "first prenatal visit." It played like a scene from a bad abortion documentary, but I managed to shrug off my annoyance.

Just about the only good news I got in relationship to this unwanted pregnancy was that the first physician with an opening in my ob/gyn practice was my favorite doctor. When I went in, along with my husband, we were straightforward about the situation. I am fairly stoic and did not get emotional when discussing the issue with her.

On manual examination of my uterus, she guestimated my gestation to be 17-18 weeks. Frankly, since I was able to provide her with a date for my last period that put me closer to 15 weeks, I found that rather irresponsible, especially considering that since I have a malformed uterus, my body does not carry pregnancies normally. It was also very clear that she was very uncomfortable with the idea of elective termination at that gestation. At one point, and perhaps this was my imagination, it almost seemed as though she choked back a cry. Now I must say in her defense, that she is apparently the only physician on staff of a major medical school hospital in a state with some of the most liberal abortion laws that does perform elective second trimester abortions. I commend her for that. I also recognize that physicians have the right to their own ethical lines in the sand. Still her reaction really threw me for a loop.

She told me that she knew of one doctor who did perform elective second trimester abortions and that she would call him immediately. She feared that because of my previous c-sections and uterine anomaly, he would not want to perform the procedure outside of a hospital in which case, as she put it "it would be back on her." That sobered us up quite a bit as she left to make the calls. Did my reproductive choices really come down to one or two people? She also called to get me in for an ultrasound immediately so that there would be accurate gestational dates. To her credit, she explained to that office the reason for the ultrasound so I was spared any congratulatory messages upon arrival. That staff was also very professional. Just as we were going back for the ultrasound, the ob/gyn office called to say that my physician had reached the other abortion provider and that he had agreed to do the procedure. That was a huge relief. I was very unhappy about putting my physician in a position that made her feel unethical and did not want that to deal with on top of my own emotions.

On the drive to the ultrasound, my husband and I discussed our decision again. I asked if her estimation of gestation made any difference to him. We also discussed at what stage in the second trimester we would consider continuing the pregnancy. We both agreed that 20 weeks was our cutting off point. When we arrived at the ultrasound, there was a woman with a newborn that was crying. The sound pushed me over the edge and I began to sob. Again, I felt like I was in a bad abortion documentary. It recalled for me also my awful post-miscarriage visit to the ob/gyn where I also broke down when faced with a newborn baby, although for very different reasons. I put on my MP3 player during the u/s and closed my eyes. I had asked my husband to find out the gestation, but the ultrasound tech insisted she could not tell us. A half an hour after we returned home, I got a call from that very office telling me that I was meant to have a copy of the record to take to my abortion appointment. How ironic.

Still as we drove home, and I began to process the experience, I realized that I was happy with the estimated gestation based on my last monthly period. I wanted as little information as possible. I still believe that life begins not at conception, but at birth, and my decision was not swayed by someone else's ethical line in the sand. I had my own.

If anything, I am even more grateful that I live in a time when abortion is still legal and that I am in a geographical location where I have easy access to a competent provider. I try to imagine having no options save for a back alley abortion or giving birth to an unwanted child. In trying to work out the childcare logistics for the day of my abortion, I cannot imagine having to travel to another state. It also reminds me of a slogan from the '80s "never again, never go back." In recent years, I have slacked off on my pro-choice activism. It is still a voting litmus test for me, but this experience has renewed my commitment to make sure that all women have the right to "my body, my life, my right to decide."