A Woman's Choice

I had an abortion.

I also had a D&C after an unviable pregnancy - miscarriage.

I have given birth.

I have five children, the youngest will be eighteen in four months, the oldest will be thirty-five a month after her milestone birthday. 

In all my life and in all my choices of my reproductive care, I never had to deal with OWM trying to get into my uterus to tell me what to do with it. 

My daughters will not have that same choice if the rest of the country goes the way Texas went in the dark of night, the same way they pushed in that illegal Supreme Court handmaid tale justice in the absolute final hours of the orangecovidmenacereignofterror.

So what is the issue?

Do I believe that life is precious?

Of course I do.

And I also believe that cisgendered women and transgendered men who still have female genitalia inside are the ONLY ones who can make decisions about what to do with their bodies. Body autonomy does not just belong to OWM. It is actually kinda creepy that all these people are deciding what a woman can and can not do.

Sounds like the Taliban.

But it is right here in good old America, in the great state of Texas that the rest of the Elephantledredhangerfolks are watching, salivating, like my home state of Missouri, to see what else they can take away.

As a woman of the Global Majority, of African descent, I can assure you that it is not because they want more babies born who are sun kissed and sparkle. It is because they, OWM have read the 22-year-notice about the "majority-minority" nation that they could not kill or jail away. The U.S. Census results proved it, white Americans are not the majority anymore and fewer white babies were born in 2007 than  babies of the Global Majority. 

This is all connected. It is an annoying thing about me, to some people, that I look back thirty, twenty years and see things that were taking place and look forward to the strategies these lawmakers were focused on to erode. They concentrated on the courts, thanks to that goobblygooseneckdealerofdeathfromKentucky. That is how he got his handmaid on the Supreme Court, he started grooming her from law school.

The many, many women's groups, from Planned Parenthood - where I got my first birth control pills and all my reproductive and well women care while I was in college - to NARAL in Missouri to so many activists, have all been in virtual or actual protest for years about this. No more hangers is not just a slogan from the dark alley days of the 70s. 

When I was growing up and coming of age in the mid-70s and early-80s, the older women would talk about the white girls who "went away" for the summer or a "trip overseas" because they were pregnant. They were not putting them up for adoption but were going to places were they could get it taken care of. It cost money, something not all Black or Brown girls had back then.

Definitely not something I had.

So when the decision came to have an abortion, as a married young woman, it was done with care. A woman was holding my hand throughout the whole thing, my ex-husband attended to me for the days of aftercare, we mourned and we moved on with our lives. It was in our plans, but neither was that pregnancy that I ended up not being able to carry. It was after six weeks that we found this out.

Six weeks.

That is the span of time of just realizing you missed a period.

Most women don't realize they are pregnant until the eighth week, some even the tenth week if they don't keep careful records like I did.

Six weeks.

It is not viable outside the womb, it is a bunch of tissue. As a seminary trained minister who has over twenty Bibles that I have read cover to cover and studies exhaustively, it is with the breath of life, there is no quickening in that invasive tissue in a woman's body.

Men.

That is part of what has been all wrong with American everything.

Control.

Power.

They forced preteen Black girls to have babies from being raped by their adult men masters or some Black man they forced to be a buck. It goes back to 1642 and the Law of Maternal Descent when Enslaved African women's children were counted as property to be snatched away before her milk even comes in. Is that sanctity of life?

They are hypocrites, for the same ones who are making it legal that any Joe Blow or one of those Crazy Karens can sue you for having an abortion in Texas, none of them are caring about the walking, living, breathing children under age 12 who are susceptible to Covid. None of them care to provide school lunches for hungry children or a full income for their mothers to care for those children.

All the Old White People who held the evil, egregious, and enormous signs outside the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis will to give one penny for diapers, formula, or daycare. They just bully, like the January 6th crowd or the school board protestors now.

Yes, I have been inside an abortion clinic, and long before they were forcing women through invasive vaginal ultrasounds to see the tissue in their body or sit through some "counseling" to wait two more days before doing it. I was not shamed or shunned.

But that was over thirty years ago. 

I rarely talk about it. Until now, my children probably didn't know. It is not that I am ashamed, but that I live in a country that makes women ashamed of what they do with their bodies. It didn't matter that I was sick or that I couldn't carry a baby or even that we were a young, married couple and could not afford another child. 

That is the point of these bans.

It is not about adding to the already burgeoning population of America, it is about them growing babies in unwilling bodies so they can walk around like minigods.

A woman has a right to choose.

That is what I told my daughters, one who will be twenty in a few days and one who will be eighteen in a few months. Their choice.

I will walk through hell fire to protect their choice and the choice of anyone else who is not ready. 

Just like condoms protect against disease and birth control protects against pregnancy (for the idiot men, neither of these are abortifactants), an abortion protects life. Some women have unviable pregnancies and have to have a D&C, these bans like the ones in Texas now make it so that doctors and nurses and even uber drivers can be sued. 

It is about their sick sick sick soul.

I am aggrieved. 

I am appalled.

And I am telling my story so that others will do the same, we can't let this thing in Texas become nationwide. It can not overturn Roe, but state houses are making it harder and harder for women to have basic care.

Meanwhile, OWM have all the viagra they want.

So they can rape, even in cases of incest, they will not grant an abortion.

Sounds pretty Taliban-ish to me.

I'm writing through tears, through rage, through determination.

I've never been an abortion-rights-activist, that was never my wheelhouse. I've supported organizations who have and have lent my voices, but never my story. But that is what activism sparks in us, something pushes us to the wall and angers us that we have to say something.

Say something.

I can assure you that you know someone, 1 in 4 women have had an abortion. 

Or you will know someone.

Maybe even your daughter or your gender-non-conforming child who still has ovaries that send an egg through a Fallopian tube to attach to a uterus that will push out through the vagina - if they choose, but if they don't and decided to not have those parts removed in their affirming gender, they may be someone you know who need reproductive/abortive/health choices.

It matters.

We can't go back.

We won't go back.

So speak up.