There are things to make note of before wading into this extended post, folks...
First, this is the Salon story that triggered this particular personal essay: http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/04/18/federal_abortion_ban/index.html
Second, I know that there are a number of other threads on the overall topic of today's SCOTUS decision already posted on DU. But this essay's not really about the SCOTUS decision, that's just what triggered me to finally write it. And it's way too long to post as a comment to somebody else's thread anyway.
Third, this essay originally started off as what was intended to be a 7 or 8 paragraph comment to a long thread about the SCOTUS decision over on dKos. Yeah, right, so much for that. But this is something that I've been waiting to write about until the time was right, and apparently some part of me decided that today is finally the right time.
I debated a long time about whether I should post this here on DU or not. But ultimately I decided that the issue is too important for people to just go around thinking abstractly about, and if I can help give a voice to those who aren't saying what they feel about it, then that's what I should be doing. So make of it what you will.
-- M. Loutre--------------
One of the things that really, really chaps my ass is what a small percentage of the people bloviating away about abortions, on both the right and the left sides of the fence, actually have any first-hand experience with them.
I'm sorry, SCOTUS. I'm sorry, Dobson. I'm sorry, Bush. And I'm sorry, Fux Noise Channel. However...
If you ain't been there done that yourself, then you can't know. You just can't fucking know.
Being one of those non-uterine persons with a damaged Y instead of a fully-formed X for a second chromosome, I have not had and never will have an abortion procedure performed on my own body.
But the principle that abortions for those who would have them needs to be safe, rare, AND legal has never been a purely theoretical question for me -- not in either direction.
My first serious long-term lover was only alive and walking the planet because her mother got cold feet and changed her mind while sitting in the clinic's waiting room. My best friend in college made the same impossibly difficult decision, only she didn't get cold feet.
Ten years later I was one of the volunteers helping to shield harassed women running the gauntlet of neo-fascist rabble rouser Terry Randall's so-called Operation 'Rescue' and its so-called 'pro-life' protesters in Atlanta when they finally crossed over the line and started bombing the clinics there.
Near the end of the last millennium the abortion issue went from being no longer theoretical to no longer hypothetical to me. I was a deeply involved participant in, though of course not the ultimate decision maker in, that same kind of impossibly difficult, lose-lose, no-possible-good-can-come-from-this decision involving what would have been the only child that I'm ever likely to produce.
We sat up many a long and lonely/angry/anguished night over that dilemma, she and I. Sure, there would have been some logistical problems -- we weren't married, and she was already raising a son from her previous marriage -- but so what? Those can be daunting issues to deal with, but they're situational rather than moral ones, and we hashed out several different ways in which they could be dealt with successfully.
But there were medical concerns as well, and that's a lot more significant kettle of fish than whether the house is big enough for a third bedroom or not. She had a genetically-linked condition that required daily medication to keep under control, and one of the medications was clearly linked to birth defects and developmental disorders if a woman got pregnant while taking them.
Which, of course, she had. And before you go off on a canard side topic here -- yes, we were using the most reliable form of contraception available. Neither of us are idiots, not were we careless at the time. But even if something is 99.5% reliable, there's still that last remaining 0.5%. So we were the 1-in-200 far end of the statistical curve -- which, again, is also linked to birth defects and developmental disorders.
That's what ultimately tipped the scales for her, and by extension for both of us. We both felt that deciding to abort our child for logistical reasons would be morally, ethically, and psychologically wrong. Bear in mind, though, that we both had jobs, she owned a house, our lives were relatively stable. Others in worse straits than we were might not be able to see ways to juggle the extra responsibilities with any chance of success. So I'm certainly not passing judgment on anyone else's decisions in that regard, only ours.
However, in our case there were also multiple factors producing significantly higher odds that our child would likely have been born with medical problems. We talked long and hard about all those issues -- what's realistic to us, what's fair to the child, what's the available scenarios with the world around the child, etc. And then she made the final choice for all three of us. It was always hers to make, and I willingly supported her decision no matter what it might turn out to be; but in the end, she was the only one who could give it the final yea or nay.
So one day in April of that year I drove her to an unmarked medical office in a nondescript location off the beaten path where we lived at the time. We went inside, we met with the clinic's head nurse to make sure we both throughly understood what was about to take place and what we could expect in its aftermath. She signed a bunch of forms, I signed a few of them myself, and then the nurse ushered her inside past the reception desk window and I sat down to wait.
It wasn't that long a wait in real-world terms, I suppose. These things are fairly routine operations when they're performed safely and legally, so I'm thinking we were there maybe 90 minutes, certainly no more than 2 hours. But it seemed like a lifetime to me. And, in ways that I can never deny and never forget, it was exactly that.
The nurse helped her her back out to the waiting room, I helped her into the car and drove her home, and then I tended to her physical needs for the next day or so while she recovered from the operation. I tended to her emotional and spiritual needs for longer than that, of course. Or at least I tried to; there's no way now to be sure whether or how much I was effective at that part. She tried to do the same for me as well.
But there's only so many words that can be said, so many things that can be thought, so many tears that can be shed for so long. Ultimately, the only healing that can ever take place has to happen deep inside each one of us -- where we are, despite any mutual best intentions, ultimately alone in the dark with ourselves. And, as with so many other couples, our relationship ultimately did not survive the strain of this shared burden. (Although in all fairness, as with so many other couples, there of course were other fissures in that particular firmament as well.)
I am certain, given the realities of the medical issues, that it was the correct decision for us to make. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that, especially when the ghosts of might-have-been come calling. At such times it helps to recall that she told me afterwards she had seen the ultrasound image during the preparation stage, and it showed that things were not quite as they should have been for the nascent being that was inside of her.
I take her at her word about that extra bit of information, because it serves to reinforce my belief in our having made the correct decision at the time. I have to take her word for that, because I wasn't there in that room with her. Hell, I don't just have to take her word for it -- I
need to.
Because it's April again now. The weather's warming, and the birds are starting to chirp, and it's finally outdoor weather after a long cold winter. And the son I'll never have would be old enough by now to play catch in the backyard with, old enough to take to the beach and teach how to swim, old enough to fly kites in the park with... well, you parents out there know the drill. And so do those of us who've never been parents, because we were all 8 years old once too.
You know, I've never written this story down anywhere before today, much less posted it in a public venue like Democratic Underground. I've only told it in person a few times over the years. For some odd reason it's not something that I'm eager to think about, much less discuss with others.
But then I hear some blowhard pontificating yet again about what abortion is and what it isn't, and what it means and what it doesn't mean, and how it's a coward's choice, an easy-way-out kind of decision that should be outlawed because the only people who choose it are merely selfish self-indulgent sinners against God and man, et cetera and so forth ad nauseum, and it's all right back in my face again.
You don't need me to describe my emotional reactions to that kind of bullshit bloviating. You can already tell what my intellectual reactions to it are just from reading this post.
Let's just say that anybody -- be they judge or preacher or pundit or politician -- who hasn't been on that operating table, who hasn't been in that waiting room watching the minutes tick away like hours, who hasn't been lying there in the dark at night trying with all their heart not to think about what might have been -- anybody who's never had to make that impossible decision themselves, anybody who's never been there done that in their own lives, well...
They (you, us, them, whatever) really, really need to just Shut The Fuck Up already.
Because if you ain't been there done that yourself, you can't know.
You just can't fucking know.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
