Birthing Rights ARE Reproductive Rights

So now that I'm a momma, I'm all into the online birthing communities, too. Birthing rights and all that jazz... which is really just a subset of reproductive rights. My body, my choice: I get to choose how to birth my baby. I have a right to birth in a hospital, or a birthing center, or at home. I have a right to have a midwife, and a doula, if I want them. Makes sense, no?


Women need to be informed about their choices, what options they have when they birth. They need to know the risks of epidurals, episiotomies, and whether or not these are actually necessary (or desirable). They have a right to have an IBCLC available to help with any breastfeeding issues.


As I saw tweeted the other day, "Pro-choice" and "Trust Women" doesn't just apply to abortion -- it damn well applies to birth, too. The problem is that the conversation is so often derailed into "UR A MURDERERRR!!!" by the pro-"life" side so we don't get to talk about any real issues, we just spend our time pointing out their lies and fallacies.


Most women who have had an abortion either already have children or will have them in the future (when they're ready). "Women who have an abortion" and "women who have a baby" are not two separate groups. They're a Venn diagram, with a huge overlap in the middle.


We want the same thing: respect for women when it comes to their bodies. When and how to be pregnant. When and how to birth. When and how to feed their children.


Yesterday I saw the Ronald Reagan quote about how "everyone who is for abortion has already been born." I've seen it before, and ignored it, because it's a stupid quote pretending to be "clever." Unborn entities don't have opinions, so they can't be "for" (or against) anything. Plenty of people who have "already been born" wish they had not. Oftentimes they commit suicide. Or they turn to drugs or alcohol to dull the pain of living.

And plenty more of us would not have cared if we'd been aborted. You know why? BECAUSE FETUSES DON'T HAVE COGNITIVE PROCESSES OR THE ABILITY TO CARE.


The quote was not blog-post-worthy. What was, was where I saw it: I saw this quote on a birthing rights community page.


Those same women who are appalled that a doctor would force a C-section on a woman... are saying it's okay to force an entire pregnancy on her??


Here's my (first) response:


I'm surprised to see an anti-abortion statement posted today, when yesterday there was a question from a mom about doing a D&C for a molar pregnancy. I still don't know what a molar pregnancy is (haven't had time to Google it), but I know what a D&C is. It's one method of terminating a pregnancy (usually done in the second trimester, if I recall correctly). I had one, when I was faced with an unwanted pregnancy, just over a decade ago. 

I have seen other posts (don't think it was on this page, but on another parenting/birthing-rights page) about moms seeking advice about a D&C after a miscarriage or stillbirth (to make sure all the tissue is actually out of the body, to prevent infection and/or other complications).

There are a bazillion different reasons why a woman may need to terminate a pregnancy. Sometimes it's because she's not ready to be a mother. Sometimes it's because she's not capable of being a mother -- financially, or mentally/emotionally, or physically. Sometimes it's because something is wrong with the pregnancy or the fetus -- like an ectopic or molar pregnancy. Sometimes it's because the fetus is already dead, but her body hasn't miscarried properly and removed all the tissue. I'm not and obstetrician, so I can't even begin to list all the medical reasons for an abortion.

Whatever that woman's reason is, SHE knows what's best for her. It's her body. She also knows what is best for that potential child -- deciding whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is the first parenting decision a woman makes. Please respect her choice.

Just like a doctor doesn't have the right to force a woman to have a c-section if she doesn't want one, no one has a right to force a woman to have a pregnancy if she doesn't -- or can't -- want it.

One of the reasons the women who posted here and on other pages asking for advice on whether they should have a D&C for a doomed (or already terminated) pregnancy is because abortion has been so demonized in our society. It's a medical procedure. A necessary one. No woman makes the decision to abort a pregnancy lightly -- and any woman who would, is not apt for or perhaps capable of motherhood. Motherhood begins with pregnancy.

If you want to reduce the number of abortions that happen because of unwanted pregnancies, call your legislators and tell them to fund Planned Parenthood. Tell them to make birth control fully covered by insurance. Tell them to make hospitals stock emergency contraception in the ER for rape victims. Call your school board and your legislators and make comprehensive sex ed mandatory curriculum starting in middle school.

But don't criminalize or demonize abortion. You don't know that woman's story. You can't imagine what SHE is going through, because you are not her and you have not lived her life or survived the trauma that may be leading her to make that decision -- even for a very wanted pregnancy.


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I went back and wrote some more comments (in response to one particularly rabid anti-choicer), which I may post here as their own mini-blogs, or I may dump in the comments here. Haven't decided yet.

But right now, my baby's calling me.


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The difference between a miscarriage and an abortion

Thanks to a discussion with my uncle on Facebook, I realized I never wrote this post when I was doing my month of reproductive-rights posts. So here it is.

When I was student teaching, the kids were working on biographies of different Hispanic figures. One group was researching Frida Kahlo, and they asked me what the Spanish word for "miscarriage" was. I looked it up, and the dictionary just said "aborto" which, as you can tell, is the word for "abortion." I looked in several other dictionaries, but there was no separate word in Spanish for "miscarriage," which infuriated me.

I know technically, medically speaking, "abortion" refers to "a termination of pregnancy" and that a miscarriage is the termination of a pregnancy, but word have meaning and they have context. A miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion: it happens naturally, without the woman knowing or wishing it. When we speak of "an abortion" we refer to the choice a woman makes to terminate the pregnancy. There should be a separate word in Spanish to show the difference between these two events, because they are entirely different.

Speeding is speeding, right? But don't you agree there is a HUGE difference between someone going 2 miles over the speed limit in a residential area and someone going 20 miles over the speed limit in that same residential area? One is a slip of the foot that will not have any serious effects on your reaction time if you need to stop, the other is a blatant disregard for laws and the safety of the children in that neighborhood.

A miscarriage happens to a woman who has already decided she wants to have that child. To her, it is a child, because she wants it. To her, that is a life, that is her child. To that woman, and to her family, that loss is as great as if that child had already fully formed and come out of the womb.

An abortion is something a woman goes through voluntarily. Not always because she wants to, but she does make the choice to do it and she knows why she's making that choice. It may not be the way she wanted things to be, but it's the best option of the ones offered to her. Most of the time that woman does not consider that fetus inside of her to be a life. She does not want the child, for many reasons and almost never simple ones.

There are times a woman who very much wanted that child must have an abortion, but she still chooses to go through the procedure, because of medical reasons (the details of which I won't go into because I'm not a medical doctor and I won't pretend to talk about things I know nothing about, and I know the list of possible medical complications, for the mother and the fetus, is long). She then makes the choice knowing this is the best thing she can do for her potential child. While I have no personal experience with this myself, this woman does [EDIT: another eloquent post on late-term abortion and what it means]. I think she they says it pretty well. Clicking around a little, I found this post by a woman who does happen to be a medical doctor. If you want to go into the gory details of how pregnancy can kill you, read her post.

But back to my point: when a woman suffers a miscarriage, she has a completely different experience than a woman who chooses to have an abortion. There is no way you can compare the two.

A woman who suffers a miscarriage was pregnant with a wanted child. This is the opposite situation of a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy.

When a woman miscarries, she is a victim of her body. She suffers physical pain as her body bleeds the fetus out of it, and she suffers emotional pain as she mourns the loss of that wanted child. That fetus was a child to her, it was her son or daughter, because she wanted it to be.

When a woman has an abortion, she is taking control of her life. She is taking control of her body, either to terminate an unwanted pregnancy -- a fetus, not a child to her -- or to do what's best for that would-be potential child, because her doctor has informed her the child would not survive anyway.

When you miscarry, you are a victim. Something bad and painful has happened to you.

When you have an abortion, you are acting. You are taking control of your body and your life.

Abortion is a choice. The word itself grants empowerment. This is one of the reasons why we use that word to describe our movement; women are taking control, making their own choices, instead of doing what someone else expects us to do.

You cannot compare a miscarriage to an abortion because of how they happen: you are helpless when a miscarriage decides to happen to you; you are in control of the abortion.

A woman who has had a miscarriage has had something taken from her; a woman who has had an abortion has not lost anything because either she didn't want it to begin with, or she knew she wasn't going to be able to keep it (because of medical complications).

This is why the emotional responses to a miscarriage and to an abortion are also completely different. You cannot compare them.

Now, sadly, there are some women who are pressured, coerced, or forced into having an abortion (by a boyfriend who doesn't want a kid, by parents who don't want the scandal, by the abusive step-father/uncle/teacher who raped her and doesn't want to go to jail, etc.). These women are not making the choice on their own, they are being forced to make the choice by someone else.

These women do suffer a loss. They have control taken from them, and are forced to do something they do not want to do, even if at the time the person forcing her is sweet-talking his way into making her feel that this is what she wants to do. (If you have never been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship, then maybe you don't understand what I'm talking about, but that it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen.)

These women have an entirely different experience than the woman who miscarries or the woman who chooses an abortion. A woman forced into having an abortion suffers the loss, and feel the guilt, since "she did it" -- even though the didn't, because she was manipulated and forced into making the choice.

When a woman is forced to have sex, we don't call it sex anymore. We call it rape. It becomes something different.

Let's realize that the vast majority of women who have abortions thought their decision through and they suffer no "emotional scarring." Some women are scared, pressured, coerced, or forced into making a decision without thinking it through, and/or without being able to have a frank, honest conversation with someone who knows what she's talking about on this issue. Because the topic is so polarized, because supporting a woman's right to choose is so "taboo," because the issue is clouded by rhetoric and propaganda and the yelling of people who have no business talking about this because they will never, ever have to face the decision themselves, women who need more counseling, women who need a forum where they can talk openly about their unintended and maybe unwanted pregnancy don't really have anywhere to go.

If we were really concerned about these women and their emotional wellbeing, we'd cut all the crap and let doctors, nurses, and trained professionals talk to these women. We'd stop feeding them lies and rhetoric and propaganda, and we'd give them a chance to have open, honest, candid, and medically-accurate discourse on the issue.

The beginning of "Life": what it is NOT (part 2)

Yesterday we saw "the rules," so to speak. But what makes the rules work is the facts.

Let's take a look at miscarriages. They happen all the time, and most of the time, the woman did not even know she was pregnant yet. The American Pregnancy Association's web site says "10-25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in miscarriage." According to HopeXchange.com,

Sources vary, but many estimate that approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage; and some estimates are as high as 1 in 3. If you include loss that occurs before a positive pregnancy test, some estimate that 40% of all conceptions result in loss.

They happen all the time.

Please don't think I'm dismissing the profound loss that a miscarriage can be -- I'm merely pointing out how common they are. (Cancer happens all the time too, this does not mean we should stop caring about it or that it doesn't suck when it happens to you or someone you love.)

We don't talk about miscarriage, though. Often, this is something the woman bears on her own, without any help or support. She mourns privately not because it's a "private" matter, but because it's not "okay" to talk about these things.

Miscarriages are much more likely to happen in the first 12-13 weeks, so doctors tell pregnant women not to tell family and friends about the pregnancy yet, in case something goes wrong.

Yes, because when a woman loses her potential child*, she should go through that alone, without the love and support of her family and friends. Seriously, people, where's the logic in that?

But enough of the tangential rant, back to the topic at hand: miscarriages, sadly, are very common.

I don't know about your God, but my God is not stupid. He's a pretty smart guy, pulling off that whole "creating the ENTIRE UNIVERSE" thing and all. Set the whole thing up to work like clockwork (you know, with evolution and all? If you don't believe me, go read some science stuff. Are you going to tell me all that happened BY ACCIDENT?) I happen to think pretty highly of God. He's done some impressive stuff.

So why in the world would he make "Life" begin at conception, when so many of those fertilized (conceived) eggs are going to "die"?

If "Life" were to begin at conception, then God would have to give each one of those fertilized eggs a soul. And then He kills them, weeks later? Like, just for fun?

Really?

I don't buy that. My God is neither that stupid, nor that sadistic. (Maybe yours is... and if that's the case, then you have much bigger problems to deal with than the reproductive rights debate.)

Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Notice how it says "before I formed you in the womb": before conception. This has nothing to do with the science and the multiplying mass of cells, because God is bigger than that.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, after all. He knew you before He created the heavens and the earth. He knows what will happen to each and every pregnancy. He's not going to send souls -- Lives -- to die in a miscarriage. It just doesn't make any sense that He would make "Life" begin at conception, when so many of those "Lives" are going to end before we even knew they had begun.

Before He formed me in the womb, He knew me. He knew what path my life would take, He knew what challenges would present themselves to me. He knew what choices I would have to make. I strongly believe he gave me the life experiences I've had to help me make the choice I did. I have free will, He gave it to me, but He put certain people and certain experiences in my life to give me the knowledge and understanding I would need to make the decision that was best for me.

Do I know I'm right? No. I'm not arrogant enough to assume I know what God's thinking. Given all the evidence He has left for me, I have a pretty good idea of what He would be okay with me doing. I'm not going to know until I get up to the Pearly Gates and ask if my name is on that list, or on the other one.

This is one of the reasons why I want to leave the options open: those of us who think like I do, are free to make that choice. Those who do not think like I do, are free to make a different choice.

Politically, though, I know I'm right. Because not everyone reads the same Bible I do, or understands it the same way I do; so we need to leave the options open. Women deserve to make the choice for themselves, not based on someone else's interpretation of a book they may not even believe in.


*Some might think I'm contradicting myself, but I'm not. I'll explain tomorrow.