This is my personal blog, if you don't agree with what I'm saying or do not care to read it, feel free to move on.
This week the Alabama Supreme Court came out and ruled that embryos are babies. The Chief Justice of the Alabama court wrote, "Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory." Apparently proselytizing from the bench is the thing to do.
I am a one issue voter. How you treat women's right to privacy, to get basic access to healthcare, to be treated as a full citizen in this country, determines if I will vote for you. I am not a far left liberal, absolutely not a conservative. I am in the middle, practical and want people to enjoy the freedoms this country has long promised and was supposedly built upon. I want people to be able to live their lives without government interference in their most personal matters. People who did not go to medical school should not be making life or death decisions for others. I want people to be able to be who they are, so long as they are not harming others while doing it. Want to be a drag queen? Awesome - you do you. And you know what, you being a drag queen has absolutely nothing to do with me. Same with the right to be trans, or gay, or a mormon. Do any of those things personally affect me? Nope. You do you.
Now, when the government and courts determine that regardless of precedent and rights granted for decades in this country, that science is irrelevant and based on their own personal religious beliefs that women should be treated like second class citizens, and penalized for trying to obtain healthcare. While I am beyond thankful I am done having children, I am terrified for my daughter. She now has less rights in this country than I did.
The word abortion is bandied about, and completely misused. It is a medical term for a procedure. It has absolutely nothing to do with the reason for it. Women have abortions to protect their health, if they were raped and choose not to carry their rapist's child, if the fetus is terminal or even if it has already passed as has happened to me. When people rally against abortion, what they are really saying is you need to be punished and bear the consequences of your actions regardless of how you came to be in that situation. It comes down to a society which wants to control its people and punish them for living their lives in a different manner. How many people in Iowa want to be told how to farm what to farm or how many hours a day they can work their property? I'm guessing none. So why do you think the attorney general of Texas, who is an attorney and not a doctor, should make healthcare decisions for women in that state? I am an attorney and while I'm technically a juris doctorate, I have not taken a science class since the 11th grade. I will never profess to determine that my lack of medical knowledge should not preclude me from making medical decisions for others.
When we first tried to get pregnant years ago, we saw a fertility specialist. After a lot of tests, it was determined that it was unspecified infertility. We did multiple rounds of IUI, and were lucky to get pregnant with our daughter before moving on to IVF. But after she was born, I got pregnant twice without assistance. We were shocked, but thrilled. The first ended in a miscarriage at 7 weeks. The second ended at 13 weeks, in a missed-miscarriage. I had just told my office and we announced it thinking we were in the clear in the second trimester. Since the fetus died a week before, my body had trouble expelling it through a natural miscarriage. I had to have a D&C. Now, a D&C is a scary term that is used with abortion. Do you think I wanted to have a D&C? No, absolutely not. But if not, I could have gone into sepsis and died. While the baby had obviously died, if I had lived in a state that has banned abortions and OB/GYNs have fled the state to practice elsewhere, what could have happened to me?
The Alabama ruling shows how far in the wrong direction our country has gone. If we cannot destroy embryos, which are literally a grouping of cells that cannot live on its own or develop, what is next? Should hysterectomies be banned because you are taking the right away for future children to be born? Wait, next it will be cancer treatments that will be banned because chemotherapy destroys good and bad cells. We cannot allow a drug to kill the cells that God has created, right?
During Covid it has become clear that science and medicine are no longer respected. Doctors go to school for 8 years, plus give up years of their lives to do internships, residency and fellowships to become experts at saving people's lives. But someone on a TV show with a big hair and makeup budget now claims to know more about science and vaccines than doctors. Yet, who do these anti-science people go see when they break their leg? Oh, a doctor, right.
As I mentioned above, I am a one issue voter. In my opinion, everyone should be pro-choice. Pro-choice means that you can make decisions for yourself. Most people prefer to make their own decisions about their own healthcare and situations. If you do not want to have an abortion, or prefer to carry a fetus to term that is terminal or may harm your health, future fertility, that should be your decision. Or, if you do chose to carry a fetus to term knowing it may kill you, is that suicide? Or will the doctor's caring for you next be charged with assisted suicide knowing there is a chance you can die by saving the fetus or carrying it to term regardless of the health risks to the mother?
Pro-life is also a misnomer and incorrectly used term in this country. If you are pro-life, then you should be supporting life at all stages right? Affordable childcare, raising the minimum wage to a liveable one, free lunches during the summer for kids that are below the poverty line, treating migrants like human beings and not trash to be thrown out. That is pro-life.
Pro-birth is literally just forcing someone to give birth regardless of the circumstances, risks to the mother's life, her health and future fertility. It is not pro-life, where you actually care about the mother and the health and safety of the baby. It is forcing someone to live based on your specific religious or moral values.
Pro-birthers honestly sicken me. They do not care about others, they do not care about the children. They stand there protesting with their signs, talk about abortions in the 3rd trimester and are beyond ignorant. FYI- late term abortions are called giving birth. No one has an abortion at 36 weeks. Stop the scare tactics and live in reality. Also, the majority of abortions after the first trimester are not because people couldn't decide if they were keeping the baby or not, but because of a health issue with the fetus or the mother. Or now, as we are seeing, the result of states like Texas which ban basic healthcare for women, and are forcing women who have the means to do so, go out of state. Besides the monetary costs to do so, it also forces these actions to be taken later in the pregnancy making it more dangerous for the mother.
I would love to see more true pro-lifers out there. But that is also not happening at this moment in this country. Look at the way immigrants are treated, how people are trying to restrict the right to vote and suppress the rights of others. See how those who do not have the means to travel, get childcare in order to get basic healthcare are affected. Essentially this has a chilling effect on minorities, and lower income individuals. Nothing happens in a vacuum and the effects are terrifying. Sure in a perfect world no one gets raped, no one has an unwanted pregnancy, no one has a pregnancy incompatible with life. But life is messy, it isn't perfect. To expect others to live to your ideals is ignorant and tyrannical. And it goes even further when the "pro-lifers" then condemn the mother for having to live with the consequences. This could be losing their ability to have children in the future, living in poverty because they cannot afford childcare to work or go to school. If you are truly pro-life, then support should be given after birth as opposed to forcing someone to live with the consequences of something they did not do or want.
In essence, if you are pro-choice that signals to me that you respect life, individuals and society. You are against government interference in the most personal of decisions, that should be made with your doctor not dictated by a politician. If you do not respect women's basic rights and feel they should be second class citizens based on your own beliefs, how can I trust you to make decisions for the benefit of the country? How will you treat the poor, the disabled, the laid off worker trying to make ends meet? How will you provide education to children regardless of where they live or how much money their parents make? Will you harass children who are gay, trans or just different from your expected norm? Do you not understand that these attacks on woman are actually a commentary your feelings of race and socio-economic status? As in reality, those who can afford it, can travel for healthcare. Those who can't, they have to be punished for things they cannot control? To make this country great again, we actually need to respect others to make their own choices and live their own lives. If they chose to never have an abortion or marry someone of the same sex, great, who cares? Because it is absolutely none of my business.
The picture below was taken on our honeymoon in Bermuda in 2002. It was before we knew the struggles we would face to have children. We were very lucky to have access to great healthcare, and to be able to afford fertility treatments which were not covered by insurance at the time.
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