Here’s me. Having control over my own body.

I have posted before about how much it stinks to be either female presenting or uterus having in previous blog posts. But it just keeps getting worse if you live in this country.

Everyone has a friend who has been assaulted and/or raped. If you don’t, they just haven’t told you about it. And that’s the truth.

You probably know someone that has had to go to Planned Parenthood. Perhaps for something as innocent as a busted condom and the morning after pill, but perhaps for something as traumatic as a desired pregnancy gone wrong, and they have no other option to prevent the death of the mother and/or child during delivery. And for a myriad of reasons in between.

If you don’t, they just haven’t told you.

At this point, I’m sure for most of my readership, I’m preaching to the choir, but there may be one or two people out there who are thinking, “Well, why wouldn’t they have told me if they’re my friend?”

Sooooooooo many reasons. It could be as simple as the fact that they’re not sure they can trust you to be a supportive ear. It could have been a traumatic experience, and they don’t have the spoons to share it with everyone. They could be worried about the story getting out and being on the receiving end of a wider net of backlash from their community. Here’s a link to a story by someone I know, posted anonymously.

And sadly, these fears are all valid if you look at the state of the country we live in.

The argument for giving states the option to make it more difficult or completely impossible for people to receive abortions is something about the life of the child. Let’s acknowledge together that this is bullshit. To expound on this, let’s follow the life of an imaginary fetus that we’ll call Baby Doe. What scenario will we give Baby Doe’s mother? Let’s say that she was in an abusive relationship, but she just got out and is trying to turn her life around. We’ll call her Mama Doe.

Hey, look, it’s me! Making decisions about my own uterus! Or actually probably not even thinking about it because this photo was taken over a week ago when this wasn’t even a question.

Mama Doe finds out that she’s pregnant with Baby Doe just after she escaped her relationship, too late for the morning after pill. She had to use every cent she had to cut ties and move out to somewhere safe. Maybe she’s got a friend who’s letting her stay on a couch. But oh, snap, now there’s a baby? Mama Doe doesn’t have any more money to spend on traveling to a state that allows abortion. She can’t get one in her state. She manages to get a job waiting tables. There’s no health care or vacation days, let alone maternity leave. She scrapes together enough to get a studio apartment for herself. She doesn’t have access to prenatal care. She’s not provided any, even though she’s basically being forced to carry her abuser’s child to term.

As she progresses in her pregnancy, waiting tables becomes more and more uncomfortable. She’s sleep deprived, constantly tired, and her tips aren’t getting any better. She’s barely making rent and groceries. She can’t afford to take time off before the baby comes because she knows she’s going to need a few days once it does.

What if we throw a wrench in the works and she wakes up in the middle of the night with pains. She drives herself to the ER and they have to keep her overnight for some unnamed problem, probably brought about by all the stress and overwork. She loses work and now she’s on the hook for an ER bill. If she’s savvy, maybe she can call the billing department later and negotiate the bill down and put some on a credit card (if she has one) but does she know that’s an option? I didn’t until I called a friend who works in a medical billing department who told me exactly what to do and say so that they would write off part of a debilitating ER visit that I had once when I was on a horrific insurance plan. You know, the ones you have when you don’t work for a corporation that gives you insurance? Like a lot of people have? (Insurance and our medical systems are rants for another blog.)

Being in control of my medical choices looks good on me, I have to say.

Back to Mama Doe. Let’s fast forward to when she has this baby. She struggles the baby’s entire childhood to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads, and keep her in school. Since she has a job, she’s capable, and she’s just above the poverty line, so she can’t get any help.

Baby Doe is a girl. So her mother drills into her mind that she has to have safe sex and she has to be responsible for the actions of every man around her because she wants her baby to have a better life than she did.

Uh, oh. Baby Doe thinks she might be gay. Good news, less chance she gets pregnant, bad news, less chance she has other basic rights, like the ability to love whoever she wants.

What about those people who fought so hard for her right to exist? Where are they now, when she’s gay, her mom has no money to send her to college (and college is prohibitively expensive anyway) and she has to work through high school anyway in order to have any extra money at all, so her grades are only so so? She doesn’t have WiFi at home, so she has to go to the library.

I’ve been to Planned Parenthood twice, both for the morning after pill due to condom malfunctions. But damn, was I not in a place to have babies at the time.

What if Mama Doe had been able to obtain a medically safe, legal abortion. Horrible enough experience as it may have been, perhaps she would have been able to save up for a few night classes. Get a better job. Have a child later in a healthy way, when she was ready for it, thereby creating a much more stable environment for Baby Doe. Or maybe she would choose to remain childless, because that should be a valid choice also.

What we’re going to get now is a flood of young women, heading into emergency rooms with sepsis from botched abortions. And more.

If men were the ones who had to carry a human around in their bodies and then take care of it and watch it grow and suffer, etc., we wouldn’t be having this discussion. And that’s all there is to this.

This isn’t about babies. This is about control. And it won’t stop here. We thought this was solid. We thought this was here to stay, especially those of us who grew up after Roe v. Wade, when it was something we learned about in history class. Nothing is sacred. This is what it has always been.

Those in power, wanting to hang on to their power and grab on to more and more if they can.

And we have to fight it. Whether it directly affects us or not.

Leave our bodies alone.