This post was originally written on 2/20/2012
First off, let's discuss the title of this blog. When sitting
down to write this, the song "War" By Edwin Starr popped into my mind.
For me, the medical procedure commonly referred to as abortion has a lot
in common with war. It isn't pretty, it isn't anything that anyone
wishes to see or hear about, but it does exist and it does serve a
purpose in our society. Both are problems that many people within the
society of man would prefer to see an end to, but it is unlikely that
until the underlying causes that lead to those problems are effectively
dealt with that either one of them will ever be eradicated. So it felt
right to me somehow to make the correlation between these two problems
when I had to pick a title for a blog that is probably going to be
difficult for me to write.
Having been born in the United
States some time after the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision was made,
there has never been a time that I can remember when a woman did not
have the legal right to choose whether or not to carry her pregnancy to
term. Having been raised in a pretty dysfunctional family with a
variety of parents who didn't waste much effort in hiding anything from
the kids, I had a basic understanding of how human reproduction worked
at a very young age, and the subject of abortion was one that I was
familiar with before I was out of grade school. I don't think that
there has ever been a time in my life when my thoughts on the subject
would classify me as anything other than Pro-Choice.
I
understand that for some men and women, life begins at the moment of
conception, and they view any deviation from the path of fertilized egg
to newborn baby as the loss of a life. I do not agree with this view,
but I feel no need to argue with those people and try to convince them
to see this issue from my point of view. Their beliefs and their
choices are theirs to make based on what they believe. It is my firm
belief that it is up to each individual to live their life and make the
choices that directly affect them for themselves, based on the beliefs
that they hold. I hold beliefs that are contrary to the norm about a
variety of subjects, and I live my own life and make choices based on
those beliefs almost every day.
There are of course many
arguments put forth by those who are Pro-Life or anti-abortion as to why
women should not be allowed to make the choice to have an abortion, but
they all boil down to one thing- someone other than the person who is
pregnant thinks that it is wrong, and therefore it should be up to them
to decide how that pregnancy turns out. No other issue that is
considered by man is seen by so many in such absolutely black and white
terms. Not one. Not even the murder of another human being. Murder of
an already living person can sometimes be justified as self-defense, or
collateral damage, or as being the result of the perpetrator's
unbalanced mind. Almost no one, when hearing that a child was killed in
a war zone, will automatically condemn the person who caused that
child's death without stopping to consider all the other complex issues
surrounding the act. Almost no one, when hearing that an intruder was
killed by their victim, will stop to consider the life that was lost
because someone was unwilling to part with their material goods. For
every situation that exists concerning living, breathing human beings
there are shades of gray.
The current political climate has
resurrected arguments among members of our society, the one that we have
here in the United States, not only about whose beliefs are correct
regarding when life begins, but also whose beliefs are correct about the
effect of different forms of birth control in preventing pregnancy, and
whether access to those forms of birth control should be available to
people, whether their use should be promoted, who should pay for them if
they are, and who has the right to decide whether that access is
granted or denied. In short, we're spending a lot of time talking about
SEX. Who should be having it, when and why they should be having it,
and what should happen if it leads to women getting pregnant after they
have it. At one extreme, we have deeply religious people claiming that
only married people should be having it, and then only when they are
trying to make a baby. At the other extreme, we have people who thing
anybody who wants to should be having it, but that as far as having kids
goes, nobody should ever be allowed to have more than 1 or 2 if they
can prove that they are fit to raise them and can support them- anybody
else should have to abort any pregnancies that might result from all
that sex if their birth control fails. I think it's a safe assumption
that the other 98% of people have opinions that fall somewhere in
between those extremes.
Since it is impossible for me to
begin to grasp the reasoning of others that has led them to their
personal opinions about abortion, I'm going to explain mine instead.
What I think, what I wish, and what has happened in my own life and the
lives of women that I have known that brought me to this point believing
what I do.
I believe every woman faced with the prospect
of carrying and delivering a baby needs to decide for herself whether
that is something she is willing and able to do. I believe that the
decision should be made by her and her doctor, and I believe that the
father of the child if he is known should be the only people included in
that decision. If the father is not known, then unless the mother is
unsure of his identity due to having been raped, every effort should be
made to identify him using DNA testing of amniotic fluid (at the
potential father's expense) should he wish to be involved in the
decision. Should the mother wish to terminate the pregnancy and the
father wish it to continue, I feel that the law should require the
mother to enter into a surrogacy contract to carry and deliver the child
for the father to raise as his own in exchange for financial
compensation. I believe that the going rate for a surrogate is $23,000
plus medical expenses, which works out to about $3.40 an hour for a
full term pregnancy being pocketed by a woman who is being forced to
carry and give birth to a child that she did not want to have in the
first place. If the mother and father both wish to terminate, or the
father is unable or unwilling to pay the price to rent the mother's body
as an incubator for 280 days, then they are the ones to make that
choice, no one else.
As to what I wish? Well that is
completely different. I wish that all the money that has gone into
fighting for and against a woman's right to have an abortion over the
years had instead been poured into research and development of a safe
and effective birth control implant. This implant would be used to
temporarily sterilize every male and female at the onset of puberty, and
could then be removed at a later time upon request when those young men
and women made the conscious choice that they actually wanted to begin
trying to conceive a child. Remember Robin Hood: Men in Tights? Kind
of like Maid Marian's chastity belt, but modernized.... Of course
you're going to have your parents who will refuse to have their child
implanted with something that could interfere with "God's Plan", but
those kids might get lucky and actually avoid pregnancy by following the
abstinence only education that their parents are preaching, plus once
they are legally adults, they can choose for themselves to use more
effective forms of birth control if they want to. And if all else fails
and those kids do end up making a baby that they didn't plan for and
don't want?
Of course there are things that neither of my
plans addresses. What if a woman chooses to try and get pregnant, then
discovers that her baby has something wrong that makes it less than
perfect? In that case, knowing that she consciously chose to get
pregnant, she needs to give it a chance. If she and her partner do not
feel equal to the task of raising a special needs child, then they have
the option to give that child up for adoption. What if a woman is in
imminent danger of losing her life by carrying her pregnancy to term?
Then she can choose to have an abortion, because no one can be asked to
give up their own life for anyone else, born or unborn. What if a woman
is raped by a man while she is trying to conceive with another man?
Here I think that the mother's state of mind needs to take precedence.
If it is going to cause her psychological harm carrying a constant
reminder of her rape to term, then she should be allowed to terminate
the pregnancy. Otherwise it is hoped that she could at least carry to
term, even if only for the purpose of placing the child up for adoption.
Ideally, even if none of my other ideas ever comes to pass- any person
who goes beyond having an opinion against a woman's right to choose and
begins to try and influence legislation forbidding women the right to
choose should be required to adopt at their own expense one unwanted
child. Unless they are willing to put their money and their time where
their mouth is, then they shouldn't be able to use their mouth to
control what another person chooses to do with their money and their
time. Wouldn't be a bad idea to require those people to raise that
child according to the beliefs and principles held dear by the person
who created that child either. See what they think of having to live
their lives according to someone else's beliefs for a change.
So how did I get here to the point where I hold such off the wall
opinions about abortion and birth control and a woman's right to choose
and everything? Well, that's a long story. Not to say that I'm not
going to try and tell it, just cluing you into the fact that we're not
done here yet.
The first way that I got here was that my
Mother got pregnant at 15 by a 21 year old man that my Grandmother
thought was a "great guy" Since he was such a great guy, Grandma pushed
my Mother to keep dating him even after my Mother said she didn't
really like him. But don't worry, that guy isn't my father. Cause the
child my Mother conceived off of that guy, my Grandmother forced her to
abort back when she was 15. There wasn't any discussion beyond the fact
that Mom told Grandma she was pregnant, and Grandma showed up in her
room the next morning and told her she wasn't going to school. Grandma
drove her to the next town over (the hospital in town that Grandma
worked for was a Catholic one, so that one wouldn't work) and next thing
Mom knew, she was having an abortion. She later learned that my Aunt
had a similar experience when she turned up pregnant by the brother of
that "great guy" I mentioned. Not sure what Mom would have chosen for
herself, she doesn't like to talk about that much. Pretty sure that
Grandma didn't give a damn what Mom thought, since she still never cares
what anyone else thinks.
The second way that I am here is
because my Dad knocked up a girl while he was in his Senior year in
high school. Cute baby. But that kid isn't me either. The mother of
that child moved out of town while she was pregnant with her folks, and
when the baby was born she told everyone that it's father was a
different guy, who she later married. Everyone knew she was lying, and
she even admitted that she was lying, but that guy was less of a shit
head than my Dad, so she picked the better guy. This left my Dad
feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof though. Kind of like there was
never any scrape he couldn't get out of.
So then my parents
hooked up with each other. Why did those other pregnancies lead to
me? Well, if Mom had actually given birth to her child, there's no way
in hell my Dad would have had anything to do with her. Even if she had
been forced to give the child up for adoption, the chances of the two of
them coming together when they did are nil. The only reason he was
able to land my mother for the short time they were together was because
she didn't have much choice but to shack up with someone in order to
escape from her mother. Had she fought to keep the baby she wouldn't
have been able to keep up with his partying, and had she given it up,
she wouldn't have ever come back to their tiny ass town afterwards.
Grandma would have shipped her off. And Dear Old Sperm Daddy? Well,
remember he already dodged one bullet, so he wasn't too worried about
having to deal with any consequences of his behavior, so they just
partied and had sex and pretended that everything was perfect. Then
came me....
By this point, Mom was out of Grandma's, cause
Grandma was off playing around with husband #3. Her and Sperm Daddy
tried to play happy family for a couple of year down in Texas, but him
getting stoned and beating her ass broke up our happy home. Mom came
back up here with me and decided to try out the single mommy thing.
That lasted until she got knocked up by the guy she was having a fling
with at work. He was all of 19 years old, and she was a mature 24.
They actually got married, and fought like hell for couple more years
after Brother Noah was born. Then they decided that they wanted to get
divorced, cause she thought he was a drunk, and he thought she was a
bitch. Too bad for all of us that she was pregnant again, and found out
right after they split up... Eventually they decided to give it
another try, but not before Drunk Daddy told 8 year old little me not to
get excited about the baby brother or sister I'd heard them fighting
about, because Mom was gonna get an abortion. Seems that they disagreed
about that, and Mom obviously won, cause Baby Sister showed up right on
schedule...
While all of this was going on, Sperm Daddy
had come back from Texas and married The Step Mom, and had given me a
delightful <bullshit> little step-sister, aka Younger Sister
(unplanned 17 year old pregnancy kid from TSM's first marriage) and
Little Sister (planned, but was supposed to be a boy- oops!) Of course,
by now, many of you are wondering whether any of these damn people ever
heard of using birth control or keeping their damn pants on. You're not
the first to ask that question, many people have asked it quite loudly,
thank you very much. Which brings me to the next chapter: My sex life.
I started having sex at 14. By this point Mom was dating the man who
would later become Dad Like Dude, Drunk Daddy was shacking up with a
girl not even out of her teens, and Sperm Daddy and The Step Mom were
seriously on the rocks. Plus by this point all of my grandparents were
divorced and banging new people too, except for dear old Grandma, who
had moved onto husband #4 shortly after I was born, so at least he was
familiar to me. To put it mildly, I had some serious daddy issues. I
was also fairly unattractive, poor as dirt, and just mouthy enough to be
getting my ass beat on a semi regular basis. Brother Noah has ADHD,
which was pushing me towards a nervous breakdown as I was going through
puberty, and everything sucked some major ass. So when a friend of mine
clued me into the fact that boys liked boobs (those at least, I had) I
started to notice the boys. One boy in particular caught my eye,
because we took up a collection for flowers when his mom died of a drug
overdose right after my 12th birthday. Dude had worse problems than I
did. He and I "dated" for about a year and a half, and when his
grandmother (who was raising him) died right before our 14th birthdays,
we got a whole lot closer.
Logically, yes- I understood how
babies got made. I was scary smart, and biology was of special interest
to me ( I was already trying to figure out just how fucked up my DNA
was going to doom me to be). There were girls at my school who had
gotten pregnant, but they were only a very small percentage of the girls
who I knew were having sex, so I figured it wasn't something that
happened easily. I also was more concerned with keeping my man happy
than I was with anything else, to be quite honest. That's why, when the
Trojan Magnum condoms that he insisted on getting from his brother kept
falling off of his less than Magnum sized member while we were having
sex, I didn't push to make him get smaller ones. I didn't want to hurt
his feelings. That's why when he insisted that it would be okay as long
as he pulled out all those times when neither of us could get a condom
(14, no jobs, no money, no cars to go anywhere with....) I didn't
argue. We did of course get caught, and my mother put me on birth
control, but she wasn't any better about reminding me to take them than I
was about actually remembering to myself.
I made it through
that relationship without getting pregnant. I did have one scare early
on, which led to me drinking Castor Oil, douching my way to a yeast
infection, and contemplating having someone punch me in the stomach over
and over. Luckily I was just late. But I guess that answers the
question of whether I would have ever had an abortion or not. Now,
looking back, I don't think I'd have gone through with it even if I had
known how to go about getting one. But 14 year old me? I might have
done anything to avoid having to tell my mother I was pregnant.
I made it through several other relationships and the next 8 years
too. Not by being any smarter or better about remembering to take my
pills, but by being damn lucky. I still made the same mistakes over and
over again, just trying to keep my men happy and find someone who would
love me enough to rescue me from my shitty life. Of course I know now
that I'd have been better off studying and ignoring the boys and should
have just busted my ass to get myself out, but all I had ever known or
seen was that the women who had better than what I had also had decent
men helping them to get it and keep it. So that was what I wanted.
I was getting close to figuring out the whole "live your life for you"
thing when I met The Ex. My relationship with him was more about the
pity I felt towards him and thinking that he was a decent guy who
deserved a way out of HIS shitty life. So he moved in with me, and I
spent about a year helping to build up his confidence. In that year, my
Aunt had a baby, and I looked back on the life I'd lived so far and
started feeling it weighing on me. Didn't matter that I was only in my
very early 20's, I'd lived a lot by then and I was starting to fear that
I was never going to find that nice "normal" life that I wanted so
badly. I was finally free of my parents and their drama, and I wanted
to start my own family on MY terms. So The Ex and I got engaged.
Because of all the "not pregnant" test results that I had gotten when I
couldn't believe I'd dodged the bullet again, I seriously had begun to
think that I couldn't get pregnant. This belief was reinforced by my
having been told by a gynecologist that my uterus was abnormally tilted,
and that I might not be able to conceive because of that.
Just about the time that I was beginning to wise up to the fact that
maybe The Ex and I weren't completely compatible, BAM! We're pregnant.
I was less than thrilled, having finally spent enough time in the real
world to realize that it was fucking expensive, and I was freshly
unemployed. But oddly, my Mother was thrilled, Grandma was telling me
when my wedding needed to be so as to not interfere with her vacation
plans, and The Ex repeatedly refused my offers to let him off the hook
and for me to raise the baby on my own without his help. So we got
married, and he spent the entire pregnancy trying to convince me that he
did want me, and the baby, and that we'd work everything out.
Clearly we didn't work everything out, because he never envisioned
getting laid off when Thing One was 2 months old, and he'd conveniently
forgotten that his way of dealing with stress was to be a crackhead and a
drunk. Last straw was when he got his DUI with Thing One in the car.
Goodbye marriage, hello to being a broke ass single mommy!
I
spent 9 months on my own after that before agreeing to go out on a date
with a guy who was working in town from out of state. He was wrong in
so many ways, but he was the first guy I'd ever known that made me feel
like he was the strong one, so I fell HARD. This time I was protected
from pregnancy thanks to the depo shot, but unfortunately not from the
venereal disease that he gave me. Now wasn't that just a fun little
reminder that my life is destined to be shit?
H2 and I met
while I was trying out the online dating thing. Younger Sister thought
that I needed to spend the time that Thing One was suddenly spending
with her father (after a year of only supervised visits he was getting 2
overnights a week) getting out in the world rather than sitting at home
licking my wounds. After ascertaining with an IQ test that he's at
least as intelligent as I am, and after dating about for 8 months, we
decided to move in together. I moved here since his job wouldn't let
him transfer. A cancer scare that I didn't have health insurance to
cover pushed up our wedding plans, and we got married. He really wanted
a baby, not having ever had any children himself. I reluctantly agreed
to one, and we started trying.
Six months after the
marriage, neither one of us was real happy. He didn't like the fact
that wife me wasn't as interested in sex as girlfriend me had been. I
didn't like the fact that he and Thing One seemed to be constantly at
odds. So we talked about a divorce. Then we thought maybe we should
take a pregnancy test before we made that call. I had not had a cycle
the entire time that we were together due to the depo having not worn
off, but we knew that I had probably ovulated once if not twice. Sure
enough, we were pregnant. Luckily we were both amenable to the idea of
working it out for the baby's sake, and hopefully no lasting damage has
occurred to Thing One that therapy won't fix in the process. Now we're
here, doing the best we can, with him neutered cause I am for damn sure
not ever having another child.
I suppose that someone
reading this could find many examples to prop up their argument for why
abortion is never the answer, or why people shouldn't have sex if they
aren't prepared to deal with the consequences. Those people didn't need
my story to affirm their beliefs though. And that is not what living
my life has taught me. What I've learned is that every person has to
live and learn from their own story. They have to make their own
choices. Because every choice has a consequence that can reach far into
the future and change the whole rest of your life. Every action that
is taken without thoroughly evaluating every possible outcome can lead
to the outcome that you least want and didn't really expect. The life I
have now is a result of the choices that I and others have made. It
has taught me a great deal about myself and those close to me, but it
hasn't taught me enough to qualify me to make choices for anyone else
whose life I have not lived.
Not everyone is strong enough
to live the life that their mistakes has created for them. I hope that I
can be, although at times it has almost been more than I could bear.
For those who recognize that they have made a mistake, or had someone
else make it for them, that want to change the path that mistake will
carry them down, the choice to do so should always be there.
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