AnaDec 2, 2022

I might have to get a second trimester abortion. MIGHT because there’s still one test to go, but the chances of a happy ending are not good. I don’t do well grasping at hope, so I’ve just decided to face facts.

My insurance won’t cover one penny of the procedure. As a federal employee with federal benefits, they only cover abortions in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. To which I reply: my life is in danger.

Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
The nature of the cells growing inside me are wrong; there are deletions on one chromosomes and an extra part of another. The abnormalities mean that a normal head and spine will likely not grow, and that even if a baby emerged from my body, it would have a too-small head, a too-small brain, and clubbed hands and/or feet.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022

It would be in pain. It would likely develop leukemia. It would suffer; I would suffer; my husband and my son would suffer. Our lives would be redirected into a chasm of sorrow for the accommodation of a life that would only exist in that chasm.

Why? Why should we live through this? There’s nothing to do with fairness or sin or penitence here; it’s just nature.

Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
But as surely as we attach the meaning “love” to a bunch of red roses, humans attach meaning to that which is simply a process. There is nothing to judge in a pregnancy gone wrong; it simply is wrong.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
As a cried to a kind nurse the other day, I didn’t cry because I know what’s happening inside my body. I cried because I know I’m lucky; I cried for all the unlucky women I know were also crying that day. If I had not fought and scrimped and saved and worked 14 hour days to live in a progressive state; if I had given up and gone back home to live in the comfort of my family, I would not have this choice, now, at 15 weeks, 6 days pregnant.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022

Sorrow and suffering and even ruin would be the only road I had to take. If I lived where I’m from, the state of Georgia, I would be trapped.

My friends who have never been trapped can’t seem to understand. I always tell them “imagine you’re in a small town in GA, with no buses and you can’t afford a tank of gas out of town. What do you do? How can you get help? You can’t”.

Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
But they never understand me, not really. Pulp’s Common People talks about this. How privileged people can’t imagine a life with no options. But we’re always so close to that edge, or someone close to us is close. No one is safe, so why is just avoiding a sick child or death from a hemorrhage on my individual basis good enough?
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
This situation will come around again and again and again, and even if it doesn’t affect me, I’d could ruin the life of the woman on my street or in the next block over or down the dirt road in GA. If she is hurt by the system, how am I not hurt? Am I so different from her? I don’t think I am.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
There’s lots of talk of men’s responsibilities and vasectomies today, and I agree with all of it. I agree with Gabrielle Blair’s Ejaculate Responsibly. But I can’t agree with her sentiment that men could eliminate all abortions in three months if they took responsibility. That’s not the nature of nature. Things go wrong, and at 12 or 15 or 20 weeks or even later, you can get bad news.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
The abortion procedure must be there for us to use without shame or question, because we already have to deal with the fact that, completely out of our control, this fetus is not going to develop; this baby is not going to have a life, or, if they have one, it will suffer, as will the entire family.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
Abortion is not just about unwanted pregnancies; it’s about intervention in pregnancies that are deeply flawed. That’s no one’s fault; that’s counter, many times, to what is wanted. Humans hate a lack of control, and genetic abnormalities are just that: out of our control. The situation requires that we make unemotional decisions at an emotional time, that we, women, separate what we want and have worked for and what is best.
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022

And we have worked; pregnancy is 24 hours every day; bodies change every day; hormones pump for every day. Nothing is without work.

But this situation requires dispassion. And women every day step up to that requirement.

Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022
Under emotional duress we learn to grieve and we go get that procedure. We hope we can. We move childcare and meetings and work. We spend our own money. We are exactly the opposite of the people who make these laws and have these opinions in the abstract. They can let their feelings fly because there is nothing at stake for them. But there are lives at stake for us.
Show threadAna
I have to face this system, even if the fetus is normal. I have to make plans and the final call. I have to weigh the options. What I can’t do is to see this as only me, an individual who can hopefully avoid something unpleasant. It isn’t only me; it’s me and about 9 doctors and my husband and our daycare provider and my mother and sisters-in-law and my brother and my best friends and all the women who don’t have options. There are so many people involved in this system, and we’re all affected.
Dec 2, 2022 at 3:46pmWeb
Show threadAnaDec 2, 2022

I might have to get an abortion. It’ll cost $6,000, which is a lot for any middle class family. It’ll cost two days of my life, plus recovery. It’s what I have to do for myself and for the people I love. For this not-yet-baby I wanted. I have to lay on that table alone, but I know it’s not just about me.

#abortionrightsarehumanrights #mybodychoice #abortionnow