Um, that's not feminism

Do what you wanna do, girl.  I got your back.

January Jones and Alicia Silverstone have made news recently.  Jones talked openly about encapsulating her placenta and taking it like a vitamin.  Silverstone practices kiss-feeding, or chewing up her kids’ food before feeding it to them. 

Now I haven’t done either of these things.  I’m interested in placenta encapsulation and if I have another baby, I will see if I can do it.  I’ve read about it and found absolutely nothing negative about it.  The only negativity comes from assholey Judgy McJudgertons.  I woke up the other day when my radio alarm went off.  I laid in bed and listened to my (former) favorite station, MOJO 92.5.  They play 70s and 80s music, and I dig it.  The two male and one female DJ then started in on some news—yep, they started in on January Jones.  It was sort of like this:

 

“Did you know January Jones ate her placenta?” 

“Ewwww.  That’s sick and wrong.”

“Totally.  She said other mammals do it, so she wanted to try it, and she said it gave her lots of energy.” 

“Hasn’t she ever heard of coffee?”  (insert jack-ass laughter)

“Well, you know, humans do a lot of things other mammals don’t.  Like wear clothes.” 

“Have you driven around this country?  There’s a reason for a lot of people to wear clothes!”  (insert more jack-ass laughter) 

So basically they judged something they know nothing about, and then participated in a quick bout of fat-shaming.  I got up and turned the station.  

Now, my opinion on both Jones and Silverstone is this:  I do not give a rip if Jones eats her placenta, and I don’t give a shit if Silverstone feeds her kid by chewing up his or her food first.  Because I’m pro-choice.   Want to breastfeed because it’s good for the baby?  Fine.  Want to breastfeed because it’ll help you lose weight faster?  Cool.  Don’t want to breastfeed because you have to go back to work and won’t have time or resources to pump?  All right.  Don’t want to breastfeed because you just don’t want to?  Fine by me, lady.  Want to fully follow the vaccination schedule?  Go ahead.  Want to selectively vaccinate or not at all?  I’ll support you.  Want to have the baby?  Cool. I’ll babysit.  Want an abortion?  I’ll go with you. 

I bet her placenta is DELICIOUS!

What I’m saying is that being pro-choice should cover more than just abortion.  Feminism should cover more than the false dichotomy of mothering versus being a good feminist. 

 

I’ve written before about how much it pisses me off when folks say they’re pro-choice.  So I wasn’t too shocked to hear that supposed feminist Amanda Marcotte wrote this article, because I already know she’s anti-choice when it comes to vaccination.  I was sort of surprised at how laughable the short piece was.  Marcotte’s argument boils down to her being grossed out, but she veils it as concern for the already beleaguered modern mother: 

That the burdens of getting "natural" fall nearly exclusively on the shoulders of women---especially when babies come---is reason enough to take a step back and wonder if this isn't the same old oppression of women repackaged in shiny new organic wrapping.

That’s a good one.  Yes, it’s all about oppressing the women.   Because nothing says “I trust and respect women” like saying “Your birth and parenting choices are nasty.  EWWW.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  There are plenty of *OPSWAM in this country trying to send women back down to chattel status, Marcotte.  Saying that the “crunchy mom mafia” is degrading and oppressive to women is just ANTI-FEMINIST.    

I’m calling it.  The fourthwave of feminism is here, and we have open arms.  We accept that motherhood looks different for every single woman.  We support women even if their choices don’t feel to us like looking in a mirror.  And if Marcotte can’t say that, I’m not sure the Fourth Wave wants or needs “feminists” like her.

*Over-Privileged Straight White American Male (stolen from my friend Sam Edmonds and his eat-a-bag-of-dicks attitude).

On choosing not to be an asshole

IWD

I used to be quite conservative politically in all the worst ways.  I was a misogynist.  I believed being gay was gross and that abused women should just leave already.  I told racist jokes and used racial slurs.  I’m terribly ashamed of all of that, and I’ve since become much less of an asshole.  But one thing I’ve never  been unsure about is reproductive rights.  I’ve been pro-choice at least since 7^th grade, which is when I remember having my first political argument.  My cousin Cindy said abortion was evil and wrong, and I said I didn’t think it was.  My reasoning was something about a mother resenting a child she didn’t want.  My cousin didn’t buy this and made fun.  “Oh, yeah, right, like the mom’s going to go Oh, I resent you, and slap them or whatever.”  I stood my ground though, because I knew what I was talking about.  I’ve been the resented child.

                I don’t know how my mom felt about children in general in her 20s, but I do know how she felt about girl children, and she didn’t want any.  She had a boy first.  Whew.  Then came me, and my grandmother’s warning must have loomed loud in her head, words I heard over and over through the years too:  “I can’t wait until you have a daughter just like you.”    My grandmother predicted I would be girl, and probably mom resented that implication, that she was about to get hers.  Who wouldn’t resent a barbed comment like that?  So out I came, female, and already I was a disappointment.  I know my mother loved and loves me, and that absolutely does not change the fact that she resented my femaleness. 

                So, predictably or not, my mom and I never really got along that well.  And I never forgot that she never wanted a girl.  I couldn’t, because she brought it up more than a few times during my childhood and adolescence.  By the time I began having sex, I had known for years that I didn’t want any kids.  Why take the chance that I’d have a kid like me, I figured. 

                Yes, I actually told myself and believed that I was a bad person, a bad child.  Somehow this translated to me having a fervent desire to not procreate, and I think this shaped my pro-choice views way before I ever started in with sex.  Back then, the right to abortion was about wanting pregnancy or not wanting it.  I didn’t want it, powerful bad.  And today reproductive rights is still about wanting pregnancy.  Every one of my children were wanted, even though not planned.  But before that, two abortions were what I wanted.  I didn’t know it back then, but what I wanted was to want pregnancy.  And when that happened, it surprised the crap out of me.  What my cousin could not and did not know back in seventh grade was that I knew about resentment, and I knew those ill feelings towards a child didn’t need to take the form of physical abuse.

                But just wanting my children doesn’t make me a great mother, and I’m fully aware of that.  What I want most for my children is confidence.  I want my daughters and my son to not only know they are wanted and loved, to never question that for a moment, but to instill that confidence in other young people, to be the kind of people who can buoy others in need because they have that strong sense of self.  I know some of this is up to chance and circumstance, but making sure girls and boys don’t grow up to be the kind of assholes who would restrict someone’s right to bodily autonomy seems as easy as not being that kind of an asshole yourself. 

               

This is not goo on the belly, people

STILL want that abortion, dearie?

Just what in the crap is going on in this country, you guys?  A room full of men deciding the fate of birth control coverage?  But men can’t even…and they don’t…so why should they…what?! 

 Not only that, but Virginia, Texas, and Iowa with the forcible transvaginal ultrasound for women wanting an abortion?  Transvaginal – that’s up in the vagina, if you didn’t know.  That’s a medical instrument forcibly placed into your body (which you have to hold?!).  Um, so the FBI recently changed the definition of rape to include, well, EXACTLY THIS.  Penetration against one’s will.  And that’s what the mandatory ultrasound laws are about.  They’re not about smearing goo on a woman’s tummy and then forcing her to check out the screen with the wavy blue lines that is supposed to magically make her change her mind but actually pretty much never does.  The laws are about legalized rape. 

 And for what, you GOP assholes?  It’s dizzying how fast it comes down to treating women like children or chattel when you start unraveling the reasons a state would legalize rape.  Let’s see if we can follow it, if we slow it down a little:

1.       We think abortion is bad, which means

2.       Abortion is bad, which means

3.       Abortions shouldn’t happen which means

4.       If abortions still happen women don’t know better which means

5.       We have to protect the women from themselves which means

6.       We have to remind them of their natural purpose which means

7.       If we force them to look at wavy blue lines they will come around and they will thank us in the end.

I really can’t believe this is on the table at all, but let’s let the fact that it is fire us up.  Komen learned a lesson about politicking women’s lives, and I think the GOP needs a lesson about staying the eff out of women’s personal decisions. 

Every Child a Wanted Child

Today is the 39^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and it’s Blog for Choice day.  I thought this was the appropriate time to share my second abortion story, because my second abortion didn’t involve complications or drawn-out denial or an abusive partner—it was a more typical experience, I think, and I think it’s just as important to share this story.   

After my first abortion, I didn’t go on birth control because I wasn’t seeing anyone and I didn’t see the point.  A couple of years later I started seeing someone, and became pregnant again (no condom.  Yes, stupid.)  I told the father and he told me he was supportive of whatever decision I made.  I didn’t hesitate.  It is still amazing to me that through the years, though I’ve been willing to sacrifice a lot of things for a man, and though I’ve avoided confrontation with others by being passive-aggressive, I’ve always, always been able to stand firm when it came to my reproductive choices.  It’s not even difficult for me. 

The father accompanied me and I went and got my abortion, by the same wonderful woman, Dr. Susan Wicklund.  And this time when the nurse asked me at my follow-up visit if I was interested in a birth control pill, I said yes. 

I don’t regret either of my abortions.  I couldn’t imagine being tied to either of those men in any way.  I grew up positive I didn’t want to have kids, which probably fueled my pro-choice slant from early on, and I only changed my mind when I met someone who somehow made me believe I could be a mother, who just took it for granted I could be a good mother, when I’d always seen myself as someone who’d be terrible at and who would also hate it.   

My Abortions Story Part 2: Complications and the business of payment

On the day of the abortion, I had lunch at the dorms with Eva, though I didn’t live there, and then we drove to the clinic. I wore those track type pants that swooshed, with a long tee shirt. After a short wait, I was called back to the counselor’s office. She was kind, and asked me questions. I told her the father didn’t want me to have the abortion, but I had made up my mind. I was frightened but sure. Then, I went back to sit with Eva for a few minutes.

My doctor was a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. She had long, straight, silver-gray hair. Her face was softly lined, and she was calm. I remember bright lights and the whirring vacuum machine, and that’s it. After the procedure was finished, the doctor and a nurse helped me to the recovery area, which was a small room with two couches, a table with juice and cookies, and some magazines. I rested there for 45 minutes. They let Eva come in. When the time came, the nurse nodded and I got up, already reaching for the door handle, and then everything went black and I was sitting on the couch again. I’d passed out. I felt nauseated and closed my eyes, swallowing mouthfuls of saliva. More juice and cookies, and 45 minutes later I got up again, slower this time, and black splashed my eyes again. Over and over I rested, tried to get up, and passed out. Eva looked a little worried when the nurse came in and checked my stomach. She paused. “Does your stomach normally look this way?” I looked at Eva. I didn’t even know if my own stomach was pooched out more than it normally was. I didn’t even know what my own stomach looked like, the part of my body I’d always hated. This is how oblivious I was to what was going on with my body. I had no idea if it was bloated, and I told her so.

Eva and I had made plans to go to our friends’ house, the two friends who I mentioned earlier, so that they could take care of me. They were cooking spaghetti, and we’d watch Friends. It was a Thursday. But the afternoon passed, and the clinic closed. I passed out repeatedly, and everyone around me was nervous. But I was calm. I’m not sure if it was just the weakness, or my general obliviousness to things happening around me, but I never got worried or frightened. Finally, around 8 p.m. the doctor came back to the clinic. She felt around on my stomach and said I might have a clot. She’d need to get me back in the procedure room to take a look and get it out if needed. But she’d need help.

She and Eva grabbed either arm and we stood up fast and made it to the exam bed just as I went limp. I woke up and vomited. I wasn’t nervous, but I was shaking uncontrollably. The doctor started up the vacuum machine again, the rumbling filling the room, and I looked over to see Eva in the room, her arms wrapped around her stomach. I moaned—I hadn’t wanted her here for this. She was pregnant and I knew she had to be having some conflicting stuff going on. But soon they called Eva to duty and asked her to squeeze my IV bag. Apparently I had an IV by this time. She stood by my head and told me to look at her, and I did. “Breathe,” she kept saying. “Breathe, pal.” And I’d take a breath and hold it until she reminded me again.

After, I was able to leave the recovery room standing, and we drove to our friends’ house. The spaghetti was cold, and they had antoehr friend over, who didn’t’ know about the abortion. I’m a pro at glossing over though, and I sat cross-legged on the floor eating microwaved spaghetti. When the friend used the bathroom, Eva told me that there was blood on my sock. They hadn’t taken my socks off when they put me on the exam table the second time, and a neat round circle of bright red blood covered the heel of my white ankle sock.

The abortion cost $360, and my friends paid for it. I had just moved back to school, and I hadn’t found a job yet. The father had promised to send half of the money to me before he’d gone to California and I’d come back to college, but it never showed up, so I had to ask my friends, who had a little money. Two friends lent me $180 each, and I paid them back bit by bit over the next year.

Despite the complications, which were actually quite serious, despite the heavy stress the whole situation put me under, I remained somehow apart, somehow unaware and calmer than I should have been. I guess it was my body’s way of getting me through it. I’m learning more and more to trust my body. Eva, who is now a labor and delivery nurse, told me recently that I was hemorrhaging that day, and that I could have died. I went to her for her memories of my abortion experience, because I guess I kept a lot of that stuff on the periphery of my mind, and she filled in some of the blanks for me.

Having been rather out of it during the entire pregnancy and termination, you might think I’d have these great feelings of regret or distress or despair now that I’ve had time and opportunity to look back and reassess those weeks. But instead, I am calm. I have not regretted that abortion for one second. I have not wondered what would have happened if, because I’m more concerned with what did happen and what’s happening now, which is raising my three beautiful children with a beautiful, beautiful man.

And I am thankful every day for what my friends did for me. Without them, I probably would have allowed myself to ignore the pregnancy for too long. And if I hadn't ignored it, I would have gone to the Pregnancy "Care" Center by myself. I would have gone to the clinic by myself. But probably, that wouldn't have happened, because without my two friends who paid for it, I wouldn't have been able to afford the abortion. Thank you, friends. Because you were there I was able to use my reproductive choice, and it was the bravest choice I could make at that time. I will try to pay it forward.

Well, are we pro-choice or not?

This topic has been knocking around in my head for a bit now, and with Thursday’s news and the assholes it brought out of the internet woodwork, I had to say something.

Michelle Duggar suffered or is suffering a miscarriage. Duggar was pregnant with #20. I’ve never watched the show and I have not followed this family at all. I know they are very conservative Christians and that they don’t believe in birth control, that god plans their family size, that they are the Above Rubies and Quiverfull type of family. And that’s it. That’s all I know about them. And you must know I’m pro-choice, which is why it pisses me off to no end that self-proclaimed pro-choice feminists 1)Criticize her reproductive choices and 2)Are either out and out cruel or offer fake-ass, back-handed sympathy (“I feel bad for her, but every ejaculation does not need a name.”)

Some women have been arguing that maybe Michelle Duggar doesn’t really want these children, she only thinks she does because she’s brainwashed by her religion. I don’t know about that. And really, neither does anyone else, even someone who’s been in a very similar place. We don’t know if she’s under some kind of religious or spousal duress to keep having children. We don’t know if the older children’s lives will be ruined forever by having to help out with the younger children. We don’t know if they’re the happiest and most well-adjusted family on earth. WE DON’T KNOW. Whatever the Duggars have going on in their household is their business. Reproductive choice is reproductive choice, and she’s made hers. If she’s not really happy in her life, well damn, that’s pretty sad. But again, we just don’t know—we can only conjecture. And to say that she can’t possibly be happy in the life she’s living, well that feels about as condescending as when someone wants to outlaw abortion for women’s own good.

Now. If we call ourselves reproductive freedom fighters, if we believe that parenthood is a choice, if we trust women, we have to respect ALL reproductive choices. There is no picking and choosing. It’s not “I support reproductive rights, but she’s had enough kids.” No. Disagree with the woman all you want, but don’t say she doesn’t have the right to have twenty children. Don’t say she’s selfish for having children—I don’t give a shit if she’s on welfare or not. Even if she was, guess what? Still none of your business how many kids she has. It’s not a sign from God to stop having children (who are you to interpret the signs, anyway?) It’s time to pick a side, and please, pro-choicers, let’s all be on the same side. The side where we trust women, and the side where, for fuck’s sake, we don’t say “maybe she needs to be mentally envaluated, and then we they do the D & C, take her baby parts away because this is beyond enough” to a woman who has lost a loved and wanted child. You don’t get to be pro-choice with a BUT. The pro-choice crowd doesn’t want to see your but, so if you must have it, keep your but to yourself. Because if we see your but, we may start to think you’re not actually pro-choice after all.

My Abortions Story Part 1: Denial and the Crisis Pregnancy Center

I was 20 years old and working as a lifeguard at my hometown pool. Home from college for the summer, I was actually working with two of my best friends at the pool. One of our other best friends, Eva, had gone that day to a doctor's appointment because she hadn't been feeling well. I happened to be the one to run to the pool house when we heard the phone ring.

Eva was crying when I picked up the phone. She was still out of town, had just left her appointment. "Pal..." she wailed. "I'm pregnant." I listened to her and asked questions or made statements, and in one of them I promised not to tell our other two friends. She wanted to absorb it a bit, I figured, and to tell them herself. The girls questioned me, though, because they were expecting a call from her about what the doctor had said. I covered a bit awkwardly.

I was on the phone with Eva, alone in the pool house. My best friend was confiding in me and she was frightened and hurting, but still I didn't tell her that I was pregnant, too. I couldn't, really. I hadn't even let myself admit it. Pregnancy simply could not happen to me. To say I was a naive and unprepared girl is to give me way too much credit. Even though I'd been having sex for five years at that point, I had never once thought about birth control. My step-mother tried to talk to me about it once on a car ride somewhere in high school. She said she'd bring me to the doctor, and we'd get me on the pill. It was a kind offer, but I was so uncomfortable talking about sex, about my body, that I clammed up and shook my head. It's stunning to me now, to look back and see that girl so heavy in denial that she explained away nausea and sore boobs, and yet hoped in the back of her mind that breathing the cleaning fumes at the pool would cause a miscarriage. It was an odd place to be, almost of two minds--unable to say the word pregnant even in my head, but already planning an abortion.

The father was onto me. And he was thrilled. He loved kids, and he took to rubbing my stomach and calling me Mama. He sensed I was leaning towards abortion, when I could eventually talk about it with him, and he put me on the phone with his mother, who he had told. She prayed and I cried.

But the father was abusive. Locking me in a room is the worst thing he ever did to me, but he'd told me he beat up his ex-girlfriend's parents and his sister, and I'd seen his eyes go cold when I stayed out too late with my friends. This guy wanted me to marry him, move to California, where he was from, and have the baby. I knew this was not happening. Crazy thing is, if I hadn't been pregnant, I was stupid and desperate enough to have married him. But even with a complete lack of self-esteem and little confidence, it was firm in my head and my heart that I was not going to have his baby. At the end of the summer, I still hadn't told my best friends or anyone else, and I headed back to college.

I finally told Eva one day, or rather she encouraged it out of me (I guess I wasn't as discreet as I thought)and she agreed to go to a clinic with me. Our university's campus newspaper had an ad for a Pregnancy Care Center. Free pregnancy tests, it said, and abortion referrals. Eva drove me there. The building was downtown inside a tall, dark, old building. We climbed up silent, soft forest green stairs and down a hallway. The door looked like an office door, not a medical clinic, but we went in anyway.


It was an office. It was small and looked like it should belong to an insurance salesperson. Right away we saw one of those "abortion" pictures, and we looked at each other. Still, we stayed. I went into their small office bathroom with rust circling the sink drain, and I peed in a Dixie cup, then left it on the dish towel on top of the toilet. The elderly lady who had led me there wore old-woman pleated slacks and a sweater, and she went into the bathroom and placed an Equate brand pregnancy test stick in my piss. After she pronounced me pregnant, she asked me what I was thinking of doing, and I told her I was thinking of doing abortion. I can't remember much of what she said, but I remember this: "Have you felt the baby kicking yet?" At 13 weeks, which I was,that was, at the very least, very unlikely. The woman gave me a handout to study up on, mostly about the emotional trauma I would feel. I was worried about this, but not as worried as I was about being pregnant. In the end, the woman gave me a Thank You certificate from my fetus, as well as a pair of tiny booties. This mystified me. I wasn't sure if the smallness of the booties was supposed to bring out my maternal instincts, or if someone figured it was the lack of booties that was causing me to want to "murder" my "child." At any rate, later, the woman called my home, where I lived with two cousins, and left a message from a "friend," and then followed up with a postcard.

After we left that place, I cried all the way to Eva's dorm, and then I told her I wanted to have an abortion. One other thing I was worried about was Eva's reaction. She had told the dad, had a plan, and she was having a baby. Terminating my pregnancy was the only option I ever considered, but I was still frightened she'd think badly of me. But she scolded me for thinking it, hugged me, told me she'd go with me, and asked if she should tell our two friends. I said yes, and then I went home and phoned the local women's clinic and made an appointment.

Part 2: Coming up with the money and medical complications