But today, I just feel like everything's lining up. The planets are aligned a certain way. All the winds are blowing the right direction. Or something. Everywhere I turn, this story is coming up. It's important. It needs to be discussed. And so, here's a note I wrote and published on Facebook. Here's my deepest, darkest secret in the world.
Okay. I'm pissed. I'm seventeen levels beyond pissed. I am so freaking enraged that I could attack someone without much of a second thought, and I am not a violent person, typically.
But this has gotten out of hand.
Yesterday, OK Senate bill 1433, aka the Personhood Act, was passed in the Oklahoma Senate. Only 8 people voted against it. The bill is expected to pass the House. So, basically, now my eggs are people.
Seriously? That's like saying... that my eggs are people. How freaking insane and ludicrous is that? Extremely.
And also yesterday, the GOP prevented a woman from giving testimony about birth control, which lead to an all-male panel. About birth control. For real. Now, I'm not saying that men aren't invested in what happens to women in regards to birth control, but goddammit, they're hardly "qualified" to speak about it -- which is why they refused a female witness. She wasn't qualified. Guess what, assholes, she has a uterus, so she's quite a bit more qualified than you are.
It's when we're talking about stuff like this when I do start to perhaps hate men a bit. Because men are so often telling women what to do with their bodies and their fertility, without any knowledge of or experience with what it means to be female. That shit pisses me off.
The thing is, men can walk away at any point in the event of a pregnancy. Would he be a total jackass and a piece of shit and would most men agree with that? Sure. But he can. He can walk away and never look back. That's why women demand so much in terms of child support money, because that's the only way to kind of keep things fair. But even then, it's not really fair. (And some guys get completely shafted in terms of child support, I know. Just roll with me for a bit.) It's still the woman who has to carry the child, give birth, and then make the decision to keep the child, put it up for adoption, whatever. If she chooses to keep and raise the child, then that's her life for the rest of her life. And at any moment, a man can just walk away and leave her stranded. That's why birth control is a woman's issue. Because it is women's lives that are really affected.
Women and children are consistently at the bottom of the economic ladder. The largest demographic below the poverty line is single-parent women and their children. So when people complain about welfare, or other government assistance programs, most of the people that are getting help from those programs are women and children. If you want to get rid of the programs, then you have to make comprehensive sex education a priority everywhere and you have to make birth control accessible to everyone. To everyone. In every neighborhood. You don't like abortions? Then make sure that all women everywhere have access to birth control. And access to birth control that they are in control of, like the pill. Not condoms, because you're still dependent on the man. With the pill, the woman is completely in control.
And while we're on the subject. Let's talk about control. That's what all of this is really about, after all. People can tell me that they're "pro-life" until they are blue in the face, but I will never acknowledge that. I can't. Because it's not about "life," it's about control.
The pro-choice movement is all about giving women complete and total autonomy over her own body. She can give birth as much as she wants. She can never give birth. It is all the individual woman's choice and no one else should have the power to make that decision for her. The "pro-life" or anti-choice movement, is about limiting women's control of their bodies. Some refuse any use of contraceptives. Others say that it's only abortion that's wrong. Others waffle around in the middle and say that they dislike abortion for birth control, but that they think abortion is okay in cases of rape and incest.
There is a very, very long history of women's bodies being used by whoever is in power at the time. For example, both Hitler and Stalin made rules regarding women's fertility. They were on opposite ends of the spectrum -- Hitler wanted all women to give birth to lots of pretty white German boy babies and Stalin wanted women to be basically sterile, and state-sanctioned abortion was a big deal -- but both of them decided that women's fertility were tools for their ideological ends.
And that's bullshit. My body and my fertility and whatever I decide to do with it is not, in any way, something to support an ideology or a government or any belief system whatsoever. My body and my fertility is mine. And I truly, truly believe that until other women make these same kinds of statements, we'll never really be equal.
So, anyway. Why do I care? Because I'm just some smart-assed liberal bitch who hates men?
Nope.
Be wary, the political is about to get personal.
I've talked about my depression and my history of being suicidal in other places. So, you know about that. Well, my freshman year of college (my first college, which shows how special all that was), I got pregnant. It was a bad deal. I was already downing bottles of pills on a fairly regular basis in an attempt to either kill myself or drown myself in chemicals. I was 19 and I'd never heard of Planned Parenthood, and I don't even know if there was one in Wisconsin. I didn't have a lot of money, so some friends from my dorm went around and collected money from the college's Womyn's Group, and I went to Madison and had an abortion. Well, it didn't go quite that smoothly. There was a lot of agonizing. When I first found out, I was stunned. You see, I had fainted. And my boyfriend at the time was really worried that I had a concussion, so he took me to the hospital. I wasn't eating a lot, so we thought that that was what has caused the fainting, but the hospital did a pregnancy test, hooked me up to EKG and we waited. Then a doctor walked in said, "You're pregnant. You need to stop smoking and start taking prenatal vitamins." And he walked out. That was it. He just walked out.
I, of course, lost my goddamn mind. I was screaming. I was crying. I threw my shoes. I started jerking the EKG thingies off of my chest, desperate to just the fuck out of there. My boyfriend at the time hugged me and told me that we'd "do anything you want to do." This is important, because he was uber-Catholic. I walked around like a zombie for a couple of days, completely unable to process what was happening. I had a professor who had discussed her abortion in class (we were reading Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants), and so I went to her and we chain smoked and I looked at it from every angle. There were two things that I knew about myself for certain. 1) I could not ever give up a kid, the second I saw the baby's face I would lose it and not be able to give it up. 2) I was in no way healthy enough to be a parent. I was trying to kill myself almost every week. And so, I went to Madison and had an abortion.
It was terrible. But when it was over, I was so relieved I can't even explain it to you. It was like this gigantic rock had been pressing on me, and then once the procedure was over, the rock exploded into tiny little pieces and I was suddenly free.
And about two weeks later, I was watching an episode of The Cosby Show (random, I know), where this older couple unexpectedly found out they were pregnant and they were so, so happy. And that. That was when the guilt hit.
That was exactly ten years ago. Yep, this is one of the reasons why I hate Valentine's Day.
So anyway, that happened. And for nine years, I've been on and off various medications to keep my crazy under some semblance of control. But I started cutting and did a brief stint in a psych ward. When I look back on the last ten years and see that I am *just now* getting myself under control, that I am *just now* learning how to love myself, I can't say that I made the wrong decision. Do I regret it? Yes. I regret the fact that it happened. But I know that I made the best decision. And so this year, I was finally able to look at the whole thing and say, I think I'm okay with what happened. I did the best I could.
In fact, my crazy has been such a big deal, that it still affects my decisions about my body. About four years ago, I was seeing a therapist who told me that I should probably never have kids. Because with my history of suicidal thoughts, depression, and bipolar disorder, postpartum depression would be an extremely significant risk -- and I don't want to be one of those moms on TV who've drowned their kids. So, I went on Mirena, a 5-year IUD, for my birth control, because no one would have tied the tubes on a 25-year-old. I've got a year left on it, and I need to start really thinking about my future and what I'm willing to risk and what I want to do about having kids.
So, knowing all of this, would anyone sit there and tell me at 19 that no, I had to have that baby? Well, maybe not. Although there are some who may have, just because there are some people who are so dogmatic that they can't see through the rhetoric to any one individual's story. But there are a lot of people who would say that I was justified in making that decision, that yes, abortion was the right choice in that instance.
So here's my point. When you can admit to the fact that there are some circumstances in which abortion makes sense, when that's the best decision to make in a shitty situation, then how can you ever start casting stones? Are you going to sit there and ask each and every woman why she's having the procedure? Who gets to decide who's worthy of one and who's not? I'm sure there are some sanctimonious bastards around who would have no problem being the one to make that kind of judgment call, but I'm sure most of us can see the problem. That no one gets to sit and ask those questions. Because it's not our business. And therefore, maybe we should shut up about who deserves the opportunity to have an abortion and who doesn't, because how do we know what the circumstances really are? How we know who's really *deserving*? And just accept that abortion happens. It's not pretty. It's not nice. But I can guarantee you that it is rarely, if ever, entered into lightly. We've thought about it; we've thought about it long and hard and often and made a decision. That is our right. It is our right to choose what to do with our bodies. It is our right to demand that it's nobody's freaking business what we do with our bodies.
So. If you don't like abortion, and I don't blame you, then please do the responsible thing. Demand that all kids get accurate information about sex and preventing pregnancies. Demand that all women everywhere get access to birth control that they are in control of. Don't start talking to me about how cheap condoms are. Don't start talking to me about how people should be more responsible and shouldn't have sex if they can't handle the consequences. Don't do it. Because you're full of shit. There are men who will not wear a condom. There are men who don't give a shit about consent. If you want to get rid of abortion, then start handing out the Pill, start demanding that all women everywhere have access to it. Start being pro-life and start looking out for the lives that are being lived right this moment.
And, by the way, my eggs are not people.
But this has gotten out of hand.
Yesterday, OK Senate bill 1433, aka the Personhood Act, was passed in the Oklahoma Senate. Only 8 people voted against it. The bill is expected to pass the House. So, basically, now my eggs are people.
Seriously? That's like saying... that my eggs are people. How freaking insane and ludicrous is that? Extremely.
And also yesterday, the GOP prevented a woman from giving testimony about birth control, which lead to an all-male panel. About birth control. For real. Now, I'm not saying that men aren't invested in what happens to women in regards to birth control, but goddammit, they're hardly "qualified" to speak about it -- which is why they refused a female witness. She wasn't qualified. Guess what, assholes, she has a uterus, so she's quite a bit more qualified than you are.
It's when we're talking about stuff like this when I do start to perhaps hate men a bit. Because men are so often telling women what to do with their bodies and their fertility, without any knowledge of or experience with what it means to be female. That shit pisses me off.
The thing is, men can walk away at any point in the event of a pregnancy. Would he be a total jackass and a piece of shit and would most men agree with that? Sure. But he can. He can walk away and never look back. That's why women demand so much in terms of child support money, because that's the only way to kind of keep things fair. But even then, it's not really fair. (And some guys get completely shafted in terms of child support, I know. Just roll with me for a bit.) It's still the woman who has to carry the child, give birth, and then make the decision to keep the child, put it up for adoption, whatever. If she chooses to keep and raise the child, then that's her life for the rest of her life. And at any moment, a man can just walk away and leave her stranded. That's why birth control is a woman's issue. Because it is women's lives that are really affected.
Women and children are consistently at the bottom of the economic ladder. The largest demographic below the poverty line is single-parent women and their children. So when people complain about welfare, or other government assistance programs, most of the people that are getting help from those programs are women and children. If you want to get rid of the programs, then you have to make comprehensive sex education a priority everywhere and you have to make birth control accessible to everyone. To everyone. In every neighborhood. You don't like abortions? Then make sure that all women everywhere have access to birth control. And access to birth control that they are in control of, like the pill. Not condoms, because you're still dependent on the man. With the pill, the woman is completely in control.
And while we're on the subject. Let's talk about control. That's what all of this is really about, after all. People can tell me that they're "pro-life" until they are blue in the face, but I will never acknowledge that. I can't. Because it's not about "life," it's about control.
The pro-choice movement is all about giving women complete and total autonomy over her own body. She can give birth as much as she wants. She can never give birth. It is all the individual woman's choice and no one else should have the power to make that decision for her. The "pro-life" or anti-choice movement, is about limiting women's control of their bodies. Some refuse any use of contraceptives. Others say that it's only abortion that's wrong. Others waffle around in the middle and say that they dislike abortion for birth control, but that they think abortion is okay in cases of rape and incest.
There is a very, very long history of women's bodies being used by whoever is in power at the time. For example, both Hitler and Stalin made rules regarding women's fertility. They were on opposite ends of the spectrum -- Hitler wanted all women to give birth to lots of pretty white German boy babies and Stalin wanted women to be basically sterile, and state-sanctioned abortion was a big deal -- but both of them decided that women's fertility were tools for their ideological ends.
And that's bullshit. My body and my fertility and whatever I decide to do with it is not, in any way, something to support an ideology or a government or any belief system whatsoever. My body and my fertility is mine. And I truly, truly believe that until other women make these same kinds of statements, we'll never really be equal.
So, anyway. Why do I care? Because I'm just some smart-assed liberal bitch who hates men?
Nope.
Be wary, the political is about to get personal.
I've talked about my depression and my history of being suicidal in other places. So, you know about that. Well, my freshman year of college (my first college, which shows how special all that was), I got pregnant. It was a bad deal. I was already downing bottles of pills on a fairly regular basis in an attempt to either kill myself or drown myself in chemicals. I was 19 and I'd never heard of Planned Parenthood, and I don't even know if there was one in Wisconsin. I didn't have a lot of money, so some friends from my dorm went around and collected money from the college's Womyn's Group, and I went to Madison and had an abortion. Well, it didn't go quite that smoothly. There was a lot of agonizing. When I first found out, I was stunned. You see, I had fainted. And my boyfriend at the time was really worried that I had a concussion, so he took me to the hospital. I wasn't eating a lot, so we thought that that was what has caused the fainting, but the hospital did a pregnancy test, hooked me up to EKG and we waited. Then a doctor walked in said, "You're pregnant. You need to stop smoking and start taking prenatal vitamins." And he walked out. That was it. He just walked out.
I, of course, lost my goddamn mind. I was screaming. I was crying. I threw my shoes. I started jerking the EKG thingies off of my chest, desperate to just the fuck out of there. My boyfriend at the time hugged me and told me that we'd "do anything you want to do." This is important, because he was uber-Catholic. I walked around like a zombie for a couple of days, completely unable to process what was happening. I had a professor who had discussed her abortion in class (we were reading Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants), and so I went to her and we chain smoked and I looked at it from every angle. There were two things that I knew about myself for certain. 1) I could not ever give up a kid, the second I saw the baby's face I would lose it and not be able to give it up. 2) I was in no way healthy enough to be a parent. I was trying to kill myself almost every week. And so, I went to Madison and had an abortion.
It was terrible. But when it was over, I was so relieved I can't even explain it to you. It was like this gigantic rock had been pressing on me, and then once the procedure was over, the rock exploded into tiny little pieces and I was suddenly free.
And about two weeks later, I was watching an episode of The Cosby Show (random, I know), where this older couple unexpectedly found out they were pregnant and they were so, so happy. And that. That was when the guilt hit.
That was exactly ten years ago. Yep, this is one of the reasons why I hate Valentine's Day.
So anyway, that happened. And for nine years, I've been on and off various medications to keep my crazy under some semblance of control. But I started cutting and did a brief stint in a psych ward. When I look back on the last ten years and see that I am *just now* getting myself under control, that I am *just now* learning how to love myself, I can't say that I made the wrong decision. Do I regret it? Yes. I regret the fact that it happened. But I know that I made the best decision. And so this year, I was finally able to look at the whole thing and say, I think I'm okay with what happened. I did the best I could.
In fact, my crazy has been such a big deal, that it still affects my decisions about my body. About four years ago, I was seeing a therapist who told me that I should probably never have kids. Because with my history of suicidal thoughts, depression, and bipolar disorder, postpartum depression would be an extremely significant risk -- and I don't want to be one of those moms on TV who've drowned their kids. So, I went on Mirena, a 5-year IUD, for my birth control, because no one would have tied the tubes on a 25-year-old. I've got a year left on it, and I need to start really thinking about my future and what I'm willing to risk and what I want to do about having kids.
So, knowing all of this, would anyone sit there and tell me at 19 that no, I had to have that baby? Well, maybe not. Although there are some who may have, just because there are some people who are so dogmatic that they can't see through the rhetoric to any one individual's story. But there are a lot of people who would say that I was justified in making that decision, that yes, abortion was the right choice in that instance.
So here's my point. When you can admit to the fact that there are some circumstances in which abortion makes sense, when that's the best decision to make in a shitty situation, then how can you ever start casting stones? Are you going to sit there and ask each and every woman why she's having the procedure? Who gets to decide who's worthy of one and who's not? I'm sure there are some sanctimonious bastards around who would have no problem being the one to make that kind of judgment call, but I'm sure most of us can see the problem. That no one gets to sit and ask those questions. Because it's not our business. And therefore, maybe we should shut up about who deserves the opportunity to have an abortion and who doesn't, because how do we know what the circumstances really are? How we know who's really *deserving*? And just accept that abortion happens. It's not pretty. It's not nice. But I can guarantee you that it is rarely, if ever, entered into lightly. We've thought about it; we've thought about it long and hard and often and made a decision. That is our right. It is our right to choose what to do with our bodies. It is our right to demand that it's nobody's freaking business what we do with our bodies.
So. If you don't like abortion, and I don't blame you, then please do the responsible thing. Demand that all kids get accurate information about sex and preventing pregnancies. Demand that all women everywhere get access to birth control that they are in control of. Don't start talking to me about how cheap condoms are. Don't start talking to me about how people should be more responsible and shouldn't have sex if they can't handle the consequences. Don't do it. Because you're full of shit. There are men who will not wear a condom. There are men who don't give a shit about consent. If you want to get rid of abortion, then start handing out the Pill, start demanding that all women everywhere have access to it. Start being pro-life and start looking out for the lives that are being lived right this moment.
And, by the way, my eggs are not people.
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