textualdeviance (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
textualdeviance) wrote2011-05-10 11:11 am
textualdeviance) wrote2011-05-10 11:11 am
Ladybits politics
As a side note to my surgery thing...
Dealing with this issue has made it abundantly clear to me exactly how important it is to keep fighting for abortion, contraception and other reproductive health rights.
Entirely aside from the fact that abortion and contraceptives should be legal and readily available anyway, so much of the stuff I've had to deal with WRT this problem of mine has involved procedures and medications that many anti-abortion activists have wanted to restrict or ban outright.
My very first experiences with this stuff came when I was very young, and was having periods from hell, and no real way to deal with it properly. What saved my ass? Planned Parenthood, which put me on BCPs to get me regular (in addition to keeping me from becoming a teen pregnancy statistic, given everything else that was going on with me then.)
Later on, when I finally got properly diagnosed with my illness, I also needed plenty of other kinds of drugs, and was on a regular progesterone regimen for years. Then there was all the infertility stuff we tried to do (something else that some have argued should be restricted.)
Finally, with this stuff, I was on two medications: a high-dose progesterone med that stopped the horrible bleeding I was having, and the drug they gave me to start dilating my cervix. Both are medications that are also used for chemical abortions. The high-dose progesterone stuff is what they use for Plan B, and the other drug is part of what's in RU 486. Both medications have therefore been targeted by anti-abortion legislation, and are also often refused dispensing by "conscience" pharmacists.
Now that I've had this procedure, the chances of me getting pregnant are very low (even lower than they were before, with my dud eggs), as it would be next to impossible for a fertilized egg to attach to a uterine wall without any proper endometrium there to attach to. However, some anti-abortion activists would argue that I should stop having sex entirely because of this, because they believe that that fertilized egg is a person, and without a giving it a hospitable location for it to take up residence, I'm deliberately killing that person.
What's also possible, however, is if I did fertilize an egg, and it found a tiny bit of live endometrium to attach to, the resulting pregnancy would very likely kill me, because it would rip loose all that nuked scar tissue and I'd start hemorraging. At the very least, I'd need an emergency abortion and probably a hysterectomy.
Of course, M and I are being scrupulous about avoiding this (and we've decided to get him snipped to seal the deal) but nothing's perfect. There's always that .01% chance of an egg getting fertilized, and if that did happen, I'd want to know for certain that I'd have available the procedures I needed to live through it.
And all this doesn't even count the fact that I'm extremely lucky to have access to proper health insurance. Trying to deal with all this without that would probably mean I'd be dead by now.
So there it is in a nutshell. Having access to a full range of reproductive health care is what's kept me alive all these years, and what will continue to do so now.
It's true that some anti-abortion activists make exceptions for life/health of mother, but I think very few of them truly understand exactly how complicated these things can get, and how legislation on this stuff just gets in the way, and can literally be the difference between life and death for a woman in crisis. Even legislation that seems somewhat fair on the surface--like conscience clauses for pharmacists--can turn an unfortunate-but-livable situation into a tragedy pretty damned fast.
Men who fight this stuff I get. Most of them have no clue whatsoever how women's bodies actually work, and even if they're married or have sisters or daughters, they're usually the kind of guy who doesn't want to be around when their kids are born, who make stupid PMS jokes and who would patently refuse to buy tampons. (And frankly: If you're married to/dating a guy like this? Dump his ass. Even being alone is better than being with someone who thinks you're a second-class citizen because you don't have a dick.)
But women? IDGI. I just don't get why any woman would fight against reproductive health rights. I spose some women who have always been regular and never had a complicated pregnancy may just blow this stuff off, and assume that access to abortion and contraception is someone else's problem. They figure that if they're not being promiscuous, these issues will never be a problem for them.
They're wrong.
Even the healthiest, most chaste woman can have something go wrong at any time, and if you think you don't know a woman who's ever had to face this stuff, well, hi. You do now. Even if you're not specifically anti-abortion, if you're voting for politicians who support anti-abortion legislation, you're voting against my health. And if you vote for these people because you think bombing brown folks or saving the rich a few bucks on taxes is so much more important than the risk of me or any other woman suffering or dying because we have fucked-up ladybits? Then please, piss completely off.
The bottom line is this: This is a medical issue, not a political one. Each reproductive health problem is as individual as the woman dealing with it, and therefore absolutely no one but that woman and her healthcare providers should have any say in it at all. Blanket legislation that restricts access to this care in any way doesn't just punish stereotypical Jezebels (who, by the way, are just as entitled to proper healthcare as anyone else), but turns women like me into collateral damage in that war.
Dealing with this issue has made it abundantly clear to me exactly how important it is to keep fighting for abortion, contraception and other reproductive health rights.
Entirely aside from the fact that abortion and contraceptives should be legal and readily available anyway, so much of the stuff I've had to deal with WRT this problem of mine has involved procedures and medications that many anti-abortion activists have wanted to restrict or ban outright.
My very first experiences with this stuff came when I was very young, and was having periods from hell, and no real way to deal with it properly. What saved my ass? Planned Parenthood, which put me on BCPs to get me regular (in addition to keeping me from becoming a teen pregnancy statistic, given everything else that was going on with me then.)
Later on, when I finally got properly diagnosed with my illness, I also needed plenty of other kinds of drugs, and was on a regular progesterone regimen for years. Then there was all the infertility stuff we tried to do (something else that some have argued should be restricted.)
Finally, with this stuff, I was on two medications: a high-dose progesterone med that stopped the horrible bleeding I was having, and the drug they gave me to start dilating my cervix. Both are medications that are also used for chemical abortions. The high-dose progesterone stuff is what they use for Plan B, and the other drug is part of what's in RU 486. Both medications have therefore been targeted by anti-abortion legislation, and are also often refused dispensing by "conscience" pharmacists.
Now that I've had this procedure, the chances of me getting pregnant are very low (even lower than they were before, with my dud eggs), as it would be next to impossible for a fertilized egg to attach to a uterine wall without any proper endometrium there to attach to. However, some anti-abortion activists would argue that I should stop having sex entirely because of this, because they believe that that fertilized egg is a person, and without a giving it a hospitable location for it to take up residence, I'm deliberately killing that person.
What's also possible, however, is if I did fertilize an egg, and it found a tiny bit of live endometrium to attach to, the resulting pregnancy would very likely kill me, because it would rip loose all that nuked scar tissue and I'd start hemorraging. At the very least, I'd need an emergency abortion and probably a hysterectomy.
Of course, M and I are being scrupulous about avoiding this (and we've decided to get him snipped to seal the deal) but nothing's perfect. There's always that .01% chance of an egg getting fertilized, and if that did happen, I'd want to know for certain that I'd have available the procedures I needed to live through it.
And all this doesn't even count the fact that I'm extremely lucky to have access to proper health insurance. Trying to deal with all this without that would probably mean I'd be dead by now.
So there it is in a nutshell. Having access to a full range of reproductive health care is what's kept me alive all these years, and what will continue to do so now.
It's true that some anti-abortion activists make exceptions for life/health of mother, but I think very few of them truly understand exactly how complicated these things can get, and how legislation on this stuff just gets in the way, and can literally be the difference between life and death for a woman in crisis. Even legislation that seems somewhat fair on the surface--like conscience clauses for pharmacists--can turn an unfortunate-but-livable situation into a tragedy pretty damned fast.
Men who fight this stuff I get. Most of them have no clue whatsoever how women's bodies actually work, and even if they're married or have sisters or daughters, they're usually the kind of guy who doesn't want to be around when their kids are born, who make stupid PMS jokes and who would patently refuse to buy tampons. (And frankly: If you're married to/dating a guy like this? Dump his ass. Even being alone is better than being with someone who thinks you're a second-class citizen because you don't have a dick.)
But women? IDGI. I just don't get why any woman would fight against reproductive health rights. I spose some women who have always been regular and never had a complicated pregnancy may just blow this stuff off, and assume that access to abortion and contraception is someone else's problem. They figure that if they're not being promiscuous, these issues will never be a problem for them.
They're wrong.
Even the healthiest, most chaste woman can have something go wrong at any time, and if you think you don't know a woman who's ever had to face this stuff, well, hi. You do now. Even if you're not specifically anti-abortion, if you're voting for politicians who support anti-abortion legislation, you're voting against my health. And if you vote for these people because you think bombing brown folks or saving the rich a few bucks on taxes is so much more important than the risk of me or any other woman suffering or dying because we have fucked-up ladybits? Then please, piss completely off.
The bottom line is this: This is a medical issue, not a political one. Each reproductive health problem is as individual as the woman dealing with it, and therefore absolutely no one but that woman and her healthcare providers should have any say in it at all. Blanket legislation that restricts access to this care in any way doesn't just punish stereotypical Jezebels (who, by the way, are just as entitled to proper healthcare as anyone else), but turns women like me into collateral damage in that war.
no subject
That's so much of it. The right has relatively successfully managed to frame the argument such that people believe that only 'loose' women, or horny teenagers have abortions.
So you have the women who, like you said, are regular, or aren't having sex (or unprotected sex), or have simply been lucky - and it doesn't 'apply' to them, so they don't think about it. And you have the fundies who are so convinced it's a 'life' that they'll crusade against it - and again, they haven't had the misfortune to need these services. The actuality of the issues has never crossed their mind. They don't hear the stories of women who have much-wanted pregnancies that go horribly wrong, and necessitate abortion - those are passed off as if they just took their sweet time deciding that they didn't want a kid after all. Seriously? Who does that? No one. But it plays on that sense of superiority that's so tempting to so many people.
I grew up fundie. I have a decently well-functioning body. I never thought about the reality of any of this at all. And even when I grew a bit of a brain, and wasn't anti-abortion, I still wasn't thinking hard enough to realize that these rights need to be protected - that if we just ignore them, they WILL go away.
And then I had an accidental pregnancy. Married, two very-much-wanted kids - and no affordable method of birth control. Tired of using a condom for sex with my husband - hello, I'd like some real intimacy, please - and we were a bit too risky with the timing.
I came *thisclose* to having a nervous breakdown. I'm convinced that if I'd had to go through with the pregnancy, I *would* have had one. I love the family I have, but I couldn't handle having my attention split one more way, having my body under another infant's control for another two years, trying to find the money for another five years of daycare, hell, just trying to figure out where the hell to put a crib in a 650-square-foot house. I would have gone legitimately crazy. Which would have helped no one, least of all a new sprog.
(In addition to being emotionally destroyed, I was *pissed*, too. I'd said NO to more pregnancies...what the HELL gave my body the right to override my decision? Fuck that shit.)
I had the abortion scheduled, and was actually in the stirrups, when the last ultrasound they did showed a blighted ovum. *Thank FSM.* And I give credit for that 'blighted ovum' to a set of 'miscarriage induction' instructions I found on the web - vitamin C and parsley. So simple, but so effective - I totally swear by it. (If I had been thinking straight at the time, I would have realized that I could have picked up some Plan B - but that information has been so well-suppressed that someone like me - fundie-background, only having vanilla marital sex - doesn't even think of it in the panic - doesn't even remember it exists and is available.)
At any rate. I say all that to say - now that I've been there, I understand. And I now fight for Planned Parenthood. Because no one should ever have to go through that, basically due to lack of access to affordable birth control. Every woman should have the right to control her own reproductive bits. And until we have a 'switch' that does it, BC is where it's at, and abortion as a last resort.
And all that barely even touches on your issues - but again, those simple biological truths are buried under a deliberate campaign of misinformation, that certainly men, and even many women never bother to dig through, because it just never affects them directly.
no subject
I'm one of those women who's never had problems. You could almost set your watch by my periods. I had an easy pregancy. Only reason I had a c-section was because Hootie got jammed, stuck with a shoulder and his head trying to exit my pelvis at the same time. Theoretically if/when we decide to have a second kid, there's no reason I should have any higher likelihood of problems then than I did the first time round.
Hell, it was my OB/GYN who first diagnosed me as having a shot thyroid. If she hadn't been testing for the right things, the tests my primary care doc kept running would have continued turning up negative and I would never have known what the hell was wrong with me. And who knows what the long term health implications of that would have been?
Like many women, I live with the subconscious spectre of rape. What would I do? How would I be able to live with the results if I got pregnant because of it?
As a family' we've chosen to be careful, to seriously consider whether or not we can afford to raise a second child BEFORE conceiving said person. We're taking the time to actually think about whether we're doing a good enough job parenting the child we have BEFORE jumping into having a second kid. Just because the anatomy makes us capable of it doesn't automatically mean we're doing a good job.
So yeah, I don't know where I'd be without birth control. Without good reproductive healthcare professionals.
And frankly, if this country ever tries to legislate that freedom and that level of care out of my life, that will be the point at which I apply for immigration to Israel.
no subject
I'm glad you're feeling good enough to feel fiery and write coherently about this. Even though my reproductive health and pregnancies have been (until now) almost as boring as can be, we're all touched by this stuff. We had a quad screen scare with the guys at ~20 weeks and had some stark conversations before the genetic counseling about whether we'd terminate a pregnancy with identical Down Syndrome babies, or just whatever other trisomies popped up, what would we tell people, etc..