On the off chance that you haven’t heard, this week a draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion written by Samuel Alito was leaked by an unnamed source. The document, since verified as real, lays out the courts arguments as to why Roe V Wade, the 1973 decision that protects a pregnant woman’s right to her liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion, should be overturned. Once the ruling becomes official abortion will almost immediately become illegal in at least thirteen states with many others placing such restrictions on after conception treatment as to effectively end the option.
The leak has led to significant outrage of course, as it should. The hashtag #shoutyourabortion on Twitter, started in 2015 when the House of Representatives tried to defund Planned Parenthood, is trending again. It’s purpose is to be a safe place for people to share their experiences without sadness shame or regret and to attempt to destigmatize the decision. Tens of thousands of women have shared their stories and the one thing that they all have in common is that no matter what their reasoning was, some of them absolutely heartbreaking, they are nobody else’s business.
If you think that the male involved in the process deserves some say, I won’t argue with you. He does.
But it’s still her decision.
I say that as somebody who has been there. It’s a story not a lot of people know.
When I was twenty three I was already once divorced, was living above a gas station/liquor store and spent a fair amount of my evenings playing pool at a strip club. About the only thing that I had going positively was my job at the hospital taking X Rays so naturally I made the poor decision of becoming involved with a student that was doing her internship there. She told me that because of previous trauma she was unable to become pregnant so I doubled down on my poor decision making and took her word for that.
I’m sure that you see where this is going. She informed me that she was pregnant, told me what her plan was going to be and asked for the money to make it happen. My opinion wasn’t asked for, something that I pretended bothered me even as I privately knew would be a welcome balm on my conscience. It was a traumatic experience that looking back on embarrasses me for the degree to which I failed to acknowledge how infinitely more traumatic it must have been for her.
I obviously have no idea what might have become of my life had things gone differently. County music, Hallmark movies and the fairy tales of the Christian right would tell us that child would have caused me to get my shit together much earlier in life than I actually did, that it probably would have cured cancer or something and that we all would have lived happily ever after. I can’t sit here and say it’s not possible. I also can’t sit here and say that there aren’t tons of loving families out there that might have been willing to adopt that child and give it a fantastic home. There’s a guy I work with who has done exactly that several times and even though he’s a Yankees fan and we don’t often agree politically I think this world is better off because he and his wife are in it.
But that’s not my story. That’s not what happened. Instead the replication of some cells was interrupted, two people went their separate ways and years later an idiot reached a time in his life where he was able to fully commit to being the best possible father that he could be. The jury is still out on how successful that effort is but I won’t feel guilty for raising and loving this child and not the other because I don’t believe the other actually was a child.
This is the part of the “debate” that I feel like isn’t discussed enough. I put “debate” in quotes because it really isn’t. The word debate suggests that one side or the other might change their mind. I think that most people have their own ideas about when that embryo crosses a line and becomes a baby and there will never be consensus on when that is. When my ex had her first miscarriage it wasn’t anywhere near the pain of losing an actual child but it was a lot closer than the next few that were much earlier in the process. No amount of arguing will ever convince anybody to change their mind on their stance because there will never be any kind of scientific, definitive way to determine when this little egg becomes an actual person. It doesn’t only vary from person to person, but from religion to religion. As much as some may like it to be, this is not a nation that is supposed to be governed by the views of the Christian church. It’s kind of what we were founded on.
If you want to share your story in the comments, there is an option to do so anonymously. If you want to judge me and call me names, feel free to do that as well. No matter how you feel about the subject I can feel confident in saying that there is a really good chance that somebody that you know or love has their own abortion story. There are millions, they are all different, and absolutely none of them are the business of anybody other than those that have to live them.
We’re going backwards guys. We don’t need to regress towards a time in our history full of condemnation, control and judgement, we need to find a way to continue to move towards compassion and empathy and communal support. It’s not being “woke”, it’s being a good human being and I don’t understand why it’s so hard.
—
Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com
—
