A Question of Choice

Responding to “When Pregnancy Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Pregnant” by Tiloma Jayasinghe

This week, I plan to expound upon abortion. A friend of mine just found out that she needs one. She feels that she can't tell anyone, because of the stigma involved. She ended up having to tell her boss, and was surprised by how supportive and helpful her boss ended up being. Actually, I'm surprised she told me.

I find that I'm more sympathetic to women who don't want children after having children than I was before I had children. Pregnancy sucks. Chosen pregnancy sucks, because people have rather exacting expectations of pregnant women.

(page 266) “Women are expected to suddenly become paragons of virtue and self-denial during their pregnancies, forgoing sushi, caffeine, nicotine, unpasteurized cheese, tuna, alcohol, cleaning the cat’s litter box, etc. Other members of society feel quite free to censure a woman who breaks any of these taboos.”

I still remember, and resent, the woman who argued with me about the soda I chose to drink. How dare I have caffeine? Didn't I know it wasn't safe? Actually, it's quite safe, and it's MY choice to make. It's my body, my baby, and my choice. I didn't ask for her permission, and she had no right to censure me.

(page 267) “Pregnant women are also affected by the war on abortion. If the fetus is granted rights of personhood, then a woman’s right to choose not to become a mother, for health or personal reasons, will be eliminated; she and the doctor who performs abortions could be charged with murder. When fetal rights are elevated over the right of a woman to choose when she wants to become a mother, to determine the spacing of her children, and to make a private decision about what happens to her body, then she loses her ability to control her own body and her choices are supplanted by those of the state—the state can pretty much tell a woman that she will be forced to carry her pregnancy to term.”

If the state has control over women's bodies because they are pregnant, then pregnant women are denied the liberty that everyone else has.

My experiences in the labor and delivery rooms have left me convinced that most women have at least one unnecessary intervention or something forced upon her, be it electronic fetal monitoring (still not proven safer than non-continuous non-electronic monitoring), rupturing of membranes, or overly-aggressive nurses, or something.

I was pressured into an induction that I wasn't ready for and didn't particularly want. Considering that my baby was born perfectly healthy, I think that over-testing was the true problem. I had to have weekly non-stress tests because the baby's heartbeat did not appear to be normal. My theory is that the baby was asleep for all of them, and that the heartbeat was reflective of that. There was one non-stress test that we had to schedule at a different time, and that heartbeat fit the normal parameters perfectly. The nurse administering the non-stress tests remarked that it was like a whole different baby.

I suppose that I could have refused, but it's difficult to take such a stand. Some doctors even take pregnant women to court to force them to undergo procedures, like Cesarean sections, because it's "in the best interest of the child." But doctors aren't always right, and it's not always in the best interest of the child. But it definitely puts women in their place, now doesn't it?

I have also been prescribed bed rest while pregnant, which I was unable to follow. I did not have the child care necessary to allow me to stay in bed. I had to care for a toddler and was not eligible for disability, having been a stay-at-home mom. Had my inability to follow bed rest resulted in miscarriage, could that have been considered murder if unborn babies had personhood? Was I, by caring for the baby I had already borne, in fact committing child abuse on the one I was carrying by not following orders? It was a risk I had to take. I really didn't have another viable choice.

(page 269) “He could not see that the idea of someone else’s paternalistically taking away her choice to have sex, or to forgo birth control, or to become a mother, renders her not mentally sound, less than human.”

In the essay, this refers to a lawyer who cuts deals for women that include agreeing not to have children. Parole can be contingent on regular pregnancy tests, and becoming pregnant can result in parole being revoked. Women can go to jail simply because they're pregnant. That's a scary thought.

(page 270) “Anytime you try to limit the procreative rights of a class of people because its progeny are considered doomed, or a burden, or generally unwanted, it results in a slow genocide of the poor.”

My own mother thinks that all girls should be fit with something like an IUD or hormonal implants to prevent pregnancy until they can be licensed to have kids. If I had waited until I was ready or could afford to have children, I may still not be a mother. I'm not sure I would ever have felt truly ready. Even now, I sometimes feel inadequate as a mother.

(page 270) “It is really about controlling who reproduces, prohibiting women from having sex, and starting with the easy targets—the vulnerable and the marginalized.”

Some people would say that my friend who needs an abortion is wrong. That she had sex and now needs to pay the piper. That she got pregnant, and to not carry to term is murder. That if she wasn't willing to have a baby, then she shouldn't have had sex to begin with.

I've been luck enough not to need an abortion. The one time that I would have (I hope) chosen to have an abortion, to not tie myself to the man who raped me repeatedly by the bond of blood, nature took care of the problem for me. I did not feel remorse. I felt relief. I was shaken by my close-call, but I was thrilled not to have to deal with the problem.

My friend is in a much better relationship than I had been in. She recently changed birth control methods, and statistically there is a much, much greater chance of getting pregnant when you change birth control. But having sex should not ever be contingent upon wanting to have a baby. I currently do not want to have a baby, and I have sex. Sex is about pleasure, about connecting with another person intimately, about passion, and sometimes about love. Sometimes it results in conception, but that should not be followed by forced birth.

(page 271) “Sexuality is a form of power, so if women own their sexuality and their ability to be sexual creatures, then they are empowered in ways that society does not want them to be. Punishing women for certain outcomes of sexuality (pregnancy and giving birth) is in effect punishing them for having sex.”

In some ways, I don't own my sexuality. I am not public about enjoying multiple partners at once because I fear the consequences. I fear being named slut. I fear that if I ever experience sexual violence again, that I will be told it's my fault. I fear that my children will be shunned or ridiculed.

(page 271) “Women are just as human as everyone else, and simply because women become pregnant or have the capacity to become pregnant does not mean that we lose our humanity or our right to fundamental human rights, which include the right to say yes, I want to have sex, without fear, without punishment, without judgment.”

I have nothing but sympathy for my friend. She is making a difficult decision, and she already recognizes that some people will see her in a negative light should they find out.