Just over a year ago, I managed to get a couple of eggs fertilized by
my main squeeze, which means I am now mommy to a joyful little 15-week
old boy. It also means that I have spent the last 12 months being taken
apart piece by piece and rebuilt into new iterations of myself that I
did not entirely recognize. Pregnant me was about four different
people, and mom me is someone I have never met. Physically and
psychologically everything has changed. Seriously, challenge me on
that. Try to name something (other than my name) that has not changed
in the process of the last year. I have it on good authority that my
skin changed the way it smelled at least three times during pregnancy.
On
thing that has changed in a delightfully unexpected way is my newfound
confidence in my old feminist ideals. I've finally experienced a few
things I'd only even talked about before, and finally have some
authority to discuss them. So, in no particular order, here's some shit
I learned or have become certain of in the last 12 months:
1.
No one should ever have to be pregnant against their will. Ever. I
had a relatively easy pregnancy, in that my symptoms were limited to
swollen breasts, sore breasts, mood swings, exhaustion, anxiety, gas,
constipation, drooling, heart burn, carpel tunnel syndrome, swollen
feet, swollen ankles, fluid retention, sore joints, reduced vision,
indigestion, insomnia, varicose veins, diarrhea, back pain,
forgetfulness, and an insatiable hunger. I also developed a sweet
tooth, but I think that is because I had to give up alcohol, caffeine,
raw food, partially cooked food, lunch meat, sushi, seafood in large or
exotic quantities, and most OTC medications. So cookies started to seem
like my only option. Other pregnant women experience nausea, vomiting,
acne, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, stretch marks, changes
in blood sugar, bloody gums, development of boils or allergies, and much
much more. Basically try googling any symptom or condition with the
word pregnancy, and you'll find the same response, "occurs in some
number of pregnancies; could be normal or serious, check with your
doctor.". That in and of itself should tell you that a person shouldn't
have to go through it if they don't want to. But think about all the
sacrifices a pregnant woman makes for her beloved child. No imagine
that the woman does not want to be pregnant; how might that affect her
decision to have a cup of coffee (which affect neurological development)
when she suddenly needs twice as much sleep to function at the same
level in the first trimester. Or her decision to forego
anti-depressants, allergy medicine, or pain killers (all of which are
tied to birth defects).
This is to say nothing of the loss of
autonomy you feel as a tiny force inside of you steals your vitamins and
nutrients (necessitating those expensive prenatal vitamins), demands
your energy and alters everything in your body from your hair and skin
to the location of your organs and arrangement of your joints. To me,
it is an argument first about autonomy, second about how and why we
value children and life, and third an appeal to what our actual
priorities are.
The first argument is difficult, because
there's no great comparision to be made; pregnancy is not really like
any other aspect of life. The best I've heard so far is of a
life-saving donation, like a kidney or liver transplant. Do we obligate
everyone who is a donor to donate their blood or a lobe of their
liver? Sure, there are risks, but a life can be saved, right? In these
cases, with two adults, the donor's autonomy wins out over the
recipient's life. Why is this not true in cases of small, non-viable
fetuses?
The second argument and the third are intertwined; they
have to do with how we treat these babies before and after they are
born, and how we indicate the value of babies through public policy. If
we value these lives before they are born, then why to we appear to
cease caring as soon as the baby leaves it's mother? Why do we have a
failing foster care system, children aging out of mediocre and damaging
state care without ever knowing the love of a family, and children
languishing in care that fails to meet their basic needs, is abusive, or
both. If these lives are all truly special and valuable, then why
aren't babies born to mothers not ready to raise them not treated as
valued by our society?
Finally, in terms of our national
priorities, we cannot rationally continue to claim that children are
precious, that life is precious, if all of our policies are to the
contrary. If nascent life is precious, why isn't adult life also
precious? Why to we imprison adults with drug addiction, or leave
people of all ages with mental health issues to their own devices? Why
do we kill other people, and accept that police killing innocent people
is acceptable, if all life is truly precious?
And why don't
these precious lives then have access to health care and education? If
we want mothers and people to believe that every child is wanted, why do
we not provide free or even subsidized maternal health care? Why do we
not provide excellent health services to those who conceive? Why do we
not make sure that every child, or even most children, have access to
quality child care, quality education, quality health care and mental
health services until adulthood? If these children are wanted, why do
we not support their parents when the wanted child comes, through paid
family leave? And why do we not provide people of childbearing age with
quality sex education and pregnancy prevention, so that they can make
the best possible choices for themselves?
I have
never heard a satisfying answer to these questions. Instead, the most
recent health care bill proposed by the president and congress sought to
make maternity care optional, allowing insurance agencies to choose
whether or not to provide healthcare to pregnant women. More than any
law attempting to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, the
lack of healthcare options for pregnant women indicates what our true
priorities are. Pregnancy is physically and psychologically brutal, to
say nothing of motherhood, parenthood, and the 18+ year commitment
entailed therein. If you want to spout nonsense about each life is
precious, act like it is true for more than the first handful of months
prior to birth. And act like life is actually valuable and worthy of
care. And then we can have a serious debate about the autonomy of women
with uteruses versus the autonomy of fetuses. And then that debate
will no longer be about, on some level, condemning women who get
pregnant to live forever with the result of one instance of sexual
intercourse.
