For all the women whose stories I do not know

It’s very easy to make a judgment on abortion based on your own circumstance. I realized this because at several points I found myself doing it. Most of us approach the issue based on what we would do. This approach is especially dangerous for women to take on–it will lead us to further set ourselves apart from one another, when what we need to be doing is supporting each other, walking in each other’s shoes. Not to mention it’s a fascinating way to approach a public policy issue, considering how individualistic and very not widespread it is to make a judgement based on what you would do in a certain situation. When the draft came out on Monday night, I was extremely disturbed and worried, but I easily came up with a solution for myself if this freaky, Handmaid’s Tale-like society were to come to pass, at least a temporary one: “well I just won’t have sex.” It was that simple, that clear cut. But how self-centered of me. How self-absorbed of me to call the issue solved because I had solved it for myself. And it didn’t even occur to me until the next day what I had done.

Sure, maybe I can choose to temporarily stop having sex, but not many women are able to or want to (or should even have to) make that choice. I am just one woman, with my own bio-psycho-socio-economic circumstance, and I carry no one else’s sexual or reproductive experience but my own. I simply cannot speak on anyone else’s sex life but my own. I am not my friend who is married and chooses not to have children for the foreseeable future. I am not my other friend who is a young single mother in a committed relationship with someone who is not the father of her child, who has kids of his own. I am not someone stuck in an abusive relationship. I am not an under resourced pregnant teenager. The list could go on. Women and girls do or do not have vaginal sex for a vast array of reasons. Many are horrifically forced into it. Many enjoy it. Many do not. Some who enjoy it often abstain for various reasons. Some who do not enjoy it often do it anyway. Not one of is the same. Every woman and girl, every person with a uterus, has a story. And each of those stories, just like mine, is valid. What also varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance is access to birth control, education, and biology and physiology. Some women are more fertile than others for genetic reasons or other reasons. This is the physiological ability to bear offspring. The men they are with may be more or less fertile as well. Additionally, fecundity rate is the quantity of offspring that a person can physiologically bear—that varies from person to person too. And then of course there is sheer chance. Someone could not use any form of birth control for months and not get pregnant, while another person could use condoms and the pill and still get pregnant. There is also the types of birth control that women (and men) choose to use. Whether you like it or not, birth control is not infallible. A couple could do all the “right” things and still the woman might end up pregnant. Who is to blame, then? So you see, it’s easy for me to say I will avoid getting pregnant. But I am just one woman, in my own unique body. As women, we don’t get to pass a judgment on abortion, saying what we would do, if we are not thinking about all the women who are different than us and asking why they might be making the choices they are making.

So, let’s talk solutions here. Because pro-life defendants are asking women to bring pregnancies to term on the basis of the notion that it would be murder to end the pregnancy. Well, actually, before we talk solutions, I’m here to tell you that my college biology professor once told our class that it’s almost impossible to define what life is. And he was a great professor. Also, that fetal viability line, it’s actually pretty arbitrary and hypothetical. It’s more like a period of viability, and beliefs about it vary from country to country. So, if you are looking to science to legislate your definition of life, it cannot do it for you. But back to the solutions. I have noticed an unspoken yet very loud judgment amongst the public that, well maybe if women didn’t have so much sex, they wouldn’t even be in that position. I could change two words in that and it would have a very different ring: maybe if men didn’t have so much sex, women wouldn’t even be in that position. Doesn’t sound so good when I blame men, does it? It takes two to tango, though. Men are every much as responsible for women getting pregnant as the women themselves are, yet they are handed zero responsibility for it, because it is not their bodies which must bear the consequences. How easily we forget that very simple fact. To ask women to stop having sex or to have less sex is simply absurd. It is to ask them to stop being human. If you find yourself wishing women would have less sex, you are in dangerous territory, my friend. You are revealing your internalized misogyny. I saw a FaceBook post just today that said, verbatim, “don’t have sex if you’re not ready to be a parent.” The author of this statement tried to mask their sexism by using the word “parent” instead of “mother,” but since our nation is in the midst of a giant abortion debate, which strictly deals with what happens to women’s bodies, not men’s, it’s clear the author meant that women shouldn’t have sex if they’re not ready to be mothers. Even though they are 50% responsible, men get off the hook for having to make the choice to end a pregnancy or bring it to term. They can walk away. Women can’t. Somehow women get 100% of the blame for 1. Having sex in the first place, 2. Getting pregnant, and finally 3. Making the choice to end the pregnancy or see it through. What a funny and nonsensical world we live in.

Then there is the matter of birth control. It is a wonderful thing. But where is the proper education? Many girls and women don’t know all their options. Where is the easy access? Why is birth control still expensive? Mine is free, but that’s because my parents still pay my health premium every month. Not everyone, not many, have that luxury. Women are also shamed from taking birth control. I still feel embarrassed picking mine up from CVS. There is a problem with this. You cannot shame women for getting pregnant if you also shame them from taking birth control. And even if women are on birth control, it is still not infallible, as stated above. There is still always a chance of pregnancy. So what then? There is no recourse after that. Pro-life advocates would say that the only option is to bring the pregnancy to term. I say that the woman gets to decide what happens to her body, her life. Because it is not the man who is burdened with this incredible load, it is her. And because in the end, she is the only one who will truly look out for her. I have a support system. I have an affluent family who would help me. But like I said, I am just one woman; not everyone would be ok were they to have an unwanted baby. You can argue about the fetal viability line/period all day long. 21+ week abortions are extremely rare (they represent 1% of abortions in the US), and you have to be either an idiot or a cruel person to believe that anyone who goes through with a 21-week abortion wants or chooses to be in that position. They cost well over $1000, take multiple days to conduct, and are only performed by a subset of abortion providers in the US.  

My somewhat ludicrous solution was to not have sex temporarily. But it’s a choice I have the luxury to make on my own. However, I also know that solution won’t last forever. I’m 27 years old. I would prefer not to be abstinent. But I can’t have a baby right now. I am not even remotely financially stable enough to support a child, considering I can’t even independently support myself. My parents would end up financially supporting the child as well as me, and that’s not fair to them. Not to mention the fact that I would be a single, working mother, because I would choose not to live with the father, and it’s pretty self-explanatory how difficult that is. This hypothetical situation is not good for anyone involved. Not me, the father, my parents, and certainly not the baby. The baby would grow up in a home fraught with my anger, my distress. I know myself well enough to predict that. To someone I know who is pro-life, how could you ask me to do this? Why would you want my child to grow up under these circumstances?