We are talking about abortion. Representative Todd Akin from Missouri made
his absurd, infuriating, depressing remarks about “legitimate rape.” The Republican National Committee released
its 2012 platform calling for an amendment to the Constitution and legislation
to outlaw abortion. In all cases.
We are talking about abortion. Almost forty years ago, in January 1973, the
Supreme Court of the United States decided that a woman’s right to privacy
extends to her right to have an abortion up to a certain point in her pregnancy
but we are talking about abortion. Still. Again.
It is time for me to share a deeply personal story.
In late August 2007, I was thrilled to be 12 weeks pregnant. I was happily married and enjoying being at home
with my then 18-month old son. My
husband and I very much wanted another child.
Because I was 35 years old, I elected to do a first trimester screen, a
relatively new, noninvasive evaluation that combines a maternal blood-screening
test with a fetal ultrasound to identify risk for specific chromosomal
abnormalities.
I arrived at the doctor’s office for my screening
appointment, signed-in at the desk, and sat down in the waiting room with “Parents”
magazine. Within a few minutes, an
ultrasound technician called my name. I
rose, put “Parents” on a table, and followed the technician to a large, cold
room where she instructed me to take my clothes off and put on the thin paper
robe waiting for me on the examination table.
The technician gave me a few minutes to undress and then
came back into the room. I lied down on
my back, and placed my legs into the stirrups at the end of the table. The technician lifted my paper robe and inserted
an ultrasound wand into my vagina. The
technician looked at her screen. She
looked at me. “Will you wait here,
please,” she said.
I waited. My
heart beat a mile a minute. Clearly something
wasn’t right. She had only looked at the
screen for a few seconds. A few
excruciating minutes later, the technician came back into the room with a man
who introduced himself as Dr. L, the head of the high-risk pregnancy
department. Dr. L re-inserted the ultrasound
wand into my vagina and took a look at the screen. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a
compassionate voice, “Evelyn, will you please get dressed and come talk to me
in my office.”
“Your baby has what is called an omphalocele,” the
kind doctor said. He went on to explain
that an omphalocele is a fetal abnormality where the contents of the abdomen
(small and large intestine, stomach and liver) protrude through a hole in the
abdominal wall, right where the belly button would be. Omphalocele occurs in approximately 1 of
every 5,000 live births and is associated with a high rate of mortality and
severe malformations, such as cardiac anomalies and neural tube defects. A high percentage of live-born infants with
omphaloele have chromosomal abnormalities.
My baby has a hole?
I crossed my arms over my belly, hugged my baby
gently and cried.
Then I wiped my eyes and asked Dr. L whether he would
mind if together we called my husband to explain the situation. My head was spinning, my belly hurt, and I wasn’t
sure at that moment whether I would be able to do more than cry and say “ our
baby has a hole in her stomach” when I left that office. My husband is a pediatric intensive care
physician and I wanted to make sure we had full medical knowledge. I called Larry, and prepared him briefly for
the fact that I was going to put him on speaker so Dr. L could deliver some
unfortunate news.
Can you imagine being Larry at that moment?
I left Dr. L’s office and drove straight over to
Larry’s. As soon as Larry closed his
office door, I released the floodgates of my grief. We held each other. We cried.
Larry talked a little about the babies he’d seen born with omphalocele
in the PICU. I talked about getting home to our son.
Later that evening, I called my rabbi. He is an insightful, delightful man and he
came right over. We sat in my living
room, my rabbi and I, talking about Judaism’s view on abortion.
“If a woman
suffers hard labor, the child must be cut up in her womb and brought out one
limb at a time, for her life takes precedence over [the fetus’] life. If
the greater part has already come out, it must not be touched, because one life
does not supersede another. (Mishnah Ohalot 7:6)”
Judaism has always accepted that life begins at birth, not
at conception, and that abortion is permissible, or even mandatory, when the
mother’s life is in danger. When the
Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards addressed
abortion in 1983, its conclusion was as follows: “An abortion is justifiable if
a continuation of a pregnancy might cause the mother severe physical or psychological harm, or when the fetus is
judged by competent medical opinion as severely defective.”
I had an abortion.
I had an abortion in part because my faith says it is permissible. I had an abortion in larger part because my
husband was on board with my decision. Mostly,
however, I had an abortion because I knew that as much as I might want to be a
stronger, “better” person, I would not be able to handle the particular
challenges of having a baby with an omphalocele in my life without it adversely
affecting my mental health, and, thus, my ability to care properly for my precious
son. I'd suffered from post-partum
depression after his birth and had recently recovered. I’d left my job to stay at home to nurture
him, and I was finally feeling like I was doing a decent job. I did not want to spend the third year of my
son’s life in the NICU, in and out of surgeries, or grieving for a dead child.
The vulnerability I feel in sharing my story is
overwhelming. I am terrified of your
judgment, or worse, your indifference. I
am pushing past this. I am sharing
because I believe in the power of storytelling and I am hoping that there might
be some other average American women out there like me who have their own raw,
messy abortion stories to tell.
Yesterday, Esquire posted a piece on its blog
entitled “The Democrats Problem with Abortion,” in which the author states:
No more enabling. No more
wishful thinking that the whole icky business would go away so we can all talk
about The Economy, or, worse, The Deficit. No more clinging to "rape,
incest, and the health of the mother." No more Clintonian caveats about
safe, legal, and rare. ("Safe and legal." Full stop.) No more
pathetic attempts to reach "common ground," when, at least in our
politics, there plainly is no common ground to be reached. (If you want to
argue that there is, take it up with Planned Parenthood.) No more, "Well,
I respect the beliefs of the other side" goo-goo rhetoric. Just a simple
demand that the conservative opposition respect the settled law.
I would like to see the
Democratic Party make a national campaign issue out of the fact that this
perfectly legal medical procedure is unavailable to women wishing to exercise
their legitimate constitutional rights to it in most of the nation.
Amen.
We are
talking about abortion and I have a funny feeling that the only way we are ever
going to be able to stop talking about abortion is if for the remaining 74 days
until the 2012 presidential election, we don't.
Please don’t stop talking about abortion. If you had an abortion, please tell your
story. If you agree that the decision
whether to have an abortion is one to be made between a woman, her family, her
doctor, and her god, please say so. Say it to yourself. Say it out loud to friends and family. And please say it with your vote.
