The Midlife

I remember my 10th grade Biology teacher saying (I’m paraphrasing, as it’s been nearly 30 years.): If a girl is smart, she’ll never get pregnant. This coming from a woman of three sons, yet the message was clear – Dumb girls got pregnant. Don’t be a dumb girl.

So, I managed to survive my teen years without a pregnancy, which I know would have embarrassed my mother, as she often told me that. It didn’t stop me from having protected sex, but even under the most cautious of circumstances, bad situations can happen and they did to other people I knew.

No woman – under any circumstance – whether dumb and promiscuous or anxious and cautious or raped or trafficked deserves the judgment of making an extremely personal choice. No woman – under any circumstance is happily running to the abortion store like it’s a carefree Target stop. Even if there should be no shame or judgment on her decision to have an abortion, there always is one – one riddled with shame and fear and the uncertainty if a decision today would prevent future choices when times are right.

When RBG passed away and the possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned was first spoken, I must admit I gave it little mind. Because in my naivete and boundless optimism, I knew that as the leader of the free world (emphasis on free), the United States could not fail women on this unfathomable scale. The freedoms I have been lucky to grow up with will be the same freedoms available to my daughter. Our bodies are our choice. Aren’t they?

I have had three surgical abortions because of three miscarriages of three non-viable pregnancies. My miscarriages were my reproductive system’s failures; my body had failed me. I failed me. To go through the process of terminating a pregnancy was shameful and lonely, and I was able to do this legally. But what if that were not the case? Would I have to drive to another state to “take care of it?” It’s no longer an assumption this will be a forever option.

While I am no longer in a baby-making way at this point in my life (after a tubal ligation), my daughter wants to be a mother someday. Because she has told me several times to this effect. My hope is that she will do so when she chooses to be a mother. And that she’ll freely make this choice on her timetable. And if condoms break or other circumstances beyond her control present her with different decisions to be made, that she will feel loved and supported and not ashamed. And because it seems inherently wrong that my daughter’s rights would be less than the rights I’ve had as a woman in this country. While this is issue is not in black and white like the decision SCOTUS handed down, I’m hoping that in the many shades of gray on abortion, that we will reverse course and not slide backwards. Not for just my daughter but hers and for other women everywhere.