Morning all, I’m still a bit pre-coffee in the chaos. Please bear with me. I’ve sat on this for awhile, and needed time to be ready to write about this.
I was raised in a home where beatings, rug sweeping, and rampant lies from one of the parents was the normal. I was raised by another parent who did not care that the person who they married made me suicidal by the age of 10.
When I was raped as a teenager, by the husband of one of my teachers that I babysat for, I was blessed by the fact that I did not get pregnant. It took over a decade to heal from that rape. Those are years I will never get back. That’s a life I will never get to live, that alternate life where I wasn’t raped.
Back in the 1990’s when I did get pregnant. I fought hard to make sure I carried my daughter to term. She was unplanned, and I gave her up for adoption at birth. I went over 20 years not knowing who she was, or how she was. It was hell on earth, and I would do it again in the blink of an eye. Before I left the hospital, I held her in my arms and promised her that I would never have another child out of wedlock again.
In the early oughts, I had to fight for the right to get birth control, then I had to fight to get my tubes tied. Over and over again, I had to say. “I gave my only child up for adoption at birth. I am mentally ill, I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I do not want to raise a child, I SHOULD NOT BE RAISING A CHILD.” I got my tubes tied.
Everyone had an opinion on my getting my tubes tied. Everyone fought me on getting my tubes tied. Even the nurses before anesthesia fought me on getting my tubes tied.
When I went for my total hysterectomy, I had to fight for that. Thankfully, I was able to have it done, because bleeding down to your knees for a couple of weeks was deemed a little weird.
I started crying yesterday. I realized that if some cretin hurt my daughter, that it is possible she would be forced to raise that baby. I then started crying for all daughters in this country in the same boat.
There need to be more options. There has to be a valid and yet accessible way to prevent an unplanned pregnancy that does not involve dangerous hormones, coat hangers, and going under the knife and waking up dead.
There has got to be a better way. I have no answers, none. I will say, that the babies born to women who are forced to conceive them, and then are forced to raise them do not deserve to be treated the way I was. I am not political, never have been. I vote, and am just scared.
As an old fat woman in a wheelchair, who doesn’t contribute to society at large in any way, I suppose I don’t have the right to say anything. However, I do say this. Come up with something, anything, that makes life better for women, all women. Come up with something that gives a woman the protection from conception in any form. This chaos and madness just doesn’t make sense.-L
AnonymousKnitter 