I support the current effort by Gov. Mills to allow abortions later in pregnancy, and I will tell you why. It is not about radicalism or extremism. The proposed change is about acknowledging a sad truth that most people would rather not think about: that sometimes you can do everything right and your pregnancy can still go horribly wrong.
I’ve heard some people who oppose this saying things along the lines of “Well, a woman could decide the day before her due date that she wants an abortion!”
There’s absolutely no evidence that, given the option, women will choose to get an abortion later in the pregnancy, all willy-nilly. This is a sexist line of thinking that comes from the idea that women are flighty and silly and need to be protected from harming themselves or their children.
Like, I’m sorry, but have you ever met a woman? Or read about the side effects of pregnancy? Even a wanted, healthy pregnancy is going to have unpleasant physical side effects. (Nausea! Weight gain! Soreness! Swelling! Hair loss! Skin issues! Hormone swings!) If a woman finds out she’s pregnant and doesn’t want to be, she’s not going to decide to get an abortion and then forget about it for a few months, the way I forget to get my oil changed.
When I went in for the surgery to donate my kidney, I was in the pre-op area, prepped and swabbed and on a gurney, when, right before the anesthesiologist came in, I was given a final opportunity to back out. And I could have said “no” to the surgery then, even if it meant that the designated recipient of my kidney would have died without it. How is having that choice morally any different from deciding to have an abortion later in pregnancy? Besides, the proposed Maine bill has the caveat that a qualified medical professional has to agree that the abortion is necessary. If I hadn’t chosen to go ahead with my kidney surgery, I wouldn’t have needed anyone else’s sign-off in order to get up and walk out of the hospital.
What do you do if you discover at your 24-week ultrasound that the fetus you’re carrying is “incompatible with life”?
“Incompatible with life” is one of those medical terms they make long and flowery so that, when they say it, you have to take a minute to think about the words and put them together in context. It means your brain takes more time to process a diagnosis of death. So what do you do, if your 24-week ultrasound reveals that your fetus is missing most of its skull and part of its brain (anencephaly)? The problem won’t magically go away. You no longer have the option of taking your baby home from the hospital. So you have two options left: You can terminate the pregnancy, or you can see it through to the bitter end, which means you will have to give birth to a child you will watch die. Neither of these are good choices. Sometimes in life there are problems where there isn’t a good choice to be made.
If termination is banned, there are no choices at all, good or otherwise.
You can be against abortion all you want. I really, truly, genuinely respect everyone’s God-given American right to their own religious beliefs. But if you support banning abortion at an arbitrary gestational age, you need to know this sad truth: You will force women to give birth to babies they will have to watch die. That is something I take very seriously, because it happened to my mom.
I’m the oldest of my siblings, but I am not the firstborn. That honor goes to Mary. My mom was 25 weeks pregnant with her when she went into early labor because of a Group B strep infection. Mom rushed to Maine Med, but there was nothing the doctors could do. Mary’s lungs simply hadn’t developed enough for her body to process oxygen. She lived just long enough for a nurse to baptize her with a Dixie cup of water. My parents held her as she died. Mom was 28 years old. I genuinely do not know how she managed to survive that and gather up enough courage to try again.
And in some ways, she was lucky, because at least that tragedy happened quickly. Can you imagine the mental and physical torture of walking around with a visibly pregnant belly, having clueless strangers patting it and congratulating you and asking you about names, nursery colors and due dates, all while you know you won’t ever bring your child home?
I wish we lived in a perfect world, where every pregnancy is healthy and a source of joy. But we don’t. We live in this one.
Most of the criticism of this proposed law does not engage with cases like that of Dana Peirce, whose child would have died in the womb or shortly after birth, after suffering broken bones and intense pain. And I understand that. It’s not a pleasant topic to think about. It’s much easier to just assume your political opponents are being “extreme and radical,” or to fall back on old stereotypes of women being stupid and cruel hussies, than to grapple with the fact that sometimes terrible things happen for no particular reason but a twist of the wrong gene. I know that lots of people are against this proposed law. Maybe you are. I wonder how many of you could sit down in the hospital room of a patient like Dana and tell her to her face that she should be forced through the rest of that pregnancy. Could you do it? If you wouldn’t do it in person, why are you willing to do it through the layer of law?
My sister Mary was too small when she was born. But she has cast a long shadow. You can disagree with my stance on this. You can call me a baby killer if you like. But I will never, through my action or my inaction, force a woman to birth a child she will have to watch die.
Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial
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