Connie in Texas
My experiences are mine. My decisions were, and are, mine. Each woman has the right to choose without judgment from anyone.
In 1980, I was working full time evening shift as a ward clerk in an emergency room. During the day, I attended nursing school full-time…..a very busy life. Yet, still, I dated AND took my birth control pills every day…not at the same time, but every day none-the-less.
My thought was, if I did become pregnant, despite taking the pill, that I would have an abortion. I was, and am still pro-choice. I even discussed the subject with the man I was dating, Then, of course, I became pregnant, and suddenly, the decision was a lot more complicated than it had seemed.
In 1957, when my mother was pregnant with me, she was offered a “therapeutic abortion.” This was before Rhogam and I was her third pregnancy, she was RH negative and her first two children were RH positive. The story went that when the second child was born, that the baby had to have a complete blood transfusion. Doctors assured my mother that to give birth again, would be to have a profoundly difficult pregnancy and almost certain death for the baby and possibly her as well. She said “no.” The first two children were by one father and I was by another.
I, of course, turned out to be RH negative. Through a serious of unfortunate incidents, and no fault of my birth mother (other than extreme fertility) my sisters and I ended up in foster care and were all adopted into different families. The abuse we each suffered was traumatic, both in foster homes and adoptive homes. When I was 18, I had my file opened and located my birth family. We all struggled with the choices of pregnancy.
So, here I was, pregnant. I had dated the guy about 3 months, was working full time and in nursing school full time…how could I do this. When I told the father of the pregnancy, he looked at me and said “So, you are going to have an abortion?” I replied, “I don’t think I can do that” He looked aghast and said, “I don’t want to get married!” My reply was “I don’t want to get married either!”
Because my life was complicated enough, I decided to eliminate one source of stress and told him that I would have the child, raise it and he was off the hook. We never spoke again.
Fast forward 3 years. I had married, and now had two children. I had married an alcoholic (note to all, if the man’s best friend suggests that you shouldn’t marry the man….DON’T!) and was working full time supporting us and he was taking care of the kids full time. My days off were spent doing housework while he went out with friends and I realized that it would be cheaper to pay a baby-sitter than to keep him supplied with alcohol and pipe tobacco. I exchanged letters with a friend back home and we hatched a plan to each divorce our worthless husbands and become room-mates. We would work opposite shifts and take care of the kids.
And…. I found out I was pregnant. No one supported me about the pregnancy. The husband wanted an abortion, “We can’t afford another child.” “you mean, *I* can’t afford another child.” I replied. The potential roommate wanted me to abort, “This changes everything, an abortion isn’t that bad.” My co-workers, “are you crazy?”
I couldn’t have one, I knew the outcome of a pregnancy, I had two fantastic children and couldn’t have an abortion. At my son's birth, I had a tubal ligation. I stayed with my husband until my 3rd child was 6 months old, THEN I separated. Ironically, my third child was RH negative, while my first two were RH positive. My children are grown, and my daughter became pregnant while on birth control pills. She, too, struggled with the choice. Like me, she had dated the man for a brief period of time and had thought that if she did become pregnant, she would have an abortion. Then she thought of adoption and my experience through adoption caused her to reject that as an option. There were many conversations, lots of tears, fears of how she would handle a child and many other discussions.The result of her choice is that I am now a NaNa. A grandaughter. One day, she, too, will probably have a choice to make. When that time comes, her mother and I will be there to support, console and stand beside her. When that time comes, it will be HER choice, whatever that choice may be, it will be HERS to make.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
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Karen Bender, co-editor of Choice
“No one would listen to you he didn’t know it was his turn to talk next.” That’s from Edgar Watson Howe, a novelist of the 19th century.
Everyone I know, including me, is guilty of this. But this issue of Choice is so big, so powerful, so really complex, it means that we all should try to stop—for a moment, away--and listen.
Listening also means thinking about what we are going to say. Choice—or, in particular, abortion, is one of those topics in which wording becomes crucial and perplexing to analyze. Browsing some pro-life and pro-choice websites recently, I found some interesting ways of describing what happens during an abortion. The pro-life websites describe the fetus as the “body of the baby,” the “developing baby,” the “innocent heart,” and even, oddly, “the child’s body,” which seems to be taking quite a leap.
One pro-choice site described the “uterine contents,” which seemed not right either.
Another site described “embryonic tissue,” which gave me a precise scientific image.
What is gained by calling the “tissue” a “baby?” It’s a fast-forward, certainly, and the word “baby” definitely sentimentalizes the issue—who is against “babies?” Or innocent hearts, for that matter.
On the other hand, “uterine contents” can be a way of separating from the loss that may be part of the abortion.
Neither words address or include the mother who is making the decision, or include the situation that spur her to abort. The fetus is physically part of the mother. How can the wording include the mother? Perhaps we can get a sense from some of the stories posted here—the perspective of the mother, not only relating to abortion, but adoption, parenthood, birth control, abstinence--any of the choices a woman can make. We'd like to hear from men, too, about choices they have made.
Anonymous Contributor
Today I am certain: I'm single, forty, and I do not want children. I'm sure of my choice, and here's why.
As simplistic as it sounds, I don't like getting up early; I'm a greedy sleeper, and my body needs at least eight hours if I want to be on top of my game when I teach my college students and write my novel. Without a solid eight hours, I'm sluggish, resentful, grouchy. I like that I'm always wide-awake ready for the long days ahead, that my body doesn't have to continually yawn itself alive to function because a baby has stolen those precious hours I need every night.
Two, my time is mostly my own. Sometimes, even after writing for eight straight hours with only pee breaks, my whole body jerks with annoyance when one of my cats cries to go out. If I'm resentful of thirty seconds in eight hours, how can I possibly take care of a child? They need a little more than that, don't they?
Three. I love to get up and go. No, not to Paris or Venice, or even to New England to visit my family (who has the money for that as an adjunct instructor?). But when a friend calls and says, "C'mon, meet me," I love that I can. Without hesitation, without a second thought–after all, the cats can go eight hours or more without my attention. No babysitters, no early hour to get back because babysitter Brittany has a test in the morning, no diaper bags full of bippies and wipees, no worrying about smoky restaurants and delicate lungs and naptime and on the go breast-pumped bottles.
Also, I love that even in my thirties, and up until now–forty almost forty one–I bypassed the agonizing rites of so many other women I knew and know: always looking for Him, waiting, hoping, eyes hunting left hands for the ring, eyes chasing down the barely hopefuls, brains doing the timelines again and again. If I meet him in the next six months, and we get engaged quickly, and I get pregnant in the first year... I love and am proud that I'm waiting for the "ridiculously in love" relationship, and won't settle for anything less. Even if it means not having children, because, really, who wants to spend the days and nights hoping and searching and praying that the next guy you meet is finally the right one? Not just the love of a lifetime, but the father? None of that internal tick tick ticking for me. "Listen up, eggs," I said once in the shower recently, " do whatever it is you need to do, have at it." Only a great love for me, or nothing.
Five: I love to teach, but being an adjunct instructor is a joke–you really have to love it to put up with the long hours and barely-there compensation. And I do love to teach, and even more, I love my students. I love these on-the-brink adults who waver so precariously between fierce intelligence and arbitrary emotions. But let's face it, the exorbitant cost of adoption, the absurdly limited options for single-mother adoption even if I did have the start-up money, means that in order to keep doing what I love I'd need to work another job, maybe even two other jobs, if I was lucky enough to bring a child home (and then we're back to that nagging issue of time again–never mind sleeping or writing, who raises this child if I'm always off working?). Even the ostensibly less costly option–insemination–isn't really something I have to agonize over. As my OB-GYN recently told me this summer, "We don't work with single mothers. We don't want more orphans out there if anything happens to you." Sort of a relief, right? Who needs that kind of pressure on top of everything else?
So that's it. I don't want children, and that's what I choose. I love that I can drowse until 10:00am on Sundays, and sometimes even Tuesdays, Wednesdays; that I can sit in a chair in front of a computer and write write write and my only worry is opening a door; that I can speed off–albeit locally–in a moment's notice; that when I meet the right guy, wow, is he going to be right; and that the little money I make is at least enough to keep me fed and sheltered and I never have to worry about orphaning a child I can't afford in the first place.
That is today.
But tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime next week, I'll wake up–maybe at 10:00, or even 10:30–and I'll stroll into a bookstore, or a coffee shop, and the sight will almost knock me over: a mother nuzzling her little girl in the checkout line. The little girl's arms possessively and casually slung around her mother's neck. The language of touches, the million signals of endless tenderness passing seamlessly between them. And I'll see this little girl's shy smile when she sees me staring, and I'll smile back, maybe even wave or say hello. And then I'll leave that coffee shop, or grocery store, or bank, because I have the freedom to do that. To come and go as I please. But always, always as I make my way back to my car (perfectly clean, no cookie crumbles and sticky books and ketchup stains and the warm, curdled smell of milk), I wonder: is it really my choice? Or am I just a forty year old woman who doesn't make enough money, who still has no clue at all how to meet the right man after all this time, and whose eggs don't need any encouragement or permission from me to follow the natural progression of time. Am I really just a forty year old woman, almost forty-one, who hopes that the list of reasons I made today will be enough for tomorrow, because the choice was never really mine in the first place.
Today I am certain: I'm single, forty, and I do not want children. I'm sure of my choice, and here's why.
As simplistic as it sounds, I don't like getting up early; I'm a greedy sleeper, and my body needs at least eight hours if I want to be on top of my game when I teach my college students and write my novel. Without a solid eight hours, I'm sluggish, resentful, grouchy. I like that I'm always wide-awake ready for the long days ahead, that my body doesn't have to continually yawn itself alive to function because a baby has stolen those precious hours I need every night.
Two, my time is mostly my own. Sometimes, even after writing for eight straight hours with only pee breaks, my whole body jerks with annoyance when one of my cats cries to go out. If I'm resentful of thirty seconds in eight hours, how can I possibly take care of a child? They need a little more than that, don't they?
Three. I love to get up and go. No, not to Paris or Venice, or even to New England to visit my family (who has the money for that as an adjunct instructor?). But when a friend calls and says, "C'mon, meet me," I love that I can. Without hesitation, without a second thought–after all, the cats can go eight hours or more without my attention. No babysitters, no early hour to get back because babysitter Brittany has a test in the morning, no diaper bags full of bippies and wipees, no worrying about smoky restaurants and delicate lungs and naptime and on the go breast-pumped bottles.
Also, I love that even in my thirties, and up until now–forty almost forty one–I bypassed the agonizing rites of so many other women I knew and know: always looking for Him, waiting, hoping, eyes hunting left hands for the ring, eyes chasing down the barely hopefuls, brains doing the timelines again and again. If I meet him in the next six months, and we get engaged quickly, and I get pregnant in the first year... I love and am proud that I'm waiting for the "ridiculously in love" relationship, and won't settle for anything less. Even if it means not having children, because, really, who wants to spend the days and nights hoping and searching and praying that the next guy you meet is finally the right one? Not just the love of a lifetime, but the father? None of that internal tick tick ticking for me. "Listen up, eggs," I said once in the shower recently, " do whatever it is you need to do, have at it." Only a great love for me, or nothing.
Five: I love to teach, but being an adjunct instructor is a joke–you really have to love it to put up with the long hours and barely-there compensation. And I do love to teach, and even more, I love my students. I love these on-the-brink adults who waver so precariously between fierce intelligence and arbitrary emotions. But let's face it, the exorbitant cost of adoption, the absurdly limited options for single-mother adoption even if I did have the start-up money, means that in order to keep doing what I love I'd need to work another job, maybe even two other jobs, if I was lucky enough to bring a child home (and then we're back to that nagging issue of time again–never mind sleeping or writing, who raises this child if I'm always off working?). Even the ostensibly less costly option–insemination–isn't really something I have to agonize over. As my OB-GYN recently told me this summer, "We don't work with single mothers. We don't want more orphans out there if anything happens to you." Sort of a relief, right? Who needs that kind of pressure on top of everything else?
So that's it. I don't want children, and that's what I choose. I love that I can drowse until 10:00am on Sundays, and sometimes even Tuesdays, Wednesdays; that I can sit in a chair in front of a computer and write write write and my only worry is opening a door; that I can speed off–albeit locally–in a moment's notice; that when I meet the right guy, wow, is he going to be right; and that the little money I make is at least enough to keep me fed and sheltered and I never have to worry about orphaning a child I can't afford in the first place.
That is today.
But tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime next week, I'll wake up–maybe at 10:00, or even 10:30–and I'll stroll into a bookstore, or a coffee shop, and the sight will almost knock me over: a mother nuzzling her little girl in the checkout line. The little girl's arms possessively and casually slung around her mother's neck. The language of touches, the million signals of endless tenderness passing seamlessly between them. And I'll see this little girl's shy smile when she sees me staring, and I'll smile back, maybe even wave or say hello. And then I'll leave that coffee shop, or grocery store, or bank, because I have the freedom to do that. To come and go as I please. But always, always as I make my way back to my car (perfectly clean, no cookie crumbles and sticky books and ketchup stains and the warm, curdled smell of milk), I wonder: is it really my choice? Or am I just a forty year old woman who doesn't make enough money, who still has no clue at all how to meet the right man after all this time, and whose eggs don't need any encouragement or permission from me to follow the natural progression of time. Am I really just a forty year old woman, almost forty-one, who hopes that the list of reasons I made today will be enough for tomorrow, because the choice was never really mine in the first place.
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