Lost Grrrls

Reading the notes on that last post, about the girl in the Dominican Republic who has leukemia AND is pregnant, but can’t treatment for the cancer because abortion is banned there…

For some reason I’m reminded of my life two years ago, just about exactly, when I had lost my job earlier that summer and was moving back home. I had sex with this guy, and I wasn’t on the pill yet, but we’d used condoms, but he’d asked me if I was on birth control the morning after and didn’t offer any further explanation for why he asked that. And I didn’t think to ask if I should be worried about anything but the question ended up freaking me out. So I thought about getting Plan B just to be safe but I didn’t for some reason that I can’t recall. Maybe because I was unemployed and didn’t have a lot of money to spend. But then my period was late and I started freaking out that I had gotten pregnant, but I couldn’t take a pregnancy test because I was on vacation with (the anti-choice side of) my family (including my stepmom who gets Focus On The Family newsletters) and didn’t have any chance to sneak off to a Walgreens to pick one up and had no where to take it. Plus it was still too early to really take one without worrying about a false negative. And not to mention, but the pregnancy tests I had seen in Walgreens were almost as expensive as Plan B, so I figured I should save my money a little longer since, even if I was pregnant, there was nothing I could do about it yet, and just hope that my period came. So I was searching on my phone every night of that vacation for “natural” things I could do to prevent it (came across several websites about “naturally inducing miscarriage” that talked about drinking teas made from parsley and inserting vitamin C tablets vaginally right after having sex to prevent conception… and I didn’t know how safe or effective these things actually were). And I was drinking as much caffeine as I could because I know that’s bad for pregnant people, because I couldn’t do anything else about it yet but wait, and wait. And for two weeks I just freaked the fuck out. We visited my little sister as the last stop on the vacation, and my period finally came the night before I had a girls night out with her, and I confessed that if it hadn’t come, I would have had her take me to a Walgreens that evening instead of hanging out elsewhere, and told her she was lucky she never had to worry about pregnancy scares. And I mean… I was stressed all summer, it’s no surprise my period was late at that time in my life. But holy shit was that a distressing experience. And I also kept thinking about how I had no idea how I’d afford an abortion if I had needed one (even that early, when they’re least expensive) because I had, like, NOTHING to my name at that point. And I certainly couldn’t ask my dad or brother for help, because we’d gotten into a huge argument about abortion rights only a month or two before that and I knew where they stood. (The conversation ended with, “Would you get an abortion?” “Yeah, if I found out I was pregnant tomorrow, absolutely.” Then both my dad and brother got upset, saying that was a terrible idea because either of them would be happy to raise the child, totally ignoring that I didn’t even want to be PREGNANT, not even just that I don’t want to raise a kid yet.) And I hoped, if I needed it, maybe my mom would be able to help me out, but she was also unemployed at the time and living off of savings and…

It was simply a very scary experience. I truly hope I never have to relive it, although I’ve had other vagina-related worries that have also been incredibly emotionally draining. I take my birth control pills religiously now that I’m on them because I don’t want to go through that again.

Sorry for that rambling block of text, but basically, FUCK anti-choice logic. If I was freaking out at that point, when I didn’t even know yet if I was pregnant, about how the hell I could afford an abortion, which would have been about $800 from what I understood (if I did the RU486 pill), how the HELL does anyone think I could afford to raise a child, or much less carry it to term and put it up for adoption? Pregnancy is also expensive as hell. And not something I was equipped to handle on ANY LEVEL at that point in my life. And if I was desperate enough to look for “herbal remedies” for the situation (which I’m not proud of, because I try to rely on medical science for things that are actually serious), clearly I’m not the only one. People get abortions whether it’s legal or not. That’s a cold, hard fact. The only difference when they’re not legal? They then become FAR less safe for the people getting them.

Alright, done raging for now.