Memory
My period was a week late or so.
I don't remember who I was fucking at the time.
I don't remember quite what bullshit excuse I used to get the afternoon off from work.
I remember that the lady at Planned Parenthood asked me, before we even got to the pregnancy test, what I would do if it came out positive.
I remember the force I had to put into my voice to hide the shake as I said, "There's no way I'm having this baby."
I remember looking at some kind of wheel to figure out how far along I would be, if I were pregnant, and her explaining that the Morgentaler clinic would do abortions starting at six weeks, and I remember the anger and the horror and horrible cold thing that gripped my stomach as I did the math and realized that this thing would be staying inside me for several weeks before anybody would be able to help me.
The test came up negative.
I remember walking home across the High Level Bridge, feeling the summer sun and breeze against my skin, against the body that was mine and mine only.
I wonder now, what that walk would have been like if there had been two lines.
I wonder about my sisters to the south.
Image via Culture Kitchen
posted by T. Comfyshoes at 9:00 p.m.
5 Comments:
Powerful post. It really resonates with me. x
5:11 p.m.
Thanks for sharing your story. I can't believe it's the 21st century and we're outlawing a medical procedure. Regardless of the "abortion kills" issues, as a medical professional I'm outraged about this. To have people's religious beliefs dictate the kind of medical care a woman is entitled to? It's frightening.
If I was a millionnaire, I'd buy a bunch of busses and run an abortion shuttle service for those SD women.
9:12 a.m.
Very powerful post and image. Thank you for blogging on this.
10:22 a.m.
While I myself have been a bit unnerved in the past over the possibility of pregnancy; the use of "intruder" and "thing" to describe it is quite disturbing. That is like calling a breast-feeding infant a parasite, or an elderly family member who needs help in day-to-day tasks a moocher. It just doesn't make sense. Sure, your feelings may have left you to view "it" at the enemy in your hour of desperation. But calling that baby; that fetus; that lump of cells with purpose; an intruder?
This post made me think more about the self-centered living that we are taught to value than the place of abortion in our society.
One more rant (although perhaps not directly related to this post): I'm tired of people stereotyping others who are considered "pro-life" as backwards hillbillies with no thought or compassion for women. It's getting a little old. I'd like to ask a rhetorical question: Have you ever known a Pro-Lifer? That's like asking, "Have you ever known a black person," or "Ever known anyone who is gay?" We're all human. Although opinions separate us, it gets a little frightening to de-humanize anyone: even those who would choose Life over Choice.
4:00 a.m.
The point of this post, borealis, in case you missed it, was to show the emotions associated with an unplanned pregnancy - in this case, one that turned out not to be the case, and one where I would have been able to abort. The idea being that I would allow a reader to extrapolate that if having to be pregnant for a few weeks was that intolerable, how much worse would it be for women who don't have the freedom that Canadian women in my city do.
But thank you very much for judging me for what I felt based on a stereotype you seem to have of pro-choicers as cold, heartless, and selfish, while ranting about a stereotype that I don't recall ever having invoked about forced-birth proponents.
9:37 p.m.
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