11/04/2024
CW / Trigger warning: miscarriage, birth trauma
One of my “long-time friends” told me recently that he remembered me saying that I could never vote for a pro-choice candidate.
You may be surprised. I wasn’t.
There was a time when I felt that way.
I was raised Catholic. And was pretty devout until my early / mid-twenties.
But even then I was taught, and believed, that there should always be exceptions for r**e, in**st, and for the life of the mother.
With the fall of Roe and no federal protections for reproductive rights, some of the most draconian state laws criminalize abortion even under those circumstances.
And women - and girls - are dying.
Most elective abortions are going to happen within the first trimester - 91% per the CDC; 98.7% of abortions are performed within the first 20 weeks.
That remaining 1.3%?
Those are not “radical liberals” carrying into the later weeks of their pregnancy because they want to have an abortion but they want to be pregnant for 7-9 months first.
And there is no state in which it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born. Trump has repeated this lie ad nauseam. That’s not an abortion. It’s infanticide. It’s a crime. And it’s not a reproductive right anyone is fighting for.
Do you believe that’s true? Are there women in your life - relatives, friends, coworkers, even just…fellow humans, who you think would do that?
Those are relatively rare - and often tragic cases. Sometimes the fetus is found to be suffering from conditions that will be “incompatible with life.”
And sometimes it’s a miscarriage.
And medical help to complete that miscarriage is still classified as an abortion. If the baby inside her is no longer alive, sending her home to “let nature take its course” is risking the mother’s life. Criminalizing doctors by forbidding them to prescribe drugs to induce labor or to perform a D&C until the woman - or girl, let’s be frank here, and theoretically that could also include non-binary folx and trans men - is already septic or profusely bleeding - is risking their life.
And maternal mortality is on the rise - mostly in red states.
Vote accordingly.
For me - the choice is clear.
