A Complicated Day
May. 4th, 2022 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. However, I did wake up with a plan (I always do; it is my superpower). The plan is pretty simple. If what I want is for the school system to teach kids about how complicated and difficult decisions around reproductive care are, and that’s why we leave it up to each individual along with their chosen medical care and other care providers, with some extra special fraught when the person who is pregnant is a child themselves, and the school system is not and has never done that, it’s time for Mama to step up and do it herself.
My intention was to start with the Irish experience, as it is recent enough to be directly relevant in other respects (medical care and women’s place in society was a lot different in 1973, when the right was recognized in the US, than it was after 2012. The Irish experience between 2012, when Savita Halappanavar died because of poor medical treatment directly related to restrictive abortion laws, and 2018, when those laws finally started to be corrected effectively, is going to feel much more relatable, if only because it is a developed, European nation and the events overlap with my son’s lifespan.
However, as I worked my way through those events, I realized that it was going to be too much information to absorb. In an effort to clarify sepsis, I thought to go to a relative who died in our past (death occurred in the 1920s) as a result of sepsis secondary to incomplete abortion — exactly the same as Savita Halappanavar, but simpler documentation to work through and maybe would hit closer to home, because a relative, and a woman who didn’t want a second child with her husband, who she’d married at 15 when he was twice her age.
But again, that was also complex, and I started thinking through what really is the rhetoric around those who seem inexplicably to want to kill women. And the answer is: the belief that human life begins at conception. That sent me back to wikipedia to better understand the products of conception, and _that_ my very dear reader, was revelatory.
I have a _delightful_ frame for my curriculum now and I could not be more excited to share it with anyone who will listen. Human life cannot begin at conception. An ectopic pregnancy, a blighted ovum, a molar pregnancy — these are all the products of conception. And NONE of these can under any circumstances ever lead to a human life. Period. So. I will build from there. And I absolutely am not going to make any kind of declaration about when a human life begins because I don’t care. My goal is to put the focus on where human life comes from, which is from a reproductive human with a functional uterus, and to emphasize that if you are in favor of human life, making sure that the source of human life is well cared for and safe is Job 1.
My intention was to start with the Irish experience, as it is recent enough to be directly relevant in other respects (medical care and women’s place in society was a lot different in 1973, when the right was recognized in the US, than it was after 2012. The Irish experience between 2012, when Savita Halappanavar died because of poor medical treatment directly related to restrictive abortion laws, and 2018, when those laws finally started to be corrected effectively, is going to feel much more relatable, if only because it is a developed, European nation and the events overlap with my son’s lifespan.
However, as I worked my way through those events, I realized that it was going to be too much information to absorb. In an effort to clarify sepsis, I thought to go to a relative who died in our past (death occurred in the 1920s) as a result of sepsis secondary to incomplete abortion — exactly the same as Savita Halappanavar, but simpler documentation to work through and maybe would hit closer to home, because a relative, and a woman who didn’t want a second child with her husband, who she’d married at 15 when he was twice her age.
But again, that was also complex, and I started thinking through what really is the rhetoric around those who seem inexplicably to want to kill women. And the answer is: the belief that human life begins at conception. That sent me back to wikipedia to better understand the products of conception, and _that_ my very dear reader, was revelatory.
I have a _delightful_ frame for my curriculum now and I could not be more excited to share it with anyone who will listen. Human life cannot begin at conception. An ectopic pregnancy, a blighted ovum, a molar pregnancy — these are all the products of conception. And NONE of these can under any circumstances ever lead to a human life. Period. So. I will build from there. And I absolutely am not going to make any kind of declaration about when a human life begins because I don’t care. My goal is to put the focus on where human life comes from, which is from a reproductive human with a functional uterus, and to emphasize that if you are in favor of human life, making sure that the source of human life is well cared for and safe is Job 1.
Re: Awesome article
Date: 2022-05-05 11:16 pm (UTC)I think for a lot of the people who've been invested in this thinking all their lives, it comes down to a kind of fatalism, that you aren't supposed to change what God has planned for you. Oddly enough this is completely compatible with a hyperindividualistic worldview: you just have to believe that your job is to accept what the universe throws at you, and all your energy should go into coping, making lemonade out of lemons, you know the shit. It's a common response to abuse or other traumatic experiences (a lot of Depression babies, like my parents, had a tinge of this kind of thinking - I was fortunate it was only a tinge), and you can see why.