NEO•GRIOT

Abortion Saved My Life

Posted by: karnythia

 

May 24th, 2011

So, there’s this lawmaker out of Kansas who has lots to say about abortion. He’s currently best known for saying that women should plan ahead in case of rape and not expect their regular insurance to cover an abortion if they want one after being assaulted. And we could spend a lot of time going around about the flaws in his logic, or even hashing out when life begins, but really this post isn’t about any of that. This post is about the idea that anyone besides the pregnant woman should get a vote in what she does with her body after finding out about a pregnancy. For a host of reasons we as a society seem incapable of accepting bodily autonomy in women. This is reflected in the existence of street harassment, rape culture, and the million efforts to dictate whether or not women can control their own reproductive health. This attitude that women are shirking responsibility by opting out of having unwanted children has always boggled my mind.

But then I’m a mom, and I would never want my kids to grow up an unwanted child like I did. I love my kids more than I could ever explain & I do my best to give them the childhood I never had. Because I love them I had an abortion at 20 weeks. It was my 5th pregnancy (I had two miscarriages while I was trying to conceive my sons), and as it turned out my last. It was troubled from the start, I didn’t experience any of the normal indicators of pregnancy, so I found out when I was already 10 weeks along. No missed periods, in fact I was seeing an OB/GYN who specializes in treating fibroids and endometriosis in part because of the increased heaviness of my cycle. When we found out (that standard pregnancy test before surgery is necessary after all) I talked it out with my husband and we debated aborting (I got as far as the clinic), before ultimately deciding that we would try to make it work. My doctor advised me right off the bat that she wasn’t certain of a good outcome and that my pregnancy would be very high risk. I did exactly what she said in terms of taking it easy, because I wanted to give that child the best possible chance.  But the intermittent bleeding wouldn’t stop and I knew that there was a high chance that I would not be able to carry to term.

I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started. Laying in bed with my toddler napping in his room, and waking up to find blood gushing up my body is an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The placental abruption that my doctor had listed as a possibility was happening and I was going to have to do my best to take care of both of us. Mind you, my husband was at work and my not quite 2 year old sure couldn’t dial 911 for me so I had to make it to the phone & make arrangements for the sleeping toddler as well as his older brother before I could leave the house. I’ll spare you the gory details of my personal splatter flick, but suffice to say by the time I got to the hospital I probably needed a transfusion.

We all knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, couldn’t be viable with the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took them hours to do anything, because the doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. No one on call that night did them in fact. A very kind nurse risked her job to call a doctor from the Reproductive Health Clinic who was not on call, and asked her to come in to save my life. Fortunately she was home, and even more fortunately she was able to get there relatively quickly. But by the time she got there I was in bad shape. Blood loss had rendered me borderline incoherent, an incredibly ignorant batch of students were fascinated by my case and more interested in studying me than treating me (one had the audacity to show me the ultrasound of our dying child while asking me if it was a planned pregnancy), and then there was the fact that I was on the L & D floor listening to other women have healthy babies while I bled out and the baby I had been trying to save died in my womb.

When the other doctor got there she had me moved to a different wing, got me painkillers (we were many hours into my hospital stay, and no one had bothered to give me anything for the pain despite my screams every time they decided to push on my abdomen or examine me for student edification), and then after checking my labs told us that I would need two bags of blood before she could do anything. Her team (a cadre of students who should all go on to run their own clinics) took turns coming in to check on me and my husband. They all kept assuring me that soon it would be over, and I would feel much better. My husband had to sign the consent for surgery (there was no question of me being competent enough to make decisions), and they took me away along with a third bag of blood to be administered during surgery.

What I didn’t know until much later was that the doctor took my husband aside while they were taking me back. She promised him she would do her best to save me, and then she warned him about the distinct possibility that she would fail. See, that doctor who didn’t do abortions was supposed to have contacted her (or someone else) immediately. He didn’t. His students didn’t either. Because I was their case and they weren’t done with me yet. Or something. Ostensibly there was a communication breakdown and they thought she had been notified, but given the talk about writing a paper on me that I do remember happening over my head? I doubt it. I don’t know if his objections were religious or not, all I know is that when a bleeding woman was brought to him for treatment he refused to do the only thing that could stop the bleeding. Because he didn’t do abortions. Ever.

My two kids at home were going to lose their mother because someone decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that wasn’t going to survive any way. Mind you, my husband told them exactly what my regular doctor had said, and the ER doctor had already warned us what would need to happen. But, none of that mattered in the face of this idea that no one needs an abortion. You don’t know what a woman who decides to abort needs, and you shouldn’t need to know in order to trust her to make the best decision for herself.  I don’t care why a woman aborts, all I care is that she has access to safe affordable healthcare. I don’t regret my abortion, and I will never extrapolate my situation to mean that the only time other women should abort is when their life is at stake. Why? Well after the news hit my family that I’d aborted I got a phone call from a cousin who felt the need to tell me that I was wrong to have interfered with God’s plan. In that moment I understood that the kind of people who will judge a woman’s reproductive choices are the kind of people that I don’t want to be.

__________________________

That's the street name... The Bitch Who Knew She Owned The Moon

			08:45 pm June 2nd, 2011

		The storm seems to be dying down. I got some Twitter comments & such but today was much quieter than yesterday. No doubt courtesy of the Internet's short attention span & Stanek's lie being so obvious. This is my first experience with going viral & I have to say I don't recommend it. On the up side, I have a greater faith in a specific section of humanity than ever before, though umm...I really do wonder about some folks. Feminists who I have critiqued in the past on various points came out in force to stand by me, folks who love me stood by me, people who only kind of know came out swinging, & some complete strangers saddled up too. It was amazing & kind of horrifying at times. Because they were bringing facts & logic to a conversation that hinged on propaganda and hate.  These hardcore prolife women would insist that babies can survive at 20 weeks (despite that never happening in the history of recorded healthcare), or that a hysterectomy was better than an abortion, or some thing else equally illogical. And they'd insult folks & then get butthurt when people stopped listening to them. It was just some of the goofiest behavior ever. And it was like logic burned them or something. Especially the ones who object to social programs, contraception, & abortion. Apparently poor women are just supposed to be incubators for the wealthy or be content sans sex. Some of the people saying the most ridiculous things to me over the last few days claim to love life. But they sure seem to hate women. Not just WOC (though there is a lot of racism in the hate), but all women. Poor, well off, middle class, young, old, single, married, you name it? They hate it.  I know more than a few pro-life folks & they've always kept their stance relatively quiet. I see why now, because OMFG I would not want to be identified with these people. And funnily enough my pro life friends have never favored making abortion illegal, for them it has always been about making it unnecessary by making it possible for every pregnancy to be a wanted pregnancy. I remain pro-choice, but I have so much more respect for sane pro lifers now. I can't imagine trying to fight that kind of hate inside a movement along with trying to advance it. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: thinking thinky thoughts I'm feeling...:  contemplative 21 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			09:46 pm June 1st, 2011

		I decided to turn off comment emailing for a while. They can scream into the aether or at each other or whatever, but I'm tired of looking at hate & stupidity. People keep saying I'm brave, but I don't feel brave. I want to cry & pack up my family for a vacation & a dozen other things that don't include another week of this shit. But, I can't avoid reality entirely so I'm just going to do what I can to take care of myself emotionally while this all plays out. I really really appreciate all the support I've gotten from you guys. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: adulthood is hard I'm feeling...:  exhausted 52 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			01:09 pm June 1st, 2011

		Attack Of The Cult Of The Fetus Aside from a willful refusal to read past Stanek's misleading headline (I never admitted embellishing anything. Because I didn't embellish anything. But hey, keep letting Stanek lie to you instead of reading for yourself.), I'm getting the same few criticisms leveled at me in the spam comments over and over. Apparently I'm cold, not graceful enough in my response to the attacks by Stanek & her followers, and too angry. Also, if I were telling the truth I'd act just the way the commenter demands (that ranges from naming the doctor to filing a lawsuit to publishing my medical records to not talking about what happened to me at all to providing them with a platform to blogging how many tears I cried), and all I can do at this point is roll my eyes and wait for the trolls to figure out that I'm not going to be bullied.  Stanek's lies about me aren't going to become the truth no matter how many times she plasters her delusional interpretation of my words on any site that will accept them. People that claim to be pro life demand to know why I didn't just die that day instead of having an abortion to save my life. Others insist major surgery (that is what a c-section is for the record) was a better option than the abortion. Fascinating how many people claim to be medical professionals and then display a complete lack of medical ethics in trying to prescribe treatment for a patient they've never seen. I'm 99.9% certain that most of the people making demands would swear they were acting this way out of concern for their cause or my kids or some other batch of buzzwords that masks the reality of their hatred for women. I suspect my race adds a layer to the conversation (I'm also getting lots of comments about knowing my place which would be upsetting if it wasn't so ridiculous), but then this wouldn't be the first time misogyny and racism have intersected in the life of a WOC. So, once more the new folks who will undoubtedly be dropping by today. Stanek is attacking my experience to raise her profile. I can't stop her from doing that, but I'm not going to be bullied into pretending that I lied about the treatment I received. Nor am I going to pretend that this harassment is coming from any place but one of hatred. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: going to war I'm feeling...:  awake 59 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			08:40 am May 31st, 2011

		In a fit of...something I decided to start a blog & podcast called Hood Feminism. Clearly, I have issues. Fortunately I have friends with issues, so a lot of other folks are going to join me in this wild endeavor. Stay tuned for further details of budding insanity guaranteed to bolster the impression that I'm a cold hearted bitch. So, it's Tuesday, it's hot as hell, how are you? I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: gallows humor you might not understand, going to war I'm feeling...:  awake 23 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			05:34 pm May 29th, 2011

My life is not your life So, I’m looking at some of the comments and emails that are flooding my inbox demanding to know all the inner workings of my life when I had the abortion that saved my life. And I know I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but there seems to be an ongoing assumption that I had tons of family support, disposable income in abundance, and that my two kids were self sufficient. At the time my oldest was 8 and my youngest was 1 1/2. My friends are supportive, and one of them stepped in to take care of my kids that night but I’ve never had the kind of family of origin that will pitch in to help me (or each other) with more than the most basic things most of the time. It was better before my grandmother passed away, but she’s been gone a while now and without her we’re not a close family by any stretch of the imagination. When I say my family will help, I’m mostly referring to my aunts or my husband’s family. My parents? They aren’t helpful. They got the phone call that I was in trouble while they were en route to St Louis for a televangelist’s convention. They suggested I call someone else to come get my kids, and then they continued their drive to St. Louis. I did get a phone call from my mother the night after the surgery. She was more concerned with me interrupting her weekend away than anything else as far as I could tell from the conversation. Admittedly I stopped listening after she launched into her latest version of ” This would be shocking, but this is the same woman that didn’t bother to name me and then got mad when I was 13 and filled out my own birth certificate with the name I’d been using at school instead of the moniker she’d always planned to saddle me with so I wasn’t shocked. It was the last straw for our already tenuous relationship, but that’s a story for another blog. On the disposable income front…at that point we were a one income family and just barely getting by on that one income. It was cheaper for me to stay home with our two kids (childcare costs in Chicago are astronomical), but that also meant we had very little wiggle room financially. So, there was no question of my husband taking off work for weeks on end to allow me to stay in bed all day every day. And while his family will help to their best abilities, they have their own households to run and must go to their jobs too if they want to pay their bills. Same thing with our friends. I don’t know where people live that folks can just stop working and keep living, but I don’t live there. Someone else asked why I didn’t take my kids with me to the hospital. Aside from not wanting to traumatize them, there was also the part where my oldest was at school. We lived close enough to his school that he could walk home, but having him come home to an empty house was not an option. Nor was waiting for him to get home since you know, I was bleeding profusely and all. My friend cleaned my blood off the walls and hid my sheets so that my son wouldn’t be scared. As for the demands that I have a c-section just in case a micro-preemie could have survived? You should go look at the survival rates for 20 week preemies again. Death wasn’t going to be averted, it was just a question of whether we both died. There seems to be this assumption that major surgery was a better idea than a less invasive procedure. Umm..no. The first thing discussed when I got to the hospital was the lack of viability for a child born at that point, then there was the part where I was in active labor & had no amniotic fluid when they did the ultrasound. But hey, go ahead and assume you know every detail of what was going on in my life so you can pass judgment on the decisions made by the person actually living it. Lastly, no I wasn’t paid by Salon or anyone else to write that post. It’s not fiction, and the title of my blog isn’t an indication that my nonfiction should be taken with a grain of salt. It is an indication that I’m a published author of fiction and non fiction. The idea that this was a publicity stunt is laughable. I don’t know what planet some of the folks making that comment are on, but on no planet that I work on is having a blog post about a tragedy a way to boost attention for a closed company. Yes, I said closed. Verb Noire is defunct and has been for some time. My writing career has been developing for years and really, I know enough people to have a good chance at selling the book I’m working on. Mind you, I wrote that post after an argument on Facebook with someone who insisted (as many people do) that abortion is not a medical procedure and that no one ever needs one. I posted it on my personal blogs & on a blog that I co write with several other angry black women. Most of my posts are made in a similar fashion. Most do not go particularly viral. This one has, and yes I did put myself out there when I agreed to let Salon re-post it. Not for an agenda, but simply to write what happened to me and talk about the fallacy in “No abortion is ever necessary” arguments. Did we file a lawsuit? No. I had a lot of other things to do (like mourn and heal) and the hospital staff that did eventually treat me encouraged me to go through internal channels so that patient care would be improved. I did that, and then for the sake of my sanity and my family I put away what happened to me and got on with the business of living my life. Some say I should name and shame the doctor that refused to do the procedure. If I knew why he refused I might have done just that, but since I know that there are many possible reasons that he did not do it? I’ve left him to deal with the internal procedures in place. Same thing with the hospital where this happened. I could name it (funnily enough many people have correctly guessed and more than a few remember me naming it when it happened), but I didn’t write this post to shame the hospital any more than I wrote it to shame the doctor. Hard concept to grasp for some, but this post wasn’t about revenge or money. It was about me coming to terms with what happened and about my disdain for a particular pro-life argument. Believe it, don’t believe it. That’s up to you. My life will go on either way. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide!

>via: http://karnythia.livejournal.com/