Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Comments from the Womb on Legs gallery.

Lilyunderwater wrote:

"READ THE GODDAMN POSTS I MADE about illegal abortion. Women are HAVING ILLEGAL ABORTIONS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE YOUR STUPID FUCKING "PRO-LIFE" MOVEMENT IS MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO HAVE LEGAL ONES. THEY ARE SO DESPERATE THEY WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET RID OF THE PREGNANCY.

I really envy you. You will NEVER understand that kind of desperation. You don't even know how scared I've been when my period came late. You don't understand what it is like to wonder just how much it would hurt to hit yourself in the gut to cause a miscarriage, to wonder if you could manage to get to a clinic and pay for the procedure and still have NO ONE find out.

You will never stare down at your stomach and be afraid that there is something present inside that you never wanted and had no intention of creating. You will never welcome cramps or bleeding or passing out on the floor when you finally get your period, so thankful you got it you don't care how sick it makes you feel.

All this, and I have never even been pregnant. I've never even walked down that road, and I feel all of that.

You can NEVER understand. Don't fucking give us glibe little remarks about making murder safe and thinking you're witty. These are OUR lives you are passing judgment on. These are OUR sisters and OUR mothers and OUR daughters and OUR SEX that is being pulled in so many different directions by people who think they know what's best for us. "
I do believe the title says it all. These are comments from the womb om legs gallery, folks. This is what it's REALLY like when you have a working uterus and no freedom to decide what happens to it, and ultimately, to you. Therefore, this is what it's like to be a woman, especially a woman who is seriously considering or has already decided to have no children or never to go through a pregnancy.

Even myself, a sixteen year old girl who isn't even sexually active, I still feel this anxiety (probably not as much, but I still feel it). I still wonder how I'm going to manage EVER feeling comfortable about my sexuality when at any moment I may be relegated to a WOL (Womb on Legs, for those of you who are not pro-life and wouldn't know). It's ridiculous that people seriously think that I should "remain abstinent" for my entire life (or, well, until menopause, and even then if it's a false alarm I should have to give birth at 55) if I at all feel like I wouldn't want to forfeit my body for the use of a fetus.

In addition, take this comment:

ScarletLetter wrote:

"I think it's terrible that people who don't even know what a period feels like can just sum up 40 weeks of health/life threatening medical condition called pregnancy in one sentence and just make it sounds as though it's nothing major with no consequences.

Even the things you said about the period hit so close home. I, too, remember passing out on the floor. I remember being sent back home from school because I was so in pain, I kept vomiting and passing out, wanting to tear my ovaries and uterus out so it would stop hurting.

I remember lying all scared in the hospital, feeling a sort of fear I never felt before in my life, the fear for my life and life of my kid. I remember being so swollen, so in pain, so ill, and so scared that I am not going to make it and die at the age of 18. I remember the doctor cutting my lower belly and reaching inside my uterus to deliver my child and save both of our lives.

I remember every single damn second of it. And I don't think I'm likely to forget that, ever. I also remember a woman dying in childbirth while I was in the hospital for more than 3 weeks because my child was so small and tiny that they couldn't let us go home. I remember a nurse whose foot accidentally slipped while carrying a baby, the baby fell down on the floor and died.

This is the side of pregnancy, childbirth and being a woman that other people rarely want to hear. But it is there. It still happens. "
It's stories like this that make me irrate. People who call themselves "Pro-life" have no business forcing these types of risks onto women. They have no right to decide for women what kind of experience they should have when they fall pregnant. They are not the ultimate decider of right and wrong, and I have always been appalled when they try to act the part. They have no right to orphan a child by making a woman, the child's mother, take on health risks which ultimately result in her death.

The potential of a fetus is NEVER a reason to justify the death of a woman, by illegal abortion, forced gestation, etc.

It seems like no one values the opinion of the women who go through it, but then again, I couldn't imagine that people who use the legal system to butt into the bedrooms and private parts of women everywhere would really care about the blabbering of the whole class of people they're ordering around.

In any case, I thought these were very good specimens of real experience, of truth, and of the feelings of the people anti- laws affect. Take from them what you will, but the least you could do is LISTEN for once.

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