Tag: abortion

NOT One-Size-Fits-All, or What Would You Tell a Pregnant 10-year-old?

On By AnnIn Activism, faith, Family, social justice2 Comments

I turned in my primary election ballot this morning. Folks can still request an advance ballot until tomorrow, or they can vote early at the courthouse for another week. Election day is August 2. For those who might be confused about the amendment issue on the ballot, I think it boils down to whether you trust the legislature to protect the health and future of everyone, or just the unborn? In other words, what would you want for a pregnant 10-year-old rape victim? As I think about my own innocent grandchildren, ages from 1 to 12, the answer is clear to me. A child at that age should not be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Nobody I know is “pro-abortion”. We are, however, pro-choice. Abortion is an option that is tragic, but it is not a simple, right-or-wrong, black-or-white issue. We must keep legal abortion available as an option for women–and girls–in crisis pregnancies.

Before you write me off as a “Baby Killer,” let me assure you I am not. I hate to see anyone or anything hurting. All my life I have befriended the friendless, rescued turtles crossing highways, and taken steps to avoid hurting most other living things for as long as I can remember. (Exceptions: mosquitoes, ticks, and flies.) It is preposterous to think I could choose to end the life of my own unborn child. It’s simply not within the realm of possibilities.

But this is not a simple thing. It’s not a “one-size-fits-all” issue. It is not “one solution for every situation.”

There is not a person on earth who can anticipate all the different factors facing a mother who is considering abortion. Each situation is unique and must be considered individually by those involved—the distressed mother, her family, and the medical team. The rest of us have no right to interfere or to judge.

I come to this realization through a sequence of events unique to my own life. And I wonder, how many of those so quick to condemn other women facing dismal choices know what it’s like to lose a baby?

I do. I lost two. Not through abortion, but through natural deaths. They were both stillborn. The babes would both be 39 and 40 now and not a day goes by that I don’t miss them. They were very much loved and wanted, but it was not to be. I do believe God loves them too and I find comfort thinking they entered his benevolent care the moment of their deaths. We can’t forget what lies beyond.

How many women quick to condemn others for a difficult decision have ever been offered the option of ending a problem pregnancy through abortion? I have. Twice.

After the first baby’s death, the best my medical team had to offer was frequent sonograms during two subsequent pregnancies. They would then recommend an abortion should things start to go wrong.

I declined. Note again: I DECLINED. I couldn’t have opted for an abortion on either one. Instead, I chose not to have any sonograms at all. If something was to happen, I didn’t want to know it.

I am grateful to this day, however, that I was offered the choice. The decision was ultimately mine to make, and nobody else’s. My choice was to cherish every moment I had with my children, for as much time as we had together.

I lost the second baby too. But the third pregnancy, six years later, left me with a precious girl who now has two healthy girls of her own.

I wonder other things about those outspoken critics of pro-choice folks. How many of them have felt the knife-twist of agony to hear that an un-named teenage girl has chosen an abortion for her child rather than allow you to adopt the infant? I have. And I grieved anew for another baby lost. (But I still support her right to choose.)

How many critics have opened their homes to raise a child brought into the world by others? I have. The adoption and the parenting of my daughter proved to be one of the most challenging decisions of my life.

How many have opened their homes, offering shelter to young women wrestling with an unwanted pregnancy? Instead of condemning the unknown young woman who chose abortion over adoption, I became an advocate for girls in crisis situations, offering my home to house them until delivery. I hoped that my actions helped reassure those women that their unborn child would be treasured in an adoptive family.

How many have experienced conversations with a woman who, after hearing my story of loss and adoption, tearfully confessed to ending an unexpected pregnancy years previously. She agonized over her decision and felt a need to apologize to me, an adoptive mom. I offered her my shoulder to cry on and my compassion.

There is nothing simple about this issue.  I’ve never encountered a child as young as age 10 who had to confront the question. I have heard, though, that there were recently three 11-year-olds in my state whose parents sought to end their pregnancies. It should be an individual choice, not something politicians can dictate.

I’m glad I was offered a choice. I chose life for my children. It was God who had other plans for some of them.

With the temperature of our planet climbing beyond the point of no return, there is much more to be concerned with now. I choose life again—life for all of us, born and unborn, children, youth, adults and the aging, people on every continent and island nation, the threatened species on our beautiful and diverse planet.

Preserve individual choice with compassionate support for distressed mothers and let’s move forward. We have a lot of work to do. I am not a baby-killer. I don’t want to be a planet-killer either.

Stop. Just Stop.

On By AnnIn faith, Family, History, Loss and Grief, social justiceLeave a comment

This is getting complicated.

So the word is out. There have been millions of babies killed through abortions since the procedure was legalized. I wonder about that. How many of those were fetuses that would never have lived, had they been born? How many procedures were done to save the mother’s life? I have grave reservations about the truth of that statement. Twenty-five million giggly babies just snuffed out? That’s trying to simplify a very complex statistic. After all, in recent years, the objections to terminating a pregnancy have yielded strict limitations on just what kind of pregnancy is eligible.

I am old enough to have come of age during the original fight to legalize abortion. When I was an adolescent, the procedure was illegal. But that didn’t mean abortions didn’t happen. And consequences were severe for desperate women seeking help. Too often, illegal abortions ended up killing or maiming the mother anyway. The legalization of abortion was a life-saving step. Just making it illegal will not stop desperate women from seeking to end a desperate pregnancy.

This all alludes to a sort of class warfare. Did you know, for instance, that 75% of abortions in recent years were for women at or below the federal poverty line? 60% of the women already had children at home that they couldn’t afford to feed. 55% of women who received abortions were single. They had precious little financial help to reach the $196,984 cost of raising a child to age 18. (Yes! Magazine Spring 2022)

It might have been in the early years that the procedure was sought too lightly. But no more. Today, almost all the people I know, pro-choice as well as pro-life, agree that abortion should never be used as a simple form of birth control. We must keep other contraceptives available and affordable and eliminate unwanted pregnancies. Is that a point we all can agree on?

You might find it surprising how many pro-choicers abhor the fact that some women have used abortion as a contraceptive. You might also be surprised how many of us pro-choicers, if offered the choice due to abnormal fetus development, would choose to continue our own pregnancies. After all, if faced with some dire news, you would do that. I would too. But it would be our own choice.

None of us have the right, though, to tell others what they can or can’t do. We simply don’t know all the details.

So has abortion been misused? Sadly, yes, by some. Therefore, you say, we should outlaw all abortions again. It’s just like:

A few people who misuse alcohol and drive drunk. Innocent people have been killed by drunk drivers. Obviously, we’ve banned all alcohol and all cars, right?

Or—A few people misuse guns, and go on shooting rampages, killing children in their school classrooms, and people in shopping centers or theaters or at parades. So of course, we have instituted a national ban on guns, haven’t we?

Oh. . . Wait. . . .

I get it. This is different.

Or is it?

Does mis-use of abortion by a few mean we have to remove that option for all? And if that’s what we gotta do, how about those guns anyway?  Surely the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for school age children is more important than the right to bear arms.

The intrusion into a person’s medical history and privacy is an unconscionable overstep by our government into our private lives and personal rights. None of us has the right to judge another on this extremely personal matter, nor to tell them what to do. We can offer love, compassion, and assistance, but we can’t make difficult choices impossible by removing options. There is nothing simple about pregnancy. Since every case is different, there is no single solution. All options need to be available. And nobody outside the triumvirate of parents and physician should even have a say in tough personal, medical decisions. No two pregnancies are alike. We can’t possibly know the inside stories of other families.

Vote No August 2. Keep abortion legal.

Reflections on Independence in 2022

On By AnnIn Activism, Family, social justice1 Comment

In the aftermath of the high court decisions stripping people of privacy and personal rights, I have seen on Facebook where some of my friends plan to wear black on July 4. Some will fly the American flag upside down. And some will celebrate with cookouts and fireworks as always. I haven’t decided what I will do yet. Maybe I will enjoy the explosion of blossoms after recent rains. Flowers do a great job of mimicking those fleeting displays, without all the noise. Or maybe just sharing these musings will be my way of observing the 4th of July, 2022.

Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” We have more of those times this year, 246 years after the Declaration of Independence. In Kansas, the day of reckoning fast approaches. It’s interesting to me to note that the original document, though given the date of July 4, 1776, was not fully signed by our founders until August 2, 1776. August 2, 2022 is a very important day for Kansas voters. It’s our primary election day. But not only that, in their infinite wisdom (NOT!) the legislature slated a vote for an amendment on the Kansas constitution on primary day.

This is a problem because voter turnout is typically low for such elections. If you are an independent voter, you usually have no reason whatsoever to go. But this year, even independent voters have the right to vote on the proposed amendment. Use that right and cast your vote, even if it’s the only thing on the ballot you have a say in.

The amendment itself removes a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and leaves it up to our “esteemed” legislature to decide when and if abortion as health care is warranted. That is a problem right there. These people are not necessarily doctors. Few of them are medically trained. Though some folks, notably the director of Family Life Services in a neighboring town, are confident that the legislature will not ban abortions for cases of rape, incest or ectopic pregnancy, I don’t share that confidence. I don’t trust politicians. Most of them no longer listen to the people they serve. (Kuddos to those who are still trying!)

A very concise letter to the editor of our local newspaper had the best summary of voting on this amendment that I have seen.

Simply this:

  • If you are pro-choice, Vote No.
  • If you are pro-life but want some exceptions in the rule for cases of rape, incest, and health of the mother, Vote No.
  • If you are pro-life and want zero abortions, zero exceptions, then you Vote Yes.

 

Where do I stand in those three groups? I think many of us lean toward the middle, and I am one of those. It is heartbreaking when a pregnancy becomes problematic, even more so when a mother has to make the insane choice about whether to end her pregnancy. We certainly don’t need to open the doors to prosecute women who have just lived through a personal crisis. Or to have investigators show up at the door of someone who miscarried, suspicious about a pre-meditated ending of the life of the unborn.

In a meeting I attended in early June, an attorney familiar with the Kansas constitution pointed out that since statehood in 1861, there have been 98 amendments passed by the people. This is one of a very few, perhaps the only one, that would REMOVE rights previously established by the constitution. Think carefully about this amendment.

Complicating the issue is the fact that abortions are already highly regulated in the state, so essentially the amendment is not necessary. Already, abortions must be performed by a licensed physician. They are prohibited after 22 weeks, except in cases of life or health endangerment. Late-term abortions, and abortions based on gender selection are absolutely prohibited. Private insurance coverage is limited to cases of life endangerment. Public funding for abortion is available only in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest. Patients must undergo an ultrasound before a procedure. There is a 24 hour waiting period after state-directed counseling prior to a procedure. Parental consent is required for minors seeking an abortion.

Just as no two people are alike, there are no two pregnancies alike either. In my own immediate family there are six women, from my mother, to her three daughters (of which I am one) and my two daughters. Though all six of us bore children, four of us experienced failed pregnancies. That is 67%. For us, those pregnancies were wanted, the babies anticipated, and their natural demise was tragic. If abortion becomes illegal—zero exceptions—the grief we felt at our losses could be compounded exponentially in future miscarriages by investigating detectives and charges of murder.

If you have never experienced a failed pregnancy, count your lucky stars. Current statistics on failed pregnancies (miscarriages and stillbirths) indicate that 20% of conceptions in North America fail naturally. For those families who eagerly anticipated a bright bubbly baby, and have to go home to an empty nursery, the pain is already too much to bear. It is unconscionable to add the possibility of prosecution for the failure on top of it all.

Given current trends to thwart environmental protections in favor of big corporations, the incidence of failed pregnancies is likely to explode. Naomi Klein states in her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, “For all the talk about the right to life and the rights of the unborn, our culture pays precious little attention to the particular vulnerabilities of children, let alone developing life. Risk assessments most often focus on effects to adults.”

She quotes biologist Sandra Steingraber who has studied the issue. Steingraber: “Entire regulatory systems are premised on the assumption that all members of the population basically act, biologically, like middle-aged men.” [5’7”, 157# white men at that].

Klein puts it into perspective: “More than three quarters of the mass-produced chemicals in the United States have never been tested for their impacts on fetuses or children. That means they are being released in the environment with no consideration for how they will impact those who weigh, say twenty pounds, like your average one-year-old girl, let alone a half-pound, like a nineteen-week fetus.”

And yet, it’s becoming clear that proximity to environmental degradation, including fracking, increases low birth weight by 50%, and the chances of a low Apgar score double at birth. Communities near refineries or massive tar sands extraction are seeing the normal miscarriage rate double.

The recent high court ruling against the EPA’s ability to regulate emissions from power plants almost certainly will increase environmental hazards. Mutations of growing fetuses, viability at birth, and the incidence of miscarriage will increase. Be prepared.

With a nod to Thomas Paine, These are the times that try a woman’s soul, as well as all who value constitutional freedom.

And in Kansas, the choice is clear. We must keep the option of abortion by trained medical personnel open and legal.

Vote No on the constitutional amendment August 2.

Day 2: The Power of Love

On By AnnIn Activism, Earth care, Letters to SeptannaLeave a comment

Dear Tanna,

I wonder where and how you live, so far removed from my own reality. Are there crowds around you? Or has the human population declined? Do you live isolated from communities? Or do you live in a town? Or a city? Is there any countryside left?

We live on a small farm, with a picturesque pond in our front yard. A few years ago, our daughter brought half a dozen ducks and they provided passing entertainment through the years. Ducks can be hilarious when you watch them.

But they provided moments of introspection as well. Sometimes a duck will successfully hatch a clutch of eggs and it becomes imperative to herd them into the hen house for their own protection. This world is a big bad place for a baby duck—cats, coyotes, turtles, skunks, opossums, and even duck siblings make survival a real challenge. Hazards await even in a hen house.

Baby ducks are some of the cutest things! But messy. With a capital M. And they grow fast. After incubation, when that first chip appears on the egg shell, you wait and watch with bated breath until the little duck fully emerges. I am astounded at how compactly they curl into that little egg.

But the ducklings don’t always make it to adulthood. One morning I arrived in the hen house to release the fowl for some sunshine in the fenced yard, and found one little duck dead in the corner, smothered by cuddling ducklings during the night. I lifted that limp little body. Recently vibrant, it had peeped to its mother duck, and ran to keep up with her. And now—nothing. The body was the same perfect little miracle, but the spark of life was gone.

Life truly is a mystery. You could have all the right ingredients, a perfect physical specimen, but without that spark, there is nothing. When I held my own newborn daughter, I felt reverence for the spark which filled her perfect little form with life, so recently infused from the great mystery, so close to the Divine. I closed my eyes and breathed in the miracle, a prayer of awe and gratitude swirling in my mind.

I have been reading more than usual these last months, due in part to the slower pace of life brought on by the COVID 19 pandemic. One book, Eyes to the Wind, was written by a young man named Ady Barkan during the time he suffered with declining health due to ALS, a dread disease which in my time is a certain death proclamation. In your time, Tanna, I hope this disease has become non-existent, but today it is an incurable descent into neurological and physical hell until only the eyes can be controlled by the spark of life trapped inside the withered body.

Technology has provided remarkable possibilities for someone diagnosed with ALS. Ady described his excruciatingly slow writing process, with a special computer mounted on his wheel chair that tracked his eye pupils to identify letters, one-at-a-time, through infrared light. He finished an amazing book this way.

Tears filled my eyes as I visualized his painstaking process. He was still there. His essence remained vitally alive, trapped in a shrinking world. When the control he exerts over his eyes disappears, the essence of the man will be vitally alive, screaming silently inside his head.

I thought of that duckling and began to wonder if the essence of Ady wouldn’t even still exist after his physical self dies? What will I discover about my own spark of life as I pass from the physical realm?

With more final farewells than I care to count in my own life—family members and friends, including two infant children, my first husband, my parents, grandmothers, fathers-in-law, friends—I ponder their sparks, their essences. Instead of simply being squelched like a candle flame in the breeze, their essences returned to the mysterious invisible divine pool, an ocean of love. They are with me still, swirling and caressing, whispering encouragement as I scratch words across this page.

It’s not a big leap of faith to include my grandmothers and grandfathers back seven generations when our nation was still young. The essences of Charley and Frank, Wiley, Eliza, Alma, John, William, Clarissa, Edwin, Edith, Thomas and even another Ann swirl around me—people I never met but who contributed to my own life and breath. And it’s not such a stretch to think that the coming generations swirl in that ether of love, all the way through seven to you, Septanna. You also are with me as I write today, the mystery and miracle of life to come.

I keep thinking of the miracle of life during these days of vicious campaigning. We get hits several times a week in the postal box or on our phones from groups bent on spreading blatant lies about candidates we favor. I hope my friends and neighbors can see through the propaganda. When one candidate has nothing specific to offer besides lies about the other, that is called negative campaigning. It lacks integrity and makes me angry. Why not explain what you have to offer instead of slander your opponent? Voters should go to the source and seek the “rest of the story.”

Take Dr. Barbara Bollier, for example. I heard her speak. She’s intelligent and compassionate—hardly the extremist the other side claims. Dr. Bollier is a physician whose focus in life is to make things better for people. She wants to heal the ailing government. The opposition calls her an extremist liberal. How they come up with that is beyond me. She recently left the conservative party due to its extremist demands.

They say she wants to take away guns, but she herself grew up hunting with her family. She is not anti-gun. She wants common sense gun control to protect children, and to keep firearms away from psychotic shooters. She wants to save lives. Who can argue with that?

They say she is in favor of late term abortions, when in reality, she voted against an late term extremist abortion bill because it was based on flawed science. It also represented an unconscionable intrusion into the patient/physician relationship by government.

If we acknowledge that every life is unique, does it not follow that no two pregnancies are the same? You can’t have a one-size-fits-all policy for pregnant women. If something goes deadly wrong in an unborn child’s development, there need to be options—legal, safe options, offered with love and compassion to a mother already in anguish. As a woman, physician, and mother herself, Dr. Barbara Bollier understands this. Furthermore, given our ailing atmosphere, chemically ridden food, and poisonous water supply, the chances of severe birth defects increase as the environment degrades. There must be options for desperate, grieving families.

For many voters in today’s world, abortion is a hot-button issue. I suppose we all have them. For me, the climate crisis we face overshadows every other issue. If we cannot arrest the degradation of the living planet, nothing else on the list of issues matters. Dr. Bollier has been endorsed by environmental groups. That matters to me. I want you to have a healthy world in your time, Tanna.

The most powerful force in the universe is Love. We’re surrounded by love, the essence of our ancestors and departed loved ones. And there is a big difference between loving compassion and regulating life through legislation. Dr. Bollier is correct. The government should stay out of medicine and leave it up to trained physicians.

And so, I plan to vote for Dr. Bollier this November because of her common sense, and her compassionate approach to the current issues. I hope she wins.

You are out there, Tanna. I lift my affection on the winds of the Spirit to touch you in the unrealized future domain.

With my enduring affection and best wishes, Your 7th Generation Grandmother.