I'm angry. Livid. Sickened. Disgusted. Outraged. There are a lot of emotions and all of them are violent. What SCOTUS did has me inside out with hate and fear.
Women in the USA are going to die in droves. Not just from back alley methods, but from ectopic pregnancies, from partial miscarriages, from their wanted dead children rotting inside of them. Suicide rates are going to go up. Women who can't handle pregnancy, women who were raped and carry the seed of their assailants, women who only see one way out because the other ways will lead to prison. Women who very much wanted a pregnancy that ended up a loss and now instead of being able to grieve they're being investigated and the stress is too much. Women who were fine until they were forced off medication to continue an unwanted pregnancy.
It's not just the women who will suffer either. Children who were brought into the world unwanted, unloved, to be abused and neglected. Children who bounce from foster home to foster home never being at ease with themselves. Children who will grow to adults who do not know how to show love because they have never been loved. Children who will grow to adults who will turn to drugs and violence because that is what they know best. For every one happy ending, there are six that end in tragedy.
Children who will die in pain hours after their born because they never developed vital organs, and instead of getting to start the grief and healing, their mothers and fathers will have to watch their child as they fight for air with half a single lung and their hearts filled with holes and their parents will have to watch and wait for the inevitable death that could have been painless and over with before their little brains even registered the sound of their mothers heart.
Families will suffer and break. Families that were supposed to be done but birth control failed and now they don't know how to feed the extra mouth. Maternal deaths that could have been prevented leaving widowers and small children in its wake. There will be parents burying their teenage daughters, their twenty something daughters, their thirty something daughters. There will be children who don't understand why any of this is happening.
Oh sure, some states are safe. Some states you can go camping. Some states that are beautiful to live in. But not everyone has the resources to pack up and move. Not everyone has the resources to go camping. And no one should HAVE to travel half way across the country for the right to reproductive healthcare. No one should HAVE to risk prison for the right to reproductive healthcare.
I have heard "but exceptions will be made in this case that case the other case." And to those kinds of comments, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you. Fuck you. You have shown your hand with that comment. No one but a woman and her doctor should ever know why she chose abortion. She should not have to defend her choice to religious zealots or government agencies. She should not have to break every piece of her life down to explain why she was not physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially capable of going through with a pregnancy. You do not get to claim Becky who made a mistake and forgot a condom after a night of drinking must be forced to carry to term but Suzy who was coerced by her cousin doesn't have to. There is no difference in the embryo of an 11 year old or a 31 year old or a 71 year old, but out of the three there's only one who would definitely be forced to continue.
The worst part is, there is nothing to fall back on. No mental healthcare easily available for pre and post partum. Poorly executed government assistance for expecting and new mothers to feed their babies and themselves. No mandated paid maternity or paternity leave, no universal Pre-K, and a joke of a daycare tax credit. Insurance makes you pay a major chunk before they start taking on the bills and that's if you can even afford insurance in the first place. Choosing to give up the child leaves them in a system that is already overburdened. Not all babies get adopted. Not all foster cares are sweet or loving. Adoption will often lead to trauma even in the best case scenarios.
This is not how I planned to come back to blogging. But I will force time to research and write as often as possible. There are about to be a lot of unprivileged parents out there and if any tip, trick, or resource I can give helps even one in any way, I will feel just a little better about life.
You are loved, readers. You are heard here. It is time to build our communities up and raise our villages again. Updates will be sporadic for a while until I find a rhythm.