can we PLEASE normalise including trans men and nonbinary people when talking about pregnancy and abortions???
cis women are NOT the only people who experience these things, and trans & nb people have just as much right as cis women to choose whether we want an abortion, or to carry out a pregnancy
and also just because we're not women and may suffer from dysphoria DOES NOT MEAN that we will automatically want an abortion if we become pregnant
Headcanon, part II: UF Sans and SF Papyrus were midwives
Hey, who’s ready for some serious angst?
Warning: Topics include abortion and baby violence, so please ignore this if you think this will affect your overall mental state. This is tagged as #trigger warning abortion, and #trigger warning baby death. Proceed with this in mind!
My headcanon for the Fell!verses is that the birth rates are incredibly low for each AU, because not a lot of monsters could create a bond with one another, at least while they are Underground. They could not bring themselves to fully trust one another, so when they had partners, it was usually out of status or necessity rather than trust and love.
Monster procreation requires trust, love, and devotion in order to create monster offspring, all things that are lacking in the Fell!verses, so when a pair of monsters was expecting, everyone around was definitely shaken and shocked. The difference between the AUs is the way the pregnant monsters and the children are treated. Honor and prestige are less of a big deal than in the in Underfell AU,
Like the Underfell AU, children are considered precious and rare. Therefore, most monsters want their children to be protected, even though potentially, other monsters could kill the children for free, easy EXP, even if it isn’t a lot. However, it’s a lot more dangerous to kill a child in the Swapfell AU, because the Queen doesn’t take any prisoners when it comes to someone hurting a child. Despite her and Asgore’s roles and some personality facets being switched, Swapfell Toriel is still a protective, slightly mad mother, like the UF Toriel personality. However, their ideals on how to protect children are very different. The children of the Underground have to be protected at all costs when she loses her children, SF Asriel and SF Frisk. Both worlds, the Underground and the Surface are kill or be killed places, and what kind of world is that for children to live in?
Though children are cherished while alive and being, the soulings must die before one third of the pregnancy process while they are still developing. There is no reason to make the soulings endure such hardships when they first come into the world. Very few monsters could provide for the child once they are born, so they would likely dust anyways, from poverty, murder, or starvation. Queen Toriel made the decree that all soulings must be terminated in the first third of the impregnation process.
If the soulings were in eggs, the eggs were dropped into the lava of Hotland. If the babies are actually being impregnated inside a parent, such as with the dog monsters, then the “during the first third of the impregnation” is crucial, because then the souling can wither away without too much harm coming to the parent. Because it takes trust and devotion to form a souling, then there are two ways to go about it...either hitting the womb with great force to cause a rupture in magic or the non-carrying parent to neglect their partner until the souling can no longer grow or flourish. Soulings need two sources of magic to survive-- the carrier’s is a MUST, but the other source doesn’t have to be the other parent, just someone who the carrier trusts. Usually, that trusted monster is usually only their partner, so the souling withers away.
So where does this leave SF Papyrus? In short, after the law is made, he just goes along with it, just like everyone else. People stop coming to him for help with their pregnancies and deal with it the way the queen wants. SF Papyrus started being a midwife in the ways that were more similar to UF Sans, but he started it when he was much younger, still a judge, but he was three years out of stripes when he started. It was an accident, really. Babybones SF Sans wanted to know why a dog monster was on the ground, growling and panting. Seeing the glow near the bottom of her body, SF Papyrus gave his brother a toy to play with and used his jacket to help get the puppies out safely. If anything, it was insurance that he and his brother wouldn’t be killed later.
Until the queen made her decree about killing all soulings, his work was exactly the same as that of UF Sans. The family would tip him, he’d tell them all about the best way to prepare (based on his limited knowledge; UF Sans had more science to help out than SF Papyrus did) and how to proceed about protecting the soulings and the rest of the family. He was a judge too, who happened to have a few connections with the Royal Guard, so usually he would enlist their help in protecting the family. Most of the time, the Royal Guardsmen could refuse, but being the Judge wasn’t without its perks. After all, the Queen would never forgive the Royal Guard if she knew that they had used her own belongings as bait to catch an enemy of the Underground, right?
No one asks how he knows; he just does, so the Royal Guards do as he asks.
Written for @stephsageek who prompted me with Sam & Ruth getting donuts. I hope you don’t mind me stretching it past the events of Maybe it’s all the Disco. I like the idea that getting donuts together has become a little supportive ritual for them.
The nurse gives her a sympathetic smile as she takes her pulse. It’s small but genuine, creasing her eyes. “Okay Ruth, you’re all good to go,” she says. “Your husband is just outside.”
“Thanks,” she says automatically. “You’ve been very kind, and—”
“You’re welcome, honey.” She is already moving, checking the pulse of another girl in another chair of the discharge lounge.
Ruth stands carefully, ready for pain. It’s there, but as dull discomfort rather than red-hot agony. More surprising is the shaking, post-fight feeling. She aches; but it’s secondary to the fight-or-flight of the body under attack. The lights are too bright, sounds are too loud. She flinches at the click of the door handle.
Sam is indeed outside, actually biting his thumbnail as he stares out of the door. She trains her tunnel vision on him. Uncharacteristically calm and still. Is this what he is, she thinks, outside of the gym, away from the camera? Stripped of all his bravado and bile is there a kinder self, folded inside the gruff carapace?
He catches her eye and smiles. It’s the same smile as the nurse, small and sympathetic, like she is a frightened animal. One that needs soft words and gentle hands to settle raised hackles.
“You ready to go?”
“Uh-huh.”
His hand rests lightly between her shoulder blades as he walks her towards the car. She settles into the seat, still shaking slightly. As adrenalin ebbs the aching pain is sharper. She closes her eyes, lulled by the motion of the car.
“Ruth?”
She jerks awake. “Sorry, I—”
“It’s fine. Do you still want donuts?”
They are pulled up at the gas station near the motel. “Yeah,” she croaks, dry mouthed.
He considers her, still blinking into consciousness, not quite able to hide a small wince as she undoes her seat belt. He gets out and comes around to the passenger side to open her door.
She looks up at him. “I didn’t think you—?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He extends his hand to help her up. “I just didn’t want to wait all day.”
The ice in her Coke has melted. She slurps the last dregs through her straw, engrossed in her book. Shifts in the seat, unsticking herself from the leather. The windows are down but there’s no wind. She might have to—
The front door opens. She puts down the book and paper cup slowly. She isn’t sure whether to hunker down and hide or sit straight-backed and earnest at the wheel. She decides on the latter, in case she’s already been seen. Sam exits the neat little house. A woman—Rosalie, she assumes—follows him into the light. They say goodbye on the driveway, cordial but firm, and Sam returns to the car. He settles into the passenger seat.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says carefully, waving one final time to the woman on the drive. She returns the goodbye, and turns back inside. “You okay to drive?”
“Sure,” she says, and pulls them away.
He is quiet, all the way out of the suburbs and onto the highway. She chances a glance now and then, when traffic allows. Unusually still, eyes unseeing; his gaze turned inward. They’ve done this before, she remembers, only the other way around.
There’s a packet of cigarettes in the door pocket. She fumbles for one, hands over the thin cylinder wordlessly. The routine of habit kicks in as he takes it, lights it; smokes it without speaking.
“So, I spoke to Glen about our sponsor problem,” she tries. “He said he’ll see what he can do.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, it’ll probably be another golfing buddy. But we made it work last time, right?”
“Right.”
Silence again. He was manic on the journey down, running through potential scenarios with her, joking, chain-smoking. She itches to know if any of their simulations matched the reality. Fiddles with the radio instead. Thumping electronica fuzzes in and out as they speed toward home. It’s going to be a long ride.
Half an hour passes. She’s more or less retreated into her own brain, thinking about scenarios for Zoya and Liberty to explore over the coming weeks, when he finally opens his mouth. “Sorry. You probably had better things to do today.”
“It’s fine. I read some more on history of classical wrestling. Might help with some of the staging.” She sighs. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I feel like I should… check you’re not going to disappear on us for another three days once we get home.”
He barks a laugh. “No promises.”
There’s a gas station coming up. She purses her lips. “You wanna go get donuts?”
“I had a feeling you’d show up on my doorstep sooner or later.”
It’s hard to say if she’s as he remembers, because he doesn’t remember much. She has long dark hair and familiar brown eyes. Familiar because she shares them with their daughter. The thought catches in his chest again, and he has to clear his throat noisily, awkwardly, to speak. “Justine gave me your address.”
“I know. She told me. She’s a good girl. Most of the time.”
“Yeah, she’s, uh, she’s a great kid.”
Rosalie folds her arms, unimpressed. “I’m glad you’re getting the chance to find that out for yourself.”
“Yeah, about that… Um. Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
The house is small; nondescript suburban. Only the pictures hanging in the hallway give any clue to Rosalie’s past life as barkeep. Black and white artistic shots, long haired hippies and punk-rockers. There’s a museum quality to them; like it’s already ancient history, a lifetime ago. For Rosalie, maybe it is.
“You have a lovely home,” he says.
“Uh-huh. How’d you take you coffee?”
“Black, thanks.”
She busies herself with the drinks, ignoring his open gawking at the ephemera of her everyday life. “So,” she says, as he takes his first sip of the scalding coffee. “What did you come here to find out?”
He takes another micro-sip, trying to assemble his thoughts. He practiced this conversation with Ruth a thousand ways on the journey down; workshopping it like it was one of her scene studies. Now, in the moment, the whole exercise feels hollow. “You never told me,” he finds himself saying, surprised at how constricted his voice sounds.
Rosalie shrugs. “It’s not like you left me your number…”
“I-I know but… you could have found me.”
She sighs. “Yeah, I could’ve. I thought about it.”
“And, what? Decided I wasn’t good enough?” He is almost shouting. Why is he almost shouting?
“Yeah,” she says, as if he’s proved her point. “Pretty much. I knew what kind of life you were living then. You’re telling me that in between all the blow and the rallies, the dive bar lays, the all-night shoots and casting couches… you had room for a little girl?”
He manages to hold her gaze but only just. “I could have made time.”
“You would have resented it. Every second of it. I didn’t want that for her.”
He has no answer to this ringing truth. His fingers twitch, but he left his cigarettes in the car with Ruth. He wanted to make a good impression. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“And me,” she says, softer. “I know there would have been good times too. But I had to put her first. Understand?”
“Yeah, I do. I get it.” He feels six inches tall; smaller than when his wife took everything in the shit-show that was his divorce. Even his anger has retreated, leaving just this shell of a man, sipping coffee for want of snorting cocaine.
“I think she’s a lot like you,” Rosalie offers.
He recognises the lifeline for what it is. “Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s stubborn. And she’s a great artist. She writes. All that creative stuff I was never any good at. She’s smart.”
“Yeah, she’s been helping me film some stuff. On location. She’s got a good eye.”
“She wants to be in the industry. I know that much.” She looks at him, with Justine’s eyes. “You think she’s got what it takes?”
“Yeah,” he says, surprised to find he means it. “She’s my daughter.”
Rosalie smiles at that, just a little. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
He’s not sure he agrees, but nods anyway, draining his coffee. Time is up. She walks him back towards the front door. “Do you still have the bar?” he blurts out, as they pass through the hallway.
“Yeah, three of ‘em now. We’re working on building a chain. Me and my husband.”
He’d already noticed the wedding band. “Sounds good.”
Her hand is on the door. “Apart from the TV show, how’s your life? Is that your… wife you left out there in the car?”
“No,” he says, “that’s Ruth. She’s a-a friend. She works on the show.”
“Good friend,” says Rosalie, raising a sceptical eyebrow. “It’s a long way to come.”
“Yeah, she is,” he replies stoutly. “Look, I know you don’t need this. But just in case.” He presses his card into her palm. “Now you do have my number.”
She turns it over, smiles. “Thanks.”
“Wow,” says Ruth, as he finishes his tale. “Sounds intense.”
The donuts sit untouched on the table between them; one plain sugar, one pink frosted. “Yeah.” He pinches the bridge of his nose below his glasses. “What the fuck do I do now, though?”
“Hmm.” She picks up her pink donut, takes a bite. “Same thing we always do. Eat the donuts. And then get on with it. Make the most of what we do have left in our lives out of the wreckage of our mistakes.”
He considers this, and finds himself chuckling. “Melodramatic much?”
She rolls her eyes. “This from the man who wrote a three-hour screen-play about his mommy issues?”
“Ouch, alright.” Through a mouthful of sugar, he adds: “I’m still not over that disappointment either, thank you very much.”
“Well, you need to be,” she says, “because we need to figure out how the hell to top last week’s finale.”
“Oh, I worked that out already,” he says, spraying crumbs. “Tag-team match. Britain and American versus Russia and China.”
“What?”
“Yeah, yeah. I want Rhonda to ride in on a white horse. Trust me. It’s gonna look epic…”
There's just one thing that I don't understand: how can women push other women to do an abortion when said women don't want to do it?
There's a girl online on a local website, and she says that her boyfriend insists on abortion, but she doesn't want it, she wants the baby. She asked other women's opinion on how to get through, how to get support if he leaves her alone (he threatens to leave and give no financial support for the child). And these women online...they push her! They call her an idiot and chant for her to get rid of the baby. ????? What happened to 'a woman's body is a woman's business'? The girl wants a child, she cries when thinking about the abortion, and everyone calls her an idiot online. And nobody calls her boyfriend a jerk for acting like he does. I feel angry both at these women and at the boyfriend. What a scum and not a man to treat your girl like that and have no responsibilities whatsoever.
Anyway, I tried to support her and to tell her to stop and not rush the decision, to tell her to not do it if she wants the baby, and I got a whole load of dislikes for that. So that's what 'women support women' is like? Terrible.
hey this post is about current events give it a pass if you're not coping please.
freaking out pretty hard about the latest lawsuits coming from the texas attorney general. plainly and openly calling for the right to murder women because they're pregnant is all the legal precedent needed to legally stop treatment of any oppressed class and I just don't have any confidence at all it's not going to go through. i just don't know.
after hearing about the absolute fuckery of the abortion bill in texas ive been reading women's stories on why they chose abortion, how they felt about it etc and other than the soul deep horror for women who were pregnant before 1973 having back alley abortions or drinking bleach to incite a miscarriage, i came across sherri shepherd's account where she said she'd had "a lot of abortions" and i genuinely don't know how to feel about it? im pro-choice because even if i personally believe it's a life from conception it doesn't matter. my opinion doesn't get to infringe on the rights of other people. but reading "a lot of abortions" definitely has me feeling uncomfortable, i know pregnancy can happen even if you take every precaution known to human kind, but the thought of repeated abortions? it makes me sick and sad both for her and the terminated pregnancies and i just - my miscarriage was one of the most horrific things ive lived through and the thought of willingly going through that multiple times? i just can't
A few years ago I published an e-book, “The Abortionist’s Daughter: A Novel”. It got a lot of good reviews, and the UK reviews on the Amazon UK site simply fill me with joy. It’s a coming-of-age story, set in 1916, about a young woman whose father went to prison for performing illegal abortions. She flees her village with her lover to New York City, and then everything falls apart. Melanie learns her father is anything but a villain. From the depths of the Adirondacks to the bright lights of Broadway, this is a vivid story. Because abortion never ceases to be a hot-button issue I’m going to post some excerpts, perhaps daily.
“Elisa DeCarlo’s new book, The Abortionist’s Daughter, deftly mixes feminism, theater and the history of Broadway. Told in four parts, the story traces Melanie’s journey as she awakens to the reality of her life as a woman in the early 20th century.” (The Clyde Fitch Report)
Excerpt from Chapter 4:
When she was a little girl, it did not bother Melanie when adults occasionally fell silent when she walked past them in the street. She didn’t concern herself with what adults were doing. And besides, a doctor was privy to all of the town’s secrets: who had gone insane, what wife had tried to stab her husband to death in his sleep, what mill hand had pushed another into the machinery. Melanie was used to adults acting strangely after some of her father’s visits.
When she was eight years old, one bright late Spring day, Harold Clarice, a classmate, had come up to her in the schoolyard. He had an ugly smile on his face.
“My ma says your pa kills babies,” he announced.
“Harold Clarice, you take that back!” Melanie demanded.
“Your pa’s a baby-killer,” Harold repeated.
“You clam yourself!” She felt her face burning hotly.
“Baby killer! Baby killer!”
“You just clam yourself!” In a rage, Melanie lashed out at Harold, smacking him in the mouth. Harold stared at her in shock for an instant, then leapt upon her, flailing with his fists, and they both fell to the ground, biting and punching. Instantly the other children were around them, screaming delightedly, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“What’s going on here! Children!” Miss Chipman, their teacher, stood over them. Melanie quickly disengaged herself from Harold. Her white dress was torn, its pink sash hanging in tatters. Her blonde hair had been pulled from its ponytail and hung loosely at her shoulders. Harold’s shirtfront was covered with dirt, and blood ran down his chin. Their classmates hung back, fascinated.
“She started it!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
Melanie knew Harold dared not repeat his taunt; he would be punished for using such language. Apparently the other children hadn’t heard him, or didn’t risk saying it themselves. Miss Chipman made both Harold and Melanie sit in opposite corners facing the wall for the rest of the afternoon. Melanie was deeply grateful that her teacher didn’t inquire further into what had started the fight.
