What did we think would happen when America’s disdain for women crashed into our insane legal justice system? Whatever we thought, it’s already worse.
In the weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, podunk state politicians who normally can’t pass a state budget hustled to action, drafting increasingly draconian laws that will not only impact women (and children!) who wish to terminate a pregnancy but literally all women. I’ve never been an “I never leave the coasts” kind of person, but honestly, I’m not dying to go to the South or Midwest right now.
My partner and I are trying to have a baby. I had a silent miscarriage last year, which meant that while we were gushing over baby names, Googling ‘What do Korean-Bulgarian children look like?” and I boasted about being a Modern-Day Fertility Goddess after getting knocked up at 39, the fetus stopped developing at 5 weeks.
I’m an anxious person, so I’d thoroughly imagined a scenario where an ultrasound would reveal a lack of a heart-beat. I took like 35 pregnancy tests before my appointment to make sure the pregnancy was still viable. As it turns out, even when it’s no longer viable, the placenta continues to develop, shooting pregnancy hormones into your system and making you fat.
It was hard when the ultra-sound technician went from, “Yay! We’re gonna get a heart-beat now!” To looking concerned. Then more concerned. Then poking around just to be sure. To when she called the doctor in, who also poked around, and seemed genuinely sad they didn’t have better news for me.
The Ob-Gyn prescribed the abortion drug but it didn’t work and I still had to get a D and C at a Planned Parenthood. This is in downtown Manhattan, literally located on Margaret Sanger street, and there were still anti-abortion protesters there at like 11 in the morning.
“It’s already dead,” I said as they swarmed me. “I had a silent miscarriage. “No! No! I’m so, so SO sorry for your loss! We’ll pray for you!”
Whatever. I went through a metal detector. The women I saw looked like college girls, I was the only old. The staff were wonderful. I doubt that will change much in New York, but what if I had a miscarriage in Ohio? Sure, it didn’t have a heartbeat. But WTF do people think will happen to women’s health if abortion providers risk prison or having their licenses revoked? My guess is they’ll find another line of work and women will have to rely on hectic ERs to get dead tissue scraped out of them before it gets infected and they die.
Speaking of death, North Carolina just put a bill up that would legalize the murder of a woman who terminates her pregnancy.
Here’s the law:
I hope I’m wrong, but that’s pretty scary. FWIW, there’s a caveat in there that the death penalty is still allowed.
I'm sorry you had to go through all of that.