Moving Forward
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Stella.20.Woman.
College student.Feminist.Abolitionist.
Believes in the power of love, hope, and people.
Will never stop learning, informing, fighting.

"One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star."
14:22
→Ceremony: a personal narrative on my abortion experience

This past Sunday marked the one year anniversary of my abortion. In part with Mama’s Day’s effort to complicate narratives and uplift marginalized experiences, I wanted to share these reflections.

1. Language

The word “abortion” is hard for me. Given contemporary meaning through white, capitalist patriarchy, this word, for me, has come to dehumanize a deeply human process. For one, it’s overly surgical. This word immediately provokes images of speculums, needles, latex gloves, vacuums with teeth. Yes, my abortion was performed by a doctor, included a needle going into my cervix, and included all of these man-made tools. But I want to resist having these details define or summarize my experience.

“Abortion” also is an overtly Political word. What’s problematic about it being an overtly Political word is that I don’t get to control the ways it is or is not political. The Political baggage of the word “abortion” does not leave room for me to express what was hard or how I struggled with my “choice” or how I believed what was happening inside my body to be something like life and how I held it sacred. It doesn’t leave room for how I had access to abortion services but struggled as a queer person accessing a service steeped in heterosexism to the point that health care professionals were unable to adequately support my decision-making. Some things I do not have control over. But I do have control over how I speak my experiences, how I breathe them into being and give them a life that feels most true to my body and spirit. I want to resist the pressure to intellectualize my experiences so they can be legible or fit into existing frameworks for understanding abortions. I want to speak from a place of feeling.

So I will start with a poem.

Post

– a poem from my womb

slow churning this cavern of blood

ache and tremble these walls

causing great waves of

fury salt heat

as if my heart has sunk

into the grave of my hips

I rise crash break

I am overcome washed over red

thick pulse of a brushfire charred earth

still pumping hot

A few weeks ago, I shared this poem with a group of fierce womyn I was in a writing group with. Before sharing the poem, I stuttered around the context until finally the word “abortion” came out. After I expressed my discomfort with the word, one of the womyn in the group challenged me to create my own word for it, since we too, have the power of language. The word “uprootion” (up-roo-shun) rose its way up through my belly and into my heart where I decide to make this word home. So from now on, I will talk about my experiences using this word: uprootion. As in being uprooted. As in losing your grounding. As in being separated from.

Required reading. Click through for the full article.

(via Feministing)

gardensgrey: “And so what we’ve done is to force the Republicans and their conservative allies to reveal their true agenda. They don’t just want to wage a war on choice, they want to wage a war on contraception. They are against family planning. In the 21st Century, they want to prevent women from having access to the tools they should have to determine their own reproductive futures. And I think it’s important to continue pointing that out. We cannot let them hide behind their positions without making it clear what their real agenda is. Because the fact is, today, the United States has one of the highest unintended pregnancy rates in the industrialized world. Half of all pregnancies are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortions. Anyone truly committed to reducing the need for abortions should be committed to doing whatever it takes to reducing unintended pregnancies—regardless of politics and regardless of ideology. And we know who’s paying the price for these policies–women around the world suffering because they no longer have access to reproductive care; women right here at home who want to plan their families and who want to prevent unintended pregnancies but no longer have access to contraception. This is not just an affront to women’s rights—it is an affront to human rights, to our most fundamental values as a nation.” Hillary Clinton, 2007
Elizabeth Banks: I Thank Birth Control Pills for My Son Just over a year ago, my son Felix was born via gestational surrogacy. He came out of me nine months early and because of my broken belly, his babycake was baked in a wonderful angel’s oven and now — I can’t believe it — he’s a year old and walking. He has expanded my capacity for joy a thousand-fold. His life would have been much harder to come by if not for the birth control pill. How’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a simple fact: The pill is used for many situations that have nothing to do with the prevention of pregnancy. The pill was prescribed to me when hormonally induced migraines kept me locked up in dark rooms for days at a time. It was prescribed to me to regulate insanely painful cramps every month — cramps so painful that I often vomited. And here’s a little secret I am happy to blow the lid off of: The pill is often prescribed during the IVF (in vitro fertilization) process to help MAKE BABIES! That’s right, women dealing with infertility are often put on the pill to help regulate a cycle so that they might have a more successful IVF. The pill is used to manage ovarian cysts, endometriosis and other conditions too. Not to mention, it helps couples plan for wanted children. Obviously, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a woman grateful for my necessary and very helpful medication. And I’m sure glad I don’t have to discuss any of these conditions, including infertility, with my employer. A girlfriend and I recently wondered what would be more mortifying: having to tell her male employer she needed birth control to mitigate a heavy flow or just bleeding all over herself in the office? So with that image in mind, I encourage all women — and the men in their lives — to protect access to birth control, and encourage our politicians to take women’s health issues out of the political process. For more information, please visit the most comprehensive and willing advocates for women’s health in America: www.plannedparenthood.org.
kileyrae: Planned Parenthood Branches Vote to Merge The boards of three regional Planned Parenthood branches — North Texas, Central Texas and the Capital Region — have voted to merge, forming a $29 million-per-year mega-organization with 26 clinics up and down the Interstate 35 corridor. The merger vote, in the works for more than a year, creates Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, the eighth-largest affiliate of the nation’s most ubiquitous reproductive health and abortion provider. “The timing is right, in terms of looking ahead at the challenges we will face politically, and from a health care standpoint,” said Leslie MacLean, board chairwoman of Planned Parenthood of North Texas. “We felt like it was an obligation to look at all of the options to make us smarter and more efficient.”
15:22
Dear All Women Who Live in Arizona: I am so so sorry. We’re all supporting you and we’ll do whatever we can to make this right again.
TRIGGER WARNING gordon-crisp: curiousgeorgiana: babstheartist: themindislimitless: tw: abuse, rape, domestic violence feministblackboard: A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well. The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one. Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.2. Sabotaging birth control3. Marital rapeOver 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body. The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter. The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her.  She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling. One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”  Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him. WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD? Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately. holy fuck im crying. I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control.  I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.  I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem. Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.  When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to. And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe. I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.  I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do. This is something I definitely see with my clients.
14:58
@michelleinbklyn: The office of TX State Sen. Wendy Davis was just firebombed. She’s an outspoken Planned Parenthood supporter - I interviewed her last month.
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16:34
Planned Parenthood eased my pain.

plannedparenthoodsavedme:

Planned Parenthood didn’t save my life…but they did save me from a world of pain. Thanks to their referral I was able to get treatment for a very painful condition at a cost I, an unemployed student with no healthcare, could afford. They also provided me with affordable birth control and reliable, objective, information about my health and my reproductive rights. I can never repay them for the help they gave me, and continue to give me (and millions of other women).

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