Some thoughts on the ending of Roe vs. Wade

 I was going to write you something well-organized about abortion. This is not that. Perhaps I will write something well organized in the future.

***

I heard the news on the TV at work while I was trying to get my patient to sit on the edge of his bed without help. (Explained badly, my job is to force elderly people to get up when they were perfectly comfortable lying down.) I was lucky in the timing of the decision, in that it was a reasonable time to take a lunch break. After finishing the session, of course.

***

Last summer I had an abortion at seventeen weeks. I wanted to be pregnant—I still want to be pregnant. Perhaps because of this, the experience is still fresh, something I think about many times a month, sometimes many times a day. 

***

After lunch, I went to get another patient for our session. My patient, an 81 year old white man, was sitting in the unit common area, watching Elizabeth Warren speak over a backdrop of protest footage. I asked him to come to therapy, and he told me that he couldn't leave. He needed to witness the protest. It was an important day, too important to leave. He cried when he looked back at the television. I asked if he needed anything, and he said "to watch this." I left to get another patient. 

I spent my time with that next patient trying to redirect my attention; I wanted to cry too, if not actually to watch the protest. It felt unfair that my patient was able to put other things on hold to attend to the political moment, while I had to move on, to act like I was fine. I considered calling out sick for the rest of the day, but I knew I could stay, and I knew no one else would see my patients if I didn't. We're understaffed already.

***

I'm glad I had the abortion—I want a child with a good chance at life. My doctor told me—and I believe her—that even if I carried my pregnancy to term, it would not end that way. That the ultrasound showed I would have a baby whose brain hadn't separated into two hemispheres, such a basic fact of our functioning as humans that it is shared with all vertebrates, from fish to birds to mammals. That outside my body, the baby might live for hours or days. Genetic testing performed after the abortion suggested that this view was optimistic if anything. 

***

Before, I thought about the retort that "the pro-life movement only cares about life before birth" as relating to a wide variety of policies, but nothing specific. To paid parental leave, or the lack thereof. To expanded access to healthcare, or the lack thereof. To concern or lack of concern for maternal health, for educational access for all children, for gun control, for policies that keep children and adults fed and housed and safe. 

I still think all that resonates with the actions of many politicians, pundits, and voters. But it misses something crucial.

***

I think about the life my baby would have had. It's plausible they were healthy and thriving—in the environment of the womb. We can't know what, if anything, they felt. But their life before birth was, almost literally, the only life they ever could have had. How can we consider a few hours of failing to adapt to an alien environment a life worth living? 

The only way my baby could be fed, housed, and safe was in my womb. This made theirs the perfect life to care about, for some people. 

***

By the time I got home, I was grateful for my patient who insisted on sitting in front of the television crying. I appreciated the compassion for others in his emotional response to a decision that will likely have no personal impact upon him. I remembered that he was doing all he could do to be in solidarity with the protesters—that a man who can't operate his television remote isn't going to be able to call his congressional representatives, to show up in person at a protest, to donate to abortion funds. 

If every 81 year old white man in this country cared as much for other people, for people unlike them, as this one does, we would not be in this mess. 

***

I don't have a nice ending to this piece. I want to say that I will write more, that I would be happy to discuss more one on one. But the truth is, I may not write more. I would be happy to talk, if this topic feels as personal to you as it does to me. If it doesn't, I might want to talk, or I might want to just make it through the day. I don't know.