As the United States of America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday tomorrow, many of us don’t recognize what the U.S. has become. As an immigrant/expat in Portugal and self-professed world traveler, I know there’s no such thing as a perfect country. Still, it’s been hard to watch my birth country, the “land of the free and home of the brave,” continually slide so far away from that claim.
This letter was written in June 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court took freedom away from women by overturning the constitutional right to abortion. It was originally published in Dr. Kathy Garland’s Navigating the Change. Some might find this deeply personal story triggering, so consider yourself warned.
June 24, 2022
Hey U:
I know you’re pissed off.
Gun-loving hypocrites are endangering our lives and trampling our rights by telling us what to do with you. We’ve been through this, though. You and I, 45 years ago this year. Our abortion at 17 was legal and protected. We just had to walk by a couple of protesters, two men holding signs in front of the Preterm clinic near our house. Even then, it was a choice made for me by my parents, without discussion, but I was fine with it. I felt so sick and didn’t want to have a baby.
I was a virgin when I was raped. Mom didn’t believe it was rape, though, because I didn’t tell her and Dad everything. I’d lied about where I’d been and I didn’t want to get in even more trouble. Dumb, I know. I knew she’d say it was my own fault. That’s what I got for hanging out with a 27-year-old stranger with a sporty car, just because he’d said a few nice words to me. I did fight and try to make him stop, but I believed it was my own fault too, for many years. I even tried to romanticize it in my high school diary, because I felt like such an idiot for thinking a grown-ass man could actually like late-blooming, nerdy Natalie. What had I been thinking? Didn’t I remember when the junior high school boys had ranked me as a “Dog” on their Foxes and Dogs list of girls?
Mom was mortified by the potential scandal and embarrassment of an unwed teen pregnancy. I was ashamed and in denial. How could you have let that happen, U? How could you have allowed that blastocyst to attach to your lining? When I went to the pediatrician (yeah, I was still going to a pediatrician at 17) for my worsening “stomach flu,” he asked if there was any chance I could be pregnant. I honestly believed it when I said no. I mean, I’d been a virgin. I fought the whole time. I was a good student. A good girl who didn’t get in trouble. No way I could be pregnant.
Dad, whom I’d expected to fly off into one of his rages when he found out I was pregnant, was shockingly calm and nurturing. It was Mom who told me I was going to have to get the abortion without any anesthesia because Preterm charged extra for it, she said. Really? She knew it wasn’t about money. She wanted me to feel and remember everything, to teach me a lesson. I’m sure she believed she was doing the right thing. Natural consequences, after all.
Forceably dilating my cervix, scraping and suctioning your lining hurt, and I cried a little. I yelled out once and was immediately embarrassed. The doctor, a man, said “This shouldn’t hurt that much.” The abortion procedure was a D&C — dilation and curettage — and you and I went on to have multiple D&Cs over the years due to your completely unrelated heavy bleeding, grapefruit-sized polyps, and hyperplasia. Every time we had one, there was never any mention of optional anesthesia. Anesthesia was always standard, because — duh — the procedure is painful.
After the abortion, in “Recovery,” they gave me a Styrofoam cup of Swiss Miss instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. Marshmallows seemed too festive… too happy for the occasion. You definitely were not happy, but I was very relieved to no longer be pregnant. All I wanted was to go home and curl up with a heating pad for your cramping. Then Mom finally came in and told me the doctor thought I had an ectopic pregnancy because there was no embryonic tissue in what he’d removed. Mom’s eyes teared up when she whispered the doctor had warned a tubal pregnancy could “kill” me if a fallopian tube ruptured. I remember thinking, “Right. Whatever.”
Tests days later determined I did not have an ectopic pregnancy. Turned out you were prolapsed and the doctor just hadn’t done the procedure properly for a tilted uterus. At least, that’s what I was told. Seriously, Doc? How’d ya screw that up? We needed to have it done again, correctly. A second abortion procedure for the same pregnancy. I know what you were thinking. Same thing I thought: BOGO, with free anesthesia due to screwing up the first time, right? Nope. We went back to Preterm for a second procedure, again without anesthesia. Double lesson-learning.
You’ve really always been uncooperative, U. A rule breaker. Late to start our period, holding out until I was almost 16. Then horrible cramps and crazy bleeding. When I wanted to get pregnant after getting married at 29, you and my ovaries took turns conspiring against me. When I finally did get pregnant and carry to full term, you attempted to kill my son during birth by letting the umbilical cord wrap around his neck, trying unsuccessfully to strangle what would end up being my only child. I know some may say this was payback for the abortion at 17, but I don’t believe that and have never regretted having the procedure to remove an unwanted embryo.
Yep, you have always been difficult; lashing out at me and causing me pain, embarrassment, and fear since the 10th grade. I’m told my maternal grandmother died from uterine cancer, so I was surprised when my doctor refused my request for a hysterectomy years ago. She said we’d gotten everything under control and all looked normal. She said she didn’t believe in removing you unless it was absolutely necessary.
Our periods have been gone completely for almost 10 years now. No more out-of-the-blue flooding. Remember how you used to love surprising me with gushing, clumpy blood after five or more months of no periods? You’d open the flood gates while I was standing in front of a classroom of second-graders, or sitting in a meeting in the light-beige upholstered conference room chairs at school. But all that fun is gone at 62.
Now, there’s nothing fun about what’s been happening to us. To women and our uteruses. Time keeps passing and we keep changing with age. Our bodies move forward in time, while changing laws are turning back the clock on our daughters’ and granddaughters’ reproductive health and freedom of choice. The lives of 19 actual born and breathing children were aborted by guns last month, in a firearm-worshipping state that has made it illegal for even a rape victim to surgically abort a blastocyst. The freedom to bear killing machines trumps the freedom not to bear a pregnancy. What fucking bullshit is that?
I get it. I know you’re angry, U. I’m pissed off too. Finally… we agree on something.
Yours in Solidarity,
Natalie
Thank you for reading ❤️! May the weekend find you celebrating your own independence, wherever you are.
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The Hot Goddess
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