I’m quoting the entirety of Robin Marty’s post about the surgical completion of her miscarriage at RHRealityCheck.org.
This weekend, a group of male pro-life Democrats gambled with women’s health, and women lost. By broadly writing in that insurers can chose whether or not to cover “abortion services,” pro-life amendments don’t just affect their intended victims — women seeking a way out of an unwanted or medically harmful pregnancy. They also affect another group of victims — women whose pregnancies have already ended but have not yet miscarried.
I’m one of those women, and this past Halloween I had what the hospital officially termed an “abortion.”
Hospitals and doctors in general do not have terminology to classify a difference between the termination of a live pregnancy and one in which the fetus has already died. To them, a D&C is a D&C, regardless of the state of the “conception materials” removed. Regardless of how many times I made sure to mention to the staff, either for the sake of my sanity or to spare me some sort of imagined shame, that I was ridding myself of my “dead fetus,” to them, it was all the same.
I had learned the day before that the baby I thought was nearly 12 weeks old had no heartbeat, and had actually died at 8 weeks. I was given three options: wait for a miscarriage to occur on its own, something I was told my body had no intention of doing anytime soon, take medication that would expel the fetus, passing it in my own home (classified a “chemical abortion”) or come in for a D&C to remove the fetal materials.
As much as I struggled with the sudden realization that the pregnancy was over, I also found myself trying to decide financially what I was willing to do. A chemical abortion would cost $40, but I would be alone, bleeding, and it could still be incomplete and I would require a D&C anyway, since my pregnancy was so advanced. Surgery would be quick, total, and under controlled circumstances, but would likely be our full maxed insurance amount of $1500. And of course, there was the free option of waiting for my body to finally realize I wasn’t pregnant, but after 4 weeks the risk of infection was steadily climbing, increasing my chances of future miscarriage, infertility, or even death. With a toddler at home, and still nursing hopes for extending our family some day, this was not an option.
I chose the quick and total route of the D&C, despite the costs, prioritizing my health and the health of possible future children. I was lucky, and could afford to make that choice, because currently, my insurance cannot chose to refuse to cover what the hospital as termed an abortion.
Thanks to the Stupak amendment, that can now change.
Abortion is a very broad term. The pro-life contingent would like you to think it only applies to selfish, irresponsible women, murdering babies out of fear of inconvenience. That’s a caricature they have invented to push their own agenda. Many of the women who seek out abortions are women who have been raped, who have learned that their child could not survive, have learned that giving birth could physically and permanently harm them. Or, thanks to newer and vaguer language, women who have already lost the life they were carrying, and need intervention to save their own.
I was one of the latter. I hope I will be lucky enough to never be again. But if I am, I hope the insurers don’t force me to carry that fetus until I medically harm myself, all for the sake of saying that they do not cover abortion services.
About 14 years ago this month my partner began to miscarry our first planned, wanted pregnancy. We discovered just how shallow “pro-life” commitment to “life” really is. You want to force someone to stay pregnant, boy, those are the folks to call. You want to do anything to actually, you know, keep a wanted “beating heart” beating they generally don’t even understand the question.
The best our chosen-in-an-emergency “pro-life” OB/Gyn could do? “Well, just go home and hope it stops.” After 24 more hours of bloody contractions she reluctantly gave my partner a vacuum extraction. The best part? As she was doing the procedure she admitted that she hadn’t done “very may of these.”
That’s “pro-life” training and the whole “pro-life” mindset for you. I’m sure even Rep. Stupak and the men (and they’re overwhelmingly men) who voted with him probably wouldn’t think that was hunky-dory. But that’s the problem: I’m pretty sure they’re not really thinking about it at all. They’re too busy “feeling good” about themselves.
Thanks for the link and for
Submitted by Kaija (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-10 04:32.Thanks for the link and for sharing your own personal story. Both of these convey the heartache, pain, and wrenching decisions that women, and often their partners, must face when pregnancy does not go according to the Disney-fied script we’re fed in our culture. A best friend’s mother recently shared her story of having to fight with doctors/hospital/insurance and deal with the judgements and opinions of family and friends when she and her husband learned that their pregnancy would result in a non-viable birth due to a severe birth defect. They were actually told that she should carry the doomed pregnancy to term and deliver the child “naturally” because it was God’s will and “he will decide” at the time. The emotional and psychological stress on the mother and husband that would be worsened by months of waiting for this to occur were deemed inconsequential, as were the fallout from the D&C that she was finally able to get.
One of the many lessons here is that we as a culture still don’t acknowledge the myriad of situations that surround pregnancy, birth, termination, miscarriage. We have these strawmen caricatures via the extremists (whorish women using abortion as birth control, sneaky wives getting abortion behind their husband’s backs, irresponsible teens dodging “responsibility”) when what we really should be talking about is the REAL stuff…pull back the cloak of shame and guilt and sadness and fear so that individual people in your office, your social circle, your neighborhood, your extended family can be open about the miscarriages and decisions to end or continue pregnancies and struggles with matters surrounding sex and reproduction. If more people knew someone who had been through the type of scenario (and I guarantee that you do, you just might not know it yet) described in this post, the extremist fairy tales would get a lot less traction.