Dear SCOTUS

This is absolutely not how I saw this going in my head: I wanted the first entry that I wrote about my pregnancy to be different. I wanted it to be thoughtful yet funny; inspiring yet unabashedly honest. The truth, however, is that I would never feel good about who I am as a woman nor who I am as a writer if I were to let all that is happening go unmentioned.

I want to start off by saying that I absolutely despise politics. I pay attention, of course, but I feel I have no right to tell those I care about, let alone complete strangers, how they should vote or feel about important issues. I have never felt it to be my place to inundate readers with my opinions and, to be frank, nobody should give a fuck what I think about politics in the first place. While I understand how this may seem like complacency, I assure you it is not.

The truth is I’m a moderate; a registered libertarian. You can perhaps imagine how one might grow very tired of having to explain themselves to everyone. No matter what, I was always too far to one side - too red, too blue, too whatever. To be honest, it conditioned me to just shut the fuck up and listen; which, if anything, has only made my opinions more thoughtful and open to change over the years. That said, I feel that my need to be politically silent has been less a reflection of my character or morals and more a social commentary for how polarized we have become as human beings, specifically in America.

For many reasons, however, this feels different.

I cannot sit idly by as fellow women worry and suffer. If this means you will unfollow me or judge me, so be it. This forum has never been a self-serving platform to make sure that I am popular or liked. You come here to listen and watch others be vulnerable and honest. You come here to feel less alone and to be a part of a supportive community. For those here in solidarity, thank you for reading on. For those who aren’t ready to take the plunge with me on this platform, consider this the proverbial trigger warning should you wish to opt out.

***

I remember the first time abortion came up in conversation with my family. I was probably about 10 years old. I vaguely remember asking my mom and dad what abortion meant while they worked off one another, trying to explain it in the most appropriate way one can verbalize termination of a pregnancy to a child and a female daughter at that.

They spared me the graphics and logistics of the procedure, but explained how it meant that a person could choose to end a pregnancy before the baby was born. What’s painfully beautiful about the conversation, is that I don’t remember either of them telling me where they stood on the topic. Instead, they asked me a lot of questions to understand how I was wrapping my head around it. I was visibly shaken at first - who wouldn’t be? No sane person wants to think about dead babies; ending a life nor preventing one. I was young, but it wasn’t lost on me that people aren’t ever pro-abortion, they are pro-options. I remember clearly at that age how my parents had begun a lot of conversations around “making good choices” as I entered my pre-teen years and thus, the first comment I made was: “Well, why don’t they want the baby? Did they make poor life choices?” I remember my mom smirking a bit, probably knowing all too well that life isn’t always so simple; life is full of choices on a spectrum, some neither good nor bad yet all still having the ability to bring unforeseen consequences.

“Well, what if a woman is raped?” my mom asked in a gentle but matter-of-fact tone. I paused. I hadn’t even thought of that scenario. I could feel myself making a face of both disgust and internal dilemma. “Well, it’s not the mom’s fault then…” I paused briefly and then continued, “but it’s not the baby’s fault either?”

“Is that a question or a statement?” my dad asked, knowing my inflection was searching for cues that I was finding the “right” answer to their question. At that point, I wasn’t forming an opinion, I was searching for validation that I was passing a “test.”

“There’s no right or wrong answer,” my dad assured me.

“Well, what if the baby was going to be the next Martin Luther King?” I said with my eyes wide, as if I had just made the best argument of the 20th century. I had recently studied MLK in my 4th grade class and had become obsessed with his legacy. I had even recorded myself giving his speech on my old Sony M-450 micro-cassette handheld voice recorder that I carried with me everywhere.

Just as quickly as my pride began beaming, it faded, for I had also begun studying World War II that year. I muttered under my breath, realizing my flawed logic, “But I guess it could be the next Hitler, too.”

After much internal deliberation, I decided, at age 10, that I was more or less pro-life; realizing, however, that there might be extenuating circumstances that could sway my opinion.

***

The life cycle of the female body and psyche is wild, isn’t it? I hadn’t even had my first period, yet there I was trying to think critically about how my body should be regulated without any meaningful, anecdotal experience to lend itself to my thought process.

Since that conversation at 10 years old, many things have transpired in my life: I’ve gotten my period, I’ve fallen in and out of love, I’ve lost my virginity, I’ve poisoned my body with the brutal, yet necessary, birth control pill. I’ve experienced sexual assault and the subsequent walk of shame into a CVS for Plan B. I’ve experienced the fear of STD testing, depression and victim blaming of said event. I’ve switched birth control methods and suffered through its side effects; ranging from thoughts of self-harm to hair loss to crippling anxiety. I’ve seen doctors for multiple abnormal OBGYN appointments, cancer scares, painful HPV shots and had them directly and indirectly remind me that my biological clock is ticking.

My experience is anything but unique - it is typical. In many ways, I am one of the lucky ones. I am a well-educated, white woman of the upper-middle class. I have a loving, devoted husband and a secure, well-paying job with fantastic health benefits and an amazing, supportive circle of friends and family. With all of these things going for me, I have still struggled and faced adversity as a female. I can only imagine the stories that would have unfolded if any of my aforementioned traits were different or untrue. Let that really sink in.

Like any woman, I’ve also supported friends through their own “beautiful” journey towards womanhood. As they did for me, I held their hands through their own birth control woes, sexual assaults, abortions, and fertility treatments. I’ve done rock-paper-scissors with roommates in parking lots to decide who would reluctantly go into the pharmacy and buy condoms, pregnancy tests or the dreaded $50 Plan B pill. All this while the older male pharmacist looked you up and down with that familiar scowl of judgement. I’ve worried about friends in the hospital with pulmonary embolisms; blood clots caused from the pill. I’ve felt the pain of my friends trying to conceive and friends miscarrying, while simultaneously feeling the guilt of getting pregnant so easily myself.

It should come as no surprise that during this journey, my views on abortion fundamentally changed. And, JFC, who could blame me? I now, as an adult, finally had experience and context to actually answer the question: Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

I always knew I would personally struggle with having an abortion myself. Regardless, I can say, without a shred of doubt, that there were plenty of instances in my twenties and thirties, where if faced with the choice, I would have done it. It would have been brutal and emotionally taxing, but in the end, it would have been undoubtedly the right choice for myself and the child.

As I sit here writing this to you all, however, I find myself, once again, in a new and unique situation; a different vantage point and stage of life, and therefore a new perspective. I am typing this out while 29 weeks pregnant, feeling the kicks of our baby boy as my fingers glide across the keyboard of my laptop. I have experienced all the aforementioned but now with the countless other experiences pregnancy has offered.

I have experienced tears and worry; thinking we had lost this pregnancy twice in the first trimester only to later cry tears of joy seeing his strong, little heartbeat on our emergency 8 week ultrasound visit. I’ve experienced crippling nausea and fatigue, unwanted changes to my body, the fear of telling my new employer I was expecting. I’ve experienced the anxiety of waiting for genetic testing results, knowing all too well that two of the three syndromes they test for will almost always result in the death of your child postpartum.

I’ve experienced the joy in imagining what his little personality will be like, what he will look like; while also worrying if I will be a good mother; the kind of parent a child deserves. And while this may seem unimaginable to some, each time we look at him on the ultrasound, I cannot help but think about Roe vs. Wade. Each time I see his little black and white feet, toes, hands, fingers, I think more about how terminating a pregnancy would be the most excruciating pain a mother could imagine; something no woman would ever take lightly.

As I watch and feel his legs kick while the warm jelly glides over my bump, I realize that I have become more pro-choice than ever before.

I used to think that my opinion on this really didn’t matter, I used to scoff at the thought of being called a “feminist.” I used to think that, yes, I had an opinion but that we could honestly just leave this to the doctors and experts. And this, my friends, is where I had my true epiphany.

I am the fucking expert.

Women are the ones who are informed; well-versed in all the different situations that could cause an unwanted, accidental or dangerous pregnancy. We have experienced it ourselves or hand-held someone through it. And ladies, if you haven’t yet - I assure you, you will.

1 in 6 of us have been raped or had an attempt made on our person. 1 in 4 of our pregnancies will end in miscarriage; many of us needing to have a procedure to physically remove our dead child from the inside of our uterus.

JFC.

You want some more wild statistics? Look at the survival rates of two of the main chromosomal abnormalities/syndromes that women test for when they get pregnant: Trisomy 18 (Edward’s Syndrome) and Trisomy 13 (Patau Syndrome). It is rare that children with these conditions make it past their first year, and if so, we must ask ourselves: what kind of life would they have? Furthermore, who do we think we are telling a woman that they have to complete a pregnancy, knowing that their child will most likely die in utero or die shortly after birth? Pregnancy and labor is traumatic enough, so how dare we tell someone they have to carry, emotionally and physically, this burden?

How dare we tell women (and in many cases, their partners) that they are to suffer like this; to live with the anguish of waiting for a child with these conditions to be born? How can we tell these parents that they must deliver into this world a child that will most likely suffer immediately. For what? To make the radical, pro-life contingency sleep better at night? For the church?

To be clear, I’ve been baptized, confirmed and grew up going to church. I got married in a church and I will absolutely support our child as he learns about spirituality and tackles his purpose and the meaning of life. I won’t, however, ever force organized religion on any of my children or let it speak for them. I will now stop here lest I start to grandstand on how little certain religious institutions care for our children, but I digress.

Ultimately, this all begs the question as to how anyone that knows all that we women know can sleep at night with a looming overturning of Roe vs. Wade.

I have to be honest, I am terrified at the thought of this. Like many, I have already been through the ringer. I have seen many things I wish I could unsee as a woman. That said, however, I am more concerned of the implications of this overturn than of having to relive the demons of my past. On a personal level, I am terrified that, if I am fortunate enough to have a second child, my health won’t be protected and that I won’t have the right to make the decisions I may need to.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that maternal age can be a factor in the health of mother and baby during pregnancy. I will be 36 years old when I give birth to our first child and nearing the dreaded 4-0 should we be fortunate enough to find fertility success again with a second. If that day comes, am I to expect that I won’t have the option to terminate a dangerous pregnancy? Whether dangerous to me or dangerous to the child? If our next pregnancy has an abnormality that will ultimately cause suffering or death, am I to assume that I will be forced to carry to term without so much as a thought of how emotionally scarring and physically damaging that could be?

JFC.

How about instead of trying to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the powers that be start a conversation on how poorly America does compared to other first-world nations in regards to maternal mortality? Each year in the United States, 700 - 900 women perish due to complications related to pregnancy and/or childbirth. For every one person that dies in the US from this, 70 woman will suffer from other serious complications such as hemorrhages, organ failure, etc. You can only imagine how abortion limitations might affect such numbers and the safety of women. If you are a woman of child-bearing age or a woman who hopes to become pregnant, all this plus the pending decision of the SCOTUS should absolutely infuriate you.

***

As I walk out onto our front porch, I grab ahold of the pillar to help gently ease my heavy, pregnant body down to a seated position on the stairs. I rest my swollen feet on the steps below me as I listen to the rain pitter on our gutters and watch it flow down into the colorful garden below. I glance over at the set of new planters I have just put together, hoping to catch a glimpse of any small seedlings emerging; ones I hope I will get to watch grow over the coming months. As I sit and take in a deep breath of freshly mowed grass and springtime rain, I look up at the dark clouds and notice it; the silver lining that always outlines the clouds after a dark and dreary storm.

To be completely honest, I thought Ben and I were having a girl. When the doctor called us for the gender reveal, I was stunned; completely floored. It was because, in my mind, I knew how to have a girl. I knew how to have a girl because I had spent my whole life learning and unlearning my own stereotype as a woman. I had mastered how to be a female in a male-dominated industry, how to learn to love my ever-changing body, how to speak up, how to be independent yet still fully open to finding love when the time was right. I had practiced difficult conversations in my head that I knew I would one day have with a daughter. I thought endlessly at times about whether my own experiences with trauma and abuse would be something that she could learn from or whether it would be something to shield her from all together. I would know how to help her navigate the world as a woman. I would understand and empathize with a daughter’s every emotion and struggle.

“But what now?” I think to myself. How do I pivot and learn to raise this little boy into a strong, compassionate and empathetic young man?

As I feel the familiar wave of panic set in, I pull up an old text message from February; a message from a very special reader of my Chapters saga. A woman who knows all to well what I went through and what I am going through as a soon-to-be mother.

“Hi Lindsay - a little belated, but my biggest congratulations to you and Ben! So happy for the THREE of you. Last year, when we connected it felt like (to me) your journey was coming full circle when it led you to Ben. Now, seeing you post that you’re having a boy, it really seems like full circle. What better person to raise a young man through the lens of your own experience. Congratulations!”

While I’m embarrassed to admit it, I often read her words over and over; like memorizing a new mantra to help me believe in myself as I become a mother to a little boy. Each time, I cannot help but cry.

Perhaps she is right. After all, I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason. Perhaps all that has transpired in my life has not set me up to raise a strong and resilient young woman, but instead raise a young man who is an ally; compassionate and respectful. Perhaps all my experiences, both good and bad, are just as well given as lessons to a young man; a man who at no fault of his own, will never be able to truly experience the struggle and hardships that his mother or sister will face. He may never experience first-hand these issues, but surely we can help teach him to recognize them and speak up on behalf of others. Perhaps we shouldn’t just look to the next generation of women for hope, but that of men and women alike.

And just like that, the clouds seem to fade away and part in the sky. I begin to feel soft rays of sunlight beam down on my nose and cheeks as I close my eyes to take one last deep and calming breath before heading back inside. As I move my feet in position to get back upright, a big kick sends me right back down.

I smile and cradle my bump with both hands, imagining what he’s saying like I usually do when he kicks.

“We’ve got this, mom,” he says.

You bet your ass we do, kid.

***