I’ve been thinking a lot about the Texas abortion ban, the impending Supreme Court review of Mississippi's ban, and how much I’ve learned about reproductive health since having a miscarriage and now, a healthy pregnancy. And one thing that’s clear is that the ban doesn’t take into account health, science, or personal autonomy. The law bans and criminalizes abortion at 6 weeks, even though the absolute earliest you can find out you are pregnant is at 4 weeks, and according to the APA, most people find out between 4-7 weeks. Before 10 weeks, the “baby” isn’t even a fetus-- it’s still technically an embryo. And at the 6 weeks when Texas bans abortion, the embryo is a mass of cells the size of a grain of rice (see photo below). Furthermore, a fetus isn’t even considered viable (meaning that it can live outside the womb) until 21 weeks, and that is with heavy medical intervention. But that said, many people don’t find out until 20 weeks at the anatomy scan that there may be a life-threatening problem with their baby and may need an abortion (or otherwise carry an unviable baby for another 20 painful weeks). In the words of the Supreme Court, how can anything before 21 weeks, whether an embryo or fetus, be considered life then?
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| Illustration of an embryo at 6 weeks (enlarged) |
I worry that people in similar situations won’t be able to access that life-saving “abortion” medication in Texas that I did in Virginia. When I experienced a miscarriage due to a chromosomal abnormality, I actually had a missed miscarriage. At my 10 week appointment, the doctor discovered that the baby had stopped growing at 8 weeks. I could either wait additional weeks to miscarry naturally-- risking infection-- or take misoprostol (“the abortion pill”). I also see the hypocrisy of considering my miscarriage a life; I couldn’t ride HOV-2 when pregnant, didn’t get health insurance or a child tax credit, didn't give it a name or know its sex, and we didn’t have a funeral. None of that changes the fact that the miscarriage was physically and emotionally excruciating. But, for this reason, most pregnant people are told not to share their pregnancy before 12 weeks anyway because of the large risk of miscarriage (1 in 4-5 pregnancies). I also worry that women who have natural miscarriages/ stillbirth will wrongly charged with abortion (as has happened).
Pregnancy isn’t easy or without consequences. Both of my pregnancies have been extremely hard. I’ve lost weight due to extreme nausea and experienced fatigue that forced me to take PTO so I could take hour-long naps during the day. I’ve cancelled travel, gigs, and social events because I’ve been so miserable, which left me depressed and lonely. That’s not to mention other symptoms like sciatic pain, “lightning crotch,” constipation, insomnia, the mental health toll, and yes, there’s more! Pregnant people shouldn’t have to suffer because someone in Texas arbitrarily decided that life begins at 6 weeks, when most scientists and the Supreme Court believes that life begins, at the absolute earliest, at 21 weeks.
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| Photo by William Murphy via Flickr |
There are so many other reasons why pregnancy should be a choice, but having a very wanted and loved pregnancy only has made me more pro-choice. And if you haven’t been pregnant or had an unwanted pregnancy, you shouldn’t force someone else to give birth because of your own hypothetical beliefs.
