Prolonged Eye Contact

TW: mention of rape, possible TW for tokophobia

uh0h:

I’ve changed my whole view on pregnancy and abortion. Pregnancy may be uncomfortable, and being in labour may be very painful, but giving up 9 months of your own life to give another person [sic] a whole lifetime to live isn’t too much to ask for. I think it’s one of the most beautiful experiences and everyone deserves a chance to have a child. If you decided against it, it’s fine, but I think that those who don’t have children will miss out on a big part of their life. I am also against abortion now. If you are too young to have a child, or can’t take care of it, adoption is an option and possibly the best way to go. People don’t realize that they have the power to take away somebody’s life, and by aborting a[n] child embryo you are doing exactly that. You are taking away that person’s embryo’s chance of living their whole life and having children of their own. It cannot possibly be your choice [HA!] on whether or not this child embryo gets to have a life. It is unfair to think of all the time that you and your child embryo could have had, or at least the life your child embryo could of had that another family could provide them with, but you took that away from them. Take your own life as an example, and picture your mother aborting you. All your relationships, all your memories, and your whole future would be non-existent.

[I fixed that for you!]

“Pregnancy may be uncomfortable, and being in labour may be very painful, but giving up 9 months of your own life to give another person [sic] a whole lifetime to live isn’t too much to ask for.”

isn’t too much to ask for.

isn’t too much to ask for.

isn’t too much to ask for.

isn’t too much to ask for.

So, essentially you’re saying:

UN-FUCKING-ACCEPTABLE.

When people run their mouths about pregnancy being no big deal a few things become apparent very quickly:

• They’re a misogynist douchecanoe
• They know nothing about pregnancy and what it entails
• The probability of them being a person capable of getting pregnant decreases significantly
• Their priorities are warped in a very disturbing way

[Unfortunately most outside links are to cis-centric articles. It should be pregnant people, not just women.]

In my post about the “pregnancy is a mere inconvenience” trope I mentioned a huge list of possible complications of pregnancy. These include:

Normal, frequent or expectable temporary side effects of pregnancy:

• exhaustion (weariness common from first weeks)
• altered appetite and senses of taste and smell
• nausea and vomiting (50% of women, first trimester)
• heartburn and indigestion
• constipation
• weight gain
• dizziness and light-headedness
• bloating, swelling, fluid retention
• hemmorhoids
• abdominal cramps
• yeast infections
• congested, bloody nose
• acne and mild skin disorders
• skin discoloration (chloasma, face and abdomen)
• mild to severe backache and strain
• increased headaches
• difficulty sleeping, and discomfort while sleeping
• increased urination and incontinence
• bleeding gums
• pica
• breast pain and discharge
• swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain
• difficulty sitting, standing in later pregnancy
• inability to take regular medications
• shortness of breath
• higher blood pressure
• hair loss
• tendency to anemia
• curtailment of ability to participate in some sports and activities
• infection including from serious and potentially fatal disease
  (pregnant people are immune suppressed compared with non-pregnant people, and are more susceptible to fungal and certain other diseases)
• extreme pain on delivery
• hormonal mood changes, including normal post-partum depression
• continued post-partum exhaustion and recovery period (exacerbated if a c-section — major surgery — is required, sometimes taking up to a full year to fully recover)

Normal, expectable, or frequent PERMANENT side effects of pregnancy:

• stretch marks (worse in younger people)
• loose skin
• permanent weight gain or redistribution
• abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness
• pelvic floor disorder (occurring in as many as 35% of middle-aged former child-bearers and 50% of elderly former child-bearers, associated with urinary and rectal incontinence, discomfort and reduced quality of life)
• changes to breasts
• varicose veins
• scarring from episiotomy or c-section
• other permanent aesthetic changes to the body (all of these are downplayed by women, because the culture values youth and beauty)
• increased proclivity for hemmorhoids
• loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis)

Occasional complications and side effects:

• spousal/partner abuse
• hyperemesis gravidarum
• temporary and permanent injury to back
• severe scarring requiring later surgery (especially after additional pregnancies)
• dropped (prolapsed) uterus (especially after additional pregnancies, and other pelvic floor weaknesses — 11% of people, including cystocele, rectocele, and enterocele)
• pre-eclampsia (edema and hypertension, the most common complication of pregnancy, associated with eclampsia, and affecting 7 - 10% of pregnancies)
• eclampsia (convulsions, coma during pregnancy or labor, high risk of death)
• gestational diabetes
• placenta previa
• anemia (which can be life-threatening)
• thrombocytopenic purpura
• severe cramping
• embolism (blood clots)
• medical disability requiring full bed rest (frequently ordered during part of many pregnancies varying from days to months for health of either birth parent or baby)
• diastasis recti, also torn abdominal muscles
• mitral valve stenosis (most common cardiac complication)
• serious infection and disease (e.g. increased risk of tuberculosis)
• hormonal imbalance
• ectopic pregnancy (risk of death)
• broken bones (ribcage, “tail bone”)
• hemorrhage and
• numerous other complications of delivery
• refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease
• aggravation of pre-pregnancy diseases and conditions (e.g. epilepsy is present in .5% of pregnant people, and the pregnancy alters drug metabolism and treatment prospects all the while it increases the number and frequency of seizures)
• severe post-partum depression and psychosis
• research now indicates a possible link between ovarian cancer and female fertility treatments, including “egg harvesting” from infertile women and donors
• research also now indicates correlations between lower breast cancer survival rates and proximity in time to onset of cancer of last pregnancy
• research also indicates a correlation between having six or more pregnancies and a risk of coronary and cardiovascular disease

Less common (but serious) complications:

• peripartum cardiomyopathy
• cardiopulmonary arrest
• magnesium toxicity
• severe hypoxemia/acidosis
• massive embolism
• increased intracranial pressure, brainstem infarction
• molar pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease (like a pregnancy-induced cancer)
• malignant arrhythmia
• circulatory collapse
• placental abruption
• obstetric fistula

More permanent side effects:

• future infertility
• permanent disability
• death.

Statistics on maternal mortality [death!] and morbidity [complications!] in the USA, often disproportionately affecting people based on race and class:

• According to new UN data, maternal mortality in the US has worsened, falling from 41st to 50th in the world. In other words, women in the US face a greater risk of maternal death than in 49 other countries. Women in the US face a greater risk of maternal death than nearly all European countries, as well as Canada and several countries in Asia and the Middle East. Despite the 34% decrease in global maternal mortality between 1990 and 2008, with 147 countries experiencing a decline in maternal death rates, the US was among just 23 countries to see an increase in maternal mortality.
• The US maternal mortality ratio, at 12.7 (deaths per 100,000 live births), was 3 times as high as the Healthy People 2010 goal, a national target set by the US government. 10 states had 18.5 or more maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Only 5 states met the Healthy People 2010 goal of 4.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. 
• The maternal mortality ratio for American Indian/Alaska Native women was 4 times higher than the 2010 target and for African American women was 8 times higher than the 2010 target. New government data shows that for 2005-2007, the maternal mortality ratio (deaths per 100,000 live births) was highest among non-Hispanic black women (34.0), followed by American Indian/Alaska Native women (16.9), Asia/Pacific Islanders (11.0), non-Hispanic whites (10.4), and Hispanics (9.6).
• The risk of maternal mortality has remained 3 to 4 times higher among black women than white women during the past 6 decades. Racial disparities were also seen in all income groups, with black women facing approximately three times higher maternal mortality risk compared to white women at low, middle, and high income levels.
• Deadly Delivery found that little data is available on maternal morbidity (complications), despite its frequency. “Near misses,” complications so severe the woman nearly dies, have increased by over 25% between 1998 and 2005 to 34,000 a year—one woman every fifteen minutes.
• Over 1 million women a year experience some complication of pregnancy that has a negative effect on her health. Currently, nearly 30% of women experience complications related to childbirth, and this has not improved.
• In 2003-2007, women living in the lowest-income areas were twice as likely to suffer a maternal death, and women in the middle income areas faced a 58% higher risk, compared with women in the highest income areas.
• States with high rates of poverty (18% or more of people living below the poverty level) were found to have 77% higher maternal mortality ratios than states in which fewer residents had incomes below the federal poverty level.

In addition:

• 358,000 people die annually from pregnancy related complications.
• 20% of people who die during pregnancy are murder victims.
• The risk of maternal mortality is highest for adolescents under 15 years old.
• Complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death among adolescents in most developing countries.
• A person’s lifetime risk of maternal death – the probability that a 15-year-old will eventually die from a maternal cause – is 1 in 4300 in developed countries, versus 1 in 120 in developing countries.
• A pregnant person has a 35.6% greater risk of being a victim of violence than a non-pregnant person. The estimated prevalence of violence against people during pregnancy ranges from four percent to eight percent.
• 40% of all pregnant people have some complications during pregnancy or childbirth. About 15% have complications that are potentially life-threatening.

From the White Ribbon Alliance Fact Sheet on global maternal mortality:

• Every day, 1,000 girls and women die in pregnancy or childbirth. In 2008, an estimated 358,000 women died due to complications developed during pregnancy and childbirth. For every woman who dies, at least 20 more suffer injury, infection or disability from maternal causes –approximately seven million women every year. Seventy-five percent of maternal deaths occur during childbirth and the post-partum period, and the vast majority of maternal deaths and injuries are avoidable when women have access to health care before, during and after childbirth.
• Pregnancy and childbirth are among the leading causes of death and disability for girls and women in developing countries. A girl growing up in Chad today is more likely to die in childbirth than she is to attend secondary school. Complications during pregnancy and childbirth include uncontrolled bleeding, obstructed labor, infection and high blood pressure. Societal factors include gender discrimination and social, cultural, legal, economic and logistical barriers that deny women lifesaving health care.
• Maternal deaths are the greatest health inequity of the 21st century. Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries. The chances of a woman dying in pregnancy or childbirth is one in 14 in Somalia and one in 31 in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with just one in 15,200 in Italy and one in 4,200 in Europe. Worldwide, women giving birth in urban areas are twice as likely to be attended by skilled health workers as those in rural areas. Similarly, 84 percent of women who have completed secondary or higher education are attended by skilled workers during childbirth.

There’s the risk of losing one’s job and, by extension, home; body or gender dysphoria; missing or dropping out of school; the potential trauma of choosing adoption; suffering from pregnancy related job discrimination; the economic toll of pregnancy and raising a child; and not being able to continue taking important medications or exacerbating pre-existing conditions.

How about costs? Hmm? All the people that complain about financial instability and poverty not being a “good enough” reason for an abortion obviously have no clue how much pregnancy and childbirth costs. In a new report on maternal mortality and morbidity in the USA these statistics were given:

• Approximately 99 percent of women give birth in hospitals where facility fees alone average between $8,900 and $11,400 for a vaginal delivery, and between $14,900 and $20,100 for a cesarean, depending on whether complications occur. This does not include the health professional fee which was reported in Deadly Delivery to add an additional $4,350 to $6,000. [It also doesn’t include fees for prenatal care and testing, an epidural or other pain medication, an episiotomy, postnatal care, possible NICU expenses, or lost wages.]

How about the fact that pregnancy and childbirth can trigger sexual abuse/rape memories?

• Chapter 11: Effects of Childhood Abuse on Childbearing and Perinatal Health. By Deborah Issokson, Psy.D.
• Book Review: “When Survivors Give Birth: Understanding and Healing the Effects of Early Sexual Abuse on Childbearing Women”
• Abstract: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Pregnancy, Labor, and Birth
• The Effects of Sexual Abuse on Pregnancy and Birth
• A Triggering Time: Childbirth May Recall Sexual Abuse Memories

How about the fact that rapists don’t automatically lose their parental rights in all states?

It cannot possibly be your choice [HA!] on whether or not this child embryo gets to have a life.

Well, there’s the pesky concept that reproductive rights are human rights and this includes abortion.

We also know that reproductive rights violations constitute torture in some cases and cruel, unusual, or inhuman and degrading treatment in many more.

And consent to sex isn’t consent to pregnancy. So, no, I don’t have any moral or legal obligation to a zygote.

[TW for ableism is article’s title] In addition, an unwanted pregnancy could pose a mental health risk.

And choosing adoption can affect the mental health of the birth parent.

If you are too young to have a child, or can’t take care of it, adoption is an option and possibly the best way to go.

For who exactly? Rich, white people who want children so badly they’ll kidnap them from basically anywhere? Some people are literally too young to have a child as their bodies are not physically ready and childbirth could kill them. How is adoption really an option for them? Especially when adoption is an alternative to parenting not pregnancy. 

***Tl;dr Forcing an unwilling person to remain pregnant is too much to ask for.***

So I’m just going to leave this logic bomb with…you.

“Janet”

[TW woman survived life-threatening pregnancy after doctors refused to do an abortion because of antichoice hospital regulations.]

My husband and I are ranchers. I was 45 years old when this happened. We have five children, and my parents live on our ranch also. We work hard, but since the multinational companies have taken over so much agriculture, it’s hard to make a living wage. It helps to get Medicaid. I’ve had a rough year; I’d been feeling ill for a long time, stopped getting my period and gained a lot of weight. After many trips to the doctor - we are 45 minutes from town - I was diagnosed with Lyme disease.

Last fall, my husband and I were repairing our roof when I fell 16 feet off a ladder. I felt a “goosh” of water, and seemed like the same feeling as when my water broke when I’d had my kids. I made an appointment to see my doctor, and a week later he said I was 17 weeks pregnant. The ultrasound showed that there was no amniotic fluid left in the sac, but that the fetus’ heart was beating. The doctor said that it wouldn’t survive, and that my medication for Lyme disease was known to cause birth defects. Because he’d delivered my kids, I trusted him and asked him to do an abortion. He said that even though he knows how and is pro-choice, he couldn’t because his hospital won’t allow them. He wished me luck, and warned me to get to the hospital fast if I started to hemorrhage, as I did with my last three pregnancies. The last one was so bad I almost died. The hospital is an hour and forty minutes from our house.

Montana Medicaid doesn’t pay for abortions, so I tried to get the money together. By that time I was 19 weeks. I raised half the money, and the fund in Bozeman gave me the rest and convinced a doctor, in a place three and a half hours from our home, to do it past his usual limit. But the night before, I started to bleed and passed out. My husband and kids were out in the fields calving. My father found me and rushed me to the hospital. I only know the rest from what my doctor and others told me. At the hospital, they gave me transfusions but they refused to empty my uterus, which was the only thing that would stop the hemorrhaging. The hospital administration wanted to air lift me to Salt Lake City, where they can treat severely premature babies, even though mine would never survive at only 19 weeks. My doctor finally convinced them to give me pitocin to induce labor. Five hours later, I came to but I was still bleeding full out. My doctor wanted to do a C-section but I refused; finally I delivered the fetus. It had died and it was very malformed. It took me months to recuperate at home.

I am angry at what I had to go through. At every step, the life of the fetus was more important than my own life. I’m angry that my own doctor wouldn’t do the abortion. Why should abortion be separate from any other medical procedure? I’m angry that the hospital wouldn’t let me have an abortion, even with my risks and medical condition! I’m angry that even when I’d lost every drop of my own blood, they thought the fetus’ life was more important than mine, even though they all knew it would die eventually.

I’m angry and I’m lucky to be alive.

Legal but Out of Reach: Stories from the National Network of Abortion Funds, 4th Ed., 2003. www.nnaf.org

In re: to my pregnancy complications post

To all the people in the notes saying things along the lines of “well why are you complaining? You knew you could get pregnant and had sex anyway so you were totally, like, asking for it. It was your choice to get pregnant, so like, yeah. If you get serious complications it’s not my problem”: the point, you missed it. By a long shot. It’s way back here in fucking reality.

The post isn’t even really about abortion, people. For real, I promise. The guy is denigrating ALL pregnant people. Pro-choice pregnant people, “pro-life” pregnant people, people who want to be pregnant, people who don’t want to be pregnant. He’s denigrating my mother, and my grandmother, and my great grandmother who gave birth to 13 children, and my aunts, and my friends who have been pregnant. This isn’t “pro-life” versus prochoice. It’s fucking cis men who think pregnancy is a god-damn walk in the park and (in his misogynist mind) women should just shut the fuck up. 

Some people choose to be pregnant, and hey, that’s their right. It’s valid and wonderful. Full stop. But no one wants to develop gestational diabetes or preeclampsia or hemorrhage to death. No one is “asking” for that by virtue of getting pregnant. There is nothing in Joe-the-misogynist’s statement for anyone to agree with. Especially if you have the nerve to call yourself “prolife.” You don’t get to force people to give birth and denigrate them for enduring what might be the most painful thing they’ve ever experienced. I don’t care if you’re prochoice or “pro-life.” You have no right to look a pregnant person in the face and tell them that they should just shut up about the fact that pregnancy is hard fucking work. Nor do you have any right to look me in the face and claim I shouldn’t want to not be pregnant because it’s just an “inconvenience” and it’s no big deal.

Check yourself, right over a cliff.

Do you even realize how misogynistic your fucking comments are getting? And now there’s too many for me to even bother addressing you individually. I don’t have the spoons for you, honestly. And I’m not sure you’re even fucking worth it at this point. You’re slut shaming and victim blaming and being sexist as all get out and I don’t think you even get it at all.

The point is that pregnancy is inherently risky. Not every pregnancy has complications but every pregnancy is potentially life-threatening. When something can kill you it’s not a mere “inconvenience.” That’s it. That’s the point.

The fact that some of you have so little sympathy for what pregnant people put themselves through for wanted pregnancies or how torturous an unwanted pregnancy can be, is fucking despicable. 

Assholes, come get your people.

dresdenlowe replied to your photo: I’m sorry it came off that way. This was brought…

Many of the temporary complications are common though. and it’s not uncommon for a person who has had an epidural to have back problems for the rest of their life. Pregnancy is amazing, it’s very alien-esque. It’s not w/o it’s downsides though.

Yes, I definitely agree. Like I said in the post, 40% of pregnancies have at least some complications. They might not all be life-threatening, but to the person they’re happening to they might be quite significant. Only they can decide that, because obviously everyone reacts differently to changes in their bodies. To many, pregnancy, even a complicated one, is a blessing. Also to many, a completely uncomplicated pregnancy could feel like torture and send them over the edge. That’s why this flippancy about the dangers and burdens really irritates the hell at of me. No matter what, pregnancy and childbirth are life changing events and they permanently change your body. That’s why people shouldn’t be fucking forced to give birth. Full stop.