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The Personal, the Political, and Dr. Tiller

Jill

Over at BastardLogic, a guestblogger has posted the sad and brave story of her abortion, in part of the effort to put a realistic and human face on a procedure that anti-choicers demonize. A small piece:

Our baby wasn’t going to live. And whatever time he spent in the womb, or out, was just going to be painful. Pain that you or I cannot imagine.

A boy.

We were given two options: Carry on with the pregnancy, knowing what was to come, ignore his pain, and ours.

Or terminate the pregnancy.

Not much else to be said, really; we made the most kind decision, one that no parent-to-be should ever have to make.

A harrowing, sad, anguished couple of weeks followed. I mostly just remember being in the recovery room, missing him so much. Alone suddenly after weeks of activity.

Alone with our broken dreams.

I had aborted at 21 weeks. My body thought it had delivered a baby who needed sustenance, so it began to lactate. Just another painful reminder of what was lost.

Read the whole thing. It is powerful and heartbreaking.

17 thoughts on The Personal, the Political, and Dr. Tiller

  2. Forcing a woman to carry such a pregnancy to term is nothing less than cruelty to all involved. My heart goes out to the author of this piece.

  4. I’ve already deleted 30 or 40 ridiculous comments on the various Tiller threads, so I’m sure said asshole will show up, but hopefully it’ll get modded out.

  5. or another showing up spewing some nonsense like, “yes, that happens in rare situations, but most are normal, healthy adoptable babies…”

  6. Okay, that’s a powerful personal story, but I think it’s important to note that Osteogenesis Imperfecta is a condition many people live to adulthood with. One of my best college mates had OI. She was my resident assistant and dorm room suitemate. She was in grad school. She used a scooter. One of the funniest, most charismatic people I’ve ever known. Yeah, she’d had a LOT of broken bones, and it was an every day concern, surely. But when people live with a condition for 20+ years and hit all or many of the same milestones anyone else does, it’s perhaps not a “fatal” condition.

    I don’t mean in any way to discount the personal and truly difficult nature of any woman’s decision to abort — or try to set limits on it — but I get really twitchy when disability is used as a weapon in the choice wars and people with specific conditions are treated like mythical creatures. Adults with OI do exist. I lived with Anne for 2 years and pain was not a topic we covered much, though our mutual scooter use was, and other disability concerns.

    Again, I don’t wish in any way to belittle a story about choice, which I wholeheartedly support, but people should also not come away from that story thinking OI is a disability so severe that it assures only constant pain and an absolutist view that people who have it would all be better off dead or never existing.

  7. Not sure there are any adults with Type II, the type the author was speaking about, since most babies born with it die before their first birthday. I think we need to trust that the women who have made these decisions know what they’re talking about.

  8. Type II is incompatible with life. There are four distinct types of OI. Type II is always lethal. Always.

    Kay Olson’s comment is uneducated and not at all helpful. It is anacdotal vs factual.

    It would be better to seek the correct information. No?

  9. The murder of Dr. Tiller has moved me to remember a man who changed, and saved, my life. Dr. Robert Lucy was a doctor who provided abortion in ND in the 70s and 80s. I was a frightened young girl in 1977, and couldn’t bear the thought of the pain my unexpected pregnancy would cause my family in my small town, with the loss of my chance to go to college, and make a better way for myself than my hard-working mother had. Dr. Lucy comforted me, assured me of the safety of the procedure I chose, and promised that someday I would have a family of my own, at a time that was right for me. Though that was a very sad June day for me, I knew, in my heart, that my life and my future was worth saving. For years, as I read about the harrassment he and his family faced for providing abortion services, I prayed for him and his family. Dr. Lucy, thank you for your courage, and what you did for me. You were right about me–now a mother, a grandmother, a wife, and a professional serving poor women and children.

  10. In the story related, this is what’s said:

    “Broken bones, some healed already. Bowed legs and arms, etc. Ostegenesis Imperfecta Type II, they called it: Brittle Bone.

    Our baby wasn’t going to live. And whatever time he spent in the womb, or out, was just going to be painful. Pain that you or I cannot imagine.”

    To my limited knowledge, all types of OI are called Brittle Bone Disease, but most types are not fatal. I think it’s fair and necessary to point that out, if only so fewer people tell folks with OI to their faces “I thought people like you all died at birth.” (Yeah, that kind of thing does happen.)

    A more general comment not involving my thoughts on this particular woman’s story: Why is it necessary to trust that a woman, in this or any circumstance involving a right to govern her own body, “knows what she’s talking about” or has done the right thing? I ask that in all seriousness because I don’t imagine reproductive justice as involving any more than imperfect knowledge and difficult decisions by each of us. We don’t have to be right to have the right.

  11. I’d like to speak here to the general place of disability in feminist discussions of abortion. Like Kay, I worry about how often disability and the fear of disability are linked to abortion. It’s just that, as the writer says, the “kind” thing to do participates in a history of “kind things” that devalue the rich diversity of disabled lives. yes, even those with OI.

    The disability rights movement is deeply sensitive about this point — disability is not an automatic justification for abortion. Indeed, in our politics, one version of the question asks whether the repeated and consistent abortion of disabled fetuses is a euthanistic act that erases a particular kind of human diversity.

    My point is not to criticize the individual chooser; her story is heartbreaking and she takes a tremendous risk in writing it here and now. Now, if I were to launch a rant, I’d go straight for the medical professionals there. I want to ask as this important conversation continues that we as feminists recognize that choice has consequences. And that those consequences are particularly harsh for people with disability. I’d like to see discussion of the presence and power of disability even as we support women who make these choices — and, yes, I support a woman’s right to choose.

    We must maintain a woman’s right to choose, but I am uncomfortable with leaving unquestioned the idea that aborting a disabled child is the natural thing to do. We must win the battles in the courts of law and in the courts of public opinion, but as feminists, can we do so without using disability as a tool in this fight?

    Sincerely,

    WCD

  12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteogenesis_imperfecta

    Type II severe and usually lethal in the perinatal period

    Type II

    Collagen is not of a sufficient quality or quantity

    * Most cases die within the first year of life due to respiratory failure or intracerebral hemorrhage
    * Severe respiratory problems due to underdeveloped lungs
    * Severe bone deformity and small stature

    While I do worry about how people judge the lives of the disabled, I think there’s a difference between living with a disability and living with a death sentence.

  13. Kay and Wheelchairdancer, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you both for including this point of view in this debate. I have been wanting to say something, and hesitating because, well, people are shellshocked and grieving over Dr Tiller’s murder. But the rhetoric around why late-term abortions are so medically necessary is getting more and more ableist as we move away from commemorating Dr Tiller and head in the direction of rehashing the usual abortion debate. Thank you so both for speaking out, because this is important.

  14. Disability is one thing. Constant and excruciating suffering and pain with no chance of relief is quite another, which was the case here. This abortion was an act of mercy, not some ablelist conspiracy or convenience.

  15. What is interesting, is this “discussion” and the calling into question the writers information (which is accurate) and nitpicking of words. For what purpose? No one knows. So pure…So wrong.

    Can this possibly be one reason no one speaks out?
    Because even those who are supposedly on the same side are going to say….Oh you cannot say that!
    In your hurry to be OH so ever correct, (and wrong at the same time) you alienate and perhaps hurt those living in reality are not interested in these word games.

  16. Reading this discussion, I’m realizing that there’s probably always going to be a lasting and real tension in this debate – not over reproductive rights but over the ableism that is implicated especially in these late term abortion stories. My first instinct is to side with the author of this story and similar stories (I’ve been reading a lot over the past few days), especially the women testifying before Congress who emphatically said that they did not choose to abort their fetuses because of “a cleft palate or a few missing fingers.” All of the stories I read were about women whose fetuses had formed in such a way that they would not be able to survive long, if at all, outside the womb. Severe brain damage especially was a recurring theme.

    Of course we should respect the choices that these women made regardless of our concerns. I do, however, think that the voice of people with disabilities needs to be heard in this debate, even though on first hearing them, it ruffles my own feathers because of the implications – at least that I hear – that these women aren’t making sufficiently informed choices. I have to admit that I have not considered the issue from that perspective, which just goes to show my ableist privilege.

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