BOO! It’s a Baby!

124 thoughts on BOO! It’s a Baby!

1. I think it’s because you’ve got two, very limited options from then on: have an abortion (and noone really wants an abortion*) or have a child. Which is a huge thing.

   *noone really wants an abortion as in, noone would go ‘oh, I think I’ll have an abortion, because that sounds fun!’, not ‘abortions are something that NOONE WANTS TO HAVE EVER BECAUSE THEY WILL TOTALLY TRAUMATISE YOU FOR EVER.

2. I think that there is a certain kind of slut-shaming that isn’t just about a woman having sex, but a (cis) woman having sex (obviously a certain kind with a certain kind of partner) that is “irresponsible.” People seem to have this idea — perhaps because it makes those of them that engage in PIV sex feel safer? — that contraception never fails. And if you didn’t use contraception, you’re a slut! And if you did use it, but it failed, that still somehow makes you a slut! And if you didn’t plan the pregnancy, that must put abortion at least in the back of your mind, which makes you a slut!

   I don’t know. The whole “slut” thing makes zero sense to me anyway, but I’m pretty sure that this kind of attitude tends to exist among most of those who aren’t conservative Christian (in which case, showing that you’ve planned for sex by using contraception makes you a slut). It’s just more ways of labeling female sexuality as deviant and shameful while appearing “open-minded.”

3. Every time I’ve had a “scare” I haven’t said anything to anyone because of people’s probably negative reactions to the decision that I would most likely make at this point in my life; abortion. I’d much rather just keep it all private than deal with so much negativity.

4. For me personally, I know I want to have kids eventually, so I don’t attribute my “pregnancy scares” to the thought of an impending bundle of ominous joy, but rather to the horrifying possibility that over the next 9 months my abs may be slowly stretched out (like some torture method reminiscent of the Inquisition), and then when “it’s time!” my hips dislocated and my entire body contorted in violent labor pangs. Even my maternal self gets pale and clammy at the thought! Quick! Someone get me an epidural!

5. To some extent I would think it has to do with the vulnerability of the situation. It’s not like you go up to a stranger on the street and say, “I think I might be preggers.” But rather to a friend you trust. It’s a big deal, choosing between abortion or having the baby, and both have price tags that can be stressful. I’d just rather not have deal with everyone having an opinion and just focus on the people who I want to discuss it with.

6. Hi there. Normally I am a complete lurker here but since I am actually in the middle of my own scare that I am afraid to talk about right this very moment, I sort of thought I couldn’t help but comment.

   I am in a committed heterosexual partnership that is clear on both sides about a decision to never have children. I am afraid to tell anyone about the pregnancy-scare because most people that I know in meat-space are either relatively conservative or have bought into the conservative discussion framing and would react poorly to A) the concept of pre-marital sex, B) failed contraception (we use two methods but I had a few misses with the pill this month), C) the abortion that I will pursue should I turn out to actually be pregnant, or D) all of the above.

   In many areas of my life I have learned to care less about how I am perceived. I am a loud woman, and at my new university I am an out feminist because the environment in my department makes that a comfortable thing to be, despite being in Kentucky, and sometimes I do not hide my penchant for goth-y attire. But I am very very bad at talking about sexuality in a real and healthy way outside of the internet and my relationship (and even there I struggle).

   So. That’s my “why I don’t talk about the pregnancy-scare” story. I am not ashamed. I am scared of the reaction of people who believe I should be.

7. For me, it’s definitely the abortion thing. I know that at this point in my life, I would most certainly have an abortion should I fall pregnant. (Parenthetical aside: I love the phrase “fall pregnant.” Watch out below!) And I am a terrible liar, so if I told everyone I might be pregnant and then ended up getting an abortion, I wouldn’t be able to lie about it. And that would suck because my family and in-laws are all anti-choice and would be very disappointed with my baby-killing ways. (Nevermind that I’ve already had two unplanned pregnancies that ended in *actual* babies that I smoosh up with kisses all the time, so yeah, I know what’s at stake. Babies *are* scary, even when they’re scrunchable.)

8. Oh, and I suppose I consider it a “pregnancy-scare” because I am afraid of medical procedures and no matter how I resolve a potential pregnancy I still have to have some kind of pain/discomfort and a medical procedure (even the mifepristone thing scares me).

9. Maybe women are ashamed of the pregnancy scare because it highlights a lack of control. The only way I want to be pregnant is because I made a conscious decision to have a child and then tried to get pregnant. When I suspect I’m pregnant unintentionally it admits that I am not totally in control of my circumstances, and it forces me to face a really tough, very personal, possibly life-altering decision. Which I may or may not be prepared to make. If you start telling people “I think I might be pregnant” (especially if you aren’t in a committed, monogomous relationship) the automatic response is “What are you going to do?” In a lot of cases a woman doesn’t know yet what she’s going to do, and there’s a good chance that whatever her decision, someone is going to be dissatisfied with it.

10. For me, a large part of the horror of the pregnancy scare is that I so strongly want to remain childless. It’s not just a time-and-place matter for me. I don’t want kids.

    And less-than-close friends might know that about me – probably do. It’s more likely to come up in casual conversation or polite questioning than the other things I consider myself to be “out” about…feminism, my sexuality, kink, politics…and it’s more likely than any of the others listed to get me patted on the head. Irritating, patronizing comments are the order of the day, from so many people, along the lines of “biology will catch up with you, dear” (though it would tear my uterus apart to carry a fetus past the second trimester) or “if you spent more time with children” (though even their happy sounds annoy the shit out of me).

    So there’s slut-shaming for the sex part and abortion-shaming for the road I’d choose to travel. But there’s also anti-feminine shaming for feeling so strongly un-maternal, so definitely unwilling to be a mother. I’m less of a woman because of my attitudes – people have actually asked me if I have elevated testosterone levels in an attempt to explain for their own comfort how I could be a woman who does not like children.

    So yeah – a pregnancy scare is a loss of control over the dialogue around my body and my femininity. The people who refused to believe that I don’t want kids will see it as a chance for me to change my mind and they are very, very loud. So I just don’t talk about it.

11. I have to say, I don’t understand the point of this post. Pregnancy IS scary. I cannot even imagine it NOT being scary. Giving birth to a child is a major medical and emotional event. So is abortion. So is miscarriage (another very likely outcome that doesn’t get discussed as much as the other two).

12. My thoughts were along the same lines as Cara, that there’s still this residual slut shaming going on that if you accidently become pregnant, you were somehow being irresponsible… even if you use multiple methods of contraception.

13. American women aren’t allowed to be ambivalent about pregnancy, is what I feel like. Either it’s an EXTREMELY JOYFUL EVENT, or you don’t talk about it.

    You’re not allowed to have doubts, or see the issue in shades of grey, for example.

14. For me its definately about the control.

    In part, the ability to control my own fertility. And, oops I screwed it up. There’s a lot of vulnerability there. Being scared is a natural reaction to the prospect of pregnancy and everything that comes from that, especially if it’s an unplanned pregnancy. Most people don’t flaunt their vulnerability, and simply being scared is a vulnerability.

    The other part is the gossip. I mean, even if it’s not malicious, someone telling someone else “O, sonso might be pregnant” may turn into an embarrassing suprise shower or something (yes, that’s a hyperbole). If I want people to know, I’ll tell them. I don’t want random people to come up and tell me their opinion on it. I mean, I’ve had some issues with my bowels, and I eventually broke down and told my mom, and she swore up one side and down the other that she wouldn’t tell any family members (I had assumed she wouldn’t tell anyone, so that was kind of amusing). I didn’t tell her intially because I didn’t want her to worry, but when I realized that it might be a chronic thing, I figured she ought to know. It doesn’t have anything to do with shame–I’ll give you all the details about my poopscapades that you want, probably more. But I don’t really want people in my business that I don’t intend to tell, especially since we don’t yet know what’s going on.

    I mean, even people who are trying to get pregnant sometimes don’t tell people right away.

    AND, I gotta agree with atlasien, pregnancy is intense. The prospect of giving birth is scary, so even deciding to have kids is going to scare me. Why is that a bad thing?

15. For me, it would be a scare because I don’t want a child right now, so I would have an abortion. Having an invasive medical procedure is stressful and scary. It’s not a shame thing, it’s an “oh god I don’t want a medical procedure” thing. Plus, having the discussion with my husband, although I know he’d support me, would be unpleasant.

16. In cases of married people who don’t mind the thought of kids and who society says should be popping out babies, maybe it has less to do with residual slut-shaming, and more to do with the idea that if they’re not sure, they don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up or start the preparations, or deal with the societal congratulations and then have to say, no, not pregnant, made a mistake.

17. I have this serious phobia of pregnancy and what it would do to my body — having control over my body has long been a very important thing to me, and falling pregnant (nice phrase), as others have said, implies a lack of control that is terrifying.

18. Even when women WANT to be pregnant, telling others about a possible pregnancy is fraught with anxiety.

19. Additionally, I think there’s a bit of body shame that comes into it, too, because to talk about pregnancy scares is to peripherally talk about…gulp…periods. And period blood. And bloody bloody periods, in the case of a pregnancy scare getting downgraded to late period.

20. What about fear of being discriminated against by one’s employer? In my workplace, I’ve heard the boss make ‘jokes’ to pregnant women about “not being sure” the woman is coming back after the pregnancy.

21. Having had both an unwanted and a wanted pregnancy, neither of which I shared with anyone but the closest people to me at the respective times, I think it’s not that hard to explain.

    Unwanted means you may well have an abortion. And telling everyone about your abortion is just a bad idea. The threat of violence, of slut shaming, of job discrimination, all conspire to keep you quiet. I would love on one level to be a voice of those who have had an abortion, and I have shared my story on sites where I am anonymous, but I will not be attaching my name to these because one day I may interview with some idiot misogynist on the selection panel. And he may google my name, and an abortion could cost me that job.

    Wanted pregnancies are normally not shared until after the first trimester as well. 20% or so of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Many women would find it hard to share the news of a miscarriage with their casual acquaintances, so they hold back news of the pregnancy until the greatest danger of miscarriage has passed. I, personally, didn’t announce to my family (other than my husband) until 14 weeks, and never really announced at work etc (other than to my supervisor, to arrange maternity leave) because some people take you less seriously in your career once you are pregnant. Or all they want to talk about is the pregnancy, not whatever they talked to you about before (my research). And every time you pee they have to make a stupid comment.

22. @Dena – I definitely understand what you’re saying. I’m in the exact same boat, and people are constantly telling me “When they’re yours, its different,” or “Just wait a few more years.”

    NO! I don’t want children! I don’t like them, I don’t connect with them, and I don’t want to. I shouldn’t feel like I HAVE to like children, to force myself to “want” to parent. My mother did that, with disastrous results!

    Also, the whole elevated testosterone comment gets me thinking – why is it assumed that men don’t like children or don’t want children? There’s always this dialog that if a man gets a woman pregnant, he definitely didn’t mean to, and its so unfortunate for him, and even that the woman must have lied about birth control. Maybe some men really do want children – but that’s another discussion about masculinity. At any rate, tying masculinity in with the “non-feminine” behavior of not wanting children annoys me. I am who I am, and I am not a man.

23. Slut-shaming may have something to do with it, but my scares weren’t because I was worried about being seen as slutty. I don’t really care that much. I know that I can’t reasonably provide for a child at this point, that I wouldn’t want to enter the kid into the foster system in this country, and that I only want to use my right to an abortion as a last resort…so for me, that’s why a late period freaks me out. That and none of my sexual experiences so far have been within a relationship, so I can’t guarantee that my partner would be down for helping me raise the kid.

    This surely isn’t true for everyone, but it’s not automatically, “Oh my god people will think I’m a slut” for everyone either.

24. Well there are two issues for me. Back up: I am a cissexual woman in a marriage with a man (bisexual myself but for the purposes of this post that’s a bit tangential). I do want a child someday, but only when I’m ready. If I got pregnant today and no health issues arose due to the pregnancy, I would not abort (not against it, it’s just not something I’d consider at this point in my life for many reasons that I’m not getting into in this post because it’s off topic). That said, I’d still freak out if I got pregnant (and actually, I just had a “scare” a few months ago).

    Issue 1: Anxiety/scaredness. I’m not ready for a kid, nor is my partner. Even though we could afford it (barely!) we’re both in very time-consuming, anxiety-ridden points in our respective carreers (one getting a PhD and the other starting a business). The initial reaction I have to the possibility of pregnancy is a panic attack about how we’re going to handle it along with all the other crap in our lives right now.

    Issue 2: Not telling anyone. I tell some of my close friends, and certainly my partner, for support. But I don’t tell anyone else. Am I ashamed? No. Do I feel slut shamed? No; I’m married. It’s because when a woman has the possibility of pregnancy (or an actual one), people start projecting and making all sorts of comments and assumptions. At that point the woman becomes public property/gossip fodder. I refuse to tell anyone outside a select group of people when I become pregnant until I’m showing. I don’t need anyone telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, eat, drink, wear, think, name the kid, etc etc. I want to put that off as long as possible, and I certainly am not going to risk going through that for only a possible pregnancy. Not talking about my pregnancy/pregnancy scares is my way of keeping my privacy and public autonomy.

25. I’d consider it a scare because both options–having a baby or having an abortion–horrify me. I do *not* want either one.

26. Great comments everyone!

    I definitely agree with most commenters about the nature of residual slut shaming. There’s so much going on with unplanned pregnancies that it’s sort of a mine field for anybody who wants to judge any woman who has sex ever. *sigh*

    As far as pregnancy (and abortion, and miscarriage, and motherhood, etc.), yes it’s definitely all scary. I just have always found the actual phrase “pregnancy scare” to be odd. Somehow “afraid of being (or not being) pregnant” sounds totally normal but the word combination of “pregnancy scare” just brings up images of women being chased by babies. But I don’t know, I’m really weird, so there you go…

27. Oh, I should also clarify that I don’t just mean talking about pregnancy scares when they are actually happening, but also talking about the fact that they have EVER happened. As in, you have already learned that you are (or aren’t) pregnant, it’s been a while, yet you still don’t ever talk about it.

28. I have to say, I don’t understand the point of this post. Pregnancy IS scary. I cannot even imagine it NOT being scary. Giving birth to a child is a major medical and emotional event. So is abortion. So is miscarriage (another very likely outcome that doesn’t get discussed as much as the other two).

    I didn’t write the post, but I didn’t interpret Sally as criticizing pregnancy being scary per se, but rather criticizing the culture of fear that surrounds talking about unintentional pregnancies or pregnancy scares. A lot of us have had them, but it’s not something we often admit out loud. That’s odd and troubling.

29. Oh Leah, you just reminded of an event I forgot. I did tell my supervisor fairly early (around 12 weeks, the end of the first trimester) and she, within a few days, yelled at me at a work event for eating brie (I don’t want to get into a debate here about whether pregnant women should eat soft cheeses, but I hope at a feminist site we can agree that it’s the choice of said woman). Yep, policing of food and drink and behaviour starts as soon as the information gets out.

30. When I had my pregnancy scare, I didn’t talk to anyone about it because of the slut shaming. I thought I was pregnant from a one night stand and I knew that if I told people that, they would judge me negatively for it. I think what Cara said comes into play too, even people who might not have judged me for having the one night stand might have done so for getting pregnant by it.

    And it was scary. The thought of being pregnant and having a baby at that time in my life, with no supportive partner and everyone slut shaming me for it was terrifying. The thought of having an abortion was scary too. It is a medical procedure, and one I wasn’t very familiar with. And while I was and am very pro choice I felt personally ambivalent about aborting my own pregnancy. The woman I talked to at the birth control centre where I went for a pregnancy test (which turned out to be negative) was wonderful though.

31. Pregnancy scares are pretty intense because they take everything out of the hypothetical and into the real, and that’s when a woman really and truly knows. Even without slut-shaming, there’s an entire level of anxiety that goes along with a Boo Baby moment.

    For example, you may have been one of those people who would declare “I believe it should be legal but I would never have one myself.” But when the pregnancy scare happens and suddenly you’re thinking to yourself: OK, I’m not ready to have a child. It’s just not happening in my life. Could I go through with adoption? And if so, could my life endure the upheaval when everyone I deal with on a daily basis (co-workers, friends, relatives) realize I’m pregnant and then realize I’m “giving up my baby” and all of the moralizing that will go with that? A lot of women realize damn quick that abortion is a much more realistic option than they had first given it credit for. Obviously, there are women on the other side of it who didn’t think that an abortion would be a big deal until they had to go and get one and feel that they can’t go through with it.

    Being partnered doesn’t impact this. Because a pregnancy scare is such a moment of truth about how you, as the woman who will ultimately have to bear and suffer this pregnancy, and will be on the line to care for the result of it even if your partner takes off in the face of it, coming out and telling your partner or friends may result in the same sort of zero-hour freak-out. You could have comfortably had a pro-choice boyfriend who gets all uptight and assy when suddenly you’re going to abort “his” baby. Since you didn’t realize your own true feelings about pregnancy until you had to stare it in the face, can you really trust that the people around you are going to maintain their previous positions? Friends you thought you could trust might suddenly start sending your carved-up-fetus pictures and offering to adopt your baby to prevent you from killing it. Shit like that.

    In the middle of the pregnancy scare you’re busy hoping that your period is just around the corner, you’re dealing with hormones that could just be drawn-out PMS or could be the beginning of pregnancy. You’re trying to overcome the feeling of intense betrayal at your body for doing this to you. Do you really want to add partner or friend related stress when you confide with someone and they don’t agree with your decision, especially if you’re not entirely sure?

    I have a *very* effective method of birth control: something like a 1 in 3000 chance of failure, but when my period was weeks late, it put the fear of dog into me. And I was in a committed partnership with a guy who I was 99.9% sure would hold my hand in the clinic waiting room if I asked him to. But that 0.1% chance that he would suddenly turn into Mr. Don’t Kill My Baby was not acceptable when I was already looking at a pregnancy that was less than .0005% chance of happening. (People get weird about that. They start declaring that with those odds “God must want you to have a child”). Fortunately, I wasn’t pregnant, but I had every expectation I would sneak off and have the abortion without breathing a word of it to anyone if I turned out to be knocked up. Once I has happily surfing the red tide again I did admit this to my partner and he understood. He knew I was stressed out about being late, but if I’d snuck off for a private abortion and told him well after the fact, he wouldn’t have held it against me because he can at least begin to try to understand how completely isolating and alone a pregnancy scare can make a woman feel.

32. “I don’t just mean talking about pregnancy scares when they are actually happening, but also talking about the fact that they have EVER happened. As in, you have already learned that you are (or aren’t) pregnant, it’s been a while, yet you still don’t ever talk about it.”

    Oh, OK, I misunderstood. Well personally, I don’t find it taboo, but mostly once I find out I’m not pregnant I let it go and move on. Honestly I don’t think about it that much (I tend to think of it as “all that worry for nothing!”). It’s not emotional anymore, it doesn’t currently impact me. Out of sight out of mind. I suppose if I actually was pregnant, it’d also cease to be a scare and be an actual, so I would talk about it more in those terms than in terms of a scare. Although I have had women talk to me about the terror they felt when they first found out they were pregnant (my mother and my masseuse come to mind, and a few others).

33. OK, I don’t mean to attack the poster, I understand the focus better now but I just found the approach initially to be very odd…

    Even if I try to set aside all the many political and sexual issues, which I do agree are really important, the fear just seems so… natural. It’s a medical issue that involves something coming out of your body that does not usually come out of your body. Anything of that nature is going to have an emotional impact and be somewhat difficult to discuss.

34. “As in, you have already learned that you are (or aren’t) pregnant, it’s been a while, yet you still don’t ever talk about it.”

    Oooooh. Yes. That is interesting. I don’t tend to talk about my past pregnancy scares (of which there have been many) because I don’t want to come across as that hysterical crazy woman who is always freaking out about being pregnant. Granted, I do have a touch of Teh Crazy, and I have a long history of hypochondria. I’ve called EMS more than once for “heart attacks”, and those are not pleasant memories. (Oops! Panic attack! My bad!) I’ve linked my own pregnancy scares with my mental illness, and I guess I do have a lot of shame about that. That’s just me, though.

35. I agree with much of what everyone has said here, especially with regard to “slut shaming” as a major reason why talking about possible pregnancy is scary.

    I think that along those same lines, talking about possibly being pregnant is scary because despite the fact that there was another person involved (the guy) the responsibility for preventing pregnancy is always placed squarely on the woman’s shoulders. Therefore, if she ends up pregnant, it’s her fault or her responsibilty for dealing with the consequences.

    Any major incident is scary when you think that you are alone dealing with it!

36. For women who are married or in long-term relationships, I don’t think it is residual slut-shaming. In fact, I think it makes sense for these women to freak out even more, precisely because there is so much pressure on them to become mothers. I’m only engaged and I’ve faced so resistance on this issue. It’s I am a woman in a happy long-term heterosexual relationship that people don’t understand why I’m going to law school and delaying pregnancy. Once I become engaged, I was no longer allowed to express any kind of ambivalence or free about pregnancy. There is an expectation that I am secretly dying to have a baby and will be super-psyched if I become pregnant. Furthermore, it’s become very clear that society is not going to allow me to parent on my own terms. When I talk about maintaining my individuality as a future mother and being dedicated to my work, people look at me as some cold-hearted bitch who likes to eat babies. People, including my own family, act like I’m just in a “feminist phase” and that I’ll become a happy mombot as soon as I “have one of my own.” The pressure is intense and I’m afraid, that once I do decide to become pregnant, that it’s going to suck all of the joy out. How can I enjoy being a parent if everyone keeps expecting me to have a total personality change and give up everything that’s meaningful to me?

    All of these issues, plus the possibility of dropping out of law school, is enough to make me break into a cold sweat at the thought of being pregnant. I’m sure other married heterosexual women have the same feelings.

37. To clarify, I don’t think it’s only slut-shaming that causes women in relationships to freak out over pregnancy scares. That is one possibility, but there’s also a lot more going on.

38. I personally had a week-long panic a couple of months ago – which turned out to just be the result of a new female roommate with some super-strong hormones moving in – but before I figured that out, the week itself was living hell.

    The reason for my fear had nothing to do with slut-shaming. To me it was “giant hideous, painful inconvenience with a $450 bill at the end,” made so much worse by the fact that I’d done everything right – three kinds of birth control, if you count carefully monitoring my cycle as the third. And there I was, anyway – a week late, feeling like I was 17 in the bathroom of my parents’ house, keeping my eyes shut until I’d waited the full two minutes for the pregnancy test to develop.

    No one ever wants to feel out of control – particularly when what you’re controlling is the topic of vicious public debate and a massive social stigma. And, alas, the state of my uterus is still something that other folks think they have some business intruding on.

39. For me, this has happened twice, and I felt really embarassed about it. I was in a steady relationship (still am with that person) but I was worried that people would think I wasn’t smart enough to use birth control properly, or even use it at all. Maybe something to do with the messages I received growing up, which come down to “if you can’t be good be smart” and “smart girls don’t get caught out”

40. I heart you so much for your comment, mighty pony girl. You spelled it all out so well.

41. Slut-shaming aside, there are biological or sociobiological reasons for the emotional reaction to early symptoms of pregnancy, including both ‘real’ scares and false pregnancy scares.

    One reason might be for the fear of social isolation that may come with it is meant to be a motivator for the woman involved (and sometimes even men who are involved, who might also experience feelings vicariously) to build or confirm related social bonds (variously described as maternal, paternal, or human bonding), and to ensure other adequate resources are available for carrying a pregnancy to term and raising a child. Some anti-choice activists exploit these biological or sociobiological realities and say this is why women who get pregnant “naturally” want to carry their pregnancies to term, but it should be obvious that the same sorts of social bonds and similar resources are needed if the pregnancy is not carried to term, whether it terminates in miscarriage or elective abortion. Either way, it takes a village, though the infrastructure of the latter village arguably could use a bit more developmental aid.

    One scientist (and his works) to read up on who did some pioneering anthropological studies and numerous very popular books on issues related to this was Ashley Montagu. Most of his work spanned the late 30s through the early 90s, and was a strong influence on both the civil rights movement (through his writings on race, which included editing the post-WWII 1950 UNESCO statement The Race Question which influenced Brown v. Topeka) and the second wave feminist movement, through his works on nurturing, and so many other issues that if you’re not familiar with his name and books it’s worth at least skimming some bios of his. Some of his writing is a little dated or speculative, but there’s so much that’s grounded in science that’s proven correct over decades it’s worth getting his take at least on nurturing, human social development, and critiques of racism, sexism, and various kinds of bigotry, as much as one might from any living author or scientist today.

42. I know the reason I never talked about my pregnancy scare was definitely because of slut shaming I KNOW I would have received. I had slept with 2 different men recently, neither one of which I was in a serious relationship with (the horror!). So if it had turned out to be an actual pregnancy, I would have no clue which of them was the lucky sperm donor.

43. when i thought i was pregnant i was really scared of the medical prodecure (abortion, i sure aint having a baby) i’d have to undergo. I hate medical stuff. The other fear about that was having to convince a two doctors i was psychologically unable to have a baby (don’t you just love stupid abortion laws?).
    The other thing that really scares me at the thoguht of being pregnant is that i am in a long distance relationship, so would usually find out about pregnancy when he was away again. And i would really want him to be by my side for that, and just be able to talk to him in person. Part of that is i’d also feel scared going through that looking like i wasn’t in a relationship or like my boy was a bastard who didn’t care (though i’m sure the wonderful people at family planning wouldn’t judge). So yeah, that has something to do with fear of slut shaming.

44. It’s not always *just* slut shaming, all though that is frequently a big part of it.

    I think Abby nailed it first. It’s about control, and perceived control.

    I also think there is an issue of classism. Accidental pregnancies are what happen to those *other* women, the ones who don’t know any better, the ones on public assistance, etc. “Good” women plan their pregnancies. It goes without saying that “good” women plan them with their *partner or spouse*, because a pregnancy not expressly authorized by the prospective father brings up the next part:

    There is also the MRA argument: That honest birth control failures are always Women Trying To Trap The Poor Men.

    I think it’s the internalized voice of the patriarchy. We frequently believe the twaddle about accidental pregnancy and “good” women and MRAs until find ourselves in an OH SHIT situation, and then suddenly we realize that we are *all* potentially “bad” women in the eyes of the patriarchy.

45. I think it may be related to the fact that in society today, women’s bodies are considered public property, in a lot of ways. People feel they have the right to try to control what women do with their bodies, and this manifests in a lot of ways – slut-shaming, anti-choice positions, controlling behavior re: what women eat, especially during pregnancy, etc. Being open about a pregnancy “scare” means that society has even more reason to be controlling in all of these ways, and it is understandable that many women don’t want to open themselves up to that.

46. I’m pretty conservative in my own sexual life, so all of my pregnancy scares (and pregnancies) have been in the context of a long-term, monogamous, engaged-and-later-married relationship. I’ve never felt vulnerable to “slut-shaming” on a personal level.

    For me, though, the biggest fears have not been when I was worried I might be pregnant, but the times I’ve found out I -was-, even when they were planned pregnancies. During each of my three pregnancies, telling my mother and my friends felt as if I was confessing some terribly embarassing sin (or about as much like that as anybody who was raised in an areligious household can feel).

    Each and every time, my parents have responded the same way: with whoops and whistles and congratulations and asking who they can call, while I’m just sitting there embarassed, wondering why they aren’t looking at me disapprovingly. Each time, I expect my friends to go silent on hearing the news, or quietly ask if I want them to drive me to the doctor’s for an abortion, and instead they go all gaga over buying baby clothes.

    I mean…for the love of god, there I was, 25, self-reliant and in law school, married for three years, with a planned pregnancy, and I felt -ashamed- to tell people I was pregnant with my first child. You know the movie “Saved”? Yeah. I was not that girl, but I -felt- like that girl.

    I think we’re just told for our entire lives that if we have sex we’ve made a mistake, and if we don’t have sex we’ve made a mistake, and if we use a certain form of birth control we’ve made a mistake, and if we don’t use a certain form of birth control we’ve made a mistake, and if we get pregnant we’ve made a mistake, and if we don’t get pregnant (in certain contexts, at least) then we’ve made a mistake, and if we have an abortion we’ve made a mistake, and if we don’t have an abortion we’ve made a mistake…so that no matter what we do or how well and carefully we do it, most of us are still convinced on some level that folks will think we’ve made a terrible, stupid mistake.

47. I’ve had pregnancy scares– and had a college roommate who essentially slut-shamed me when I confided in her about one. So now I don’t tell anyone except whomever I’m sleeping with at the time, and/or possibly one of my good feminist buddies from college.

    What makes the concept of pregnancy so scary for me is a mixture of things: I know I’d have an abortion as there’s no way I can afford all the costs associated with pregnancy right now (vitamins, doctor’s appointments, etc). My boyfriend has expressed that he’d be quite upset if I aborted a pregnancy because one day he wants kids, but that he would ultimately support me.

    It’s also medical. Nasty hormone-related migraines run rampant in my family’s women and seem to worsen with rising estrogen levels– my mom had one every week while pregnant with me and I have inherited them. That many migraines would put me out of work, since their timing is often unpredictable. As I have anxiety and depression, severe IBS and several other chronic medical conditions, I can’t go off the meds that shouldn’t be taken while pregnant without suffering pretty intense consequences. Also, I’m a tiny little person and the thought of pushing anything baby-sized out of my pelvic area makes me want to faint.

    And nobody looks forward to having their insides hoovered or scraped out, or to spending three days bleeding and puking on mifepristone. Abortions are serious procedures!

    For me, becoming preggo would be a lose-lose-lose situation, and explaining this to ableists who don’t understand what it’s like living with multiple “invisible” medical disorders brings up emotions of frustration and anger. Comments like, “If that dwarf woman on TV could get pregnant and have kids surely you can too!” or “Maybe your migraines will go away if you get pregnant! Women are wired for it, you know!” make me want to scream.

    Whew. That was long, but it felt good to let it all out.

48. Well, perhaps my perspective should be taken with a grain of salt (being a lesbian, I’ve never had a pregnancy scare, and don’t expect to ever have one), but in addition to the many reasons listed, I also think it’s just part of the way we tend to talk about undesirable bodily/medical conditions. For someone who doesn’t want a baby, pregnancy is on some level an unpleasant medical condition which will require some unpleasant treatment. The hush-hush scare thing seems pretty similar to the way one might talk about any similar ailment. “Don’t tell anyone, but it looks like I might have a yeast infection,” or “Just between you and me, I won’t know for sure until my appointment, but there’s a chance I need a root canal.” Etc. We generally tend to be private about the (especially uncertain or potential) conditions of our bodies.

49. My boyfriend has expressed that he’d be quite upset if I aborted a pregnancy because one day he wants kids, but that he would ultimately support me.

    I hope you took that as a teachable moment to explain that an abortion is the removal of the fetus, not the removal of the uterus! Having an abortion does not prevent you from having children in the future.

    I love enchiladas. If I had to envision my life without enchiladas, I would be very, deeply sad. However, when I first wake up in the morning, if someone thrust an enchilada, even perhaps the most delicious enchilada ever made in my face and yelled at me to “EAT! NOW!” I would have to decline, even though I love enchiladas, because at that moment when all I want is a class of OJ, a cup of tea, and a bit of granola with some yogurt and maybe a banana–a hot corn tortilla with any number of tasty fillings, smothered in spicy tomato sauce and cheese is not going to be appetizing for me. In fact, eating an enchilada first thing in the morning could throw me off my game for the rest of the day and make me pretty damn miserable. This does not mean I would never have an enchilada ever again after that, or that I would be undeserving of later enchiladas, or that I would love any subsequent enchiladas with any less gusto.

50. Having an abortion does not prevent you from having kids in the future, but it’s still one risk factor for infertility, among many others. A D&C has a less than 1% chance of infection… but the flip side is that it has an almost 1% risk. And for women who already have uterine-related infertility issues, D&C’s present higher risks for the chance of carrying a child successfully to term later in life.

    According to anti-choicers having an abortion will ruin your life… I obviously disagree VERY strongly with that, but I also believe in being realistic and pragmatic about the issue. D&C is really not 100% safe. Like any other invasive medical procedure, it has a certain degree of risk. Miscarriage or carrying to term also has plenty of risk. And it’s not mutually exclusive, sometimes when women miscarry they then need to have a D&C to reduce chances of hemorrhage or infection.

51. atlasien — and that would be the woman’s decision regarding the risk of infection. Less than a 1% chance of getting an infection is just that: an infection. The chance of getting the infection and as a result becoming infertile is significantly smaller than that because not all uterine infections are going to result in infertility. It is a woman’s decision if she is willing to take that risk (even if it’s infinitesimal).

    NOT her boyfriend’s. As far as he’s concerned, her less than 1% chance of getting an infection that might cause her to become infertile later on is a ZERO percent chance.

    It’s one thing for a partner to have an investment in your fertility because they hope to have a future or having children with you later in life. So things like getting sterilized without their knowledge — I can see someone getting upset and leaving the relationship. But it is quite another thing to have your partner make the risk assessments about your fertility for you. And frankly, if your body was so fragile that the risk of becoming sterile goes from “infinitesimal” to simply “incredibly unlikely” and that’s too much risk for your poor boyfriend who needs to have his babies come out of your uterus later in life, then he needs to keep his fucking dick in his pants until you’re both ready to be parents and he doesn’t have to worry about the “what ifs” of you going sterile due to an accident. Because frankly, the chances of becoming infertile are much higher as a result of carrying a pregnancy to term than they are for having an abortion.

52. I think the hard Truth-with-a-capital-T is that, when you are talking about a pregnancy “scare”, you are talking about having to have an abortion. It’s not a “scare” if you are TRYING to conceive.

    The rhetoric on abortion in this country is so negative and so polarizing that a woman would be insane to talk about it openly. One in three women HAVE ABORTIONS, that is I believe as many as women who are divorced. How many divorced women do you know? That is (probably) very close to the number of women who have had abortions that you know.

    WHen you think you may be pregnant when you are in school or very poor or unpartnered, and you know you will not be able to do a good job of being a mother, not unless you actually force someone to support you who does not want to do so, be it your parents or the sperm donor…well, in your heart you know you are going to get an abortion.

    Abortion is still considered COMPLETELY SHAMEFUL in this country. Plus there is the feat of domestic terrorism! There are real crazies out there who would not hesitate to shoot you or burn your house down if they knew you had an abortion.

    That is why there is so much secrecy. Because it is rational!

    1. I think the hard Truth-with-a-capital-T is that, when you are talking about a pregnancy “scare”, you are talking about having to have an abortion. It’s not a “scare” if you are TRYING to conceive.

       Indeed, it’s not a scare if you were trying to conceive. But those who conceive in spite of the fact that they weren’t trying don’t always have an abortion — in fact, they only do about half of the time.

53. Oops that should have been “FEAR of domestic terrorism”

54. I had the interesting situation of becoming pregnant just after getting married. A classic time for people to give you that attitude and start counting on their fingers at you.

    Some ways it was fun being completely upfront with when the baby was conceived. Everyone knows that you have teh sex on your honeymoon, but there’s that label if you get pregnant that quickly. Being upfront left a lot of people stuttering, always a good effect.

    It didn’t completely stop everyone, but it’s really amazing how many people would wonder if we “had” to get married despite knowing about the six months of planning that went into the wedding after the engagement.

    Could be worse. My younger sister had people asking that question about “having” to get married when she got pregnant a year and a half after getting married. It’s ridiculous. People try so hard to find some slut to shame in these situations.

    Our third was the next time we had to deal with an unexpected pregnancy. With my husband laid off from his job it was decidedly not a comfortable time to be having a baby, although we did keep her. But there were certainly people who were suddenly quite willing to ask us questions about our birth control use and other highly personal questions.

55. (((((((Llencelyn)))))))

56. Forgot to add that a scary number of people don’t want you to take the baby itself anywhere either. There’s always the concern if you breastfeed a baby in public. A couple earlier this week was kicked out of a Target for it, with the police called and store personnel claiming it was illegal (it’s not).

    Some people say mothers should stay home at all times with their babies when garbage like this happens. Like that’s practical or even remotely reasonable.

    I’ve seen people claim the woman is being an exhibitionist for breastfeeding in public. Um no, just practical. It’s really not going to hurt you if you see a tiny bit of breast or even nipple. Odds are the mom is doing the best she can.

    Not exactly on the pregnancy topic, but I think related considering it’s about how people treat you with the result of a successful pregnancy.

57. Definitely slut-shaming.

    I am butt-terrified of pregnancy. I’m desperately afraid of having a baby or getting an abortion (as Shelly said), and I’m also terrified of being sick/bleeding for 48 hours from the morning-after pill, assuming you can even get one.

    So the one time I had a scare (turned out my shot was supposed to have been procured the previous week, and I’d already had unprotected nookie with the LDR boyfriend), it was a weekend at his place when I clued into this the next day and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t drive, so damned if I know how I’d even GET to a Planned Parenthood in the next town, and I’d be terrified of my mother somehow finding out and begging me to keep my precious baby. As for the LDR boyfriend, gee, guess what, he DID turn out to be “save my baby!” guy and said we could elope. And that’s when the shame kicked in: imagining myself as a pregnant JOP-wed bride, my family shaming me, and my evil Catholic relatives who got knocked up out of wedlock would be doing the Happy Dance of SHAME SHAME YOU BAD GIRL over my head for the rest of my life. And I thought, “NO WAY,” but again, how was I going to make myself not be pregnant if I didn’t want to be? Damned if I knew how to do that, either. It’s a good thing I got lucky.

58. As one on the upper age for pregnancy scares (I’m almost 41) there’s the fear of looking monumentally stupid. “Don’t you know what causes THAT yet?” “Aren’t you a bit OLD for that?”

    As an Old Married Person, I’m supposed to want kids. Even if I don’t want more than I’ve got.

    The rhetoric we’re surrounded with is that if you don’t want kids, we ought not be having sex. That doesn’t fly in a marriage. So if you’re married and don’t want kids/more kids then there’s a belief that you’re doing it wrong. That you’re marriage is a sham because you don’t want to be squeezing out babies all the time.

    We told that pregnancy is supposed to be a joyous time and that if we talk about anything negative we’re chastised. It drives me crazy!

59. I’m in leah’s situation – married, out of school, my parents demanding grandchildren, but not quite ready for a baby. Still, I’m close enough to ready that I were pregnant now, my husband and I would roll with it rather than try again in a year or two.

    Even with all that, I’d be ashamed if I got pregnant accidentally. And I think it goes to akeeyu’s point about how “’Good’ women plan their pregnancies.” Good women eat nothing but organic vegetables and folic acid for months before they even try to conceive. What if my migraine meds and that joint last week and my Diet Coke addiction poison my baby AND IT’S ALL MY FAULT? (not a rational thought, but that’s internalized sexism for you)

    For me, the reason I don’t talk about it after the scare is over – when I know I’m not pregnant, I feel foolish and hysterical for having been so worried about nothing. I feel like I should know my body better than that, and not work myself up in to a hypochondriac fuss. So I don’t tell anyone. It’s about shaming, but “women are so emotional/irrational” shaming, not slut-shaming.

60. I think there is also another layer of fear here – if one admits to feeling ambivalent or negative about the pregnancy and then goes on to have a baby, what will people think? What kind of mother will that make you? What if your child ever finds out zie wasn’t-quite-wanted? Mother guilt is so pervasive it starts way before you’re even a mother (or at least, the internalised language of it does.) I have a friend who felt ambivalent about a pregnancy and then ended up having a stillborn baby. Her guilt about those early feelings is incredibly painful to her, and to witness. I think sometimes we can protect ourselves and our possible offspring from that ambivalence (which is often felt by women who have longed for a baby, including myself) by not voicing it. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining why women who might not need to fear slut-shaming (eg. married women) still fear disclosing this kind of information.

61. @Mighty Ponygirl

    Where did I say it WASN’T the woman’s decision? Everything I commented on is solely from the point of view of the pregnant woman in question. Partnered or not. Perhaps I should have made that crystal clear from the outset, considering the context, but I am not considering any man in regards to the decision. In fact I’m not considering a decision at all, just discussing risk.

    And the way you’re arguing, to me, sounds dismissive of women who are infertile and subfertile and do have a lot of issues with reproductive health. Infertility doesn’t just mean you can’t have a baby, ever. It’s a very broad spectrum. Infertile women are not just a “fragile” symbol of bodily dysfunction, they simply have overlapping but somewhat different issues than women who get pregnant easily. Also, I already mentioned that miscarriage does not preclude D&C, and childbirth carries huge risks… greater risks, in the vast majority of cases, than abortion.

    I’ve never had an abortion/D&C. But I have had a gynecological procedure that doctors told me would be easy and pain-free. It turned out to be the most physically traumatic experience of my life. For a decade, I thought I was just freakish for experiencing so much pain, until I found out a substantial minority of women had my same experience.

    I’m coming from the position that abortion is always the woman’s decision. But it’s not something that should be made light of as always totally safe and easy and even inconsequential. It’s an invasive medical procedure and represents a woman’s loss of control over her body (though almost always, in the US, it represents much LESS of a loss of a control than carrying to term). In an ideal world we would have a more just social structure and methods of birth control that are so easy and effective that abortion wouldn’t be necessary at all.

    All I’m really saying is that pregnancy carries risks no matter what, and no one can say that every woman is going to count and weigh those risks in the same way.

62. atlasian–I was initially responding specifically to a woman who was describing her boyfriend’s ownership issues with “her” body and “his” future children. To begin discussing the incredibly minor risks of later infertility in the context of a boyfriend attempting to make reproductive decisions about his girlfriend because “he wants kids later” and then getting upset that I point out, in no unclear terms, that it is none of his damn business what sort of risk she should plan to assume, and trying to wave your hands that I didn’t read your comment generously enough, or with enough comprehension of what you were trying to say… well, you have chutzpah, I’ll give you that.

63. I didn’t read your comment that way. I read it as a two-sentence reaction to the boyfriend, which then veered into several paragraphs of a shaky metaphor where “refusing an enchilada” is supposed to equal “invasive medical procedure”, which seemed like it applied to women in general, NOT to the boyfriend in question. I’m not going to apologize for then trying to broaden the discussion to include a class of women whose issues you’re jumping to dismiss and insult.

64. sweet maude, Spilt Milk, your poor friend…

    As a married woman who could technically “afford” to have a baby (whatever that means), and who has no health issues (that I know of) that would “preclude” it*, I would not discuss the existence of any past pregnancy scares with anyone except the closest of friends because I wouldn’t even want to open the possibility of someone asking me what I would have done, and then judging me for being some sort of gross luxury-abortion consumer (“sure I’m pro-choice, but only for the people who really NEED them!”). I’d rather not have people accusing me of being a baby-killer because I may have once considered aborting an imaginary fetus.

    The “acceptable” move, I believe, to my coworkers and family, would be to have kept any unwanted pregnancy, because I have admitted – publicly! – that we are considering having a child in 3-5-years. It’s like sex: if a woman ever thinks she’ll want it in the future or has had it in the past, she obviously couldn’t have any objections to it at *this* time, amiright?

    And I’d definitely never admit to being in the midst of a pregnancy scare, for the same fears of judgement about getting an abortion (and if it was a real pregnancy, and you did decide to keep it, but then you miscarry – now it’s either because you were so negative, or you secretly had an abortion and are trying to pretend you didn’t), or you keep it (and Spilt Milk covered that) or it was nothing (and elle and michelle covered that).

    Also ignoring alllll that, there are the loss-of-control issues, but not just on a personal level, but a professional one. I don’t want to remind anyone in my work sphere that I have the potential to bear children and may thus become A Huge Liability to The Company with my selfish maternity leave-having ways, or Not a Real Serious Scientist until the last possible moment.

    The best part, which would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, is that I had a scare one time, that lasted exactly 24 hours – that’s how regular my periods are – it was a looooong 24 hours, though. And because of my lack of scares, I started thinking, once I thought I might want kids – “oh no, what if I can’t actually have children? I mean, I’ve never even had a scare!” which is fail on so many sad levels, but I have friends who’ve admitted they’ve thought the same. I’m not sure what to make of that weird flip side to the pregnancy scare.

    * from the point of view of the tireless busy body who insists that every woman wants a baby barring risk of death or the eugenic arguments against passing on “deficient” genes

65. I’ll admit, the reason I didn’t talk about my pregnancy scare was that I was careless with my birth control. I didn’t need anyone telling me I should have known better. I was busy enough telling myself.

66. I’d have to chime in on the control issue.

    I never “planned” any of my pregnancies. I have a weird cycle and had a husband more absent than not (which apparently makes men’s sperm counts rise when you do get together again…) and turned out to be one of the people who pregnancy fucked over pretty badly physically and mentally. And when I would get an early pregnancy symptom, I’d just feel like such a damn failure at managing my health and our resources. And I was angry at my body, too, because it was just going off and doing this stuff and I had no choice but to go along for the ride. And either way whatever I did was going to be expensive and painful and hard on my body. And being in those positions sucks.

67. This is one of those fantastic threads that perfectly emulate a consciousness raising group of the 70s.

    I’ve never had any of these experiences and never thought of this in the grand scheme of shared sexual, feminine experiences. Twisty Faster had a post a while ago in response to a billboard that said “Pregnant? Scared?” where she pointed out that the only time pregnancy can be scary is in a patriarchy where women are hated. This is a great continuation of that theme.

68. Interestingly, this hasn’t been my experience. I’ve been very open with friends about my pregnancy scares, and it comes up in conversation not infrequently (most of us are early to mid-twenties, lots in relationships but very few married, so there is a lot of grey in how we would respond to an unplanned pregnancy – it wouldn’t be ideal, but many of us feel that the way we would react and the choices we would make might be different than they would have been just a few years ago).

    At least with close friends, I find that there is a lot of discussion and commisseration after-the-fact – walking by pregnancy tests in the drugstore, joking about using oops babies as an excuse to go hang out at the playground (a lot of my friends are grad students, and even as a crazy feminist housewife frequently sounds like an attractive alternative to academic insanity), etc. We are definitely open about having gone through them and talk about the experience with one another. It is true that I haven’t talked about them during the fact with many people – but these were the same people that I limited my conversations to when I was pregnant. Had I been discussing the “scare” with others, I think it would have felt very awkward to not want to discuss the pregnancy with them while having them know it was a possibility.

    On a slightly tangential note, one thing that has never made sense to me is when someone thinks they may be pregnant but doesn’t immediately take a pregnancy test. I admit it: I compulsively pee on those sticks. I’ve done it when I haven’t had sex in six months. I’ve done it with no symptoms and no missed period on incredibly effective birth control. I’ve done it for no reason at all (annnd that was the time it was positive, go figure), and I’ve done it because I had every reason. My perspective is: it doesn’t make me any MORE pregnant to take the test. If I’m pregnant, if I take the test, I’ll be pregnant and know about it. If I’m pregnant and I DON’T take the test, I’ll still be pregnant, and I’ll know it’s a possibility but I won’t know about it for sure. I don’t understand why so many people choose this option and walk around going “Oh my god, I might be pregnant, what am I going to do?” What are you going to do !? You’re going to go pee on a stick and find out if you can stop freaking out!

69. Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences and thoughts. I don’t want to repeat anything, but I’ll say a general heck yeah to the comments about the “good” women vs. the rest of us “bad” women. It is a really important element that was missing from my post.

    And Lucy, careless b.c. use was actually my reason too, let’s just hope my mother never reads this lol

70. KMTBerry, while I agree with the sentiment of your comment, I’ll just say this:
    “The rhetoric on abortion in this country is so negative and so polarizing that a woman would be insane to talk about it openly.”

    Unnecessary. A woman does not have to be insane in order to talk about it openly. Living and making decisions based on societal pressures does not make somebody insane. Just sayin’.

71. As a childfree woman, nothing would terrify me more than to discover an unintended pregnancy. I mean, my risk is small as I have an IUD, and if something did happen I’d get an abortion the soonest they could squeeze me in for the appointment, but for someone like me who is severely tocophobic, it would be a “scare” in every sense of the word. Not everyone’s like “Eh well, abortion now, thx”. Some of us are hyperventilating and mentally screaming “GET THIS OUT OF ME RIGHT NOW!” I know it may seem drastic, but I can think of nothing more terrifying than pregnancy.

72. What about the messages women are taught about their bodies, is there some kind of argument about a woman’s body being the property and domain of everyone else to be made here? I mean, “we” (women & the world at large) are told that we can’t talk about periods and that the inner workings of female reproduction are somehow slightly icky. I see the notion of not being able to talk about the “scare” as related to that as well as all the great points everyone else has made about control & slut shaming.

    I hate to derail, but the reverse side of the coin is whenever a woman of a certain age has an inexplicable medical problem everyone in the world jumps in with “you could be pregnant, you know”. Apparently it’s unacceptable to respond with “no, I couldn’t and is that any of your business at all?”. Just another way women’s bodies are up for public debate, any time, any place and we’re expected to smile sweetly.

73. “Twisty Faster had a post a while ago in response to a billboard that said “Pregnant? Scared?” where she pointed out that the only time pregnancy can be scary is in a patriarchy where women are hated. This is a great continuation of that theme.”

    If you’ve characterised that accurately, it pisses me off. Some of us are scared of pregnancy on account of, you know, we might die.

74. For me it’s a lot of things, the biggest one being that I want to make my decisions in private. Every reproductive decision I have ever made or considered making has been commented on, or more accurately preached on, as soon as anyone found out. I used to work at the only drugstore in my old town, and buying a pregnancy test or bc or even tampons invited opinions from all the rest of the staff. They felt that this sort of prying and advice giving was helpful and could’nt be harassment because they were women. They were invasive, assuming and insisting that I would stay home and marry-up if I was “blessed” with surprise pregnancy. My family believes that because I love all the babies in our family, I secretly want one as soon as I can convince a man to give me one. They will not be swayed from this belief. My partner is Pro Choice, but personally strongly opposed to abortion. He would’nt do anything like try to stop me or lecture me about it, but the possibility of pregnancy already makes sex a source of anxiety for him. He firmly believes that you should not have sex if you aren’t willing to accept the possibility of pregnancy, and if he no longer felt secure with our birth control methods, or if I had to abort a pregnancy he felt responsible for there would probably no longer be sex. That’s why I am hesitant to talk about it. Everyone still believes my body is public, and they have the right to input. The reason it’s so scary to me is I don’t ever want children and at this point my life is at a fragile balance and it’s literally unworkable to even be slightly impared for nine months, never mind actually raising a baby. And the money. I simply don’t have the money for an abortion. I have no idea were I might get the money for one if I needed it. I sunk the last of my money to get a consultation for an iud, which it turned out was not covered by my insurance. Then I got dropped from my insurance. The whole thing would be a mess of debt and time and destructiveness for me.

75. wow, sorry for that huge block of text. I didnt realize until I posted it.

76. Out from my usual lurking to share my one and only pregnancy scare.

    Two good things came out of my pregnancy scare. First, I actually changed the opinion of one of my friends from anti-abortion to pro-choice by talking with him about what I was going through and my reasons for choosing abortion. Though previous discussions about abortion in theory had not been convincing to him, the reality of the situation and the impact being unable to get an abortion could have had on somebody he knew was quite convincing.

    Second, I learned that I give false positives on home pregnancy tests. Yay!

    Though I talked about my pregnancy scare quite a bit during, I do not bring it up often afterward. If somebody brings up a similar topic, or expresses fears regarding being pregnant themselves, I bring it up, particularly as a tool for offering empathy, support, and to normalize the situation. Otherwise, it’s just not something that I think about to bring up.

    Similarly to a few others in the comments, I also plan to never have children. I get tired of being told that I will change my mind, as well. Fortunately, immediate family has never told me anything of the sort. They were always supportive whatever my thoughts on the issue.

77. Sei, that last paragraph is beautifully written. What you’re tapping into is the way many people believe, above all other things, that women cannot be trusted with their own reproductive decisions, and that reproductive decisions are always the job of the patriarchy.

78. I’ve had a couple of pregnancy scares and they’ve always been so scary because of my age (fourteen and twenty); when I was fourteen I had no money for a test and didn’t know you could get them from the clinic, therefore had to ask the school nurse – her slut-shaming technique was down to a tee; the most recent one was about a million times more scary though because I realised exactly what it was I was dealing with here. I discussed things with the potential father, who was still throwing a little tantrum over the fact I’d split up with him and promptly decided that it was probably someone elses anyway because I probably couldn’t keep my legs shut therefore he was exempt from offering me any type of support throughout the pregnancy or abortion. I posited keeping the baby; he said good luck getting a DNA test. It really, really sucked; I didn’t want to have an abortion because I was all wrapped up in super guilty-feelings about having a miscarriage the year before – no scare there because I didn’t know I was pregnant til I wasn’t. Having said that, I’d just started college, I’m long-term mentally ill with a couple of physical ‘quirks’ thrown in for good measure, no money and my mother made it clear abortion was the *only* option. And so I drank, because I was so scared all the time at all these huge decisions I was totally not equipped to make right then, and I ended up having a miscarriage again which was ironically probably the best thing that could have happened. I’m told!
    I think there’s lots and lots of reasons why you’d be scared, but mostly it’s a loss of control. Suddenly your body has this whole invader-thing going on.

79. I think it’s the thought of being irresponsible. I recognize that authentic mistakes happen, and that’s OK… But if birth control is used correctly, the chances you have of getting pregnant are very, very rare.

    That’s just a fact.

80. Pregnancy is legitimately scary, even for people with no medical problems.

    For me, it’s horrifying. My medications are not approved for pregnancy at all and who know what they might do to a fetus. I also can’t just go off them, becuase doing that is basically a death sentence.

    So damn right if I thought I was pregnant I’d be scared.

81. I’m asexual and my method of birth control is keeping penises out of my body. I know some asexuals will have sex even if they aren’t interested (for the sake of the other person), but pregnancy is so horrifying to me that I simply could never allow that. If that means no boyfriends … oh well. .00005% is too much for me.

    My mom has always told me that only stupid people get pregnant on bc, so I understand why someone who has a scare might not want to tell anyone. I would hope my friends would tell me (I’m a good listener and a good dispenser of rational advice), but I would totally understand if they didn’t.

82. My fear is that the wait to get an abortion in the last city I lived in was 6 weeks (recently moved, not sure about here). My anxiety and depression get out of control before and during my period, sometimes to the point of being totally non-functional. I can only imagine what six weeks of crazy pregnancy hormones would be like (and maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as my pms, but I don’t have six weeks to gamble on that).

83. @lauredhel: me too.

    All pregnancy “not being scary” presumes a theoretical “normal” and “natural” body. In reality there are lots and lots of exceptions to this. Back issues. Internal organ issues. Medication issues. Autoimmune conditions. Complications from D&Cs caused by endometriosis and/or Asherman’s Syndrome… Women who could die if they carry to term. Or a history of recurrent miscarriages that means carrying a pregnancy to term is going to feel like weaving through a minefield.

    Some women happen to experience pregnancy as something very simple. Which is great! Just don’t use that experience to look down on other women by implying that all their valid medical concerns are just patriarchal artifacts.

84. @atlasien

    “Some women happen to experience pregnancy as something very simple. Which is great! Just don’t use that experience to look down on other women by implying that all their valid medical concerns are just patriarchal artifacts.”

    Yes, this! many women have very real concerns. Even beyond medical concerns, so people just don’t have to money for child, even if they may want one in the future, which hey, they might not.

85. The fear of talking openly about suspected pregnancy applies to all women who might find themselves in that position. You Will Be Judged! No matter what- baby, no baby, married, single- if you are a woman you’re entire life is subject to someone’s opinion. No wonder people don’t want to talk about it, who can stand all that scrutiny? The only things women are allowed to discuss openly with out fear of reprisal is: nothing! The food you eat, where you live, what you do, all of it is fodder for the woman hating that our society loves to engage in. You can never, ever win.

    I’m married, happily for 11 years, with one kid. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked about why I’ve got only one. The answer is because one is too many. Why have more? But this is the point, even your decision to have or not have children is a talking point if you’re a woman. Like our wombs are public property? No one has ever asked my husband if he plans on having more. Because he’s a man, and men don’t ever want kids, and therefore he is entitled to his privacy on what he does with his sexual reproductive organ. What a luxury!

86. I think though, that medical conditions making pregnancy “abnormally” unsafe (as if they’re ever completely safe) are exacerbated by patriarchy and our voices that, yes there is a problem, we need it fixed now, get this thing out of here, are ignored and thought to be just women being hysterical. I think absent any cultural patriarchy, medical issues would be just that, medical issues, with medical fixes, and with assurance that you *would* have access to those medical fixes, instead of people assuming you were lying.

    So absent misogyny, there will still be medical issues impacting pregnancy, but they would be *ONLY* medical issues, and the decision and control in responding to them would rest entirely in the woman’s court. (Of course in the stupid US healthcare system we not only have to absent misogyny, but also the cruel poor-deserve-to-die-without-care meme.)

87. jemand: You know not everything can just be “fixed”, right? And that some of the problems and “fixes” can be found intrinsically scary by some women?

    So yes, I am pissed off that some people seem to be erasing women’s experience here, specifically the experience of women with disabilities, in favour of instructing us that our fear is all due to the patriarchy, dear.

    I am not going to go into my private medical details here, but suffice it to say that it’s nowhere near as simple as “Pregnant? Abort! Mischief managed!”

88. Lauredhel, you know that your personal unique challenges don’t actually serve as a counterpoint to the larger discussion, right? Which is that only in a patriarchy could women fear being pregnant. Not fear the biological process of it or the consequences or anything like that, but the simple fact that your sociology changes in drastic ways to the extent that women know not to talk about pregnancy scares in the same way they don’t talk about rape or abortion. Your own quirks, unsurprisingly, are not that important and shouldn’t be given the same weight as, say, Seriousfluffy’s experience or my experiences or Jemand’s larger point.

    I dunno, you seem really irritated that we’re not falling all over ourselves for not paying you special unique attention to your special unique problem so here it is. Outliers do not change the average experience.

89. RachelII, that’s fucking bullshit, and astonishingly ableist crap to boot. I was specifically responding to a quote – and YOU QUOTED IT – that said

    ” the only time pregnancy can be scary is in a patriarchy where women are hated.”

    “ONLY”. “ONLY”. Which is disprovable by a _single_ example.

    Got it yet? For fuck’s sake.

    My “personal unique challenges”? “Shouldn’t be given the same weight” as one other person’s experience? A disability is a “quirk”? And “not that important”? Compared to the “average”?

    Fuck, before I was a bit irritated, now I’m ropeable.

90. Rachel II, I was actually going to stick up for your original comment because I saw it more as a general “look at how many of these things go back to the patriarchy” sort of generalization, but I’ll go ahead and admit I was wrong, straight up.

    Your latest comment is just unacceptable. For starters, it’s just plain incorrect given the number of people on this thread alone who have expressed just how much of their fear relates back to their bodies and health. Second, it’s completely patronizing, hurtful, and, as lauredhel said, ableist.

    If you comment again, please know that attitude will not be accepted.

91. Wow really. Disabled women are so vanishingly rare that our experiences and needs don’t have to be considered at all in discussions of pregnancy. Or anything else. Outliers that we are.

    That’s so far from comforting. Does seem familiar though. Thanks again mainstream feminism! You keep on concentrating on that so-key core group.

92. kaninchenzero: Sometimes I think it’s not that often that someone is completely happy to say out loud “Stay marginalised where you belong, uppity crip freak!”

    But then real life disappoints, over and over.

93. “I dunno, you seem really irritated that we’re not falling all over ourselves for not paying you special unique attention to your special unique problem so here it is. Outliers do not change the average experience.”

    That is the most unnecessarily snarky comment I’ve seen for a while and definitely an extremely offensive one. Lauredhel is not the only woman in the world with ‘quirks’ which make pregnancy a physical or psychological risk. To erase all of those women IS ableist and people should be called out on that. It’s true that for many women, their pregnancy-and-abortion related fears stem from patriarchal control of women’s bodies, like slut-shaming. But those reasons are not suddenly more valid simply because they are more common. Without patriarchy there would still be physical and neurological differences between people, there would still be psychiatric illnesses, there would still be disability, there would no doubt still be poverty. And without patriarchy, contraception would still be imperfect and abortion would still carry certain risks. Pregnancy and birth related illnesses and injuries (postpartum psychosis, pelvic instability, perineal tearing, placental embolism, eclampsia and mastitis et. al) would still exist (though presumably – hopefully – be better treated) and some of these are fatal.
    I don’t have any ‘quirks’ that make pregnancy or birth dangerous but I still find it extremely offensive that you could erase all these very tangible problems which apply to a wide range of women, particularly those with disabilities or certain illnesses, on the grounds that they are not as ‘important’ as the ‘average.’

94. Unless my friends and I are completely weird, when we discuss pregnancy “scares” and “fears”, we are most definitely not referring to the biological aspect of abortion/birth and the assorted surgeries/pains/cost. Those would likely exist outside of a patriarchy and thus, are not terribly insightful when trying to figure out what it is about pregnancy that scares those of us who are not scared of the pain/cost.

    When crisis pregnancy centers put a pregnant teenager on a billboard that says “Pregnant? Scared? Call us”, they are not asking if they have episiotemy concerns. I’ve called quite a few in my day pretending to be a teenager scared about pain and they all blew me off once they established I was not aborting.

    Maybe a better word for this type of fear is “apprehension”. You know it’ll hurt and be scary but through it is the only way through it.

    And yes, I still maintain that an extreme fear of pregnancy that crosses over into phobia is not representative of the usual apprehension. You know how I know that? Because the word “extreme” forbids you from being part of the majority. You’re an outlier and you’ll need special attention whether in a patriarchy or not.

    Oh, and I’m really okay with being ableist.

95. Meant to add: I’m okay with being labeled an ableist because feminist comment threads are highly reactionary and throw out insults way too frequently to be taken seriously. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but disability issues are not my area of expertise and I don’t have enough time or desire to brush up on them so I’m not going to disavow a label that someone with more experience in that area puts on me.

96. Hmmm, that’ll look really odd until my first comment gets out of moderation.

97. “Hmmm, that’ll look really odd until my first comment gets out of moderation.”

    Not really, Rachel II: It’s entirely congruous with the rest of your bigoted remarks.

98. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so blatantly state their utter lack of empathy before. Impressive.

99. That’s an optimistic outlook. “Until.”

100. Meant to add: I’m okay with being labeled an ableist because feminist comment threads are highly reactionary and throw out insults way too frequently to be taken seriously. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but disability issues are not my area of expertise and I don’t have enough time or desire to brush up on them so I’m not going to disavow a label that someone with more experience in that area puts on me.

     So… is this a valid defense for misogynists too? That “feminist issues are not my area of expertise and I don’t have enough time or desire to brush up on them“?

101. Oh my god I’m so fed up with the over-emotional, nice-y, nice-y of the feminist blogosphere. No, Shiyiya, I don’t have “empathy” for strangers on the internet. Maybe I should take that as a sign that I’m just a mean person, but again, I’m not terribly concerned about strangers on the internet and my real life relationships imply that I’m not that hard to get along with.

     I assume that most people are just nitpicking for the same reasons I leave the occasional comments: boredom and procrastination. That’s fine and all on an individual basis, but taken as a group it’s just really petty and hard to take the entire community seriously.

     As I said, I’ve lost my taste for feminist comment threads and I’m not going to read/respond to this thread (or others).

102. The idea of getting pregnant again is scary for me for two reasons:

     I love babies. I genuinely LURVE babies and small children and thein they’re just fantastic to be around and learn with and be cool with, but:

     1) I’ve had one and I don’t know if I want to do it again. I love the little guy I’ve got, but I’m not great with being a caretaker of an infant 24/7. While it wouldn’t necessarily be an unhappy event if I were to get pregnant again, I don’t know how I’d handle the powerlessness that goes with body and mind while also being the primary caretaker of one and the primary earner for the family.

     And 2) Because I nearly died the first time thanks to forces on my body that I didn’t know existed until I was deep into pregnancy, and which I have been informed are highly likely should I try to carry a pregnancy to term again.

     Rachel II, I get what you’re trying to say here about patriarchal forces over women’s bodies in general and pregnancy in particular, but I think your view is insular and exclusive for those of us who have very tangible risks with pregnancy. I think the medicalization of pregnancy has been a blessing in that less people experience major trauma through pregnancy and childbirth, while at the same time the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth has disappeared the many complications involved with the reproductive process. Your reductive view erases the many women whose various disabilities — which range from the visible to invisible, the incredibly socially and physically serious to the marginally socially and physically serious — make pregnancy and childbirth a much more inclusive issue than “Baby Or No Baby?” Acting like all women are the same except for these hateful “outliers” is misogynist and ableist and unwelcome on this website.

103. As a woman who had a relatively ‘normal’ pregnancy that she planned for and wanted – it is fucking terrifying. Beyond the career concerns, the pain, the death, the minor annoyances, I brought another human being into the world. I am responsible for her. That is a scary thing, a huge thing. Pregnancy scares have that, on top of everything else with the added pressure of ‘but I’m not ready, this isn’t planned’.

     To assume that all fear about pregnancy is either to do with the desire not to have children, the fear of pain or the fear of hospitals trivialises the whole process. To assume that fear of pregnancy and birth having ill effects, including death, is a outlier and non warranted as well as ignoring the psycho-social effects? Points to a real blindness of view when it comes to the reality of life for many many women.

104. *is amused to learn her PTSD, bipolar and anxiety are nothing more than quirks

     I think, yes, you and your friends are extremely weird. You talk about abortion and birthing totally without the biological aspect? Always? How do you distance yourself from that? They’re kinda.. inevitable.

105. “I dunno, you seem really irritated that we’re not falling all over ourselves for not paying you special unique attention to your special unique problem so here it is. Outliers do not change the average experience.”

     Since I should be worried about post-partum, I guess I’ll go hang out in the Outlier Freak section with Lauredhel & Co. *high five*

106. Woohoo, for us freaks!

     Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t around 20% of the US population disabled? I know not all all of those people are women who can get pregnant, but that see like an awful lot of people’s concerns that are getting dismissed.

     I’m glad to know I can pick and choose what social justices I want to care about and I can pretend to know more about other people’s lives than they do.

107. Just an FYI that I’ve gone ahead and banned Rachel II. Sorry to everyone who had to deal with those comments while I was gone.

     Rachel II, I’m not sure why you wanted to comment if it wasn’t from a place of empathy (or at the very least respect), particularly if you don’t like feminist comment threads. *shrug*

108. Oh, and I’m really okay with being ableist.

     Why is this person not banned? She saved you the trouble of making it obvious that she is. Clearly she has no problems being a bigoted shit, so I don’t see why Feministe should bother to continue allowing her viewpoints an airing, given that it’s rather about not being a bigoted shit in the first place.

109. Errr, nevermind. *cough.*

     Thanks frau sally.

110. FWIW:

     I think pregnancy WOULDN’T be so scary if it were not for a misogynistic power system in this world… AND for an ableist power system.

     Eliminate the first, you’re still left with the other…

     Which makes sure that support and affirmation is NOT available for women who face physiological and psychological “quirks” (snort) during pregnancy, because it can’t be bothered to provide that support for people with those “quirks” even when they aren’t (or can’t be) pregnant.

     If ableism was eliminated? There would still be some degree of scariness to pregnancy. But it would not have to be a fucking given like it is now, that if you do not have a picture-perfect pregnancy the whole nine months and birthing process, that your ass will be kicked to the curb by the rest of society and you’re going to be left without any meaningful support for these changes your body is going through and the dangerous things about them.

     Pregnant women who experience complications (physiological, pschological and both)? Welcome to the world of disability: once you gain that “difference,” to where you do not fit in the abled framework anymore, you suddenly cease to be important, and nobody is going to bother to offer you meaningful help! So you’re left to deal with uncomfortable, frightening, dangerous or even potentially fatal changes to your body/mind, and the rest of the world basically tells you “Well, we can’t do anything to help you now! Have fun over there!”

     If we actually cared about eliminating ableism, guess what? We WOULD care because we would know we CAN do something for many, many cases; we can make sure appropriate medical care is available, that the person pregnant is appropriately informed about hir condition and the options available, that it isn’t about “well, gotta get you ‘normal’ again — but if we can’t, we give up on you” but about bringing you to a better place for *you* — we would ensure that the outer world is accessible to you, that people are willing to pitch in to make things just as available to you as to them —

     we would realize that “OMG Baby won’t be the perfect little white angel with absolutely no biological differences oh no!” is not a fucking tragedy and therefore it IS appropriate for the person pregnant to have hir conditions properly treated, rather than the automatic decision that any risk of “defect,” any risk no matter how slight, means that you cannot pursue that treatment period because your health just doesn’t effin’ matter when it comes to quasi-eugenicist priorities (all babies must be perfect superhumans! no defects, no matter the cost!)

     and so forth.

     Now, eliminating ableism does NOT mean that pain, discomfort, damage, and danger are therefore also gone. This isn’t a fantasy world. This is a world we CAN have. And there will still be illnesses and conditions that change the way your body/mind works/is arranged/shaped/whatever, and if ableism is eliminated most of those aren’t going to be such a Big Huge Fucking Deal anymore, but some of them are still just not going to be Happy Fun Times either. Especially when they can kill you.

     But if ableism were eliminated, pregnancy would not be an automatic sentence to those conditions with a considerable risk that they CAN kill you. We would not automatically expect to experience things that are unpleasant and dangerous. And things that should remain in the “unpleasant” realm would no longer sentence you to move into the “could kill me” realm because society withdraws all support from you the minute you cross that “fully abled” line.

     This is all kind of scattered, but I wanted to make sure to throw this out there too. Because pregnancy SHOULDN’T be automatically scary. It always will be partly scary — but it doesn’t have to be as scary as it is now — and it is that way, not just because of patriarchy, but because of ableism.

111. It’s understandable that any woman would have fears about pregnancy. Things can go wrong. But, I took this article to be about why women don’t want to talk about it. For example, I never talked about it because my feelings about my pregnancy didn’t directly correspond to what everyone thought I should be feeling and projected onto me. I didn’t want to be judged on top of any natural fears I already had and on top of that fact that I was unmarried and poor. There’s nothing the patriarchy loves more than to condemn a pregnant women who does not meet certain approved criteria.

112. Because I’m somewhat older (cough) than many of the people here, plus I’m not from the US, I’m from a culture that draws somewhat of a line between the personal and the public. We don’t go around discussing our miscarriages, surgery, medications, haemorrhoids or whatever quite as freely as Americans! I think the fact that sharing everything is seen as the norm is really quite a recent cultural development.

     Sure, there’s a shame element in there, but my colleague in the next desk doesn’t share his intimate health and medical details either, thank the FSM.

113. That came out wrong – by “shame element” I meant “fear-of-being shamed-by-others element”.

114. Sure, there’s a shame element in there, but my colleague in the next desk doesn’t share his intimate health and medical details either, thank the FSM.

     Wouldn’t want to be forced to deal with the fact that people who are not perfect Adonis pictures of health exist. It’s much easier when you are protected from ever having to acknowledge that vulnerability is what defines humanity.

115. [note: I think I’m talking far less about disability per se now, and more about general medical goings-on that everyone has from time to time.]

     amandaw (re Helen): I think it’s a bit more complicated and contextual than that. To me, seeing a co-worker take regular medication, for example, or say that they’re off for medical leave, would be very different from being regaled by, say, an unsolicited detailed description of their haemorrhoid operation aftermath or their erectile dysfunction treatment. I got the impression Helen was talking more about the latter than the former, though it’s not completely clear.

     Maybe it’s that the difference between co-workers and friends is quite a big one here, and that not everyone is comfortable with them being collapsed. I think women, in particular, may be at greater risk when workplace conversations cross all sorts of social-distancing etiquette lines; not only are women then expected to listen to stuff that can be wielded in certain ways, but in an – hm – “over-sharing”? – environment, they can also be expected to submit to intrusive questioning about their bodies, reproductive choices, etc. There are very good reasons that sort of questioning by employers has been made illegal here.

     Which is not to say that there is no situation where talking about erectile dysfunction treatment or haemorrhoid surgery or reproductive choices or any other medical issues is socially appropriate! This specific situation, with co-workers and bosses, is I think a rather more complicated one, in our current society. (I can imagine an ideal one where it might be far less so, but we’re not there.)

     I don’t know. I mean, I’m actually working pretty hard uphill to _add_ that social distancing to my extended-family interactions, where I am sick to fucking death of being constantly assessed and questioned and cure-suggested and having family members getting all up in each other’s business. So I’m coming from a personal place where I’m looking for a little more medical distance in some of my relationships, and where that wish for distance isn’t limited to the workplace, so that’s probably inflecting my reaction.

116. I was all about not sharing “personal” things until I began working so many hours that I couldn’t help but do so. Yeah, I have to tell people I had H1N1 or am getting a D&C for a miscarriage when they only excuse for missing work is a serious medical problem because we’re oh-so-busy.

     For the record, my D&C fucking hurt. And when I got pregnant (accidentally) the first thought in my head was “holy fuck I’m pregnant” which I then googled, and discovered a really cool blog.

     A lot of women don’t talk about it though–I remember being in a college bio. class and there were these test strips from Genetically Modified Corn that had a line form on them, and I said “just like a pregnancy test” and it was only me and some labmates who I was friendly with, like three or four, and we were all women, and they all had this politely horrified look on their faces. Umm, oops.

117. so, I think this is the problem. In the current social environment there are two things going on.

     1) no, we don’t want to hear about medical issues. ICK, EEEK.

     2) you want accommodations? Prove you aren’t faking, faker!

     It is *impossible* to thread both of those. It’s a situation that is just contradictory for anyone who needs *any* sort of accommodations or who doesn’t fit the “default” human “ideal.”

     If we trusted that people asking for accommodations really needed them, it wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal to ask that medical discussions be kept private, and not be big public disclosures at work, or to other acquaintances. But as much as I don’t want to hear about your hemorrhoid operation… I do recognize the societal assumptions at play, and setting any social “rule” on the topics not allowed is just going to be hopelessly ablist.

118. Another possible reason is the fear that word of the “scare” could get back to the potential father. The whole idea of a “pregnancy scare” is the idea of not really being sure yet. A few days after a missed period, most women will find a way to take a pregnancy test, and then the “scare” is either averted or confirmed. If you weren’t intending to get pregnant, it might take longer than a few days to adjust to the idea that you might be, and I totally understand not necessarily wanting the father to know about the situation until you have an idea how you feel about it yourself. (Again, we’re talking about a window of a few days here, not weeks or months.)

     Plus, if you’re in a monogamous relationship, there’s always the possibility that “OH CRAP A BABY” could cause the man to be out the door. And if you’re not in a relationship or not monogamous, there’s the question of who the father actually IS, and…well…these are all complications that people generally try to avoid until they’re sure that the baby in question actually exists.

119. A baby scare is this moment where my life I was living dies. This experience of being pregnant axe-murdered the person I was going to be. Or so I felt at the time. My choices boil down to either birth or abortion, and those choices are not part of me or my life I wanted to live.

     My scare honestly felt like the person I was died at that moment, but—fake out!!–I was fine all along! A little shaken, a little bruised, but not dead, like an action hero at the end of a movie.

120. I have just read this blog and all 120 comments. Wow. Except for the bizarre tangential threads here and there this is an extraordinary bunch of people. The blogger rocks and the readers rock just as hard.

     I’ve enjoyed the relative safety of my middle class feminist friends for so many years that sometimes I have to slap myself back into reality….trying to remember those early 20’s when these issues were, truly, terrifying. And Patriarchy is frakking responsible no matter how I look at it. Patriarchy first. Second it is our decisions to remain silent, or let the fear guide our decisions on what to share. Its personal, and I sure as hell don’t know what is right for everyone. But for me its usually right to blurt out the truth and deal with the consequences. I always feel that when women tell the truth, they empower women. When humans tell the truth!

     But sometimes your life, your story, your moment dictates otherwise and the truth may be that the fear is real. These are personal choices. I look forward to the day when that is all the baggage there is…..just a personal choice without the threat of a dozen stigmas.

121. You want something even stranger? Pregnancy scares among virgins. No, I’m not kidding, so here’s a bit of explanation:

     I grew up in a church that advocated ‘no sex before marriage’ and even outside of my church friends, I tended to hang around with kids who said they were going to ‘wait for the right person’ or ‘wait until I’m legal’ before having sex. We all knew enough of the basics of sex, pregnancy, and contraception to know what was and wasn’t possible.

     Regardless of this, even if they had never had sex before, girls would still occasionally panic about a possible pregnancy if their periods were more than a couple days late (and they weren’t used to any irregularities). Although they’d never had sex, they were still panicking that maybe someone slipped them a roofie and raped them (although they couldn’t remember blacking out), maybe they were the one person in the world to ‘beat the odds’ and really get pregnant from a toilet seat, or whatever, even though they knew such scenarios shouldn’t have been possible.

     Why were they so terrified? Perhaps some of it had to do with slut-shaming, especially in the ultra-conservative environment. I think a lot of it was fear of being raped, since the time I had an STI scare (although it was four years after I’d probably been roofied, but I wasn’t raped as far as I figured out) my first thing was a panicked thought of “How did this happen if I can’t remember having sex?!?!” and my second thought was what would happen if I went to the local Planned Parenthood for tests/treatments and, say, someone from my parents’ church was protesting there and recognised me. Also, there’s the fear, especially among this specific group of teenagers, that if they have a baby they’ll be stuck at home, unable to complete their education, and no man would want to marry a woman with a kid. Granted, when you’re 14-17 (these scares seemed to happen less frequently as girls learned that their period will be late/missing occasionally for no reason at all) having a child is going to be a lot more physically stressful and socially disruptive than it would be for an adult with a stable job and income.

122. @Freya, that bring back memories! All my pregnancy scares occurred before I had sex. First one was when I was about 8, and had confused orgasm with what gets you pregnant. I wouldn’t even get a period for many years yet!

123. Adding, I also thing that in a conservative context as you describe, some of these adolescent pregnancy scares among virgins are a terror of the future they see prescribed for them… get married young, stay home, raise kids.

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