Perspective on Pro-Life

If you are voting based ONLY on pro-life only...Don’t be a jackass. Vote for the person who actually gives a damn about people’s lives-about life, not just their birth. If you aren’t sure who that is- IT IS NOT TRUMP.

Now…a few statements on this piece-

One, there is profanity.

Two- if you are reading this and you are *pro-life-actually PRO LIFE, great. Thank you for being what that title entails. If you claim pro-life but only care about abortion rights, Your are NOT pro-life. You are ANTI-abortion. 

*Amendments made to the above based on some conversations with people who I think have solid opinions Pro-life can be much more than anti-abortion. There should technically be pro-life for those who are actually pro-life, not just pro birth. people who do care about what happens past a baby being born. Anti-abortion for the many who stop caring once a child is born. and pro-choice for those who believe in choice around abortion, and who deem life is valuable past birth. And hell, pro-abortion if we get into it, for those who are fine with abortion rights but again don’t care about a baby once they are or are not born.*

Now I am sure anti-abortion people, are going to stop reading, because no one could possibly have anything to say that is worth hearing about pro-choice. But I’m going to keep writing, so hey.

Three-I am not going to cover every possibility, every law, protection, right that each little thing could tie to- so just because I don’t mention them, doesn’t mean I am ignoring them.

……………………

For those of you who are anti-abortion, even those is the full pro-life camp. Good for you, that is your right. You don’t want to have an abortion? Awesome, fine by me. Don’t. I am 100% ok with you making that choice for yourself and your family.

But your values, beliefs, that this country allows you to have and freely express, aren’t everyones and should never be used to force anyone else to have laws placed upon them that restrict their own decisions about their body.

When we had Spencer, we had no idea he had any issues. That went out the window within an hour. 

We spent the next six weeks making decisions, almost hourly, around what we wanted Doctors to do, what we didn’t, treatments, tests, diagnosis, and so much more. You want to say I can't make a decision around my 6 week old fetus, but I can make a thousand decisions a day for my 6 week old.

Why?

Because at 6 weeks old, I at least let him be born? 

So now I can make all the decisions surrounding his care? 

 I made decisions on how far to push testing, do we continue testing, what do we want done if he stopped breathing? Did we want invasive measures taken, did we not? We had to sign documents stating what we did or did not want done in case something happened while we were not with him.

All of these decisions are ones we got to make, no questions asked. But you want to tell me I can’t make a decision around an unborn fetus? That what...I couldn’t possibly understand the gravity of my decisions? Or my decisions on a fetus impact that fetus more than the decisions I make for a 6 week old, impact that 6 week old? I call bullshit.

Do you know what it is like to watch your newborn be put into, essentially a full body air cast so they can transport him for testing off site? Or watch them hook 50 wires to his head to get brain scans?

How about having to sign off on your less than a month old baby being given a fucking spinal tap, that you have to leave the room for. No?!? Well aren’t you lucky. Because I know what all that is like, and I am the one who gave Doctors the go ahead to do it. More than once for a lot of the testing.

And you know what it felt like? It never felt hopeful, it never felt like I was being a good mom, it felt like I was forcing a square peg into a round hole, but that peg was my son and that round hole was any sort of liveable life. 

It felt fucking terrible.

A big argument in the anti-abortion world is the idea of regret. You will regret the decision, you will have to live with the decision. People who kept their kids saying they would have regretted having an abortion, like choosing path A instantly gives you all the insight into how path B would have made you feel.

Well- I felt regret. But not once around the decisions we made on my sons behalf to let him stop fighting. To let his clearly failing body rest and be at peace. No. That is not what I regret. I do not regret telling the doctors, enough was enough. Not once.

But I do regret, on a regular basis how long I forced him to fight. How hard I pushed his tiny body. How many tests and procedures I allowed him to endure. All I wanted was for him to be ok, and he was never going to be. I tell my son I am sorry often, not for letting him go, but for everything we put him through trying to get him to stay. We fought, and he fought harder battles than I ever thought possible for 6 short weeks.

Towards the end, they gave us more options. Options around end of life care, options around putting him on machines to breathe for him that they had no idea if he would ever come off of, options.

But once you have seen your child turn blue, a team rush around him and count seconds that seem like hours as they work to revive him. Those options aren’t real. Once you see a team revive your infant 12, 20, 25 times in the course of a few hours, there are no options, no decisions to be made. And yet, you are still given options. You are still asked to make decisions.

So tell me, how is it I am deemed capable enough to make those decisions? I am given time if I want it. But no one is making me listen to his heartbeat to make sure I understand my decisions. No one is making me sleep on them, or talk to five different doctors before I sign off on anything.

No. I held my son everyday for 6 weeks. I fed him, changed him, bathed him. I knew exactly what my decisions meant. I still made them.

People who are looking into abortions know what their decisions mean, they aren’t taking it lightly, they don’t think it is some easy thing to think about as carelessly as what shirt to wear to dinner. You might want to paint them in that light, because it makes it easy for you to spew your righteous crap. But, it simply isn’t the case.

If people can make all decisions around their children from the second they are born, they can make all decisions from the second they are conceived too. Full Stop. End of soapbox rant. Go be a good human.