War, What Is It Good For?

So my little health calamity is over now, except for the lab results. I will wait for the fat lady to sing on that one, though Dr. Madre thinks I have nothing to worry about. What makes him so sure at this stage in the game, I have no idea.

But with all of the appointments I have had, and then all the trips back to the office since the blahblahblah procedure because in the course of healing, things sprang a leak or two at a couple of really inconvenient times, I have been thinking a lot about women's health. Or shall I say Women's Health, since it is now the focus of national attention and a political agenda item, everyone presumably trying to project an image of competency about something since the economy and the price of gas are clearly beyond anyone's ability to even make an educated guess at this point.

When did this election become a war on women? With the housing market still in the hopper, and the price of gas hopping, skipping and jumping back toward $4 with the intent to maybe leapfrog over it to $5, and the job market still not recovering with anything that would inspire anyone to be confidently dusting off their resume, why are we focused on something that for many of us isn't broken at all?

Roe v. Wade is on the books and will hopefully stay there. I am not a fan of abortion. Would not want one, would be ethically challenged to have one, and would suffer much if I elected to have one. I would not, however, want to be deprived of the right to elect to have one.

I have two kids. Had my husband not gone completely off the deep end, I may have stayed married long enough to have 4 kids, though thank God I chose to offload the lead shoes of marriage to a psycho before adding to the headcount under our roof.

When I became pregnant with Hil, and Pat was a mere four months old, I had somehow in the interim managed to cross the magic invisible line into Advanced Maternal Age. Which in OB/GYN-speak is the magic age when the benefits of all the risky tests are offset by all the risks you have inadvertently subjected your child to by daring to conceive as an old hag of 35 years. The things I managed to avoid with Pat were now being suggested, like an amniocentesis. Lucky me.

Lars' sister-in-law, a former Labor and Delivery Nurse and mother of two, both at Advanced Maternal Age, helped calm me for the procedure itself. She told me that the anticipation and thoughts of a really long needle piercing your enormous belly and going dangerously near your precious unborn child was really way more horrifying than the actual experience itself. I would surely angst myself into a frenzy, but I'd be surprised how simple and painless it was.

One worry down, one to go.

Having the test would mean a decision, perhaps. And that is where I'd struggle. What does the test diagnose, and what do all of those diagnoses mean to me and my child? And frankly, for the child I already have at home who needs my time and devotion and attention and doting? If I have a child who may not live to his or her first birthday, what will that mean in our house? If this child will suffer horribly and not leave the hospital for a year, or never be detached from machines at home, what impact will that have on Pat's young life? How accurate are these tests? And for me, how disabled is too disabled? I don't know if I can make a decision.

The morning of the test, the doctor, newly engaged and having participated in Pat's delivery the prior year, is as warm and sweet as you'd hope under the circumstances. But she is a physician and she wants to know that if I have this test and the results are devastating, that I am prepared to make a decision. And I am not.

I have a word with her alone. I ask her about the test itself. What things it will reveal. What kind of decisions I'll be faced with. She assures me, in no uncertain terms, that the test diagnoses a bunch of things, all of which are severe, and all of which are accompanied by profound retardation.

My decision is made. I can do this. Life is hard enough without known setbacks. A deformity I can work with. I will not bring a child into this world to be forever dependent; to never thrive. To suffer and half live a very short life.

And though I was relieved beyond words to learn weeks later that everything with my baby would be just fine, and that there were no little nicks or scrapes on chromosomes or anything, I was also relieved to know that if the results had been different, I could have made a choice.

It would not have been a joyful one. It would not have been one I'd talk about at Book Club or at work in the staff cafeteria. It would have been intensely personal and sad and haunting, but one I would have believed and would continue to believe was in the best interest of my children, the born and the unborn.

And that is why Roe v. Wade remains something I'll defend. Because it would be for any woman, an intensely personal and ethical and moral decision to have or not to have an abortion, under any circumstances that might inspire one to make a choice. But it would and should be her decision. I don't believe that God is mean (as Charlotte is quick to remind me). So I don't think He intended for some law maker to look into the eyes of an eleven year old who was raped by her twice convicted of armed robbery uncle and became pregnant, that she must carry that unborn, unwanted child because abortion is wrong. Lots of things are wrong in such a case, and any outcome is adding to the list of wrongs for that eleven year old girl. Let her have a say in which outcome feels less horrifying to her. It's the right thing to do.

And now, not only are we peeling back the plastic on that decision, we are questioning the very birth control that would prevent the decision in the first place. And women in the workplace, and a whole slew of other advances up the ladder of equality that women have achieved.

And these people want to get elected?