Tag: abortion

“Why aren’t you crying? I mean, are you even upset? Do you understand what this means?”

This was the start of the argument Hawthorne and I had the night before they died. I had just told them that RBG had passed away, and they immediately became distraught. I was sitting on the edge of the bed where they were laying. I may have had to wake them up to tell them; I don’t remember anymore. 

I sat quietly. Yes, I was upset. Yes, I understood what it meant to lose RBG, a sitting liberal justice who had championed civil rights for everyone who was not an affluent, cishet, white man. 

I was also exhausted. It was Friday night, and I was balancing working full time, doing all the driving needed, and providing the majority of care for Lucy, who was just ten months old. I reminded Hawthorne, too, that I was not the type to get emotional right away. It would hit me later, I said. This did not satisfy my wife, who was absolutely distraught. 

“They’ll kill me,” they said. “There’s nothing to stop them now.” 

I thought back to election night 2016, how awful yet different it had been. Watching the results start to roll in, 1, 2% at a time, we had snacked and gotten slowly drunk on bourbon. It was before Lucy, before Oscar. We had recently lost Clark, Hawthorne’s father, and remarked about how in a lot of ways, we were glad that those who had gone before us weren’t here to see this. I figured my mom would have been making plans to move back to Poland; Clark, were he healthy, probably headed for Canada. It had already been ten years since we lost my dad. 

Hawthorne and I had felt a lot closer. We were standing on more equal ground; both of us working; school and family plans had yet to steal attention away from each other. We talked about how we were in the best place for this eventuality to happen; Vermont would not be taken over by Trumpers. Sold to Canada, perhaps, but that was OK. We joked that maybe we could ask them politely to annex us sooner.

We knew this was more than an election; this was a regime, with a long-range agenda and the weaponry and war chest to carry it out. Obama’s Supreme Court pick had already been stymied, and the court sat at 8. We knew Trump would cater to his base, after all, he had claimed to be Christian, and the evangelicals ate that shit up and asked for seconds. As long as he was getting the kind of attention the Republican party and lobbyists were willing to lavish on him, he’d do their bidding. That included seeding the courts with anti-choice judges, and cherry-picking the perfect “moderate” justices. 

Over the next few weeks, we heard (as many of our progressive, queer, trans, and myriad of “othered” friends did as well) that it would be okay. We were overreacting. The US government had checks and balances, Trump wouldn’t be king, after all. The courts and Congress would balance things out. 

Right. 

Now here we were, four years later. We had been through the wringer. Hawthorne had come out, changed their name, their pronouns, and their body to match and reveal their true self. It was a journey that even they weren’t sure where it would lead – though we had never dreamed it would be so abruptly interrupted. 

Hawthorne was scared of what would happen; Trump had already put Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench. Ginsberg’s breath had barely left her body before the Republicans turned a wild and greedy eye on the vacancy. Their strategy had worked, and their chance had come.

I knew Hawthorne was terrified, and I understood. We had so much to lose, so much that had been decided in just the past ten years that made our family possible, and safe – and even that felt tenuous. I was upset, but not scared yet. I didn’t have the energy to be scared. I was still processing the loss of life; death has affected me much differently since losing Oscar, and I couldn’t tear my thoughts away from Ginsberg herself to focus on what was so disturbing my wife. I could only take care of the baby, tidy up a little bit, and try to get Hawthorne to calm down enough to get some sleep. 

Hawthorne had put the message out on Facebook, needing to talk to someone who was similarly emotional; I watched as they stepped outside to pace the porch and smoke while I cleaned up the kitchen and took care of Lucy. I could hear their voice rise and break at times, the deeper timbre still relatively new. They spent an hour in the cool September night out there, talking to their cousin. When they came in, they demanded to know if I had even cried yet. I hadn’t.

They died before I shed a single tear for the Notorious RBG; after that, all my tears fell for them.  

In the days since the Supreme Court leak of Alito’s draft opinion, I have thought of that last night more often that I feel like I have since their death. I have been so angry; the kind of hot, pulsing anger I keep thinking I’m done with. I’ve had more memories surface this week, none of them happy. I understand that with the traumatic events that are happening in the world it’s only natural that it would stir the painful memories first. Still, I am frustrated that it feels like the best memories still lay beyond my reach. 

I cannot help but see beyond the potential fall of Roe v Wade, however. I see this as the first in a long series of dominoes that would put my humanity, the rights associated with that humanity, back in the hands of the state courts. And yes; I live in Massachusetts, have always lived in the Northeast, and have much less to fear than most. I would be safe; my family and local friends would be, too. 

I don’t want to go back to a time where we had to wonder if we were safe – if we would be considered married still, over state lines. If Hawthorne had ended up in the hospital somewhere out of state, how would they be treated? That was somewhat of a concern, even here in New England. Bigotry and hatred don’t care about state lines or laws; they just don’t man the political wheel where we have lived. 

If Roe falls, it is only a matter of time before marriage equality – as far back as Loving v. Virginia, I fear – are back up for debate. I am utterly incensed with the court’s apparent willingness to undermine the autonomy of half the country. In a country with some of the worst maternal health statistics in the developed world, they want to force more people into risking their lives in being pregnant and giving birth. 

There has been nothing in my life that has made me more pro-choice than my experiences with pregnancy and birth. I did not recognize how endangered my life was, when my blood pressure began to rise and rise. I did realize how uncomfortable and painful things could be; how my kidneys could start emitting blood and shards of calcification, how my gallbladder could fill will sludge, how my placenta could trick my body into changing insulin production. Being pregnant is a (at times hostile) takeover of one’s body and lifeforce in the creation of another, which may or may not be healthy enough, or lucky enough, to survive the ordeal. 

I have carried my two babies, not easily. Both pregnancies were celebrated, and both were difficult. One ended when my body turned on me even more, and Lucy had to be welcomed six weeks early. The other ended with an aberrant twist of the very cord that gave my baby his life. I delivered my son, already dead, at more than a week older than my daughter at her birth. 

I would never wish that on another. I would never wish pregnancy on someone who did not want it. And I would certainly never wish anyone to be forced to go through what I have. 

There is a march today, in cities all over the country. I was prepared to go, thinking of bringing my daughter, but ended up securing a babysitter since I simply do not have the energy to wrangle a toddler in the heat and press of bodies. Either way, the plans did not come to fruition; mission aborted, as it were. It’s a hard decision. There is a part of me that still wants to find a way to go – because I believe in activism, and this is a cause that calls for action. However, most of the reason I wanted to go specifically today, goes back to that night where I never cried for RBG. And while she played a role in the events leading to today, it is the memory of Hawthorne that makes me feel most like I should go. I have to remind myself (with the assistance of beautiful friends) that I do not have obligations to dead people. Not to RBG, not to Hawthorne. 

Maybe that seems cold and unfeeling. Maybe you don’t feel the same about doing things that “they would have wanted,” whoever “they” is for you. I promise you, there is a tumult of emotions every time I think about what Hawthorne “would have wanted.” That is a storm I am very familiar with, and will continue to go through. Yet I have come to a place in my life, as a person, as a mother and friend and widow and everything I am, where I am living this life for me. Not for RBG, not for Hawthorne, not even for Oscar. My life. My body. My choice. 

To everyone marching today – your reasons are your own, your journey is your own. I raise my glass (mmm coffee) to each and every one of you; know that I am with you in spirit if not in sneakers. To everyone Roe v. Wade has affected – my heart is with you today, as well. You always have a safe space with me. To everyone worried about what this will mean for them, now and in the future – I’m with you, too. 

And to anyone who wants to deny people their autonomy on the grounds of “morality,” politics, or religion; anyone who wants to roll back civil rights for folks who have had to fight for every inch of them; anyone who wants to bring back any measures of discrimination – let me make it absolutely clear that I am not with you. 

It’s a lovely May day, don’t you think?