>I'm avoiding posting further to this entire thread, but thank you
>Yoshie. As a worker bee, a prole, on the front lines of the women's
>health, sexuality, and sex worker health wars, thank you. I'm busting my
>ass to get into a nurse practitioner/midwife program so's I can get higher
>up in the pecking order to have more clout to agitate for just these
>things and to provide the actual services myself (a line worker = prole =
>staff RN can't do this, you can if you're a NP, CNM or MD).
Well, the thanks go to you. I had an abortion in January. Wasn't exactly pleased about that and, really, in my dotage, I'm just fucking fertile godamned myrtle.
I guess I'm just a horrible person, but I didn't feel the slightest bit of anguish over anything but the fact that I DO want children with R but, uh, with both of unemployed and hoping to move out of this state, it wasn't exactly the best time, was it?
I had an abortion and I'm damn proud that I did. I can safely say that it was a wonderful experience, with terrific women who I'd like to be friends with. We talked about my underwear. The woman who did the intake counseling that day came in to say hi and she chatted with the nurse who'd taken my blood samples and other tests. She was asking about her new beau and if she he was "doable". I sat there in a haze of Nitrous smirking, waiting for the other woman to stop blushing. Still blushing, she told us just how doable he was, where they'd had dinner, what they planned to do the next date, and some concerns she had a bout it. When the intake nurse left, we somehow got on the topic of death, and god, and taking care of our loved ones when they were preparing to die from a long-term illness. Death. God. She talked about faith and how she knew god was in the room when her mother passed.
She asked if i thought I'd like to stand up now. I smiled and thought how nice it would be if everyone who believed in god could be an abortion doctor's NA.
I haven't been a lot of doctor's offices, so I guess I can't compare, but ti was far better than the way the women treated me when I had to have a broken tooth repaired last August. It was better than most of the reception I rec'd at the hospital when sonshine was in his accident.
With the exception of one day orderly, who shared with me thoughts about the war and god and working hard to get out of her hole. And with the exception of the night orderly who hung out in our room, let me have my "other daughter" in the room overnight, and talked cars and girls with sonshine for a couple of hours. He flipped through the mags and tried to make me laugh with his jokes and totally cheered up sonshine. He talked about his wife, and his kid, and what he hoped for him -- to be a ball player. He got all dad like with sonshine and marveled at all my kids -- the other sons and daughters who all call me ma. He thought I musta started pumping out kids when I was twelve and maybe was into some sort of race tourism or something given the array of skin pigments in the room. We wrote him a thank you later, sent special note to the hospital, sent him a card, and went to see his little one play ball -- coz it turns out he lived near the old 'hood.
It was like that with the women at the gyn-ob office, too. I sat there in the nitrous haze, one woman asking me about the business we were starting, and trying to formulate a coherent answer. All the while I'm thinking, you know, this is just beautiful. Dennis P and Gary? would be wagging their fingers at us for not caring about the fact that we just offed an undead baby.
But, this wasn't morbid nursing/doctor humor, to cover up the anguish of death. This was four women who believed that what they were doing was the right thing and nothing to be ashamed of. The room wasn't filled with the scent of vigiliant martyrdom, of people hellbent on making a political statement about feminism and women's rights. It was a room that smelled of women who just were: this is what we do. We choose to give birth or not and we talk about our underwear, doable men, the latest forms of birth control, whether we like our jobs, the weather, and if the ex was every really any good in bed and why did we put up with it for so long.
It was a room of women -- the Women's Room -- where life was, well, it was a great life, with great women, laughter, grimaces, tenderness, hugs, warmth, grumpies, gripes, and smiles.
So, they sent me on my way. Somehow it came out that I was in a somewhat challenged financial state, the woman who liked my boy panties, stuffed a bag full of maxipads, condoms, soaps, condoms, and all manner of doctor's office givewaays -- so much that the bag was overflowing and ripped, the contents spilling to the floor.
As she picked it up -- I was still kind of woozy and not quite capable of keeping my balance enough to help -- I thought, what did I do to deserve this? Do I look like a total charity case that I need free maxipads and chuks? How could my attempts at smiling under the effects of the nitrous and my garbled mumblings have indicated anything particularly special? I'd been up all night the night before, working on that damn Web site, Maybe I just looked like death warmed over.
And then I thought, you know, there was nothing special about me at all. I hadn't done anything to deserve this. They were simply beautiful women. A room full of beautiful women. Beautiful women who had abortions and helped other women have them. Beautiful women who escorted me back to the loving arms of R who commented on how obvious it was that we loved each other from watching us in the waiting room.
Hugs all around before I left and a warm bright smile to the next woman, accompanied by her mother. I'd watched her in the waiting room. She had tears in her eyes the whole time as she filled out all the paperwork they occupy you with while you're waiting. She must have been 15, wearing clothes designed to hide the growing tummy, all big and baggy and stopped over she was, ashamed, afraid, embarassed. A mother beside her who clearly seemed troubled but my guess, only because she'd been here herself, twenty years before, but still lived under the vestiges of a Latino culture where women must be ashamed, whoring themselves to the outstretched, judgmental finger of a wrathful christain god.
Four beautiful women. Hugging. Smiling. Talking about 'doable' men and black lace boy panties. I'm glad that maybe that young girl saw four beautiful women smiling and hugging and talking about underwear, not bowing their heads in shame.
Kelley
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling