We all know someone.
For me it was a girl in my dorm. We’d drifted apart, one of us at the theatre loading docks, the other in the gardens outside the lecture hall. But I held her hand afterwards. Brought her tea. She was scared.
I never thought it would be me. I made that decision early, no matter what. But I didn’t think I would ever be faced with it. Until I was.
My story is not painted with that scarlet brush. You know the one. The girl who couldn’t keep her legs closed, the woman with four kids by five different dads, the shame of a pregnancy resulting from being violated.
There was no shame. There was only fear.
Back it up, Liz.
I had this feeling long ago that I would be surprised one day. I waited for it, like a girl hoping the pumpkin will turn into a coach. I didn’t know it would come when I was 42 years into life. My decision was set before me with an unexpected pregnancy that had serious medical complications. It could have meant carrying an unviable fetus to term. It could have meant absolute complications to my own health.
It didn’t happen. The entirety of my story was a miracle. But I remember the hushed whisper about setting up an ultrasound appointment, “Tell them to fit you in. You don’t have a lot of time.”
The waiting period of that pregnancy, days that barely pushed into weeks, didn’t make sense to me. I knew there were heartbeats, the sheer shock of their existence told me they were meant to be here. It never felt right that I would have to choose my life over the potential of another. But there I was, wondering. What if?
The Heart of It
I think the heart of it, certainly here in America, is that we think of a pregnancy as a baby. Alternatively, this has been framed as believing that life begins at conception. But that verbiage still feels too clinical to capture it. The preciousness of trying to protect the unborn. When couples announce a pregnancy it’s rarely, “We’re pregnant!” More often it’s, “We’re having a baby!”
I personally don’t believe life begins at conception. I believe we’re all souls just hanging out there, waiting for a body to be born. That life begins at first breath.
But a pregnancy and a baby are end points of a process. A pregnancy is the gestation period that will, if all goes well, result in a baby. But it cannot survive without its mother. Before we can have a baby, there is a blastocyst, then an embryo, then a fetus. There is debate, as the science continues to evolve, about whether a fetus can survive outside the womb in terms of the exact point the gestation. It lands somewhere between 22 to 28 weeks, depending on which expert you’re talking to.
Generally, that means before twenty weeks, that fetus, embryo or blastocyst cannot survive outside of the womb. When do most abortions occur? Only one percent occurs after 21 weeks. Ninety-three percent are in the first trimester, six percent are between 14 and twenty weeks. That means 99 percent of them are prior to twenty weeks.
Once a pregnancy comes to term, labor happens. (If you haven’t read my take on that, check it out here.) Another process, then, to the birth of a baby. But go back to the intention, go back to the conception.
Let’s Talk About Sex
Really, that is what this is about, yes? What was the intention at conception? For the sexual partners that is. For the potential mother and father of this scenario. Let’s go back to the birth announcement. For the married couple trying to have a child, they send out cards or they have a photo shoot for a social media post. Some try to come up with creative ways to tell their parents or their existing children. They book appointments and start thinking about a nursery. It’s a big deal.
For the couple who didn’t not intend for their coupling to result in a pregnancy, it’s more likely: “We’re pregnant.” And the follow up question of “Well, now what do we do?” It’s a big deal.
For the woman who didn’t have any of this on her radar, it is more immediate. “I’m pregnant. What do I do?” It’s a big deal.
Most abortions are performed on single women: 87% compared to 13%, according to the CDC. What was her intention then in choosing to have sex? What was his? (Generally speaking, we know that his intention usually stops there. To have sex. Getting the sex. Sex.)
Modern society tends to gloss over the importance of a woman’s ability to say no when it comes to sex. It was not that long ago that the expectation of a woman who was married to a man could absolutely not say no. If she did, the act was done by force, or met with other physical punishments. It was the early twentieth century that women began crying out for birth control, because the health and mortality of woman was so intricately intertwined with sex and pregnancy and birth. Margaret Sanger heard that call, and changed the lives of women forever.
Even the sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century brought freedom and ideas about sex and sexuality that directly affected a woman’s options. And for many of us, we grew up never knowing a world where a woman couldn’t choose to get married or not, to have sex or not, and to have children or not.
I’m reading this fabulous nonfiction book about the first five victims of Jack the Ripper (don’t judge my personal interests), called The Five by Hallie Rubenhold, and it’s a book rich with details and information about the lives of women in 1880s London. This passage struck me, about Catherine Eddowes, mother to victim number four, Kate. Catherine, who bore seven children, died of consumption. “Catherine, whose body had been ravaged by childbearing, physical labor, and poor nutrition, had, at forty-two, lived the average number of years for a woman of her class at that time.”
The options of the working poor were meager, at best, but for women, getting married was the only option after being employed as a servant, and getting married meant children. So many children, because birth control methods were being used by the upper classes, but the poor had limited knowledge of how to stop pregnancies, except for abstinence.
And yet, here we are, in 2025, regularly hearing rhetoric that fully revolves around trying to control women’s bodies. They don’t just want to take away the right to choose. They want to take away the rights of choosing when we have children by using birth control. They will come after our right to say no next.
Stop.
Nope, they want the sex, and they want women to give it to them. Preferably in a married bedroom, and without contraception. If we don’t give it up, we’re prudes. You’re not giving us a chance! You only want six-foot-tall men with money!
And yet the fallout of THE SEX is not at the feet of men. There isn’t forced castration, or vasectomies, or risk to their bodies. No risks to their health, their lives or sometimes even their wallets. Their sex is external, and just like that they can walk away.
Miscarriage
We cannot discuss sexual intention in combination with abortion without talking about miscarriage, because there is a core element these two have in common. Abortion and miscarriage are both the end of the potential for life. The ending of a pregnancy.
I fully understand pain here associated with this, and I think with a little exercise of empathy, most people can grasp the pain of losing a pregnancy via miscarriage. But very few attempt to view the ending of a pregnancy via abortion with the same empathy. That the decision comes with a heavy weight
The raw truth is that the strict abortion laws that do exist in this country, very much effect woman suffering with a miscarriage. The abortive care that is needed is being restricted, which in turn is putting the lives of women at risk. In general, this is putting the lives of all pregnant woman at risk. Imagine any situation in which a man shows up to the emergency room and he’s told he cannot be treated until he’s a little closer to death? That he is to suffer, endure pain, bleeding everywhere until it’s legally safe to save him? When he may not be saved?
Even if you don’t like it, the truth is that abortion care is health care. Period.
Pro Birthers
But we need to save the babies! And from the pro-life perspective, this is where their opinion ends. I typed what I typed. The process of conception, pregnancy, labor and birth isn’t over when it comes to a life. (The irony that “life” is the word that pro-lifers have chosen.) But the truth is, many of them are not pro-life, they’re pro-birth. (Which in and of itself is a movement that is gaining momentum when it comes to the world’s declining birth rates. Re: the people that are worried there are not enough people.)
But after birth, there is a baby, that in the best of circumstances is raised by parents, or at least other adults, and grows into a child and then a young adult and then ages into an elderly citizen. All those steps—childhood, adolescence, education, career, starting the life cycle over with their own offspring and elderhood—are of little or no consequence to a pro-birther. Their mission stops at birth.
They don’t extend care to the mother. The postpartum care in this country is abysmal. Even during birth in a hospital, the nurses are assigned to the baby, not the mother. Women are not well informed about post-partum depression or what to do if they are struggling in the early days of motherhood. And then there is the abyss of affordable childcare and healthcare for the child, and the pressures of being a working mom versus a stay at home mom, and on and on and on.
Like me, there are many women who are pro-choice, but maintain that they themselves would not, or have not, gotten an abortion. The stance is simply in the name of the position: choice. We get to choose over what happens to our bodies. But in that choice, and things that came before that right of choice, includes other aspects of our everyday lives we as women take for granted. Things like birth control. The right to vote. The financial ability and freedom to take out a loan. We recognize that the thread of abortion is one they want to pull, and begin to unravel all of the freedoms we have earned in this democracy.
Our Choices
Like me, there are many women who are pro-choice, but maintain that they themselves would not, or have not, gotten an abortion. The stance is simply in the name of the position: choice. We get to choose over what happens to our bodies. But in that choice, and things that came before that right of choice, includes other aspects of our everyday lives we as women take for granted. Things like birth control. The right to vote. The financial ability and freedom to take out a loan. We recognize that the thread of abortion is one they want to pull and begin to unravel all of the freedoms we have earned in this democracy.
The only way we can move forward is to take that power back. Those who chose to make these laws, male lawmakers who don’t understand that most women don’t know they’re pregnant before the six-week mark, who don’t’ care that we’re bleeding out in parking lots or scared to be pregnant because we quite literally might die at the hands of them—they do not care about science, or the truth, or us having autonomy over our bodies. They have to earn their jobs. Take it away from them. Vote them out. Vote for women’s healthcare. Because they’re coming for all of our choices.
My Voice In This 
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