In 1944, during WWII, when I was conceived around the time of the D-Day invasion, both my parents worked in defense industries near or in Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0 Both were engineers, and I believe (not for sure in my father’s case) they were both liaison engineers for the Army Air Corps in aircraft factories.\u00a0 They had been married since mid-or-late 1930s,\u00a0 and my mother had had four previous pregnancies, all ending in late miscarriages\/stillbirths–all male.\u00a0\u00a0 When she learned she was pregnant again, after the second missed period (pregnancy diagnosis then depended on the “rabbit test”) that would’ve been in August ’44, probably.\u00a0 She came home elated–another chance, maybe this time she’d carry to term–to tell my father.<\/p>\n
He had news for her.\u00a0 Before she could tell him about the pregnancy, he told her he wanted an immediate divorce because he’d gotten another woman pregnant and wanted to marry *her*, so her child would be legitimate.\u00a0\u00a0 He was not happy to find out my mother was pregnant, and very unhappy to find out she wouldn’t divorce him because it would make the contents of my mother’s uterus a bastard–that’s how the law went.\u00a0\u00a0 Well, then, he said, she should get an abortion.\u00a0 Abortions were illegal, though not as illegal as some states want them to be now.\u00a0 They were also more dangerous than abortions have been since ’73.\u00a0\u00a0 He wanted her to risk an illegal abortion of a child conceived in marriage, that she wanted, and divorce him, so that he could marry this other woman and legitimize her child.<\/p>\n
When she refused, and when she insisted on a conference with a priest who was horrified at his demands, he took my mother off to meet with his mother.\u00a0 His mother thought anything he wanted was fine and dandy, and her reaction to my mother’s refusal to have an abortion OR grant my father a divorce, was to…try to push my mother downstairs\u00a0 and cause her to have a miscarriage…or even perhaps die.\u00a0 My mother described the struggle at the head of the stairs to me only when I was mostly grown up and didn’t want me to talk about it.\u00a0 As often happens, she, the victim, felt shamed by it.\u00a0 She didn’t want to hurt her mother-in-law, but she also didn’t want to be thrown down the stairs.\u00a0\u00a0 Not too long after that\u00a0 she decided it was not safe for her or her pregnancy to stay with my father (no kidding!!) and drove from Chicago to South Texas where she was from–right down on the border–in wartime.\u00a0\u00a0 No interstate highways then..a long, long, LONG way, and crossing multiple state borders.<\/p>\n
When I read about the states (including Texas) that want to stop pregnant women from leaving the state they’re in because they “might” go somewhere and have an abortion, I think about that.\u00a0\u00a0 I am alive today because she had the courage to leave…and the *ability* to travel across state lines despite being pregnant.\u00a0 I think about my father, and my paternal grandmother, both being willing for me to die–through miscarriage or an illegal abortion–for my father’s convenience.\u00a0 My father was Catholic.\u00a0\u00a0 That didn’t affect his behavior in this situation.<\/p>\n
When I read about a woman found dead at the bottom of a staircase, I think of my mother, who fought to avoid ending up there…or with another failed pregnancy.<\/p>\n
In today’s extreme right-wing-woman-hating climate, my mother probably would be arrested for that first late-term miscarriage\/stillbirth.\u00a0\u00a0 If not for the first, for next.\u00a0\u00a0 Women having spontaneous pregnancy loss have *already* been arrested and jailed on grounds that they were trying to abort.\u00a0\u00a0 A woman who’d had a fall down a staircase was assumed to have wanted an abortion. \u00a0 Laws that forbid medical care for failed pregnancies that menace a woman’s life (rotting remains of pregnancy causing massive infection, ectopic pregnancies that rupture, and several other emergencies)\u00a0 or for pregnancies that simply directly cause maternal death directly, will kill women and also eliminate any chance of bearing a live child later.<\/p>\n
Women were, and still are, typically blamed if a spontaneous or intentional abortion interrupts a pregnancy.\u00a0 News flash:\u00a0 often it’s the person who impregnates the mother who wants her to have an abortion.\u00a0 Or his mother.\u00a0\u00a0 My life experience has let me know a number of women (no trans persons, just women) from ages 14 up who have had abortions, several of them paid for by mothers of the boy\/man who made them pregnant.\u00a0 Some by the man himself.\u00a0 I have also known women who were injured or killed by those who impregnated them.\u00a0 So-called “honor” killings of pregnant teens by the fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers to conceal their own crimes.\u00a0 Murders by married men to hide their affairs (and sexual assaults of minors).\u00a0\u00a0 Murders by boyfriends, by rapists.\u00a0\u00a0 Pregnant women are at extra risk of being murdered during pregnancy.\u00a0\u00a0 Murder isn’t always by gun or poison–they may, like my mother, find themselves being pushed toward the stairs.\u00a0 Some fall; some die.\u00a0\u00a0 Some successfully fight back.\u00a0\u00a0 Now those numbers will rise again.\u00a0 More women will die.\u00a0 From medical neglect, from the malice of those who do not want their pregnancy to succeed, and from the malice of those who believe in forced pregnancy.\u00a0 Some pregnant women will be blamed when they are murder victims.<\/p>\n
I’ve been asked how I’d feel about it if my mother had aborted me.\u00a0 I wouldn’t exist, so I’d have no thoughts or feelings, and thus could not “mind” or feel “sad” or whatever.\u00a0\u00a0 I decided early on that abortion should be legal, that no uterus-carrier should be obliged to bear a child she did not want.\u00a0\u00a0 And that no pregnant woman who *wanted* that pregnancy to succeed should be forced to have an abortion.\u00a0 No forced pregnancies, no forced abortions.\u00a0\u00a0 That no uterus-carrier was just a “vessel” existing primarily to provide “a domestic supply of infants for adoption,” as if the women were cows and mares, and the infants were calves and colts\u00a0 to be sold for someone’s profit.\u00a0 Considering the profits in baby-supply these days, infant-trafficking is certainly making some people rich. \u00a0 The thought expressed in that draft decision by SCOTUS, that killing Roe v. Wade would “increase the domestic supply of infants for adoption” is commodifying babies: making them a commodity people can expect to be made available for them…for them to purchase and use.<\/p>\n
How I feel about my father and my paternal grandmother wanting me to die or be born a bastard is…a bit complicated and has changed over time.\u00a0 By the time I knew anything about that, I was alive, and thriving, with very little contact with my father and none with that grandmother.\u00a0\u00a0 I was initially appalled at the insults to my mother, rather than the danger to me.\u00a0\u00a0 I had my own reasons not to trust or like my father; I resented being forced to see him when he’d show up without warning, interrupting my life.\u00a0\u00a0 I think they were wrong, both he and his mother,\u00a0 and things he did often hurt me, but it wasn’t life-threatening.\u00a0\u00a0 I was never able to feel for him what either he or I wanted me to feel, but I finally got over feeling guilty about that.\u00a0\u00a0 If you aren’t *being* a father, then you can’t have a father\/child relationship the way an in-residence father can.\u00a0 The hours just aren’t there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1944, during WWII, when I was conceived around the time of the D-Day invasion, both my parents worked in defense industries near or in Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0 Both were engineers, and I believe (not for sure in my father’s case) they were both liaison engineers for the Army Air Corps in aircraft factories.\u00a0 They had been Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,56],"tags":[17,57],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-politics","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}