I exist: Roe v. Wade, baby-making, and why choice isn’t choice.
The cookie tin sat on our shelf between the tea and the peanut butter. It was blue enamel with little red-pink flowers climbing up its sides. If it wasn’t genuinely Victorian, it was a convincing impression.
And it sat there, empty, always. No one wanted it; no one could throw it away. Years after her death, it still sits on the shelf — a relic, a scar, a reminder, and, strangely, a triumph.
Why?
Because, on the day of my mother’s miscarriage, after hours of praying, crying, and excruciating pain, her doctor told her to bring what had be torn from her, literally and figuratively, for analysis. To figure out what went wrong. The verdict? Nothing new; infertility runs in the family. It was everything that had been said before, except this time it was cradled in her hands — a small, bloody mess in a stagnant pool of water.
When my mother was dying of cancer — a new life growing inside her — she wrote a book to leave behind. The only help she truly asked for was a story my father wrote called “The Cookie Tin.” It’s the only enduring memory of this time. Even at the end, despite it all, all the messy, loving, glorious, complicated beauty that was our lives together, it was a wound too deep for her to wade into.
But then they adopted me, the day I was born.
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I exist because two women had abortions.
Across 12 years of my high-school-sweetheart parents desperately trying every possible route to have a family of 4, my mother had 4 pregnancies total: a miscarriage, my sister, a very serious miscarriage, and an ectopic pregnancy.
An ectopic pregnancy is when the embryo embeds in the fallopian tubes. If carried to term, generally the mother or the embryo dies. Or both. But both survive? Odds are low — but especially so over 30 years ago.
So, my mother, devastated, had an abortion. The embryo she was attempting to bring to term was in its earliest development. It was either bring a child that wouldn’t live to term and die, leaving her husband and young daughter behind, or make the most painful decision of her life and terminate.
They wanted a family of four with all their hearts. Even my sister asked Santa for years. And against all odds, my birth mother found them and chose them.
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My birth mother, a beautiful wild child from which so much of my nature is clearly composed, was (and is) a supernatural force. Nothing could stop her. And when I was 17 and she told me she had had two abortions before she became pregnant with me at 19, I might have been taken aback. In my thirties, I realize I’m a sliver away — a social class, a parental anecdote, a failed doctor’s visit, a therapist, a well-timed medication switch — from all the same choices. Genes are so much stronger than we realize.
She wanted kids, but she was 19. Abortion was more dangerous at the time; she wanted a family one day — just not today. Of the 5,000 letters my parents hand-addressed and sent to adoption lawyers across the country, she picked ours. And after another letter, and an in-person meeting, she chose us fully and legally. She helped pick my name. She found us; we found her.
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Some people are entirely against abortion, on any terms. Some of them may read this and leave brutal comments. That’s life.
But a large number of people subscribe to the “surely” ideology — surely there are exceptions for ectopic pregnancies. Surely, people who need abortions — need being entirely subjective — will be able to get them, with or without Roe v. Wade. But no; when you make something illegal, when a right isn’t protected, restrictions tighten and tighten until they are, not so metaphorically, a noose. Some might argue this is a slippery slope — but I’d say history tells otherwise, over and over. Even in the US, abortion has been inaccessible for years on technicalities — it’s too late, despite being on a waitlist, or facilities’ hallways can’t accommodate wheelchair.
For people able to pay any price, abortion will always be in reach. For those who can’t, well, even if their reasons for abortion aren’t for health reasons, the cost of birth will leave them $30,000 to $50,000 in debt (that’s to start; $75,000 is more normal, and over $1,000,000 happens with regular complications). And the complications can leave bodies permanently scarred from muscle separation, sacral misalignment, and other painful, costly to treat medical conditions (which all now count as pre-existing conditions for insurance companies).
In any case, innumerable lives are forever changed. By some measures, they are forfeit. A house, a retirement, or even basic necessities are out of the question, lumbering under debt. As someone who worked at a debt relief law firm, this is a fact.
So, while we cannot force people to donate blood or bone marrow, or even take organs from a corpse without consent, somehow this specific, life-threatening procedure is inviolable, no matter the consequences.
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To be clear here, I don’t think it takes life-threatening emergencies to justify abortion. Any body, any choice. But, it’s important to note here, it’s always painful. Even in the best circumstances, none are advocating for pro-choice are pro-death. They are fighting for autonomy.
I don’t want kids — but even if I did, biologically, my genetic illnesses make it very dangerous for me to have a child. I use birth control obsessively, fearfully. I have had pregnancy nightmares starting in middle school, long before I ever had sex. I’d love tubal ligation to prevent me from having a child, but still in my 30s, I cannot get this procedure because, according to doctors, what if I change my mind? What if my body miraculously heals? What if every part of me and my life were different, overnight? The slimmest chance of all slim chances eliminates me.
The opinions of my engaged partner and I, who have been together 8 years, whose wedding was postponed by the pandemic, are not enough. We must be married. He must sign off ( and does, but we don’t have the paperwork). Despite all the evidence to suggest this would be an absolutely positive enhancement to my life, my body is not my own as long as I provide even the most barren, inhospitable uterus. A man can father approximately 9,000 children in the time it takes me to birth a single child that might kill me, but if I get pregnant, it seems anti-abortion groups feel it’s my right to die.
Because that’s what I am under the law without Roe v. Wade; a perpetual potential uterus. Whatever else I might give to this world, every achievement, every moment of grace is eclipsed by my capacity to produce.
After all, the baby might be male.
