What I learned about abortion from my miscarriage
Ihave two beautiful kids. They were very much wanted, and they were very much planned. I love being a mother, and I strongly support abortion rights. Let me tell you what I learned from my miscarriage.
This was the pregnancy in between my kids, the short pregnancy, the one I never got to announce. Several weeks along, feeling tired and excited, I noticed a persistent little trickle of blood. My obstetrician sent me for an ultrasound. They couldn’t find a heartbeat.
In the excruciating couple of weeks that followed, I was sent for ultrasound after ultrasound, until finally it was obvious that there were no dates that would make this embryo viable.
My body hung onto hope even longer than the doctors, and it wasn’t completing the miscarriage, which put me at risk of hemorrhage or infection. I had a D&C, a surgery to remove that poor dead blob, in my obstetrician’s office. The doctor told me afterwards that I was one tough lady, which pleased me more than it should have.
I still think about that embryo. That was a real loss, a loss of a hope and a dream, but it was not the loss of a person. If some fool came to me right now and told me that losing that beautiful kidneybean-sized blob of potential is the same grief as it would be to lose one of my children who has grown and kicked and wondered, I would slap them in the face.
A zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus: this is a pathway, in time and space and endurance, to a person who does not yet exist. The distinction is marked in law and custom: We celebrate birthdays, claim tax exemptions, and give growing children new legal rights based on the time since their birth, not since their conception.
The pathway to personhood is not some smooth Interstate highway, either; it’s a dirt track winding up the side of a mountain. It’s bumpy. It’s going to make you carsick. It’s uncertain: about 1 in every 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, as my middle one did.
And it’s dangerous: in 2020, for every 100,000 births of a live child, almost 24 American women died because of pregnancy or childbirth. (For comparison to our driving metaphor, 11 out of every 100,000 Americans died in traffic accidents in 2019.)
I turned onto that dirt track three times with full information and in full hope. Every time, it changed my life. Even leaving aside the emotions, this road puts a lot of wear and tear on the car — and in our metaphor, that’s actually a person’s body that can’t just be traded in.
My youngest is almost 4, and I still deal with the painful effects of sciatica and varicose veins. Some people end up with bladder incontinence or chronic pain. Many important medicines — like chemotherapy drugs — can’t be taken during pregnancy.
Some pregnancy complications, like pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, are associated with later risk of stroke and heart attack. Post-partum depression, triggered by potent hormones around childbirth, takes lives.
Those things are big, but there are other reasons a person might need to turn around and leave the path. Maybe they don’t have enough gas or money for this trip; 60% of abortion patients already have at least one child.
Maybe this trip is too big a detour and will cost them their job or their education. Maybe every mile is an awful reminder of trauma. Maybe they don’t have anybody to help with the driving. Maybe they discover that their driving partner is a danger on the road.
Maybe, devastatingly, their blob of potential can never become a living person. Maybe this was just a wrong turn in the first place.
Bearing a child is a profoundly personal sacrifice. Pregnancy changes the way that you balance, the way that you move, the way that you eat, the way that you use the bathroom. The structure of your blood vessels changes. Your organs work harder than ever while being squished and shoved aside.
No living person has a right to the use of someone else’s kidney or liver or heart without their permission. No potential, couldbe person has that right, either.
We already see women in Texas who can’t access lifesaving care in their own state, or who can’t obtain gold-standard medications for treating a miscarriage because those medications can also be used for abortions. We already see women being prosecuted for miscarriages. We will see deaths.
We will see suffering and tragedy, all entirely avoidable. It is cruel and wrong to force a person down this road. The ends cannot justify the means.