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| Image credit: Photo by h.koppdelaney on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
Four years ago, I was horrified by where we in the United States were as a country. I was sickened and disgusted by our (in my mind, then as now) morally inexcusable invasion of Iraq. I was frightened by the religious conservatives who were in power and whom I perceived as daily threatening the liberties that we as a nation hold so dear. And at the head of it all, hiding greed and lust for power behind a cloak of evangelism, I saw George W. Bush as the deceiver, the spin master, the trickster.
So, on November 2, 2004, after many donations and months of campaigning for what I saw as the side of right and good and intelligence, I went out -- with hope, fear and desperation mixed -- and cast my vote for "Not Bush" (as my husband and I referred to John Kerry). When I went to bed that night, the results of the election were not yet clear, but I laid down with the fervent hope that Ohio would swing for Kerry, that Bush would be out of the White House and all would be right with the world. I slept restlessly and dreamed that Kerry lost.
When I woke up in the morning, I took a deep breath before I turned on my computer to check the results. I hoped that dream was meaningless, just a dream. But there was Ohio, shining red on my screen. Kerry lost. Bush won.
Deeply saddened, I threw on some comfortable clothes and heard the doorbell ring. I let in the friend who was there to take care of the kids for the morning, and we commiserated on the election. Then my husband and I got in the car and drove to the hospital.
I was about eight weeks pregnant, and I had an appointment for a D&C, a procedure to remove the contents of my uterus and terminate my pregnancy. I thought it was nice of the hospital staff to call it a D&C and not an abortion, as if maybe I had a miscarriage already and this was just to clean things up. But ultimately, it really was the same medical procedure. The difference was in the outcome.
My husband stayed with me and held my hand until the nurse wheeled me away into the bright lights of the operating room, where a friendly, gentle anesthesiologist talked to me, and my own beloved doctor met me. She was the one who saw me through my last pregnancy. She was the one I cried to when I learned my husband was a sex addict and who gently ordered a few additional STD tests as a result. She was the same woman who had delivered my daughter and brought life into this world. I wondered what she thought of now, after she and I had both seen that flickering heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor a few weeks earlier, when she had watched me collapse into hopeless tears. I wondered if she hated this part of her job, the one that prevented life from coming into this world.
The anesthesiologist told me to count backwards from 10, and I remember thinking I might never fall asleep, and then hearing a voice call my name out of the darkness. I felt sick and didn't want to wake up or open my eyes. The voice was very insistent. I tried. I remember people in blurred bits. I remember the nurse who called my name giving me something to help with the nausea. I remember my husband telling me he loved me. I remember that my doctor came to check on me and I felt an overpowering gratitude and love for her. I held her hand and cried and mumbled, "Thank you." Thank you for taking good care of me. Thank you for doing your job well. Thank you for keeping me safe. Thank you for not judging me. Thank you for helping me do what I think is right. Thank you for taking the life of my baby. A strange thing to thank someone for.
My husband drove me home, still groggy and bleeding. I had pills to help with the bleeding, and rest would help with the grogginess. My husband would watch the kids. I stayed in bed all day watching the wind and rain lash the trees outside the window. It stormed. Stormed like the end of days. There was rain and hail and lightning and thunder and falling branches. It seemed like Nature was really pissed off. George Bush had won the election and I had aborted my baby and everything was wrong with the world. At the time, it seemed like a sign that I had done the right thing, that somehow it would be wrong to bring a baby into this world, into the middle of this storm. Those two losses -- the child that wouldn't be and the country that I perceived as spinning into ruin -- seemed twined together for me, and processing their pain, figuring out what they meant to me, couldn't be done separately.
I woke up on that same November morning with a feeling of loss and despair. I looked at my husband as he was getting ready for work and I said, "I have never felt so disconnected from my country."
I saw Dr. Mean Old Lady that day for our previously scheduled appt. and shared my despair with my usual politically correct, "I'm not sure where you fall on the political spectrum, but here's where I stand while respecting your right to disagree." She revealed only one of two personal things about her in the 2 years we were together, the first was that her favorite color was yellow, and the second was that she, too, despaired when she removed her John Kerry sign from her window that morning.
I am sorry about your abortion. I had to make that same decision when I was in my early 20's and the birth control I had been using failed. It is not an easy decision and I still sometimes grieve over what might have been, who he or she might have been. Even thought I know it was the right choice for both of us, crossing the protest line of anti-choice fanatics was a brutal feat. Dipshits. As if we didn't care.
There's a undercurrent of sadness through this post that makes me want to reach through the screen and hug you.
I know I'm going to get this wrong but I couldn't leave without commenting.
I have had countless similar procedures, yet I can count every one.
Best wishes dearie
That is such a sad story. I'm sorry you had to go through that!
That awful Palin woman will take the right to make that decision away from you in a heartbeat if she has her way, even in the case of rape and incest. Just as Bush is evil wrapped in an evangelical cloak, so too are McCain and Palin...
Oops, sorry if I'm ranting! I guess I better post it instead!
That's the saddest-sounding post of yours I've read. You've been through so much lady.
(((((HUGS))))
What a sad post. I hope your life has taken a turn for the better since that painful time.
What courage. Thanks for another window into humanity.
(((super hugs))) MPJ.
This sentence: "And at the head of it all, hiding greed and lust for power behind a cloak of evangelism, I saw George W. Bush as the deceiver, the spin master, the trickster."
- I read it repeatedly. It is a powerful statement. You put it perfectly.
((HUGS))...thank you for sharing your story. It takes an awful lot of courage to do that.
That brings tears to my eyes, for you, for the echoes in my life, and for everyone who's life has been affected by GWB and his reign.
Let's hope there's healing for everyone.
I'm so glad you wrote this. I'm so sorry. I have had to make that same decision. I had to go to a bare bones assembly-line type clinic and the only pain relief I had was ibuprofen and the nurse's hand.
I can remember all the women who were in line with me. We all told our diverse stories. There was a fearful college student who I could tell just wanted a teddy bear. There was a married mother of four whose husband was about to leave for 2 years of military service. There was a woman who felt to old to go through the physical demands of pregnancy. And there was me, just reconciling with my estranged husband after a brief terrifying relationship with the very mentally ill man who was the baby's father. I will never forget it, but I'll also never regret it. Even now I'm in a cold sweat wondering what I would have done and what my life would be now had I not had that option.
Believe it or not, I know what I was doing on that same day you wrote about. On election day 4 yrs. ago I had the ultrasound that told me I was pregnant with a girl. I was so excited. We had overcome fertility problems and pregnancy losses and we were past that iffy first trimester. It was so happy.
Then the attending physician (not our normal one, thank god) came in and told me there was something unusual about my daughter's kidneys. And before we knew what was happening, he had painted us a mural...years of prophylactic antibiotics followed by surgeries when she's about 4 and even then, who knows about our baby's kidney health once she's middle-aged. He was wearing a BUSH/CHENEY sticker on his jacket. I remember watching the doctor's mouth moving and thinking "you're a prick and you're so wrong and my baby's fine and Bush will be out on his ass, you'll see."
Then Bush won. And I started to cave in thinking about what was in store for our baby...tests and surgeries. I just crumpled when I got those election results...
Soon after, our regular doctor came back from Sri Lanka. And he told me to love my baby and not to worry. Gotta love a good doctor. As it turned out, the prick doctor was wrong. My daughter is fine, her pee-pee factory rocks it.
x
this post was beautiful. it was so well written and makes me envious in your ability to take an emotional time and make it clean and poetic. I remember my time waiting in that line and seeing who was around me. I was alone. Luckily, i didn't have these two events collide. When Bush was re-elected, I just went to the Canadian website to see how i could move. I am getting ready to look at that site again, so it better work out. That or this country is going to abort me as a citizen.
As Maddy said, x - because I have too many words to write here and although there are similarities this is your story not mine.
Wow. You took me back to the time I had my abortion. One day I should write the story. It's kind of fuzzy in my memory now, but it was kind of an assembly-line clinic, like listeningmoth says.
You also took me back to the last election. I was so disappointed, and so concerned. Things have definitely gotten more difficult in this country since then.
I remember that day too with such clarity. It was a sad, sad day, even here in UK. I'm sorry it was particularly bad for you.
We were in the true depths of infertility at that time and I recall feeling our own losses at that time ... but with a horizon of hope that perhaps this next generation can do things a little bit better. I still draw breath on that hope. Especially this time around.
Sorry to keep commenting, I'm just fascinated by your life and brilliant writing style. I confess, not only did I vote for Bush that year, but I'm definitely not an abortion supporter. HOWEVER, I desperately regretted my vote shortly thereafter AND reading your story and the comments here has really made me pause to consider how abortion is not the quick and easy escape, and how perhaps Congress is not qualified to make such a personal choice for families.
Again, your brutal honesty is so appreciated.