Thoughts from a Woman

Published in the Idaho State Journal on December 19, 2021.

 
Please note that this column broches the topics of child sexual abuse, rape,  and abortion.  In the week before Christmas, it’s tempting to save this content for another time, but it’s also the week of my 49th birthday. My birth and life as a woman is central to the conversation that’s come to a crescendoing peak in this country.

How many op eds have appeared in the Idaho State Journal from a woman on the topic of abortion? When there’s been a catalyst in current events for me to share my thoughts on the topic – be it a new Texas law or a new justice on the Supreme Court –the words have been impossible for this woman to find amidst the rage, fear, confusion and disgust.

My columns tend to read more like personal blogs. That is intentional. I don’t like to be told what to do or what to think, so I try not to do that when I write. I’m also careful not to speak for all Idahoans, all LBGT people, all engineers, all redheads or all of any group I belong to because my life experience is unique to all of these identities that intersect in what is my life. My perspective. My being. My editorials, including this one,  are about my lived experience from childhood as a young girl though adulthood as a woman nearing 50. I can’t (and shouldn’t) speak for all women, but I can speak for me.

It’s outlandish in a nation that prides itself on individual freedom and privacy that I would even need to discuss my sexual history or whether or not I have been assaulted in the arena of public discourse, but in the conversations and legal debates about individual freedoms, that’s where this conversation goes. So fine. Let’s talk about me.

I have never been raped or sexually assaulted. I have also never engaged in consensual sexual intercourse or undergone in vitro fertilization treatments. Nothing has happened to me that could have resulted in a pregnancy, nor have I chosen to engage in an activity that would lead to pregnancy. Yet because my unique, logical, compassionate, happy-to-be-on-this earth body and soul came with a vagina, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, I have always been at risk of needing an abortion.

Throughout my life, I’ve considered that I would need an abortion if I became pregnant, but the truth is, I have no idea what I would need in the aftermath of such a horrific and truly unimaginable tragedy – because the only reason I would have become pregnant would have been the result of an assault. An attack on my body, my mind, and my agency.  I can imagine all I want, but without living through something so ghastly and life-altering, I cannot say for certain what I would want – or when I would want it.  I cannot say what I would need – or when I would need it. To lose my agency in a sexual assault is one thing, but to further lose my agency as a result of something the American Government or Idaho laws dictate is another. Both scenarios are vile.

Growing up, I had a lot of serious conversations about abortion with my mom who was a child protection social worker. One of our first was on a workday evening after she took a report from a 13 year old girl who had been raped by her uncle. I was her same age. She sat with her for hours listening to her process what happened to her. In those moments the girl didn’t know if she was pregnant, but Mom got to see how the most critical thing for this girl in the immediacy of the trauma, was that she had options. After not having any agency whatsoever over her own body, it was critical that she now did.

Because of my lifelong risk of needing an abortion is central to the behavior of men whose paths I cross, I don’t think men should be excluded from the discussion. I  wish, however, men would focus on what they can do themselves when it comes to abortion.  They can be responsible ejaculators. They can encourage each other and their sons to ejaculate responsibly. Can we normalize the use of the word “ejaculation” in the conversations about abortion?  No abortion was ever needed without an ejaculation occurring first.

When a man chooses to ejaculate out of pleasure, power, malice, affection or indifference, his act could lead to an abortion. If men want to be absolutely, positively ensure that an abortion doesn’t happen, they have the agency to ensure that through their own behavior rather than regulating mine. Discussing the merits, nuances and legalities of criminalizing how men ejaculate bring to light the government overreach in many abortion regulations and exactly who is being controlled and condemned.

Would Americans ever consider regulating ejaculation? If truly limiting abortions is the goal, then perhaps they should.