I was such an insomniac for so long, I don't really remember having any bad dreams in the beginning. Maybe I've forgotten them. I dreamed that Myles wasn't dead, that it was all a mistake. That was a good dream, waking up was awful.
Having said that, I had an awful dream two nights ago. So bad I'm still trying to shake it. I dreamt that I was pregnant and had to have a c-sec (i've never had one before). My baby died, but it wasn't Myles, it was the next baby. I'm not pregnant or planning on ttc anytime soon. But there I was. And I remember trying to hide the fact that my baby had died. That I had even been pregnant. I didn't want to tell anybody. It was awful. It was like proof that there was something wrong with me, and I was so ashamed.
So that, and the assassination of Dr. Tiller both have me feeling sad and shaken. All of those women, enduring the worst time of their life, making the hardest choices they've ever had to make, and now the only person they could turn to is gone. Pro-life my ass. This man has helped and saved the lives of so many women. He will be missed by so many people in so many ways.
The abortion debate is front and center as a result it seems, and I can't help but feel stepped on by both sides. There is a way to promote womens' choices without devaluing the love and pain women like me feel. I know it.
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I am so sorry about the dream. Dreams that have us feeling this awful horror on the inside, the horror you have a hard time shaking even when awake... those are the worst.
The murder had me feeling so bone-tired sad. Well, more like the part that I learned about the right wing media and anti-abortion group portrayals of Dr.Tiller. The fact that so many people would willfully misrepresent the incredibly compassionate care he was providing for women with these horrible diagnoses, for these women in the worst days of their lives. That seemed so incredibly cruel, like negating their pain, making light of it was fair political game. Horrid, just horrid.
But I have to say that I didn't feel stepped on by the pro-choice side. I feel very much like you do that my son mattered and matters, and counts, and is important. But I guess my understanding on pro-choice really emphasizes the word choice itself, rather than that word as a euphemism for abortion. And I do think the choice part includes our right to choose the meaning, to choose to say that our children died, rather than any other way of describing it that would emphasize that they were not born alive. I guess this might be a debatable point if we wade into the certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth thing, but I do think that part too can be done without charged language that would alienate people like us. I am sure there are zealots on the pro-choice side too, but I have not really encountered any so far. I think that may be because to be truly committed to this work it helps to have deep and profound respect for women and the breadth of experiences of women.
I don't know that I've personally been stepped on. I do know mothers who have had people tell them their child was 'just a fetus'. I suppose I vicariously grasp that anger and it seems like the only group for me to point at is the pro-choice group. Now that I right that, perhaps it is unfair, and I've been brainwashed by this debate to be biased. I've also been on message boards where dbags knock missing angels bills, or knock legislation similar, and I suppose I shouldn't generalize their views to the pro-choic community, but they are pro-choice, and so I do, even though I am pro-choice, and believe as I do.
I think that a large segment of the pro-choice and anti-choice crowds really have no idea what they're arguing about. They haven't been there, they don't truly understand. For anti-choicers, where do I start, they don't understand women's autonomy, or the difficult decisions women make in myriad cases that end up abortions. On the pro-choice side, it seems like they don't fully understand that a child can be loved almost instantly. Even a cluster of cells. And what is merely some biological entity that is not yet a person to some, is a full fledged child in the heart of the mother.
Even explaining it, I fail to give justice to the broad spectrum of the feelings of mothers and the myriad 'choices' they make and the many circumstances they find themselves not having any choice at all.
I know the saddest part truly, is not having a choice. I didn't have one. Nobody could give it to me. So I believe when we can give a choice, or any sort of autonomy over childbearing, that we better goddamn give it with respect, and compassion, and without judgement.
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