My personal story in four parts
This is going to be a long one, folks, so get comfortable. Those who know me IRL shouldn’t be too surprised by my need to share. I think I’ve always been a bit of an overshare-er, but there’s a purpose to this story. See, for those that don’t know me IRL, I became an young, unwed mom in the mid 90’s. I graduated high school in June of 1994 and my son was born July 1996. As people argue over a woman’s right to choose, medical science, and dropping teen birth rates that seem to bother the party in charge, the reality of single motherhood gets brushed away. But that reality is important to understand. It is hard. In the grand scheme of things I had it easy. I am white. I was healthy. I was on my parents insurance although that only covered my own medical costs and wouldn’t cover baby, and my family didn’t shut me out. Even with all of that going for me, it was still fucking hard.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 originally prompted me to write these essays. Today, I’m resharing them because our current regime doesn’t seem satisfied with what they’ve already destroyed. Today they’re talking about the impact allowing medical abortions has had on teen pregnancy. The fact that teen pregnancy is down should be celebrated. Instead, in a court filing against distribution of mifepristone, the Red states of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho are arguing in court that we should disallow these drugs because they are “depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers” in Plaintiff States.
Lower teen birth rates should be something that we celebrate. When I was a young mother, the Republican party certainly wasn’t celebrating my pregnancy. When you read the reason for their concern it has nothing to do with the lives of the young mothers. Or the babies born to them. Here’s their concern, verbatim: “A loss of potential population causes further injuries as well: the States subsequent “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds,” such as potentially “losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are” reduced or their increase diminished.”
The insincerity in the lawsuit is so hurtful for anyone paying attention. Their entire argument to taking away yet another option for women is a feigned concern for safety, but coming from the same admin that is doing everything they can to end medical care and research for women. it’s hard to believe it has anything to do with concern. A look at our maternal mortality rates would show how little our country cares about pregnancy care, but we aren’t looking into any of that anymore. One thing that gets missed in these conversation is the fact that a woman without the option to end a pregnancy is impacted by the pregnancy long before there’s a child to care for.
Pregnancy is not as seen on TV, at least not for everyone, nor is delivery. The “glow” people talk about pregnant women having was never worn by me. For some people pregnancy is not a joyful experience in three parts, it’s months of debilitating illness. Some of us even end up on bed rest. Try working attached to an IV pole! Forcing women and girls to be pregnant should not be something one group of politicians can do. And worrying that not enough teen girls are having babies if we give them options should not be done by anyone. Ever.
I’ve been pro-choice my whole life, but in the fall of 1995 when I knew I was pregnant I knew I was going to become a mom. It was a decision I made quickly and for myself. And that is the key – it was my choice. And when I say I knew I was pregnant, I mean I knew. I was so sure that I showed up at the hospital to have a blood test. I wasn’t trusting this to a pee stick. When they asked about how late I was, I was honest – I wasn’t. Yet. But I was sure I was about 2 weeks pregnant. I even had dates. They turned me away.
After being turned away I was more determined to get the test, so I came back a few days later and lied. I mean, I was never one of those Every-28-days kind of girls anyway. Twenty eight days. Eleven days. There was no tracking that shit. The bottom line was that I knew I was pregnant and I just needed them to confirm it. They took my blood, assigned me a random number, and told me to call a phone number in a few hours for the test results. At that point I did what any other 19 year old would do; I went to the mall with a friend.
Wandering the mall I tried to come up with a game plan while my friend played her part trying to reassure me I was paranoid and it was going to be negative and everything would be fine. I was going to be fine, but I also knew I was pregnant. We went into a Hallmark store and I spent money I shouldn’t have (didn’t have) on a stuffed polar bear there. I was holding that bear in it’s bag to my chest when I stood at the payphone at the mall and made the call. “Your test results are positive.” No shit. That bear became the first gift I ever bought for my son.
I think because I was already so sure that I was, getting the positive pregnancy result wasn’t that big of a shock. I wasn’t going to panic. I got pregnant the beginning of November and got my results around Thanksgiving. If I could get through the Christmas holiday, I would tell my parents at the new year and go from there. Plenty of girls went months and months without anyone figuring out they were pregnant and I was sure I could do the same. I was wrong. It became apparent right away that I was not going to have an easy first trimester. My mom called it out one night while we were alone, wrapping Christmas presents together. I told her the same thing I’d told everyone else so far – I’m pregnant and it’s going to be fine.
My OB/GYN started me off right. I was given the injection for my RH factor. I was started on pre-natal vitamins that I couldn’t ever keep down, weighed, and given a due date. August 3rd was my first due date. I might not still remember that but it was my grandmother’s birthday. It also felt so very far away in this miserable pregnancy that I’d started. I panicked after a later visit pushed my due date out to the 9th, and then changed it to August 12th, my uncle’s birthday. We were still at the beginning and I already didn’t think I could make it to August 12th.
I wasn’t at a point in life where I was planning for a family. I was working an early morning shift for a call center answering questions about at-home hair color, and taking classes at the community college to finish my criminal justice degree. Initially, I thought I could maintain both. I needed to work because I needed money. I also really wanted to finish school. I had plans for the police academy and an eventual detective position. Even though others were already saying that something was going to have to give, I spent a few weeks in denial about this part. I wanted to believe I was responsible enough to do it all.
Problems with my ambitious plan started right away because vomiting started to be a problem right away. The final straw was throwing up all over myself and my car on the freeway on my way to work at five am. I missed work that day and the next. Fun fact: I’m a reactionary puker. Just hearing someone else throw up makes me dry heave. Pregnancy was torture. Shortly after that I was laid off from that job. I’m sure my struggle mornings and the fact that they also figured out I was pregnant had a lot to do with it. In 1996, this country was less than 20 years in on the idea that employers couldn’t fire women for being pregnant, and we were still encouraged not to talk about it at the work place until you absolutely had to.
Now I was pregnant, unwed, and unemployed. After that hit, I withdrew from school. The truth was I was sometimes too exhausted to keep my eyes open, and my “morning sickness” struggled telling time. It thought of itself more as an all day and all night kind of sickness, so I was having trouble in my morning and my end of day classes. There was also the money to consider. I had a scholarship for my first year of school but the second year at the community college was on me. I’d be a liar if I said that choice to quit school and change career plans wasn’t hard, but these were all my choices. Imagine having to go through this, completely unprepared, because people not impacted by your decision made the choice for you.
I was momentarily unemployed, but I was still trying to be positive and move forward. I was sure some family members felt sorry for me, but I had support. I had a (free) roof over my head without any threat of losing that, my groceries, or my insurance. I would throw moving out of my parents’ house into the pregnancy stress, but that’s a different story. I had no doubt that I was going to see this through and be a mom, but even at this point it was hard.
And I was only twelve weeks in.
To be continued…