Mommies Paradise

What the fuck is going on? Is the entire country going insane? Have we completely lost control? Is it possible to regain control?

Fourteen states are making moves to criminalize abortion as well as limit access to contraceptives. It is rolling like a snowball. How many more are planning the same moves?

Is this a conspiracy to overpopulate our nation? For what, I can’t imagine. More to the point is this a conspiracy to turn women into breeders? To force us back into being chattel?

What is frightening is the number of women who support these efforts to take away our choice. Women who don’t support the idea that women are capable of making educated and informed choices about their own bodies! Do they believe that they can not make those choices? Are these women who have been oppressed and belittled to the point of no return and thus believe what their fathers and husbands have told them? That their only job is to have as many children as they can, regardless? Hell!

The important thing to remember about these atrocities being committed against the rights of women and their reproductive choices is that they do not target the wealthy. They target the poor. They affect those who have limited means to survive. They are directed at the unmarried, the victims of incest, abuse and rape, the uneducated, and the young.

I know that the decisions of politicians are not necessarily based on the beliefs and views of their constituents, however somebody voted for these people! Somebody allowed them to take the power. And somebody knew what these lawmakers support and don’t support.

I am afraid for the women in these states, as well as for all of the women in this country.

What can I do to help?

As I mentioned in a previous post, my son was a “surprise.” I mean I didn’t wake up one day and have a cramp and then a couple of hours later have a 6lb. baby. I mean, we didn’t plan it. It just happened… as things tend to do since, as I have also mentioned, I am not good at math and I have a harder time counting when I have been drinking. So, now he is SO here and has been for a little over two years and I love him like I love oxygen.

This is the kind of mom I am.

Pregnancy: Sucked
I hated pregnancy. It started out like a hangover. A hangover that lasted for six months. It felt like there was an alien growing inside me. I imagined myself in the first Alien movie when that alien head busted out of that guy’s gut and it was all screaming and slimey and toothy… It was NOT the gestational bliss some crazy hippy ancestors promised it would be. I should have bought stock in Tums because I bought enough to send That Baby through college. I couldn’t breathe, my feet and ankles were the same width as my thighs and I almost had to grease my feet to get my sassy boots on. And YES, I was going to wear my sassy black stilletto boots. YES, I wore high heels many times. I refused to be Pregnant and insisted on just being pregnant.

Pregnancy is great for some, but not for me.

Labor, Delivery, Hell: hmph!
Ah… the final descent from nine months of planning and, and fretting, and planning, and fretting… came to it’s glorious culmination. I was induced and that is good because I was ready. I demanded pain medication. All of it. Stadol(Sp) was like going down the Rabbit Hole with Alice but I don’t regret it. I don’t think that doing it naturally would have made me a better, stronger, more special mom. Just a crankier mom. I requested an episiotomy should it be necessary. I don’t think RIPPING naturally makes childbirth a better experience. Quite the opposite.

He was born pretty quickly and that is great!

Life With a Newborn: Scariest shit I have ever done. (I have done a lot of scary shit)
I didn’t breastfeed. We didn’t co-sleep. We don’t have a family bed. I am a stay-at-home-mom who works. I don’t plan on home-schooling and am in fact trying to figure out how I can ensure that he goes to a solid private school starting at three or four years old.

That is the kind of mom I am.

The thing with parenting is that everyone, and I mean everyone, does it different. Some people think that their way is the only way and pretty much everybody (parents or not) have strong opinions about how it should be done. Ultimately, people should raise their children as they see fit. And if these children are happy and healthy and safe, well then, no one should judge anyone for doing it differently.

It has actually happened. It is truly horrifying that this is where we have come.

“…unless it was necessary to save the woman’s life.” I know people who have had illegal abortions and THOSE are a risk to the woman’s life. Many women find themselves with unwanted pregnancies and now they will find alternate ways to terminate those pregnancies. Regardless of this backward, ignorant push to reverse Roe vs. Wade. There will always be doctors willing to offer these procedures, albeit illegally. Unfortunately, now even more unqualified people will be offering these services as well and all abortions in South Dakota will be occurring in alleys and warehouses and bathrooms throughout. So, rally on you misogynistic old men who continue to make decisions about a woman’s body and how, when and where we give birth or don’t. Ultimately, you are committing murder through acts of barbaric lawmaking.

Ironically, some (most) of the people who rally for banning abortions are the same people who, instead of educating our youth about real sex and actual useful forms of birth control, preach abstinence. Abstinence as birth control? How inane. These people try to pass laws forcing minors to get parental consent for abortions (do I have to explain why this is bad?). Then they continue to try to pass laws making all abortions illegal. We are losing our choices and our power to treat our bodies as we see fit. We are living in a time of barbaric government which seems intent on pushing us back at least a hundred years in the name or “own good.”

How many unwanted children in America are in foster care and will never be adopted by good, loving families? But rather be tossed from home to home to experience unending levels of abuse, molestation, rape and exploitation only to land in society as a citizen at eighteen and be expected to thrive. How many children have been born to parents who didn’t want them, because of a lack of choice, and suffer that injustice every single day? How many women have died or been seriously maimed from back alley abortions?

My uterus is in an uproar. My ovaries are seething with anger and frustration. We are horrified and suspect that the next step is a whalebone corset cinched so tight that we may eventually die from internal damage done while our organs were pressed in on each other by said corset.

Next thing you know someone (some self righteous, archaic old man I am sure) will be instructing me to get a hysterectomy in order to cure me from having desires to… oh, I don’t know… read or have an orgasm. Fuck you.

Molly has great information on her website, for the women of South Dakota. The problem is that this even has to be done. I am on the west coast and I feel the threat of this choice-less plague moving towards me from the right.

But what indeed can I do? I feel so helpless. Writing to my congressman doesn’t help. They really aren’t listening to the people.

Strangely, this reminds me of a comment made by my ever opinionated, self-superior father over the summer to the crowd at large. He said, “You kids, your generation, you don’t stand up and fight for anything. You aren’t angry. WE were angry (he was in Vietnam) and we fought for the things you have now. But you do nothing.” At the time I was irritated with him and just really wanted him to shut it. But now I know that he was right. We (I guess, Gen X or even Gen Y (Gen vapid Paris)) don’t do as much as was done by our parents. We are complacent on average.

This leaves me with the question “Now that we are losing our rights as women, what can I do to help change this?” and another frightening question “Is it too late?”

I want to help. If you are considering an abortion I cannot drive you across state lines because I do not live in South Dakota - but I would. I cannot watch your children if this is what you must do because I do not live there - but I would. I do not have a proper amount of cash to donate to build a clinic - but when I am rich I will. However, I know what happens in an abortion. I can talk to you about it and help you make an informed decision. Please feel free to contact me at mo[at]mommiesparadise.com.

If you are a woman and you don’t understand the severity of this or you aren’t scared and angry then you aren’t paying attention. Or someone is lying to you.

Here is some recommended reading: (Thanks to www.klothos.com for leading me to Molly and the following recommended reading)
Before Roe

http://www.countercrisis.org/

The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, by Laura Kaplan

Back Rooms: Voices from the Illegal Abortion Era, by Messer and May