A Fresh Start

I'm having a hard time with Dr. Tiller's murder. I have missed it on the news cycles, thankfully, but it is all over the internet. Having built and birthed my own child I am more sensitive to this issue than I was 2 years ago. I have heard from thoughtful, though dogmatic, individuals that a person cannot be both pro-life and pro-choice, but I think these politicized terms are a false dichotomy. I claim both. Maybe out of a desire to piss off each side. I hate the abortion debate with the power of a thousand white hot suns. It in no way addresses the issues at hand. Yes, abortion is killing the unborn. But an eight week old fetus is not the same entity as a 29 week baby. If you mourn the passing of a first trimester fetus, then I think you ought to be vegetarian. Squid are more intelligent than a fetus. If it's the potential for human life you are concerned for, then why aren't you doing more to support the lives that exist here and now? Approximately 25% of all pregnancies spontaneously miscarry in the first trimester. Are these women murderers or culpable in some way?

And yet, I would weep if one of my close friends chose to abort. I have had a good friend, pregnant, wonder if she should keep her baby, and I have talked with Adam about offering to adopt the baby if she would consent to carry it to term.

Abortion sucks. It is something that I wish no woman ever had to choose. Sure, there are some stupid women out there who are careless and use it as birth control. Sure. But I'll take them as collateral damage to protect the rights of women who are raped, who have no health insurance and are told their child will have severe disabilities, whose partners are abusive and know that her home is no place for a child, who are starting out in life and are partnerless, who didn't have access to birth control to begin with.

There are plenty of professions I don't agree with, plenty of individuals whose morals and choices disgust me. Do I think they deserve to die? No, I do not. Those who rejoice in Dr. Tiller's murder are misguided and cruel. They are as cruel as the man they claimed deserve to die.

ETA: Because of the murder issue, I am coming down hard on the "pro-life" side of things, but I also am not a fan of the "pro-choice" side of politics. When NOW or other sorts of "feminist" organizations start branching out and doing more for women's health in general then perhaps I'll be inclined to give them money. Women's health includes more than just the right to abort. It includes advocating for pre- and post-natal care for women, it involves pressing for the rights of midwives and homebirth, it involves working for access to birth control and education. Etcetera.

I don't know how I missed the entry.... well, I do. I was working all day yesterday and didn't read my friends page. A woman from one of my due date communities lost her sweet, beautiful daughter yesterday. I have been crying my eyes out at work. I cannot even imagine the grief. I have never met this woman, but I respect her so much and I loved her stories and pictures of her little girl.

This puts every difficult day in perspective. I will take a hundred difficult nights of crying and sore nipples and getting kicked in the belly and a hundred zombie days of sleep deprivation if it means another day of little Bennett's smiles and snuggles.

What is remembered lives.

No one ever finds another's dreams terribly interesting. Knowing that I plow ahead anyway to report that I had another death dream last night. I will spare many of the details leading up to the act, except to say that a man and his teenage son were killed by a large lurking dark executioner: their hair grabbed from behind and stabbed in the back. Upon replaying the dream in my dream, I was caught by the executioner witnessing the death of the boy in a garden. I ran to the dark shed where the man had been strung up and killed. Strange that that's where I chose to run to - I was hoping I could merge with the already dead man and fool the executioner. (Upon getting my bike this morning I realized the shed was an awful lot like the bike storage unit in my apartment building.) Unfortunately, the enormous executioner caught up with me before I could merge with the man. From behind he stabbed me in the back. I slumped to the ground and he closed my eyes and took off my shoes and left. I was relieved that he hadn't noticed I was still alive. I hoped my coat would block a lot of the bleeding. Blood began to fill my mouth: thick, warm and iron. I sat up to gush it out of my mouth. I did this twice. I heard someone outside. Getting up laboriously, I went to the door. "Help me! I'm starting to get cold," I said. The man, so distinct and blonde, had a strange sort of amused look on his face. He turned to leave. "Wait!" I said, "Who are you going to tell?" "The narrator," he replied, as if "of course." Who is this narrator, I thought? I went back to lie down in my spot. A very very tall, pale, older man entered the door frame: the doctor. He bent down to check my pulse. More blood pooled in my mouth. I don't think there was much hope for me.

I woke. Wondering if I had been drooling I checked my mouth. Nope no drool. But there was a tight chill in the place in my back where I had been stabbed in my dream.