The Buzz: The Least Compelling Reason

Content Warning: This post contains descriptions of an experience and emotions surrounding seeking emergency reproductive healthcare.  

I tend to make things softer. It might be my societal conditioning, but I do, I make things nicer. I’m honest — even brutally so from time to time — but then, I couch my sentiments. I often approach with caution. I seek the rounded edges or the more appealing bits of a narrative. I gravitate toward compelling arguments and substantive support. So, when I first started hearing whispers of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, I panicked, and then perfectly constructed a list in my head. That exercise looked a little something like this: 

Compelling Arguments Against the Overturn of Roe v. Wade:

1. People could have life threatening health issues that can only be resolved with an abortion. 
2. People could be forced to carry a baby to term that was a result of rape. 
3. The same political monsters who want to overturn Roe v. Wade do not typically support social welfare programs, which means people struggling from a socio-economic standpoint will not only be forced to give birth but will likely not have the financial support one needs to survive. 
4. The adoption, foster care, and transitional care statistics in the United States are grim. 

It was just after bullet point four that my brain short-circuited. It was right about that time that I was transported back to 1999. I was 19 years old and a college student. I had just figured out how to feed myself, sort of, and do laundry on my own, kind of. My bank account regularly had less than $1 in it, and I was still on my parents’ car and health insurance. 

I held summer jobs at a local museum and a beauty supply store and considered myself to be a responsible human… and yet, most of my work earnings went to purchase bandana tops from Contempo Casuals and Bacardi Coolers from the convenience store willing to look the other way. I read softcover books from the library and went to the movies for the air conditioning and earned mostly good grades and favored clear, sticky lip gloss and TCBY. 

Although I grew up with the same normal patterning of family dysfunction as nearly everyone else in my orbit, I was also loved and taken care of by my family, always. 

I lost my virginity in 1996, like many of my peers, and, like many of them, failed to understand the gravity of that decision. This was not due to a lack of education or an inherent sense of disrespect for myself, my body, or my family. I was sixteen and I thought I knew things, and so, I existed in the world that way.  

The same thought process that enabled me to methodically construct my Roe v. Wade list would shout at me: Abstinence! Discipline! And to that call, I would reply: Nah. I was young and free and comfortable and middle school health had taught me how to roll a condom down a banana, so I was okay. I thought that I knew enough. 

And still, not even three years later, I found myself on the precipice of hyperventilating, contemplating the condom that had mysteriously travelled inside of me, only to emerge in a fashion not befitting its purpose, which was to protect me. Panic clogged my throat and there were tears, so many tears. Yet, through my grief, I was able to put my barely college-educated brain to use. 

I looked at my on-again-off-again handsome high school something or other and pleaded. “We have to go to Planned Parenthood. I need to get that pill, whatever it’s called. I can’t get pregnant. It will ruin everything. Everything will be ruined.” He agreed, quickly and quietly. And in the most efficient fashion I had done anything to date, I climbed into the front seat of his hand-me-down Honda Accord, and we drove to Planned Parenthood, less than two miles away. I sobbed and wrung my hands, and he paid the sympathetic woman with a kind smile at the front desk. 

I vividly remember the protestor picketing outside and my legs shaking uncontrollably and my halted, fetid breath and the dampness on my brow.  

I was not acting from a place of selfishness or negligence. I had done my best, and that best failed. And, I had options. 

And today, if I lived somewhere other than New York, those options could have been unavailable to me. And I would not be a 41-year-old woman, living in an apartment that I purchased with my own hard-earned money. I would not be an officer at a financial services company. I would not have had the pleasure of travelling this big, beautiful, terrifying world. Someone can and will dispute these facts. They will point to different scenarios and other people’s stories, but for me, I know this to be true. I know it as sure as I knew my options back then. 

This week, so many options were removed for so many. I like to think it would never be removed for me, living in New York, but I’m not certain of anything anymore.  

So, I don’t feel like I need to make the most compelling arguments right now. Not today. Today, I just want to share that once upon a time, I had a choice, a free choice, and for that, I am endlessly grateful. Today, I hold close to my heart all the women I know and love, and all those people I don’t know at all, who are being forced to grieve, so undeservedly, and relive the difficult choices they made because they had the freedom to make that choice. Today, I mourn that we need any reason at all, compelling or not, to demand control over our own bodies.  

Today, I hope and pray for another day when that choice, that control, has been rightfully restored.  

Today, I don’t need a compelling argument. My damn body, my damn choice.