Sometimes motherhood=abortion

I am a white married mother of two. This last pregnancy turned out, at the end, to be pretty risky: kidney and liver function failing, and stroke/seizure around the corner. I was in the hospital for five days – with the baby as MY guest. She is now four months old. I am breastfeeding and back on birth control; my partner also plans on getting a vasectomy within the year.

To reiterate the facts: I am privileged as a cis, het, white woman. I am in a stable, monogamous, long-term, loving relationship. I am on birth control and soon my partner will be sterile. I am currently a mother.

If I get pregnant, I am getting an abortion.

I’m more fortunate than a lot of women because I have a support system that can help me with logistics – and cash – if needs be. And those closest to me won’t try to debate me on the idea or call me a murderer.

But here’s the thing: outward appearances of cis, het, educated, white, married motherhood – not to mention the fact I have opted out of the paid workforce for my daughters’ early childhoods – make me seem like the perfect poster lady for pro-life. It’s sort of like an invisible endorsement for them.

That makes it more and more important for me to be unafraid of saying, “If I get pregnant I am getting an abortion.” Because believe me, even with a uterus barely back in place, people have already asked me if I plan on having more.

I’ve got a lot of great reasons, but frankly it doesn’t matter what they are to people who support reproductive rights for women. For those who don’t, two of them are named Nat and Maddie.

Chances are if I become pregnant again, there will be an increased risk of DEATH. As in mine at minimum. Needless to say, that would negatively affect my husband and family. And my ability to raise the two kids I’ve already got.

It’s important to remind people that the boring “at-home” mothers who take the kids to story time at the library, color with chalk on the sidewalk, and push the stroller to the corner market - people they probably already know in real life – get abortions, too. And that often forgotten among the many compelling reasons for reproductive rights, including women’s humanity; body autonomy; and general human decency, are children and families.