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Dear Michelle Bachman
“Here on our watch we will stand, we will stand for life, we will never forget, we will never give up, and next year we will gather in a day of celebration when we have finally ended abortion in this all important election,” she said. “Join me this year. Choose life.” Michelle Bachman
Choose Life.
Oh, Michelle…Michelle, Michelle….
I choose life everyday.
I do.
I am so Pro-life, as in: I love my life.
Maybe not every single day. some days I wanna crawl into a ball and hide, and stay under the covers, but generally, mostly, pretty consistently, i am pro-life. Fuck yeah! I am all for everyone making their own decisions, their own choices for their own life. I don’t wanna make your decisions for you. I don’t wanna pick out your clothes or shoes for you. If you wanna wear pastel colors and look pasty, hey, that’s your problem. not mine.
let’s talk choices.
many years ago i had an abortion. i actually had two abortions. two that i’ll talk about. share. and on both occasions i sat alone in a waiting room with other young women who had also made bad choices, bad boy choices. and because we had made bad boy choices we were now sitting all alone waiting to terminate our unwanted pregnancies.
let me just, for a second, tell you what that feels like, sitting alone, waiting to be called, to be taken into a room where you’re surrounded by kind strangers, and filled with thoughts of great sadness. great guilt. great shame.
it all begins with wanting someone to love you. that boy over there. the cute one. you want him to notice you, love you, pay attention. good god, you’ll do anything for him. you want him to like you, to love you back. you drink, you smoke, you flirt, you tell him yes yes, please, yes… and then maybe you end up in the back of a car, or in the basement, or in his room, or in the locker room in the gym and you let him have you. take you. you give yourself away. you think if i give him this, he’ll want me, love me, want more of me. you don’t think protection, or safety or disease, or pregnancy. you only think “i want you to love me.” and then you don’t hear from him, he doesn’t call, ever. you sit and wait and he doesn’t call and then you miss your period, and feel sick and think it’s the flu, or a cold, or a stomach virus, and then you feel really sick and start to gain a bit of weight, and he doesn’t notice you, he ignores you, and then you go to your doctor, or some doctor with a friend because you can’t tell your folks, and the doctor does a blood test and some urine test and tells you that your pregnant and you’re 15. maybe 16. and the guy that you liked, wanted, loved doesn’t even care if you’re alive and god knows he’s not going to want you more because you didn’t care enough about yourself to protect yourself, use a condom, tell him “NO, you can not come inside of me,” and you find yourself sitting in a clinic with people who are kind and loving and brush your hair our of your eyes and say, “you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,” and you want to believe them, and then someone holds your hand and says count backwards from 100 and the next thing you know that same someone is standing over you with a glass of orange juice, lifting your head ever so slightly, and saying, ‘take a sip, a little sip.” and then you get dressed and you feel shame and guilt and empty and lonely and you wish that you liked yourself enough to not have let that boy – the one who doesn’t even know you exist, who doesn’t even say hello to you in the hallways, who doesn’t even look at you out of the corner of his eyes – into your heart and soul and body. and you feel dirty, empty and dirty.
and yes, those were my choices: both the bad boy that i wanted and loved madly who didn’t love me back, not one iota, and the abortion. and that choice that i made, that one, that one saved my life, and that boys life.
and then there’s another choice… there are girls out there who get pregnant and have babies at 14 and 15 and 16 and then a year or two later, they are overwhelmed and unprepared and no longer with that boy, and those young girls, they kill their babies. their child. they murder their babies, because they can’t do it anymore, they can’t do it alone because they’re overwhelmed, and underwater, and life is a burden. life is a heavy hard burden and they’re only 18 years old, and they end up in prison.
and all those lives … all those lives… are ruined, destroyed, no longer.
there a hundreds of thousands of young girls in this country that get pregnant, have babies, and then abandon them, kill them, hurt them.
what kind of choice is that?
where’s the pro-life in that?
My choice was tragic. It was tragic from the get go. I didn’t know at the age of 15 that I could love me, love myself and that would be okay. more than okay. more than enough. i didn’t know that.
But those choices: having a baby, killing a baby – those choices are horrific.
We must teach our girls and our boys to CHOOSE TO LOVE THEIR OWN LIFE.
And that Michelle Bachman is what PRO-LIFE should be about, not this crap about overturning Roe V. Wade, or closing down abortion clinics.
How about:
CHOOSE YOUR OWN LIFE: LOVE IT, AND LIVE IT AND WEAR IT WELL.
and ps: by the way, here’s one more radical choice: same-sex adoption. i gotta say there isn’t one same sex couple that i know out there (no pun intended) who aren’t the very best parents. oh my god, talk about love and goodness and wanting – really, truly, deeply wanting – a family.
Category: Uncategorized 18 comments »
January 23rd, 2012 at 2:38 pm
WOW what a brave column. It took courage to write that. And to live it. And, it takes courage to be pro-life, particularly your own.
Choose to live your own life… Yes! From end to end and wall to wall, live it WELL!
January 23rd, 2012 at 3:23 pm
A true story for all those who think it’s OK to ignore the threat of repealing Roe vs.Wade.
When I was 18 I had an abortion when it was not legal. For a lot of money I was driven to a doctors office in Brooklyn by a man I never met in my whole life. During the doctors lunch hour between patients he performed the abortion on his examining table WITH OUT ANY ANESTHESIA. He put a tray under me to catch the fluids. It was horrendously painful. When he was done he asked me if I wanted to see what he had taken out of me, if I wanted to look in the tray. Needless to say I declined his kindly offer. He gave me a shot of penicillin and told me to come back in a week. I did. He proceeded to examine me and when he felt my breasts at the so called exam he said they were much nicer before, when I was still pregnant. They were firmer.
January 23rd, 2012 at 8:59 pm
As always, Amy, you are so honest. Your label of “bad boy choices” will forever stand out in my mind. No one that I know has had the guts to say that–but how often is it the truth! Oh boy, is it ever the truth. Bad boy choices truth and its consequences.
I would not say my life was destroyed because I chose to give birth, but I know full well that I would have been a much better mother if I had said, “not now” and waited to become one 10 years later. And sometimes I feel excruciatingly guilty about that.
What do you bet there is some bad boy decision or another in Michele’s background that she can’t face so she takes it out on judging other women?
Really great post.
January 24th, 2012 at 12:14 am
Yes. Just, yes. Been there. Didn’t have the anesthesia. I haven’t had the courage to write about it, although it happened 35 years ago. Maybe now that I’ve read your story though. Maybe. My daughter just gave birth to my first granddaughter 6 months ago. I don’t know if this is the time to tell this story. But if not now, when?
Honest writing takes so much courage. Thank you.
January 24th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
You’re an admirable woman Amy Ferris. Keep on speaking! Each time you do, you encourage the rest of us!
January 25th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself. ~Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal”
I TRULY BELIEVE THAT NONE OF THESE PEOPLE KNOWS WHO THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY VALUE ANY LONGER. THEY HAVE TASTED THE KOOL-AID, AND NOW THEY WANT THE POWER THAT GOES WITH IT. FOR GOD SAKE, LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY…OOZING WITH INTEGRITY AND LEAVE THE REST OF US FUCKING ALONE.
January 29th, 2012 at 1:08 pm
You are so very Brave. Honest. Encouraging. Inspiring.
I am cheering for you.
i love you.
January 29th, 2012 at 1:32 pm
BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!
Shame keeps us prisoners.
Dispelling the fear in voicing our experiences, then and now, is so needed in order to heal what lies deep inside.
Your words, as always, penetrate, break down, and eliminate that holding back part of me.
Thank you girl! From the bottom of my heart!
January 29th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
That was intense. Lots of great writing this morning. Bold. Honest. I used to be “pro-life.” There was a period back in the 80’s where I was a big Jimmy Swaggart fan. Pre-embarrassing scandal and meltdown. I was young and thought I knew all the answers.
What changed me was a close friend who, a couple years later, told me that she’d had an abortion. And she and I were close friends and it pained me that she went through that without my support, without feeling she could talk to me because she knew my views. I’d been outspoken. And I felt arrogant, especially being a man, that I’d “figured all this out” and had all the answers. And it dawned on me that so many people think they have the answers because they read it in a book or that’s what they’d been taught. Life experience is often the better instructor. My friend shared a lot of things she went through that I had no idea. It changed my heart.
Profound column. Thank you.
January 29th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
What a beautifully wonderful, heartbreaking written tribute to pro life!
January 30th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
This was a moving, riveting piece. I like the redefinition of pro life.
January 31st, 2012 at 11:13 pm
So slow to comment on this, but thank you for speaking so truthfully, honestly, openly, humanely, wisely and intelligently. Thank you, thank you, thank you… as always.
February 9th, 2012 at 1:33 am
You are my hero.
My hero.
I adore you
February 9th, 2012 at 9:35 am
Your life, my life….so many lives
Your words, speak our words….so beautifully
Thank you, thank you……so much
February 9th, 2012 at 11:21 am
You are fierce, Amy Ferris! Keep the fire going.
February 12th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
I came upon this blog quite by accident. A wider audience (i.e. Conservatives) needs to hear the story you tell.
As a retired, Christian woman, I’m angry about the judgmental statements so many are making in the name of Christianity. And now this week a group of old white men (bishops) want to deny female employees access to birth control.
I’m deeply concerned about the future of reproductive rights in this country. And about (maybe it’s not fair) the lack of interest I see young women showing in the current political scene.
Read my recent blogs, “Young Women, Listen Up” at http://www.smearedtype.com/2012/01/young-women-listen-up/
and “I’m a Dangerous Woman” at http://www.smearedtype.com/2012/01/im-a-dangerous-woman/
Keep up the honest writing, Amy,
Nancy
February 26th, 2012 at 5:12 pm
WOW! ! Amy That is some amazing honest writing…..It made me cry and it is so true and true to who you are as a human.
You have so much compassion, and humility, I truly admire you even more than before, and I adore you completely.
Much Love,
Paul
July 7th, 2012 at 6:20 am
Hi Amy– I agree with all who’ve said that this is so powerful. You i.d. the devaluation of self and womanhood so many of us have experienced. I don’t know if you saw my post about my pregnancy “termination,” but here’s link. http://loquaciouslyyours.com/2012/03/20/pro-choice-and-pregnancy-termination-a-personal-narrative/… more of us need to speak up and out to girls, especially. xxxj