Thread by @BrookeSalesLee

I want to throw out there that I have never had an abortion and am not likely to get one in the future for non-emergency (nonviable fetus/I could die) reasons, but I am very likely to have a miscarriage and these bans put me at risk of insufficient care and criminalization.

My opinion as someone who has studied the history of abortion and whose first job out of university was at an OB/GYN clinic and as a Christian is that everyone who could potentially be pregnant is put at grave risk by bans on abortion. They are harbingers of death.

There is nothing morally or ethically upstanding about the types of laws Alabama has just signed. They put every single person with a uterus at risk of incredible, inhuman pain and death, yes, even the Christians who would never get an abortion. Every. Single. Person.

Let’s run some scenarios in which abortion bans are in effect.

1) Expectant parent learns their unborn child cannot survive outside the womb. The eventual death of this fetus may not be a tidy one. Any potential signs of life mean you can medically do nothing.

2) Incomplete miscarriage. This is very, very common. Often when people miscarry, things don’t just “take care of themselves.” Medical intervention is required to prevent infection. Intervention is a D&C, unlikely to be performable under bans. You could die of sepsis without it.

3) Many states have laws about notifying parents if someone under 18 wants an abortion. Consider that many people will behave violently towards their daughter if they find out she is pregnant. Consider the likelyhood of a pregnant teenager doing even okay on the streets.

4) Let’s say you miscarry and seek medical attention, perhaps even trying to SAVE the pregnancy. You will automatically come under scrutiny under these bans, delaying full and appropriate medical care. Again, hemorrhage and sepsis are possible outcomes.

5) And let’s talk about postpartum depression. Imagine for a moment you lose a desired pregnancy but have undergone scrutiny, perhaps delaying medical care, perhaps simply reinforcing the notion that you brought this on yourself. When you’re already depressed.

6) Let’s imagine you are a young woman financially dependant on your conservative parents. You will be disowned (or worse) if you are found pregnant. Guides to “bringing on menses” are in the public domain. You are in terrible pain and bleeding a lot, can’t go to the ER...

7) You are a transman and not out for fear of transphobic attacks, losing your job, etc. You will lose your job and not be able to make rent if you are visibly pregnant. See scenario of teenager DIYing above, with added fear of being told you deserve to die.

8) I am not going to write out a scenario for incest/rape. If you can’t figure out why people would risk incarceration or death to get an abortion in those cases, your soul needs work.

9) You want a child. You get pregnant. You become gravely ill. You could easily get an abortion early on, but since you have to go through a special process to prove this is a legal scenario for medical reasons it pushes past 20 weeks, now the full ban is in effect. You both die.

10) Back to the young women scenarios: You get pregnant. You drop out of school, are ostracized by everyone you know, bright future extinguished and vilified for being a teen mother. You have to choose rent or food because SNAP was cut.

11) You are happily married, figuring you’ll start a family soon. An egg is fertilized but implants in your Fallopian tube. You go to get medical care, but they can’t do anything but give you pain killers as your tube bursts, they have to rush you to OR. You’re rendered infertile

12) Your boyfriend just really doesn’t want you to be pregnant.

(Men, women know what this one means.)

13) You just got a new job. You aren’t eligible for mat leave. You lose your job and home.

14) You JUST has a baby and yet somehow you’re pregnant AGAIN. This causes placental abruption. The fetus dies. You hemorrhage. Your six month old infant has no mother.

You have three kids. You wanted an IUD but it’s considered abortion because eggs could be fertilized. You’re unmarried so Dr won’t sterilize you. You take the pill, get a UTI, pills fail. You can’t afford another mouth to feed, forced to give up your baby and explain to others.

And scenario as above but decide you can’t do that to your kids, hop states. Are caught, charged, sent to jail. Your three kids are sent to three foster homes and you give birth in jail. The baby is also sent to foster care.

Your husband was told he had low sperm counts and couldn’t father a child. Miracle of miracles, you get pregnant anyway.

He doesn’t believe you.

You are a South Asian woman. You miscarry at the start of the second trimester. The fetus is a girl. The nurse has suspicions you intended this to get a boy (she read that’s a thing Indian families do!). The police show up at the hospital.

You are a Black woman. You have had a couple miscarriages. Your OB waves it off as “it happens.” The medical assistants whisper, your medical history shows you use douching “for hygiene,” and isn’t that code? The cops show up.

(An aside on this one: Today douching is mostly used for aesthetics—smell—but is therefor tied to higher rates of untreated BV which can cause miscarriage/infertility. Black women are more likely to use douches. Please tell your friends not to, it’s bad for them!)

Really, I could write out any number of variations on “you are a member of a marginalized group, have a miscarriage, medical staff are suspicious of you, the cops show up.”

This one isn’t hypothetical:

I almost lost my mother twice to miscarriage that went very badly when I was in high school and very aware. I still can’t watch maternal death scenes in movies without losing it. Both times she had medical intervention that is not available in AL now

If you support this ban, I want you to go back in time and sit with the scared, lonely teenage girls my sisters and I were holding it together for the younger kids. Make us dinner. Bathe the baby. Look us in the eye and say “it’s okay if your mom dies.”