I support women

From my Facebook Post on Sept 24th, 2015

I support women. All women. And I've been very disheartened by what I've been reading in my newsfeed this week. More than disheartened: upset and sometimes very angry. Because what it boils down to is that I support women. I support women who are infertile, child-free by choice, enjoying a motherhood of bliss, longing for their babies in heaven, or trying to balance mothering children on earth with mothering children gone too soon, and all the women who don't fit into categories. I support the 15 year old who had an abortion, the married woman who has miscarried, the unwed mother, the adoptive mother, the mother who has faced an impossible choice: birth your baby now and they die through "termination", birth them later and they die "naturally" but suffer, and even the mother addicted to drugs. Yes, even SHE deserves my compassion as a human being because I have not lived her life. I AM NOT FIT TO JUDGE. I may wish for many women to get the help they deserve, my heart may ache for children to get the help they deserve, but I'm not going to withhold love and compassion. I believe it is fine to say, "I was pregnant and I ended the pregnancy." It is fine to say, "I was pregnant and I continued the pregnancy." It is fine to say, "I have never been pregnant." It is fine to say, "I was pregnant but didn't raise the baby" (adoption, or any other reason). However, as soon as we start using phrases like "I am pro-choice BUT..." OR "I am pro-life except when..." we are being hypocrites and saying some women matter and some don't. They ALL matter. And before someone starts in on "doesn't the baby matter?" just stop yourself. I am Orion's mother and frankly, all we have done as a nation is discuss the rights of the unborn. They often, in more states than you would believe, have MORE rights than the woman gestating them and creating them out of their own flesh and bone and blood. I've heard enough about it. What I do not hear are discussions about women. I don't hear, from either side, enough about how THEY matter. Not just their life itself, but their happiness, safety, autonomy, goals and dreams...those ALL matter. And when we discuss legal abortions that needs to be a part of the discussion, because that is at the heart of it. And we have ignored it. We pretend that no woman is in danger by being pregnant, ignore that domestic violence increases with pregnancy, that women lose their jobs, and that women lose their LIVES due to pregnancy. Women deserve for us to acknowledge the imperfection of reproduction and that love does not create babies. Women deserve for us to say that they matter too. And they deserve to tell their stories: relief when an unwanted pregnancy ends naturally or through abortion, and grief when a pregnancy ends naturally or through abortion, not just shame and guilt and silence. They deserve to be able to say motherhood sometimes sucks just as much as they are allowed to say how amazing it is. Infertile women deserve to have their pain and struggle validated and grieved out in the open. Child-free women should be able to state their reasons without remorse. Women who had babies die should be able to talk about them as freely as they talk about their living children. Death sucks, and we're terrified of it, but it happens. AND ALL WOMEN, REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THEIR WOMB, DESERVE SUPPORT, LOVE, AND COMPASSION. PERIOD. You can define what happened however you want, but she ultimately decides how to process that in the context of HER own beliefs, and no matter what...if you withdraw support and compassion you need to consider what is going on in your own heart, not hers.