The Annexation of the Uterus, Again

8 May 2022

If a woman’s right to choose is rescinded, as it looks like it will be, then being a girl will mean something else entirely. We might as well tell girls when they are young that they don’t matter as much as boys do. They aren’t equal. They have no say in what happens to their bodies. The government has more authority over their body than a doctor or themselves. Roe v. Wade legally established that women had the sole authority over their body. They had the right to privacy. It proclaimed women can and should be able to make their own decisions about their own body. Their body and how they chose to use it was nobody else’s business. 

If you’re pro-life, good for you. You can choose to not obtain an abortion. Ever. Under any circumstances. Even if your life is at risk, or you were raped and had zero say if you wanted to have sex, let alone get pregnant. No one is allowed to tell you that you should abort a pregnancy if you want to carry it to term. Why should your beliefs ever affect anyone else’s body or choice? They shouldn’t. Your body, your choice. My body, my choice. It’s pretty simple. It’s funny that you never see protestors outside of the maternity ward, yelling and shaming women for having babies. Why, then, should women, who for whatever reason, decide to terminate a pregnancy be publicly vilified and shamed for a personal choice that they made? 

Does anyone else find it strange that a uterus is the most controversial organ? Half the population was born with one, but the entire population has an opinion about it. Is it because of jealously that these conservative, mostly white, mostly male dinosaurs in Washington want to get their over-bearing hands on my uterus and all of the uteruses? Something tells me that if humans reproduced like sea horses, in which the male carries the baby to term and gives birth, abortion wouldn’t be up for debate. It would never have been an issue. The decision would remain between a man and his doctor. Why? Because it was a private matter and not just anybody’s decision to make. Men would never have to question whether another man was trustworthy to know what’s best for their body. They would never have to spend centuries fighting for equal rights, the right to privacy and the right to choice. 

What must that be like? It sounds kind of nice. Never having to fight to have a voice, or guaranteed rights under the law? It seems that women are more pre-disposed to resilience than men. They have to fight to get a seat at the table and then fight to be taken seriously. We can’t take a break from our menstrual cycle. So we carry on despite being in pain, and while a blood waterfall gushes out between our legs. If a man had a period I’m convinced the world would have to shut down once a month. No chance of multi-tasking. God forbid they have to go about their life while they are in pain or in any level of discomfort. 

Birth control would be covered without question. Kind of like how Viagra is covered today. The amount of support and funding for research on how to make a form of birth control with the least amount of side effects would be obscene. Fuck, it would probably be available over the counter. And affordable. Imagine a world like this. As a person with an active imagination I can’t fathom it. Instead of women being seen as vulnerable, out of control, and unreliable when their period strikes, men wouldn’t be treated any differently and certainly not made to feel crazy when their time of the month hit. Unlike a woman, they’d be seen as a badass for getting shit done while their body goes awol on them.

It’s bad enough conservatives proclaim they are pro-life when they won’t have anything to do with a child once it’s legally forced out of a vagina. They won’t support maternity health, parental leave, childcare, school lunches, WIC, really any governmental support of any kind. They care about babies when they’re just a concept. Even when it’s a fetus they don’t want to offer affordable healthcare or ensure that the mother has a place to live and food to eat. Odd that being pro-life doesn’t extend to actually supporting and caring for a fetus from the start, and certainly not giving a shit about how it grows up. 

After the annexation of every American uterus, what’s next? If the government can proclaim ownership over territory in a woman’s body, doesn’t that open the door of pandora’s box? We’re talking about forced pregnancy. Some are arguing that we ought to backtrack when it comes to LGBTQ rights. Republicans are already gerrymandering the shit out of every voting district in every county nationwide. Voting suppression is unforgivably blatant. People joked that the Handmaid’s Tale could become our new reality. This is how it starts. One right is taken away after the next, until women are forced to become vessels for growing babies and then discarded like trash once their services are no longer needed. 

It’s a bleak picture. The show, more than the book put me into a severe depression. Seeing it happen before my eyes on t.v. and reading the news, especially when Trump was elected, left no doubt in my mind that fantasy could easily become reality. Both the conservatives in the show and reality use the word of God to support their beliefs. They take religion and warp it to their liking and needs, so that their utterly misguided belief system is valid. Do you think if God created Eve before Adam, we’d be in the same boat now? Maybe. Maybe not. But my gut tells me that those who use God and religion to threaten, demean and shame someone because they have a uterus or love someone of the same sex, would probably continue to shove their beliefs in the rest of our faces no matter who was created first. 

Motherhood is a life commitment. It changes a woman’s life completely. Being pregnant, or having the ability to grow a human, should be treated as a superhero feat. It’s wild that a uterus can house another human and that same body can bring that human into the world. It should give those of us with a uterus a leg up. So why doesn’t it? Instead of seeing a person with a uterus as powerful and strong, some people use it as a reason to deem women inferior and incapable of deciding what’s best for their bodies. 

I love when a man has any opinion about a woman’s body and what she should do with it. First, men exist because a woman, likely their mother, chose to give birth to them. They would not be here if their mother hadn’t carried them around for nine months and then pushed them out of a tiny tunnel. Instead of thanking women and supporting women with whatever they choose to do with their bodies, men think they need to assert themselves and decide what’s the best use of a body part that they will never have and therefore can never completely understand. It’s so obvious that men belong nowhere near a uterus, but they can’t help but keep poking and prodding at it, until they can assume full control over something that was never in their wheelhouse to begin with. 

I know it shouldn’t, but it always surprises me when a woman is not pro-choice. I can’t view it as anything other than self betrayal. If a person is born with a uterus they should understand what having full autonomy with their body means. Are pro-life women unable to trust themselves to make the right decisions for their bodies? I seriously doubt that. But why should a woman ever want anyone to tell them and others what to do with their bodies? Being a pro-life woman is like handing over the keys of their uterus to someone else. They’ve chosen to give their permission to allow others the control over their bodies.   

Of course, I haven’t even factored other situations to take into account. Maybe a woman has sex and accidentally gets pregnant. She can decide how to proceed. Maybe a woman has sex with the goal to get pregnant. Either way both scenarios produced a result that the woman had a say in making. If a woman is raped and never given the choice to accept the invitation of sex in the first place, should she then also have no say in whether she wants to be pregnant and give birth? That doesn’t seem fair. 

So let’s say a woman becomes pregnant after being raped, scientifically it happens despite what some ignorant people say. Not only did this woman lose control over her body during the act itself, but now she won’t have control over what happens to her body for the next nine months. While her mind and body go into shock, a new person will be growing inside her. Shouldn’t the only time a baby is born be based on the idea that both parties agreed to the sex in the first place? This seems like a no-brainer. We’ve already watched society undermine a woman when she comes forward that she was raped. Is that not horrific enough? Now, a woman might again be forced to carry the burden of her rape in her uterus, as well as her brain. The usual shame and denial a woman typically feels after rape won’t be confined inward, but on full display without her consent. Once again. 

It’s not like making abortion illegal will end abortion. The privileged and well-connected will always be able to have an abortion. Because of this fact, abortion can be used as a means to keep women in poverty, marginalized, in abusive relationships and without any sense of control over their own bodies and futures. Women will obtain abortions whether it’s legal or not. History proves that. Can someone still call themselves pro-life when their decision made it impossible to seek a safe abortion, and therefore a woman dies because of that decision?

I’m not a mother and honestly still don’t know if I want to be one. I know for certain that if a baby comes out of my vagina, it sure as hell will be my decision. That’s the thing. My body, my choice. How could there possibly be any other say in the matter? I would never dare to suggest what another person should do with their body. Plus, if I do decide to become a mom I don’t want to have to tell my daughter that her body isn’t her own.

I called my mom this morning to wish her a happy mother’s day. She told me she had spent the last couple hours reading the New York Times’ opinion section, mainly pertaining to Roe v. Wade. She started to get fired up, then paused and defeatedly said, “I can’t believe this is still an issue.” My mom chose to have three children, all naturally. Why? She says because she always wanted to have kids. I couldn’t tell you why she chose to have all of us without any drugs, even after repeat inquiries, but she did. It was her choice. I’m pretty glad she decided to give birth to my siblings and myself. None of us would be here if she hadn’t. Maybe part of why my mom is the kind of mom she is, is because having kids was something she wanted to do and she had the choice to do so. Thank you, Mom. And all the moms out there.