Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town.
At some point during my own pregnancy I knew I would confront my pro-choice politics, not because I had had an abortion in the past but because I could have, and because I believe so strongly in my right to do so. Because I dedicated some years of my career to the pro-choice movement; because I personally assisted other women, many other women, in accessing abortion; and because my politics had never wavered over that time but they had also never been tested beyond the hypothetical. While I knew the fundamentals of my politics would never really change – I would always believe there are good reasons not to continue a pregnancy and I would always believe only a woman could know these reasons for herself – I wondered if the state of being pregnant could shake my views at all on abortion. Could I somehow find it immoral?
I didn’t know at what point in my pregnancy, a pregnancy both planned and wanted, that this question would come but I knew it awaited me. As it turned out it came quickly, during my first ultrasound when I saw proof that I was indeed pregnant. The shape on the screen meant I had not imagined the excitement nor invented the symptoms of pregnancy. That I then felt this ‘something’ to be alone inside me meant that I saw it as ‘other’ and ‘apart’, and that it seemed to be waiting implied I saw some future for it. That it was living and had a heartbeat to prove it, and that I suddenly knew it to be so – the significance of all of that was not lost on me. I confronted my abortion politics there and then, I felt the wrestling within, whether to continue calling this ‘something’ a foetus when that bean-like shape on the screen was being referred to by everyone else with a term as romantic and hopeful as ‘baby’. It would be a symbolic gesture, but significant to me all the same. So many of the important debates eventually hinge upon a few simple words and ‘baby’ with all its emotional triggers has been critical in the tussle over abortion.
There is nothing like the experience of early bonding in a happy pregnancy, enhanced by technologies like ultrasound, to move you from being a person who referred to an embryo as “a collection of dividing cells” to a person who refers to their embryo as “a baby”. Unless you are me, in which case you steadfastly refuse to let go of the technical terms. I saw the doctors flinch when I used ‘foetus’; I know what they thought it meant, that I was already somehow failing to bond with my pregnancy. On the contrary. I used the word to indicate that I needed the facts, that I wanted the details in a version undiluted by visions of bunny rugs. That however unsettling those facts might become should things go wrong over the course of this much wanted pregnancy, that I needed to know them because I understood my vulnerability in wanting to love something as precarious as a foetus. In part, I used the word ‘foetus’ not because I didn’t feel attached to the idea of my pregnancy but because I already cherished it.
After facing this test of sorts I went on to find my pro-choice politics affirmed. Over the coming weeks I celebrated each progression towards viability – the heartbeat, the functioning kidneys, the budding fingers, and the sucking reflex – but I also saw that I celebrated them not as the joys of a baby, rather as the joys of the baby it promised to be and not yet was. I willed my body and this foetus to continue their transaction towards that delightful outcome. And let me be straight, I loved the journey whole-heartedly, but I came to understand as I hadn’t before pregnancy that this state of being is a devouring one, and that it is vital that it not be experienced unwillingly by a woman.
Somewhere in the second trimester I finally gave in to the word, my hope was too strong and I recklessly used the term ‘baby’ all over the place, along with everyone else. By then I was filled with both optimism and something enormous and kicking. And that came to be a baby, with all the promise I had imagined. (She is now five years old). When I was pregnant for the second time the ‘cluster of dividing cells’ stopped. It had grown far enough along to nudge past the term ’embryo’ and officially be called a ‘foetus’ but I called it ‘baby’ anyway. It was as much in recognition of the grief I was experiencing as it was in what might have been.
(P.S. For a more thorough examination of the topic of abortion and maternal love and the reconciliation of the two I recommend Daphne de Marneffe’s Maternal Desire: On Children, Love and the Inner Life).
BM, thank you for beautiful and honest post. As someone whose politics were tested beyond the hypothetical, and as a woman who is at this moment about eight weeks into her first planned and wanted pregnancy, I, too, have been wrestling with these ideas. No matter how much I pretended to have forgiven myself, nothing in my life has made me revisit and question my past choice like this experience.
You are right: it is a consuming and devouring state in which to be, and delightfully so for me this time, I’m thankful to say. Even so, I call this embryo-fetus “baby,” with abandon, but that abandon comes with weight and pain over the other. I appreciate your idea that becoming “baby” is an ongoing teamwork task of mother and fetus, whose finish line is still some seven months away.
I’m hoping for natural childbirth with a certified nurse midwife in the US. But scared, also, of being turned away because of my past. Thank you for saying just the things I needed to hear–as usual. It is a great comfort.
When I was pregnant, we referred to the fetus as The Clump. Even when the ultrasound told us The Clump was female, we continued using that term till around the time of viability. The interpellating effect of the ultrasound, the use of (non)gendered pronouns, the ritual of naming was something I, too, was well aware of. My willingness and excitement to be pregnant did not override the fact that what I was carrying was not yet a baby.
The whole (and in my case much-wanted) experience affirmed my position vis-a-vis choice as well.
Thank you for this post. It is both heartbreakingly beautiful, fair, and wonderfully optimistic. It’s wonderful to see a measured approach to the politics of pregnancy and parenthood.
My partner and I referred to our fetus as “the fetus”–lovingly, hopefully, and quite accurately–until we were talking about the baby that had just emerged from my body. We did it mostly because it was what felt most natural and comfortable to us, and of course partly as an act of refusal to the anti-choice movement’s worrisome rhetorical flourishes. I also loved the real and symbolic shift as this little thing became its–his–own independent being, to be loved in a new and different way, to be held and met for the first time.
What was most interesting and surprising to me about this part of my pregnancy was that several people were EXTREMELY offended by what we chose to call the fetus I was growing in my body. I loved being pregnant, I loved that fetus with a quiet, fierce intensity that I enjoyed every day, and my child is one of my two best friends and favorite people … but it was a fetus. I wasn’t surprised that some people were more comfortable calling it a baby, but I was surprised that some people actually ‘corrected’ my language, and wrote us emails telling us how very wrong we were to use that terminology. (One started memorably with, “I’m as pro-choice as the next person, but …”) I was all, why do you think it’s called a ‘fetal heart rate,’ people?
Oh well. Anyway, that knee-jerk resistance showed me how deeply these habits of thought are embedded in our culture, and the sort of bizarre implications that correct descriptive terminology carries for some people (even those who are pro-choice).
I also called my now son a fetus until after birth (I’ve left a comment on the cross-posted entry) and yes, I was also told not to do it by family, on the basis that it was a bad-mother thing to do.
Wonderful post.
I agree that the “baby” and the “hope of a baby to come” need to be kept separate. For us, the “hope of a baby to come” started on the day that we decided the time was right to try to get pregnant and ended the day I pushed out a healthy baby.
I found that the “hope of a baby to come” grew as time passed and as milestones passed. The progression went from “we would like to have a baby” to “we had sex at the right time of the month” to “there is a plus sign on the pregnancy test” to “a heartbeat” to “an ultrasound” to “feeling kicks” to “OMG I’m in labour” Each of those stages brought heightened hope and brought us one step closer to having that baby. Each of them brought joy. And because the pregnancy was wanted, a negative sign at any turn (a business trip at the “right” time of the month, a negative pregnancy test, a miscarriage, a failure to find the heartbeat, a stillbirth) would have been devastating, and increasingly so as the progression went on.
But a woman who is faced with an unwanted pregnancy is not experiencing that “hope of a baby to come”. She is experiencing that “despair of being pregnant when she doesn’t want to be”. And that progression, I imagine, is one of progressively increasing fear and pain, not joy.
Really thought-provoking post.
I admit I used the word baby with abandon pretty much from the start of my pregnancy, and didn’t much think about the politics of language. But, one thing that did strike me from the first few weeks of being pregnant, and which I happily told whoever would listen, was that my pro-choice beliefs were greatly reinforced by the experience of being pregnant. From a very early stage, I felt that I had been taken over by another being or even just another me, the pregnant me. And I thought often about how that must feel if it is unwanted. How perfectly horrible. So the idea that anyone could experience all that pregnancy brings, and still say that other women should be forced to go through it against their wishes? I don’t understand that at all.
…my pro-choice beliefs were greatly reinforced by the experience of being pregnant. From a very early stage, I felt that I had been taken over by another being or even just another me, the pregnant me. And I thought often about how that must feel if it is unwanted. How perfectly horrible. So the idea that anyone could experience all that pregnancy brings, and still say that other women should be forced to go through it against their wishes? I don’t understand that at all.
This, exactly. To say nothing of the constant nausea, exhaustion, and general physical wretchedness. I was really struck during my pregnancy by how very fortunate I was to be in a family-friendly workplace with understanding superiors and how miserable I would have been if my job had involved, say, being on my feet all day. For me in my civil service job, working for other moms, my very much wanted pregnancy was uncomfortable but doable. For someone in different circumstances – in the service industry, or on a high-powered career trajectory in a male-dominated field – I imagine the experience would be much more difficult even if it was planned. I have always been pro-choice but being pregnant really made it clear to me how life-altering pregnancy can be.
Yes, I absolutely agree. My experience of motherhood has made me even more passionately pro-choice.
Lovely, and may I just say yes, yes, and more yes?
It wasn’t real to me until the ultrasound either, and I imagine that if I was unsure about continuing, I would not be undergoing that kind of solicitous testing, which might make it easier, because that does tempt you to nudge your knowledge about how tenuous that little knob of cells is into the are of hopes and dreams, which alter the whole landscape of the experience and the debate.
As a woman who was so devoured–mentally and physically–by her unwanted pregnancy that she suffered a nervous breakdown, thank you for this gorgeously-worded post.
(I referred to him as “the Broodling,” a parasitical being from Starcraft. It was only after I changed my mind that this term became affectionate. My husband was pretty distraught by my usage of the technical terms.)
Interesting post. I have gone, in my life, from being entirely pro-life to thinking there are times when choice is necessary. I still don’t believe the limit for abortion should be 24 weeks though – in my view, when it has human characteristics it becomes human, a baby. So I guess in my leanings I am still pro-life, but having seen some of the suffering of unwanted children and looking at the life an unwanted, unloved child has to endure I find my pro-life self wavering.
In the end I’m just grateful that it’s not a choice I have to or have ever had to make.
I struggled to conceive and had a rough time holding on to my baby for the first five months, so that first scan, at 4 weeks there was just a button with a heartbeat and that’s what we called her throughout “Button” since we didn’t know the sex.
For me though, the 12 week scan made me cry. She was bouncing around in there and responding to the doctor’s prodding and I was in love. Foetus or not, that was my baby and I would have been devastated if I’d lost her.
Good post – lovely to read something well thought out.
I also expected to have my pro-choice politics challenged by pregnancy and I was shocked to discover that they were strengthened. I had always said that I was strongly pro-choice but did feel that abortion was also problematic because of its impact on life (at the time I was also a passionate vegan and didn’t eat eggs for similar reasons…).
My pregnancy made me understand a few things more clearly. First, it became so clear that the embryo & feotus in my womb was extremely precarious and really presented no guarantee of a baby – as dearly as I hoped for one. It really was just a possibility of life more than a true life.
However, the thing that had the biggest impact on my politics was the fact that I truly found pregnancy to be an extremely uncomfortable and challenging condition. I had never even contemplated such a possibility and was shocked to feel so sick, and fatigued.
You put it so well, I felt as though I was being “devoured” and I really really struggled to cope with it. This was so significant to me, because it made me feel passionately that no woman should ever have to experience that unwillingly.
As with some of the other commenters, I also found myself feeling more strongly pro-choice during my much wanted, much planned pregnancy.
I love my boy. I found being pregnant fascinating. Fascinating but hard and difficult and something that seemed entirely clear to me to be something that no one should be forced to do.
Thank you for this post.
I remember the exact moment during my unplanned pregnancy turned from being unwanted to unexpected. It was the time my partner rubbed my belly and asked ‘how’s my baby?’
I marvel at the contortions of self-delusion and rationalization going on here, particularly in the comments. I am so grateful that I never had an unwanted pregnancy in my younger years, as I most assuredly would have had an abortion. I cannot imagine the feelings I would have had to confront at that early ultrasound of my first wanted pregnancy, when the reality of that fetus’s babyhood became so fundamentally obvious.
A fetus is not the hope of the baby-to-be any more than an infant is the hope of the child-to-be, the teenager the hope of an adult, or a senior, the hope of a memory. They are all whole, physical, beings – right now, as they are – wanted or not. They make demands of us and our bodies, our time and our sleep – wanted or not. Technical jargon cannot change this reality, it merely allows us to think it does.
A fetus is not the hope of the baby-to-be any more than an infant is the hope of the child-to-be, the teenager the hope of an adult, or a senior, the hope of a memory. They are all whole, physical, beings – right now, as they are – wanted or not.
Yes, yes it is and yes they are.
My first ultrasound of Bunbun was an eggsac. I’d been bleeding on and off and we were trying to confirm viability. We were too early to suggest anything other than a fertilised and implanted egg. I went home and wept because this egg (already making me sick) had a world of possibilities but was still simply a clump of cells.
Even after seeing that first heartbeat there was a dichotomy in how I felt. As much as I loved my baby, it wasn’t really my baby yet. Wolfman would get upset when I referred to the foetus or the embryo but that’s what she was up until I could interact with her and find some pattern in her movement. Even then I knew she might not stay. She was her own individual clump of DNA, a unique mix of me and Wolfman, but she was also an embryo, a fetus and absolutely part of my body until the day she wasn’t.
Perhaps I should have more strongly emphasized that “A fetus is not the hope of the baby-to-be *ANY MORE THAN* an infant is the hope of the child-to-be…” Children are our future, and all. But the suggestion that that is all they are is denying biological reality.
While you assert she was a part of your body until the day she wasn’t, that day can and has been continually moved up with technology. Similarly, consider the fourth trimester, with babe held in arms and nursing, completely dependent on mother. Surely some would argue (and many would lament) that she was *still* a part of your body! But biologically she was never a part of your body, an egg was – an egg that was not her until fertilized. Your perception that she was, was because of your ideology, not the other way around. That early life is precarious does not make it less profound.
relrev – keep your anger in check here, or you’re gone. If you want to join the conversation by all means share your reactions and opinions but show some respect in the way that you respond. This blog and this post is not here for a re-hash of the ugliest elements of the anti-choice campaign.
My apologies if my post came off as angry or disrespectful – I honestly harbor no anger on this issue. I just meant to share that when confronted with new information and experience on the issue, I chose to allow that new information to inform my political beliefs, rather than to attempt to deny my emotional reality to maintain my political beliefs.
I am glad that people are sharing honestly their feelings and perspectives, and didn’t consider the possible insensitivity of how I shared my perception (based on personal experience) that while being honest with us, they may not be being honest with themselves. With an anthropology background, I have taken an interest in the human capacity for self-deception as a sometimes ironic evolutionary advantage. But I can also be more sensitive to how someone opening up may take such comments, as the discussion is more personal than theoretical.
And might I also add that I am not part of any anti-choice movement – I am, in fact, a strong proponent of individual liberty. The problem is that my experience has led me to the conclusion that the new life inside of us is also an individual, with rights of his or her own. I feel the key to the abortion issue, legally, is in balancing the rights of all parties, and from that perspective it takes more than the pains of pregnancy to justify taking a life.
“That early life is precarious does not make it less profound.”
It seems odd to me that you have an anthropological background and cannot see the cultural (and very subjective) bias inherent in that statement (which seems to form the basis of all three of your comments). Whether or not any particular form of life is ‘profound,’ or what kind of value (or sanctity, perhaps?) you place on it is incredibly subjective.
A feotus below 24 weeks cannot survive outside its mother’s womb and, furthermore, many of them do not survive even inside the womb for a whole range of reasons. That is a biological fact. For that reason they are feotuses not babies.
Yes, a feotus is a life. So is a single cell. So is a fertilised chicken egg, a grown chicken, a cow, and a pig. Whether you think that ending that life is ethical or not (and for what reasons) is unbelievably subjective (and massively determined by your cultural background, religious beliefs, individual experiences, etc).
I think that it is unethical to kill another animal to eat it. I used to think that it was also unethical to use their milk or to eat their eggs (which represented the possibility of life) and now I am not so sure. I have always felt that whether or not people chose to eat animals (or their products) was entirely their choice and never wanted to interfere. I also always felt that women should have the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, but used to feel that it was unethical in the same way that I feel that eating meat is unethical. Now, once again, I am not so sure and, for me, that change came through the experience of pregnancy. The precariousness of a feotus’ life did change the ethical calculation for me.
To say that people who do not see these incredibly subjective ethical questions in exactly the same way that you do are “self-delusional” is very patronising.
It has been a humbling experience for me to realise that my views on the ethics of life continue to change and it has reinforced my view that it is dangerous to be too absolutist about this issue. I have come to realise that my deeply held views may be wrong even for me, let alone for anyone else and that I, therefore, need to be far far more respectful of other people’s viewpoints on this personal issue.
Thank you for this post blue milk. Here is my story.
At the age of 19 I certainly did not have any pro-choice politics and yet when I fronted up to a youth clinic to be told I was pregnant (naively much to my surprise) I told the nurse that I would have an abortion immediately. Without a second thought. I have never felt an ounce of regret.
Some 10 years later I was confronted with my decision several times during my first planned pregnancy (which resulted in a miscarriage) and felt for the first time a sense of guilt. Not that I ever question my own decision, but that I needed to explain myself to others.
Needless to say I am passionately pro-choice and know that even after having two children of my own who I love completely, I could make that decision again.
I’m a regular poster here but I have never talked about my termination online, thus the anonymous posting. This is because I am in fact deeply deeply ambivalent about it, despite the fact that I remain pro-choice. I can’t beat a drum about it. I can’t be political about something that I carry so close to the heart of me.
I discovered I was pregnant to someone I knew didn’t love me (I thought I loved him) when I was 20. The day I tested positive I had been working on a casual basis in the babies room at a child care center. I had held a small person in my arms and sung them to sleep. The termination I had (partly under duress though in full conscience I own the choice too) badly badly wounded me, and I carried guilt and horror for many years. There’s a long story behind this of how agonising it was, but I haven’t the energy to go into it here. Short version, he was an arsehole and he pushed me into it and left me to deal with it alone (like not turning up to pick me up at the hospital afterwards, which was horribly embarrassing.)
Oddly it was in being pregnant with my first baby I was able to reconcile with the embryo I never carried to term. I was able to understand exactly what it was I had given up, yes, but I was also able to understand the difference between the sad and lonely and difficult path I would have trod then, compared to the joyous, loved, hope-filled baby I carried to term eight years later. There was no space in the world for that first cluster of cells, and any space I made for it would have been hard fought and unstable territory. But for the second baby (and my subsequent children) the world opened, space bloomed, and there were many to welcome them with love.
Having a baby healed rather than harmed me. I understand how hard that must be to read for a pro-lifer. But it is my truth.
Healing Room, our stories are so similar. Mine was at 18 (just), and though he did stay at the clinic and take me home afterwards, I still remember the night I told him and how he didn’t speak to me the rest of the night, though I lay there crying for hours. You said it best: it was absolutely my choice and I own it, along with any successes and pain that it set into motion, but it was certainly a decision made under duress. Now in a lovely six-year marriage and pregnant with our first very-wanted baby (or fetus), I am finding peace at every step, perhaps because I am forced for the first time to look at my abortion square in the face, and not turn away. I am consumed with being pregnant; there is no turning away. I never expected to find redemption here–what a blessing.
I wish you all best luck in your pregnancy and I hope motherhood is the luminous and wonderful experience for you as it has been for me. It sounds like it will be and you deserve it for having traveled so far, and taken the difficult path.
Someone anonymously would like me to make the following comment on their behalf for them:
Healing Room, Grateful Reader – my mother was in a similar position, years ago. I am the result of her first wanted pregnancy.
It shook me up a bit, when she told me, because as the eldest child, one naturally believes that ones’ position in the family is static. But I came to realise that nothing had changed – there had once been the *potential* of an older sibling. Not the reality. I am, now and forever, my mother’s eldest child. And I’m profoundly grateful to her for the choices that she made that made my family into the shape it is.
I too had the same thoughts, wondering how motherhood would change me and my pro-choice views (http://thoughtfulmamma.blogspot.com/2009/09/oh-yea-lets-go-there.html) . I had been told by many that ‘things won’t seem so simple when you’re a mother.’ I found that having a child (a daughter no less) actually affirmed my pro-choice stand. I hope she never has to make that decision but I will fight to the death for her to have the right to choose for herself.
thank you for your thoughtful post.
Thanks Cristy, exactly what I was thinking, only you put it more eloquently than I would have.
relrev – happy to see your own experiences expressed here but am not interested in entertaining any more of you denying other people’s experiences.
Like many others here, having a child affirmed and strengthened my pro-choice position. I remember somewhere midway through my pregnancy thinking of the various words that described how it felt – awesome, terrifying, amazing, scary, huge, wonderful, life-changing, demanding – and then how it would feel if all the positive words were taken away.
As many others have said, my own pregnancy definitely affirmed that being pregnant and becoming a parent are not something you should ever, ever have to go through unwillingly. There were many moments when this was abundantly clear to me: bad morning sickness, having to travel for work while experiencing morning sickness, moments when my partner was (is!) less supportive than I would like. My 48 hour labour and 3 hours of pushing. I just cannot imagine how you get through that without the thought of your vrey very much wanted baby at the end. Perhaps most of all though, the way that we talk about single and otherwise underprivileged mothers in our countries, and the way our government’s policies don’t support them at all (not to mention how they don’t really support any families that much) – how could you expect someone to put themselves through that if they didn’t desperately want a child?