It's Not Safe to be a Woman in America
From the attacks on funding for basic cancer screenings to allowing hospitals to kill women with pregnancy complications... We aren't safe.
I’ve lived through so many seasons as a woman in America. Despite only approaching my fortieth birthday later this month, I’ve lived through pre-cancer caught at an early age, three high-risk pregnancies, becoming the mother to a daughter, and watching the downfall of Roe V. Wade. Something that could have changed the course of my own Mother’s life had abortion access been available to her as a pregnant teen in the 60’s.
And for the duration of my life, we have made so many improvements and strides in improving the health and healthcare access to women in America. Until the first Trump Administration. Once those Supreme Court seats were up for grabs, that was the end of basic healthcare rights for every woman in the country.
Screaming, send it back to the States. Once again, the Federal government has stepped in to tell hospitals across the country it’s totally cool to deny basic healthcare to a pregnant woman experiencing a pregnancy complication in America. Across every hospital in all states.
But before we talk about all of the attacks, I wanted to share some of my own experiences. Because programs that helped me and saved my life are the same programs our government is planning on cutting in this massive Billionaire Bill.
A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used… oh shit. My bad. A long, long time ago, when I was a young, uninsured 19-year-old. Freshly kicked off my parents’ insurance back in the days before the ACA, I went to a local Planned Parenthood so I could get my annual reproductive healthcare that all women need.
Of course, a breast exam, pap, birth control, all the stuff to keep your girlie healthy. On a sliding scale, of course, because at 19, I was working part-time, uninsured, despite working in an actual medical office. Make that one make sense.
Upon my pap that year, I got a call that it came back abnormal, and they would need to do another procedure as a biopsy. Cue the panic because my paternal grandmother died of cancer, which started in her reproductive system. This would turn into the need for a third procedure, which, surprisingly, a lot of women have needed over the years. A LEEP. They would go on to remove the precancerous cells found.
Thankfully, after that, I was good to go. And thankfully, because of Planned Parenthood and my access, I was able to catch it early enough that it also never impacted my ability to have children. Despite the scarred tissue leading to a cervix that wouldn’t dilate.
If it wasn’t for Planned Parenthood, I wouldn’t have three amazing, smart, healthy, and kind children today. Because of the lifesaving services they provide, the same services that the bulk of women go to Planned Parenthood locations for. Not abortions. Basic healthcare.
Privilege is not knowing what it is like to have to go to a Planned Parenthood location because you have always had the convenience of insurance and a private OB/GYN to see. Believe it or not.
The Federal government is stripping Planned Parenthood of all of its funding nationwide. Not just for abortion services, because we have long since known that Federal tax dollars are prevented from being used for abortion services, per the Hyde Amendment, which has been the law of the land for decades.
They are stripping the funding for low-income women who have no other choice for basic healthcare. Basic cancer screenings. Basic birth control prescriptions.
It is a war on women.
But it doesn’t stop there because cutting the funding isn’t cruel enough. Oh no. If you are a woman in America who just so decides to actually take the plunge into parenthood in this current fiery hellscape, you aren’t safe either!
Despite the Federal government grovelling at the feet of American women begging us to birth the next generation, they don’t seem to actually seem willing to address all the issues keeping women from having babies.
Besides the wealth inequality, lack of insurance, basic maternity care, or leave, childcare costing more than some people literally make… the list goes on and on.
But now, fuck your right to live too. Because if you are pregnant in America and experiencing a pregnancy complication, that could cost your life. Doctors don’t have to save you. In fact, if you live in a red state… that nonviable pregnancy now has just as many rights as you do.
In West Virginia, officials are telling women to call 911 and report a miscarriage at home to avoid being charged with crimes.
This is reality. This is what we are living. These are real stories from across America.
This is reality.
As I got older, I would go on to have three high-risk pregnancies. The first was because they were worried my cervix wouldn’t stay closed because of my prior LEEP procedure, which proved to be laughable by the end, when I wouldn’t dilate at all. The joke was on all of us, huh?
I would go on to have two back-to-back c-sections 17 months apart with my oldest two boys. After my second c-section, a failed VBAC, a traumatic birth for the second time, and a horrible case of postpartum depression, I decided to hang up the towel on kids.
Plus, my two boys were enough. Until the fall of 2010. I would discover, very unexpectedly I was expecting. At first, I was very torn because the days after Benjamin was born were scary to me, and I didn’t want to tempt fate. But as the days went on and the OB/GYN at Yale said my HCG numbers weren’t increasing like they would like to see, and that I would probably have a miscarriage shortly… I found myself sad.
I didn’t want nature to make that choice for me.
The joke was on us again because I would remain very pregnant. Finding out in December of that same year, our family would welcome the first girl… since me!
Even though my pregnancy seemed to be going off without a hitch, the third trimester would turn out to be scary AF. At my 28-week ultrasound, my midwife was a little concerned about Addie’s measurements. She wasn’t growing like they would expect, since the last scan months earlier.
Ultrasounds increased to every 2 weeks until that wasn’t enough, and back to Yale I went for an ultrasound that ended with an amnio.
0 Stars.
Do not recommend.
Especially if you have a toddler with you, because that day I had brought my oldest with me, who was 3 at the time, so he could see his baby sister. Bad move.
My paranoia would get the best of me over those next few days, just waiting for the results of the amnio to come back. The doctors had given me a laundry list of things they would be looking for. Infection, Down Syndrome, other chromosomal abnormalities… Hearing this all at 34 weeks pregnant was the shit nightmares are made of.
In the end, all of the results of the amnio would be fine, and still no one would know why Addie wasn’t growing the way she should be.
And it wouldn’t be until my water unexpectedly broke on a Friday night, forcing her entrance into the world early, that the doctors would finally know exactly what had happened.
I had IUGR, also known as Intrauterine Growth Restriction. My uterus basically wasn’t expanding, allowing her the room to grow. The attending that early morning was sure to tell me is caught most of the time with a stillbirth.
Addison Ann would be born April 30th, to get those diamonds, baby! All 5 lbs. 12oz. She came screaming into this world and still is a force to be reckoned with.
That will hang over my head as long as I live. The idea that my own body could have killed her because it was done birthing babies… terrified me for years.
I would go on to get an IUD, which would then have to be surgically removed in 2017, which would be the same time I shut it all down and tied my tubes. I saw the writing on the wall, and with all I had been through health-wise… as a woman. I needed to protect myself and my reproductive future. I knew what the end goal of Trump’s first administration was.
It has only gotten worse since.
I don’t share all of this with you to air my own dirty laundry or shitty uterine stories with you. I share this as a woman who could have lost her life a number of times along the way because of the mere choices this administration is making in real time now.
Because it may not be me next time around.
It could be my daughter or yours.
It could be your sister or mother.
Your aunt or girlfriend.
The women of America are in danger.
And it all has been imposed by an extremist government operating under religious principles, when that is exactly what the Founding Fathers warned against.
It’s not a male loneliness epidemic.
It’s women deciding our lives are worth more than anything we are being offered in society today.
Women shouldn’t have to worry that pregnancy will kill them because they can’t get basic medical care.
We deserve better.
We deserve basic human rights.
We deserve the same right to healthcare as men.
It makes me sick as someone in my late 50s to see women today suffering like I never thought they would be. I marched on Washington in 1989 with the NOW. It was a great day, and my mother was sure to tell me that my presence was important because I had a civic duty to stand up for other women. She told me about the days before Roe, back alley abortions, the loss of life and loss of fertility. It’s terrifying that women have to flee their state to get them needed medical care they need. I am the parent of a child who is in their early 20s and is adamant, they want to be sterilized, because they don’t want the fear of being forced to endure what other women in the country are. It shouldn’t be like this. And I’m gonna still fight for all of you.
Oh girl! Thank you for sharing. I’m sick about this as a 60 year old woman that ended up adopting because I was unable to conceive, but your story resonated because as you say in today’s climate women are losing more and more of our reproductive rights. I can’t believe in the year 2025 that we have to deal with these fucking men making decisions about our health care with total disregard for our lives. We have to stop them!!