What happens when they do? When you find out at 17 weeks that you need a genetic screening because they saw something funny on the ultrasound? When you wait, hoping against hope, until the 21st or 22nd week, when they can say for sure? And when that news is bad, what then? It’s $7,000 out of pocket to pay one of the few specialists in the US who will do a late-term abortion.

And even if you can afford to pay $200 a month to your credit card for the next decade, who needs to be confronting the ultrasound that destroys all your dreams of fluffy lambs and nursery decorations, and then realize that the money you thought you were going to put in that baby’s college fund is actually going to pay for the abortion, because goddamned Bart goddamned Stupak thinks that ending this pregnancy will send you to hell, instead of just ending the hell you’ve been living in since you found out?

I get that this is a politically touchy subject, but there are reasons for that. Everyone’s been ignoring the realities of abortions that really do need to be covered by insurance, but that reality has nothing to do with heartless college kids who can’t be bothered to use condoms.

Last week, my six-month-old nephew had three hours of surgery to repair a kidney problem they discovered when my sister was in her second trimester. There will be another major surgery within the next six months. And we were lucky. We dodged a bullet there. The kidney can be fixed, and even if it can’t, he’s got another one. But many women don’t have that happy ending.

This is one of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard.

I often feel as if my identity can be summed up as “the girl who isn’t noticed.” Lately, it has bothered me…no, scratch that, it has always bothered me, but lately I have wanted to demand more. And that can be so fucking scary, because what if I become open to accepting the attention (friendship/comradery/praise/what have you) only to find out that no one actually wants to give it? Then I will be embarrassed and the world will be horrible and nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I might as well eat worms…

But maybe I just need to be open to accepting these things from myself and putting these things out in the world.

Thanks for making me think!

H–Go to town, use it anywhere. It’s a bit sputtery still, since the indignation tends to get the better of my writing skills, but I’d be delighted to have it spread around.

Aleks–There ought not be a political climate in which we have to make this choice. It’s appalling that women’s issues and women’s healthcare have become nothing but a bargaining chip for the powerful to throw away. I feel like fucking Czechoslovakia in 1938. Whatever happened to throwing in a bridge or two and a military base to satisfy the reluctant allies?

If we could only approve a health care plan that excluded people suffering from mental health issues, say, or left out unmarried people, or didn’t provide health care for children born of unwed parents, we might cover a bunch of previously uninsured people but the pragmatic success of the plan would not justify its moral failure. The Stupak Amendment is not okay because it deprives women of necessary medical coverage in order to appease a highly vocal minority of religious extremists. It shouldn’t be okay for Democrats to throw women under the bus just because they can.

This has made my day.

And I realized you couldn’t be all things to me when I was building my trellises all alone and not one of the main bloggers showed to help hold things and bring me a glass of iced tea. It broke my heart, but I’m getting over it.

Love this. I may tattoo it on my forehead.