A couple of months ago, I wasted a half-hour of my life listening in on a town hall conference call with my congresscritter, Charlie Wilson. Amid all of his reassurances to reactionary constituents that he wouldn’t sign off on death panels, he kept repeating: “I am a Blue Dog Democrat. I am pro-life.” This weekend, he delivered on that promise by becoming one of the 64 Democrats who sold out women’s health by voting for the Stupak amendment to the House healthcare bill.
In case you didn’t hear, the Stupak amendment will prevent all private insurers who participate in the new insurance exchanges from covering abortion as part of their basic benefits package. As a result, millions of women who currently have abortion coverage will lose it, unless the Stupak amendment is removed during the process of reconciling the House and Senate bills.
I thought about posting on this yesterday but I wasn’t up for writing anything because I was dealing with pain. I have suffered from this particular pain since I delivered my first baby. For the first couple of years, it was my constant companion. After I had a second baby, it receded to a day or two every month. It is not the normal pain that women get with their period. It is the direct result of structural damage done by childbirth.
So instead of blogging yesterday, I took half a Vicodin, cranked up my heating pad, and waited for the day to end.
I am lucky in that I don’t suffer from stress incontinence. You know all those boxes of Poise and Depends in the supermarket? That market is much, much larger than the elderly. Plenty of young women use them, too, thanks to damage incurred during pregnancy and childbirth. Incontinence is a serious risk factor in elderly women for landing in a nursing home. Just over 11 percent of all women will have surgery to repair damage to their pelvic floor at some time during their lives. About 12 percent of these women will undergo repeat surgeries after the first one fails.
These days, American women count on surviving pregnancy. But that doesn’t mean childbirth has become risk-free. Just in my acquaintance, I have one friend who acquired a serious postpartum infection, another who suffered a stroke after giving birth, and a college classmate who died of eclampsia.
It’s one thing to undergo the health risks of pregnancy when you deeply want a child. It’s quite another to be forced to bear a child – and the attendant risks -against your will.
This is why any healthcare package that reduces women’s access to safe, legal, and affordable abortion isn’t reform. It’s a blow to women’s health. It should not be negotiable – especially by congresscritters like my own who will never, ever have to put their health on the line in an unwanted pregnancy.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Here I’ve been waiting for you to weigh in and you weren’t well – SO sorry. But thanks. As always, you add extra dimensions to the discussion – ones I really hadn’t thought of and I didn’t know that was possible. <3
Thanks, Hysperia! It’s not exactly that I was unwell; this pelvic pain problem was part of my new normal until I got sick last winter and then had to find a new new normal. I think you’ve been there, in one way or another.
Yes you are exactly right.
Aw, Sugarmag – you are going to feed my delusions of grandeur. It’s sort of a running joke between me and my husband and also within my family of origin that we all have to be right all the time. We’re all usually pretty good-natured about it. Except, of course, when one person is evidently wrong! And of course that person is not me!
Really, though, the only time this caused long-term strife was when my dad insisted that Ronald Reagan was our great secular savior, and I though he was, well, sort of the opposite.
Yes, completely right.
And what if mental health is factored in? Obvious emotional/psychological/social factors associated with unwanted pregnancy notwithstanding, there is also the risk of postpartum psychosis and related conditions – a risk women without access to abortion will have no choice but to face.
Oh, yes! That’s a really good point. Even in a wanted pregnancy there can be mental health issues. We’re somewhat accustomed to talking about the postpartum emotional issues, as long as they remain abstract. We hear very little about the the impact of pregnancy itself, although pregnancy raises the risk of depression. I experienced postpartum depression once and depression during pregnancy the second time. In both cases, I’d deliberately set out to get pregnant. If I hadn’t wanted to bear those babies, I’m sure my symptoms would have been a helluva lot worse.
[...] writes about how the Stupak Amendment hurts women’s health, considering the health risks of pregnancy and childbirth, and the need for women to be able to [...]