We are here to excercise our freedom of choice

They stepped out of the car, and if they had been unsure of being in the right place, their collective doubts were instantaneously dispelled as the officer raised his flashlight and pointed at them. The three figures, clashed against they sky, the man, the woman and the child whose arms were tightly wound around the mother’s neck.

We are here for an appointment, the woman ventures, shakily. It feels as if these men are here to put her on trial, not for the opposite and actual purpose, to protect her rights and the clinic from attack from some over-zealous militant of “life”.

The redness, the warmth of shame, rolled in around her neck as she gave her name with picture ID and was ushered inside the building, the glacial night having set upon them so early and the sea-chilled air sending an unpleasant chill down her spine.

Two weeks earlier, she had known, right after the visit with the “doctor”, when she had practically begged the PA to give her something immediate to prevent these precise circumstances from unfolding. She had been told to just wait for the monthly blood to come and then to return for the injection, but the blood never came, and the familiar nausea, the vertigo, the cold sweats on her way to work had her keenly tuned to her body’s every movement. Then the catty, intruding questions, “you feel sick again? You couldn’t be pregnant could you?” No! practically spit at the terribly inept and uninvited co-worker. There is NO way… trying to convince her body with the force of her convictions, no she couldn’t be fucking pregnant. Not again. Not with a practically two-year-old consuming all her love and attention. I don’t want another one, I could never love another one this way, and it would be the end of me, of us, we would never get back on track. Period.

She met no resistance, but her own fleeting hesitation, and while Planned Parenthood in this state could offer no actual services, they directed her to several clinics where she could obtain said services. The first office she called was an OB/GYN, accustomed to dealing with everything, but mostly the delivery of full-term pregnancy, or other birth-control issues. The slightly moralizing, condescending voice of the secretary told her that this was no place for an anonymous and uninvolved visit, that and the fact that she had never even heard of a medical abortion. What? That isn’t legal in this state. Yes, she replies through gritted teeth, it still is. Thank you for your time, goodbye.

The second call was placed to a specifically women-oriented center, close to the state university, and therefore probably more than used-to dealing with young women needing a safe (emotionally and physically) place to shed uninvited tissue. An appointment had been made, and the child had been brought along because there was no other place where she could have been left behind, without significant explanation. The woman practically stumbled up the path, feeling unprotected and alone despite her company. The winter had descended early this year, and the smell of frozen ozone pierced her nostrils just as she stepped into this space. There was a decompression room, where she and her family waited and were viewed by video for erratic behaviour. They had already had a pat-down before entering and were determined to be friend not foe, as if the miserable deadened look in her eyes wasn’t the same in every woman who passed through those double-doors.

She was greeted by a woman, who it would turn out, had a very personal (and sexual) relationship with a dear girl-friend of her’s. The woman’s husband was put-off, commenting that she was acting as if he were an invisible specter, as if he didn’t exist. The woman felt the opposite, she felt that she was being emotionally coddled, treated with the kid-gloves that were necessary for such a tragic and heart-rending experience.

The child, who had just finally been weaned from her mother’s breast clung gently, resting her hand over her mother’s heart, tugging at her hair, flashing her angelic smiles, with a warmth that made the woman feel all the more secure in her decision and all the worse, too. After the necessary counseling and pre-procedural waiver signing, she was escorted, finally alone, to a microscopic room consisting of a table, and a sink, not unkind, but very, very lonely. That is when the tears began to fall. This was indeed unexpected. She had made the right decision, why did she feel like the world was ending, why didn’t the man understand this? The nurse held her while the silent sobs convulsed through her body, she tried to speak, to justify herself, but the woman’s hands on her back and her quiet understanding were more than sufficient. Was she sure? Yes, then there was nothing more to be done but to discuss the process. She would take this horse-pill the following Monday. Did she normally have cramping during her menses? No, well she might expect to have severe cramping and debilitating discomfort for several hours on the prescribed day. She should try to not be alone, an impossibility, then at least have someone on-call. She should not plan on driving a car for 48 hours following. She should take the 800 milligrams of Ibuprofen two hours before as a pre-emptive measure, to guard against severe pain, and the emotional pain?

There was no drug that could be offered for that, just a hug and a kind word and an empowering tarot card from this new “friend”, the lover of her brother’s ex-lover, and her sister, the woman who had called her to California and driven up the PCH, with the sunlight in their hair, and five dollars of gas to get them from Santa Cruz to San Francisco and back. This was a happy memory that helped, and then the recollection of their photo-shoot several years before in this very same coastal town, and how they had driven back home, higher than kites, and watched the snow swirl in fascinating patterns through the darkness, lit by beaming headlights and dancing in circles on the frozen pavement.

We made the right decision, the man tries so hard to reach her, but she is gone, out the window, flying in her memory, shrouded in her own pain. He doesn’t understand that the call to life is so strong, and the moral weight is bearing down upon her soul with no piety. It hurts to think about this, but then, this is not a baby. It is not like last time, when the baby made itself known and proposed names for itself and captivated its mother’s attention manifesting itself in reality – this man wants to hurt my baby – the reaction upon meeting with the clandestine doctor in the country where women are held hostage in their own bodies if they don’t have the wherewithal to pay for clemency. And then the children’s hungry mouths, and the violence, and the unforgiving society that makes them scrounge and beg for food, or convert themselves into street-performers to live. Not here, not yet, but everyday the battlegrounds grow larger, the ancient call of “good” and “evil” being invoked and juxtaposed in an ever-present ever-crushing end dance. Will the moral majority take our bodies back away from us? Will they hand us the coat-hangers instead of the needles that they abhor?

She is already thinking about the logistics of her medical treatment, having had to pay up-front, as the clinic is often cheated by HMO’s that say they provide coverage, and then don’t, counting on the shame of the act itself as a deterrent for collection of allotted funds. She was already imagining the hours of phone calls that this process would entail, and she felt, suddenly very tired. She closed her eyes, pressing her inflamed cheek against the icy window, feeling the warmth of her breath condense, and fall back onto her lips in a cool mist. She let him drive the hour back to their apartment. She did not feel like talking.

The weekend passed, anxiously, and the day came for the consumption of the first pill. She got up, took the medicine, and the Ibuprofen, and in the darkness, she drove herself to work. She made every effort to occult her interiority, joking with her students, smiling, listening attentively to their needs. By the third hour, she felt the need to relieve herself, and between the shuffle of the teenage feet, she closed herself for a brief moment in the bathroom stall, new plastic, green doors, no reading material to take her mind off of her body. She cleaned herself, having felt something warm slide out of her body. She turned to examine, before flushing and there it was, the small round ball of cells clustered together, so easily expelled. She flushed and hurried back to class. Where she was greeted by a teenage debate on the merits of a pro-life stance. She examined this blond girl, so sure of herself, so sure of her moral clarity and her right to inflict her opinion on others. This girl that she had caught plagiarizing the year before, and who she had kindly guided and forgiven, and she suddenly despised her. For a moment. Wait until you find yourself in a room with no doors, and your back up against the wall, and then tell me about moral clarity, she thought, but she held her tongue, always the teacher, always the fair one. She guided the discussion back to the subjunctive, perfect in its expression of ambiguity, and possibility. She drove home and inserted the second half of the process into her body, and called the clinic to check in. She left the lights off and cradled herself in a blanket. The pain and cramping never came, and she had known that the whole ordeal had been over hours before, but she kept waiting for closure, for physical rejection, her body’s anger. It never came, nor did the tears of the first night. The child and the husband returned, and life went on.