There are certain things in life you know will happen, they’re expected; birthdays, accidents, births, deaths, fights, and celebrations. Bigger things like getting married, starting a family, buying a house, or retirement. This we cannot control like gas prices, inflation, or recessions. There are things we come to know as certain – their existence is concrete, but viability as fragile as eggshells or a feather left alone outside.
For me, things certain in life were that I would have a family. Something unexpected – two diagnoses that directly impact my ability to have biological children without complication or miscarriage. Learning about my fertility was overwhelmingly terrifying and heartbreaking on every level. Roe v. Wade was my protection from outright despair. Its existence was expected and grounding, but given the political environments ever shifting tendency I knew that any light breeze could completely shift the groundwork for my safety. So today I mourn, trapped under a blanket and the paralyzing fear I never wanted to face. I don’t think it is feasible – safe – for me to try to have a family anymore.
Endometriosis is a medical condition that affects 1 in every 10 women, those numbers keep growing as more research is done on this disease. One complication from this diagnosis is that it heightens an individual’s chances of infertility and miscarriages early on during a pregnancy.
A bicornuate uterus is a heart shaped uterus. While the shape conveys extra love and care in the womb, it is actually unwelcoming and only allows half of the uterus to be used for fetus development during pregnancy. One complication being late term miscarriages due to lack of development space.
Scary. Big scary items to face in my mid-twenties when I am actively planning a family with my partner.
1 in 4 birthing humans have miscarriages. A miscarriage being an accidental death of the fetus during pregnancy. Accidental being the key word – they are not abortions, yet currently they are being viewed as such.
While there is a very specific science to how to get pregnant including ovulation times, viability and fertility of the individuals involved, and even positioning it can all seem very chance based – many even calling it a miracle occurrence. Not everyone knows the science behind getting pregnant, nor are they tracking ovulation periods, stomach temperatures, or hormone levels – pregnancy can occur out of the any color if we don’t know our colors. Pregnancies can also disappear before we even know they’ve happened and we wouldn’t ever find out if we didn’t go in for yearly PAP smears and other OBGYN appointments.
There are countless birthing humans who have gone to regularly scheduled OBGYN appointments who have found out they have tissue proof of a previous miscarriage. Birthing humans who didn’t know they had been pregnant, don’t know how to process or compartmentalize the information, don’t even know when the pregnancy would have occurred or how long it lasted. Birthing humans who likely now blame themselves for not being a viable carrier of life. Is this a moral failing, a sign from some higher being, or a completely unexplained and unknown accident to no fault of their own.
I am faced with these feelings. I enter every OBGYN appointment in terror of hearing the words “you’ve suffered a miscarriage” part of me would rejoice – I *can* get pregnant. Part of me would weep – I lost what could have been my child. Part of me would be thankful for not having to make a decision on if I could actually provide a good life free from financial hardship and emotional toxicity yet ripe with health, happiness, and safety. Part of me would go to a deep dark place within my mind describing all the ways I deserve loss and that I will never fully develop a human being in my body or ultimately ever be a mother whether biological or adopted.
I once heard that the tissue I was losing though my menstrual cycle could be any number of things – ruptured cyst tissue, endometriosis tissue, uterine lining, my worst nightmare – miscarriage tissue.
It wasn’t. But to think that appointment alone could have caused a lengthy investigation pinning the miscarriage as purposeful instead of an unknown accident. That I could have faced jail time and persecution. I can’t describe what emotion I’m left with, what conclusion I could end with, what meaning I can add to this mess.
But I do know I have had conversations.
“Can you move up your timeline so that you’re safer?”
“Maybe it’s best if we just don’t have kids”
“I don’t think it’s safe to start a family anymore”
My interaction with fertility, with family planning, with the thought of children has been traumatic. I cannot start a family right now. I am not financially secure enough. I do not have a home I can promise won’t be taken away from my children. I have not worked through my own childhood trauma so that I do not pass it on. I don’t have the lifestyle ready on hand to be a mother. I’m not ready to give up my daily naps – I need them to cope with exhaustion from endometriosis, sleep insomnia from PTSD, a terrible work life balance. My partner’s readiness isn’t even included in that list but I already have enough reasons for our joint timeline to be “not right now, but in two years we’ll be ready”
Do I ignore my own emotional maturity, financial restrictions, and need for mental growth to have a family? I can’t, the entire reason I want a family is so I can be there for a child – and I can’t be there for them when I’m not ready to even be there for myself.
Every birthing human is at a 25% chance of miscarriage with every pregnancy. I don’t want to have a 25% chance of criminal investigation and possible jail time for anything. I am being told that for 9 months I will be under the pressure to not miscarry or I could face jail time when stress and anxiety increase the miscarriage rates on my already increases likelihood of miscarriage.
Realistically I’ll start a family. If I miscarry I probably won’t be sent to jail. I might not even be investigated. But I am a cis-white-straight woman so the systems built to harm individuals hardly ever harm me in reality – just in initial fear and shock. BIPOC birthers will be investigated at higher rates than white birthers. Trans birthers will be jailed more frequently than cis-counterparts. Disabled birthers will likely die – especially black disabled birthers. The more society has marginalized a group of individuals the more the law applies to them. What is being done to protect these individuals at least to the level of “safety” I am at?
There is no safety in this post-apocalyptic Roe v Wade-less world. To create my own I’ve stopped tracking my periods on my phone. The local – state-wide – hospital no longer prescribes birth control so I will go back to Kansas to update my Nexplanon – the only thing that is treating my endometriosis. I vote like hell in a state so red the hell I vote like is jealous of the color. I educate my community – my niece. I stray from conversations with men who do not have uteruses concerning my own reproductive rights.
I remember a conversation, when the right to abortion was heavily questioned the summer before Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States. “But why does everyone care out of nowhere? People are using Facebook to show that they are trendy by sharing posts about the right to abortion when they never have before. It’s fake. It’s not really what people are passionate about – its just what is popular to share right now. Like you- I get you sharing it kind of, you care about and are always posting about rights of disabled people and sometimes other social justice posts, so it sort of makes sense and isn’t so phony…” it continued. His cis-het voice circles the drain in my brain. Never leaving. Never overflowing. Always gaslighting.
Having a uterus gives me an opinion. Not having one – and never having had one, takes away your option to share yours – especially when your opinion comes at the cost of my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. You have your right to bare the arms that take the lives of our children daily in school massacres. I have my right to bare – or not bare a child from my bones whenever I am medically, physically, and financially ready. I am not a criminal for building the best life I can for myself, my partner, and future children. It’s time we stop acting like I am one.
katelynn schultz 