Welcome To My Soapbox

Two weeks ago, I pulled into the parking lot of Lowe’s, needing to stock up on some cleaning supplies. When I parked, I immediately felt like there was something off about the car next to me. I could hear that the car was running and out of my peripheral vision, I could see that it was in pretty poor shape. When I got out of my car, I noticed that inside this car next to me, there was a woman in the driver’s seat and a man sitting passenger, both of which were slumped over, their bodies looking completely lifeless. The woman had her phone in her hand, like she had passed out mid text and I couldn’t see either of their faces to tell if they were even breathing. Based solely on body language, it appeared as though the two adults in the car were passed out from  substance usage, but I can only make an assumption here and am definitely no expert.

As I continued to scan the scene, I could tell by the way the car was loaded down with clothes, hygiene products, food and other miscellaneous items, that these people were clearly living out of this car that was falling apart. Once I had made my way to the back of the vehicle, my heart moved up into my throat and then dropped to the floor… There in the back of this car, among the filth and the chaos, was a tiny baby. This little child had a bottle propped in a way so that it would get a continuous supply of milk with as little effort from the adults as possible and looked like it could have been no more than 5 months old. It took everything in my being not to reach into that car and take the baby right then and there.

It was soon apparent that I wasn’t the only person who had noticed this peculiar situation and a woman stopped by while I was peeking into the car to tell me that she too thought this looked very suspicious and they had been passed out like that for at least an hour if not more…About this time a few of the Lowe’s employees came out to say that they had contacted the police, who came about an hour prior, and that they had done absolutely nothing! After the Lowe’s employees came outside, more and more people started to notice what was happening and began to crowd the car which inevitably woke up the sleeping adults. Once they noticed they were being watched, they took off pretty quickly.

Call me sensitive if you will, but after getting over my initial shock at the situation, I went through a gamut of emotion. I cried a lot, thinking about that little baby and the life it was living as well as the future it had in store. I made myself sick to my stomach with worry, worry about where these people would sleep that night or where their next meal would even come from. As crazy as it sounds, I was thankful. I don’t make a lot of money at all and we don’t have the best car, nicest furniture or coolest electronics, but we have so much more than a huge population of Missouri, approximately 25% of whom are in poverty. Finally, I became enraged. Enraged that I work for a woman’s health care provider that faces protesters and negative feedback on a daily basis because individuals care so much about saving an embryo. Yet, I have personally never seen ONE protester or concerned citizens raising hell over the children who are born addicts because their mother was using the entire time she was pregnant. You don’t see protesters or angered citizens surrounding the children who are living out of cars with addict parents and you don’t hear outrage over children who are being forced to live in abusive homes because it is too hard to get out of that situation.

HOW can anyone justify the importance of one “life” over another? People cannot just pick and choose when they want to care about life. That is so wrong and any way you spin this, it will never be OK.

Now, for those of you who I haven’t lost yet because you can obviously see where this is going, I have a few very important facts that, especially if you are a woman in today’s society, you should read and understand completely:

• Did you know that existing state law already forbids public funding (Medicaid) to go towards an abortion? The only circumstance that changes this is if the mother’s life is in danger. That my friends means that all of the “Defund Planned Parenthood” talk going around is a bunch of bogus made up by conservative law makers to make you think your tax dollars are going towards abortion. Planned Parenthood sees a very large number of people who are on Medicaid every single day, approximately 7,000 annually, non of which are coming to get an abortion but instead seeking preventative care. They are coming for life saving screenings, like pelvic and breast exams. They are coming for affordable birth control so that they can practice safe sex and not be faced with an unwanted pregnancy. And they are coming for STI tests and treatments so they can be safe partners. When you DEFUND Planned Parenthood, you take all of this away from these individuals. You are being a supporter of taking their rights and helping to inflict harm on some of the poorest and most vulnerable women in Missouri.
• In 2011, when Texas jumped on the Defund Planned Parenthood bandwagon, birthrates among poor women jumped 27 percent in just three years. This isn’t because abortion was shut down. This is because these women no longer had access to affordable contraception. In fact, there was a 36% drop in benefit claims for long-acting contraceptives like IUD’s, one of the most effective forms of birth control.
• I once heard someone say that women were using abortion as birth control. Well, as of today, women seeking to terminate a pregnancy will pay an out-of-pocket cost which can range from $470, for the medication-induced abortion, to $1,320 for the surgical abortion. I don’t know about you and your finances, but who can afford to pay that much out of their own pocket for birth control? Not to mention the whole 72 hour wait you have to go through before you can decide to terminate your own pregnancy. That is a huge time and money commitment in my opinion.
• I see a lot of former school mates or old friends being up in arms about abortion and I recognize and respect everyone’s right to an opinion. I just find it awfully ironic that a large number of these women were going to Planned Parenthood to secretly get on birth control or popping Plan B like it was plan A. I hope you all understand that plan B can be seen as another form of abortion by those super awesome men making the rules in Jeff City and it too will go away with all of these restrictions they are trying to force upon our bodies…
• How about infertility in women? God forbid you are a women who has trouble getting pregnant in Missouri. With the recent “personhood” bills being talked about in our Capitol, in vitro could become a thing of the past in our state. If one of the  fertilized and implanted embryos dies while inside of you then that is being seen as a loss of a human being, just the same as abortion. No doctor who specializes with in vitro is going to want to deal with all of the strict regulations that will be put on them and in the end will pull practices out of Missouri which makes finding someone to help you with your infertility, especially hard.
• Did you know that Missouri is one in a handful of states left that allows female prisoners to be shackled to the bed while giving birth? Not only are they shackled, but the chains are around their bellies, proving to have caused harm to not only mom but also baby. For all of my mommy friends out there who have given birth, do you think it is absolutely necessary to shackle a woman in labor? I don’t know about you but I certainly wasn’t thinking about anything besides getting the giant watermelon out of my body without dying.
• Making abortion illegal in this state will NEVER get rid of women seeking abortion. It will take away the ability for women to get a safe abortion and if for one second you think that women aren’t already taking to coat hangers or swallowing chemicals to get rid of unwanted pregnancies then you are living a life of willful ignorance.
• There is absolutely no such thing as pro abortion. This language needs to be stopped because it does nothing but spread hate. Everyone is pro life. A woman doesn’t just wake up one day saying, “man, I am so glad I get to go kill a baby today.” If you think this happens, then honestly, you need a little bubble bursting.
• Never, in any situation, it is necessary or appropriate for the government, especially men in government, to tell women what they can and cannot do to their own bodies. If you have a penis, then I don’t care what you think about how I am handling myself and my body. Until men can carry a life within themselves, then they have no right to hand out their opinions on what a woman chooses to do concerning a life she may be carrying. Women of Missouri, you should seriously be weary of what the men in MO legislation are deciding is right for you.

Listen, in no way am I ever trying to be offensive about the topics I cover in this blog. This topic is definitely not an easy one to discuss. With that being said… I have a child and she is the best thing that ever happened to me. Personally, I could have never gotten an abortion and that is something that was the right decision for me. Unfortunately however, we have women in our state who are being raped and impregnated by their attackers then forced to carry these babies to term. We have a population of individuals who practice incest in our state and are impregnating their young daughters who are also forced to carry their babies to term, sometimes more than once. AND  we also have women every single day who are getting pregnant and are so extremely happy about it but find out later that their baby is facing a life debilitating disease or even more unfortunate are already gone. Because of Missouri law, they cannot get the DNC they need in our state and have to travel outside of their means and their support groups for an extremely hard and heartbreaking procedure. You can’t judge someone’s choices without understanding their reasoning.

Abortion isn’t right for me but that doesn’t mean I have the right or power to dictate if it is right for every single other woman out there. I am BEGGING you to please, have some compassion for the women in Missouri. Be informed about the issues and don’t just get stuck in the “Pro-Choice/Pro-Life” battle. Most importantly, if you choose to call yourself Pro-Life, then you need to be PRO every single life, not just the ones you feel are most important. Think of that little baby I saw at Lowe’s and the life that it has to live…That child deserves the same amount of respect, care and compassion as the fertilized embryo everyone is up in arms over.

I leave you with this quote from a woman whom I admire very much, Margaret Sanger. “No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body”

I am open to any feedback you may have and welcome all positive and productive conversation on this topic! If you have any questions or would like to know more about what is happening in our Capitol, I would also love to help answer any questions that I can! I am in the business of spreading truth and preaching love for one another and only ask for the same in return if you do decide to get involved in the conversation 

As always, have a great day friends!

-HonestMomma