The Ramifications of Overturning Roe V Wade From a Mad Woman’s View

I Don’t Know Where to Start

I’ll figure it out as I go. You guys know how I write in my bipolar brain. This impacts me as a woman, a mother, an employee of a medical insurance, etc. Have you ever had to read medical charts? Well, I read one today where twins didn’t make it. Spontaneous abortion. So what are we going to do now? My job is preparing to figure out how they handle these things. That isn’t my job but, as a coder, I have to read charts and my heart will go out to people that no longer have a choice over their bodies.

Roe v Wade being overturned has surprised some people but this world is trash and nothing surprises me anymore. People wonder why I want to leave. Look at the world. Women’s rights are a thing of the past everywhere. We don’t have the freedom to make sure that we don’t get pregnant, we don’t have the freedom to mind our own uterus. We won’t have the freedom to choose our method of contraception to AVOID getting pregnant.

While I haven’t been sexually active in seven years, I use contraception because I have PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). I use it for the hormones. Many teens have to use contraception to regulate their periods (I worked in GYN and infertility for about nine years combined). I know the stories. I know about the different types of contraception. I know I personally don’t want an IUD because of what I have seen in the notes as far as side effects and removal. And what of my child? These are the things I have to contend with. It’s not just my uterus I have to worry about; I have a whole teenager that I have to advocate for whose periods are extremely irregular as well. I haven’t put her on anything because she is not sexually active, and I don’t really want to put her on any of the options out there in all honesty.

Many People Don’t Know This …

Around the age of 21, I had an abortion. I will tell you that, because I was sheltered before, I got out in this world, saw that men wanted me, and had a man for every single day of the week. With that, I couldn’t tell you who the father was although we mostly used condoms. I never even told my mother. But my sisters know and my boss at the time knew. In my case, I had to do it because I didn’t know who the father was and I couldn’t tell my mother especially that I had done something so stupid and gotten pregnant. One of the guys that could have been the father found a doctor (a real one), and I went to the office and had the procedure done.

Every day, I live with that decision. I do. When I got it done, I felt so guilty because I was SO sick while I was pregnant. I couldn’t hold anything down but, once I got the abortion, I ate a whole Subway Cold Cut Combo. That meal made my heart sick. I felt that I was selfish. I live with that. I knew I wasn’t going to do it again. The process wasn’t painful, there were no picketers outside of the office or anything. It was a doctor’s office.

(Skip the next five paragraphs if you don’t want to hear about my daughter’s deadbeat father)

Once I got pregnant a second time by a deadbeat that looked great on paper but totally turned out to be the worst person in the world to have a child with (unless you count someone like Hitler), I began to pay more attention to my ovulation and all that. It wasn’t going to happen again and it didn’t. But, because I had that abortion once, I wasn’t going to do it again. I was going to sleep in the bed I made. Although I did what I was supposed to do as a responsible adult (in my eyes), the deadbeat chose to skip town. Now, this isn’t some guy I just met or anything like that. I had known him for years before I even met him in person. I met him when I was dating a Nigerian guy and wanted to know more about his culture, so I went in a Nigerian chat room and that’s where I met the deadbeat. On paper, he was a good dude. From a two parent family, went to DeMatha and Howard, had god kids that he loved. I met his best friend (he has since passed), had been a teacher, and was a good uncle to his brother’s kids. Loved kids. Didn’t love the one he made though. She was the first one. Instead, he decided to hit CA, FL, and finally came back to DC where he was served when my daughter was about 6.

The sad part is that his mother became the best grandmother when she had proof that my daughter was his. She had come to see my daughter when she was little because I found her to find him. I had called him the day I went into labor, and he later told me that he knew what he was doing when I had called. He had even made a blog when the paternity test came back (his friends had all become geneticists because she was born at 37 weeks). He just KNEW she wasn’t his but, I’m no dummy. He started to put me down and tell me that I was dumb. Those were fun times.

Once paternity was proven, he decided that it wasn’t fair. So he “lost” his job and moved to Spain with the woman he later married (please believe I am not jealous, I don’t want him and I hope he has the life he deserves). My daughter has a brother that she will likely NEVER meet. So, he was making six figures (I didn’t know as he had bounced his way all around the country to let me take care of my child because I made her myself, you see) and child support was going to be higher than he wanted it to be so he “lost” his job. He claims that he “lost” it because he was served at his job and the owner of the entity (I won’t say the name of his job but it is a big architectural firm in DC) is a single mother. They wouldn’t have had to serve him at work had he not bounced around the country to get away from his responsibility.

His mother then took the reins and would keep my daughter overnight, take her to the pool, and even had her deadbeat son hang out with them (when she originally found out that she had her first biological grandchild, she wanted to come lay eyes on her and I allowed her to. She was SO happy, but she chose to step back until paternity was proven which it was). But I started to sense something was wrong. She began to show signs of dementia and I knew those signs. Well, when the deadbeat got “fired”, he got married, and started traveling the world…. on his mother’s dime. She had dementia and he wanted to keep her with him (I saw it on his blogs). His brother had to fight him to keep him away from taking some good property in DC (she had a nice condo in a NICE part of DC). Anyhow, he “was homeless” and got his child support lowered from about $1,200 (he never paid it) to $50.00/mo for a “retarded ass kid”, yes, he said that to me. I can tell you the date he said it: 9/5/2013, three days before my birthday). My daughter had not been diagnosed yet but those were his words (see My Child is Far From Retarded).

Anyhow, the payments didn’t come, and I struggled. My daughter is 16 going on 17 now and you guys have seen our stories and struggles. But I do it because I am all she has. And I have a village. My village is big and beautiful. It is made up of single mothers, single fathers, family, and friends. That village is why I am still here. I now get payments of $51.46 because the deadbeat wants to travel again. I mean, why not just stay in Spain? Yes, they took his passport. I can’t say I care and I would hate to see him on the street. The one person in the world that I hate is him. Just him. Don’t call my child names and don’t treat her like trash. Do what you want to me, but don’t mess with my child. And, yes, she is my child now. I have done all the work with my village. She is their child as well.

The Impact on Women PERIOD

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that this is taking so much more than abortion off the table. And this overturning pretty much generalizes that everyone that gets pregnant chose to be that way. Everyone uses the examples of rape and incest, but I always go a step further because I work in the medical field.

There are babies with genetic conditions that make it so that the child might not live but a few minutes once delivered. There are mothers out there that don’t get adequate care and the babies aren’t healthy or the mother might lose her life having the child. There are babies that are born with grave conditions that don’t make it after being in the NICU for weeks or months. Yes, there are some that make it and are fighters but then who pays for the medical bills? What about those mothers that are addicted to drugs and pregnant?

It’s easy to say “Well, they shouldn’t have gotten pregnant!” but there is no way that we can know the circumstances that people go through when they get pregnant. When I worked in infertility, we had to do a LOT of D&Cs. Were we going to make the mother, who was already going through emotional turmoil, carry a fetus that no longer had a heartbeat? Some babies die in the womb. Do we make the mother carry the baby until the due date? Where is the humanity?

Being pregnant is hard. Being pregnant and not having a choice in the matter is harder. Being pregnant and being judged for not foretelling the future is harder. Being pregnant and alone is hard. I really think that the world thinks that everything is a woman’s fault. If we have the child, and need assistance, we’re moochers. If we don’t have the child, we’re selfish. If we have the child and don’t need assistance but have no husband, we lose value, and no one wants us (society has told us this). What is our purpose in the world? To raise kids alone? Even married mothers are single mothers sometimes. They don’t get the support that they need from their own husbands. When I say that people change, I mean they can change for the better or for the worse.

I always use me as an example. I was a totally different person before I had my daughter. She made me a better person in many ways. She has taught me a lot as a person. She makes me see the world differently. Thankfully, we were afforded the chance for a do over in some cases but what about our children?

The Impact on TEENS

None of us were born perfect. We all made mistakes as children/teens. Some of us thought we were in love and had unprotected sex with someone we thought we loved. Some of us didn’t get attention and gave ourselves to anyone that would show it to us. Some of us were sheltered or not even really taught about sex as if it was something dirty. Some of us didn’t even know what ovulation was or how to monitor it so as to know when NOT to have sex or to use contraception (I literally learned and stuck to it after I had my daughter, I was 26). And then we have those that were raped or assaulted by their own family.

According to RAINN:

• One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult.
• 82% of all victims under 18 are female.
• Females ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

With the overturning of Roe v Wade, our teens won’t have the chance to make those mistakes and come out unscathed (physically at least, we won’t even get into mentally right now). They won’t have a choice in their contraception, they won’t have a choice in whether they keep the baby or not. They might feel as though they can’t tell anyone and hide the pregnancy (some were already doing that). This is not going to have a good outcome. Yes, on a state level, there are alternatives but that doesn’t mean that they will tell someone before it is too late. Everyone talks about adoption but let’s ask the kids in the foster system how that worked out for them. There are some good outcomes but not always although I do know some great foster parents that don’t use children for a check. There just aren’t enough of them for the 407,493 kids that are in foster care as of Feb of this year according to Statistica.

And then we have to look at the reasons why many, if not the majority, of the kids are in foster care in the first place. If their parents can’t afford them or don’t want them, what kind of mental anguish do you think those children have to endure? I’m into true crime. Do you know how many killers come from households or environments where they were abused and continued the cycle of abuse? One of my favorite true crime and makeup YouTubers just did a HORRIBLE story where this was the case. Watch it if you choose but it WILL break your heart. Sadly, this is just ONE of many stories where people are the product of their environment.

The Impact on Parents of Teens

I’m a mother. I speak of my daughter all the time. Anyone that reads my blogs knows this. She is my world. She also has a moderate intellectual disability and autism. With that said, would you like to know the stats of sexual assault for people like her?

Because many of these instances go unreported, there can only be an estimate BUT it is said that people with disabilities have increased chances of being sexually assaulted (up to 3x the rate of people in other demographics). In my child’s case, because she has the cognitive age of an eight-year-old, she might not know what’s going on. Believe me, we have been teaching her about good touch and bad touch for many years. I have also been working with her on being so nice to people. Everyone isn’t good in this world and looking out for your well-being. It was one of the main reasons I put her in Taekwondo. I know she can fight as I have had to fight her. I know she knows what to do but sometimes we’re outnumbered, some people are drugged, some people are just brutal. Sometimes people don’t care and will take what they want. What are we supposed to do in that case? Do I raise that child? I would ultimately be the one responsible for that child.

From an Insurance Standpoint

Many women have been talking about how their doctors won’t do a tubal ligation on them if they haven’t had children or without the husband’s consent. There are reasons for this. I am not a doctor but, again, I know insurance, work with doctors, and try to look at things objectively.

Someone accused me today of saying that it’s right that doctors don’t do this when I was merely stating a fact. The fact is that many doctors DON’T want to do tubals on women because 1) Insurance usually will not cover it if it is being done electively (meaning you have no problems, you just want to be sterilized) OR 2) because people have changed their minds and, because the procedure is invasive for women, they would like you to at least have 2 kids before they do it. Getting it reversed, as of now, isn’t usually covered by insurance.

Insurance has the say in what doctors really can and cannot do unless you want to pay out of pocket. These are the rules. People think that doctors have power and make all this money. No, they don’t. The only fields that really make the money are infertility and plastic surgery because their patients pay out of pocket. So, there are rules that have to be adhered to when you are a doctor and don’t get me started on malpractice insurance. Do you know that many doctors no longer “catch babies” because of the high cost of malpractice insurance? People like to sue.

This blog is too long, and I have a lot more to say but this is where I will stop. Just know that ALL the states are not being impacted by this overturning of Roe vs Wade. Know that the majority don’t agree with this decision. Know that there are entities that will help people get the care they need for their situation. We are all in this together. Ohhh, I really wanted to talk about the insensitive comments that men have been making on this subject, but I will definitely have to put that in my next blog because it’s just … disappointing. SO disappointing. I mean, they’re literally laughing and telling us we need to keep our legs closed. But I thought it took two people to make a baby. They can just skip away while the woman has to take the brunt of the punishment by society and now by the judicial system.

Also, if you want to see what the world is going to be like in some states because of the overturning of Roe v Wade, I suggest you go on Netflix and watch a BBC Original called Call the Midwife. The show is set in times before women had autonomy of their own bodies. There are stories where women almost died because they tried to get an abortion done. There are stories where women were arrested or had to flee because they got pregnant without a mate. There are stories where teachers lost jobs because they got pregnant without being married (that actually happened here up until a few decades ago) but it is a very enlightening series and, sadly, that’s where many states will be. It has made me cry a number of times as well.

I might have to do a part two of this. But understand, we will get through this even if we have to do an Underground Railroad for pregnant women in red states. I was raised pro-life, but I will NEVER dictate what another woman does with her body. I’m even hesitant to do so with my own daughter. I will be calling my GYN to find out some suggestions regarding my daughter and what is best for her (as all birth control, like most meds, don’t work for everyone). There have been suggestions from GYNs on TikTok. They are saying to buy a couple of Plan B’s (save some for other people as they have an expiration date of about 2 years. Please don’t be greedy).

Yes, I have more to say but I will have to continue this in another blog because there is so much to unpack and I’m still really trying to wrap my brain around all the ways this is going to impact us as a society, as women, as mothers, as humans. I’m truly just really disappointed in the responses or lack of responses from men. The laughing is really hard. It makes me question our real purpose in this world to them. But, like I said, I haven’t had sex in seven years. Most aren’t even worth it and that’s also sad.