I CAN TELL YOU WHAT TOMORROW WILL LOOK LIKE
Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash
Sepsis. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe not.
An email from a nurse friend recently sent me back down the rabbit hole of abortion memories. She wrote of another nurse who, after minor surgery in her own hospital, got sepsis that took, first, both of her hands, then her feet, then her life. Sepsis is not for the faint-hearted.
Yet it’s how millions of women died in this country alone before Roe v Wade made sterile abortion care widely available.
I am a survivor of one of those pre-Roe abortions. Performed on a kitchen table in 1956 by a sleazy guy who probably hand’t bothered to wash his hands. Did I care? Well, yes — but the issue was to end an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a workplace rape and this was the only option.
The most common method of back-alley abortions involved insertion of a straw (or worse) into the vagina, which would precipitate bleeding and eventual discharge of fetal tissue. It seems barbaric today, but few people today understand the desperation of a woman who needs to end a pregnancy — often compounded by rape, incest, abuse, you name it. You cannot name it, though, unless you are that woman.
Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash
Unsanitary conditions lead to sepsis. The advent of medication abortion (along with general improvements in reproductive care overall) virtually eliminated the risk of sepsis when a woman needs to end an unwanted pregnancy. The last half century saw a world of progress.
But today? The crazies who would dictate what a woman may or may not do with her own body are also dictating to physicians who, in many states, now have to consider losing their license or going to jail while they’re considering how best to treat a patient.
Not even pharmacists are exempt. The super-safe and simple dispensation of pills for medication abortion it also in the crosshairs of the crazies.
Images of all those women who died of sepsis — because desperation abortions cause sepsis — might seem dim to you. Not to me.
I am a survivor. An incredibly lucky survivor who lived to marry and have healthy, much-wanted children. But I have not forgotten the unlucky ones. If we do not fight hard, daily, everywhere for restoration of reproductive freedom, I know what the future will look like.
