Thoughts on sharing birth stories
The reality is that if a person fears birth and the various things that could possibly go wrong, the way to reassure her is not to silence those who have gone before her and pretend that she’s imagining the risks and it’s all in her head.
How I cried my way to a free smear test
I lost it, and I cried, and I knew it wasn’t her fault but it was the final straw: it was yet another piece of evidence of a broken system that fails women every day, one that failed women who are no longer with us, and their families, and every woman who has since lost faith in the system.
Angry in company
The question was posed many times in the past few months: What will we do with all this time when we repeal? But the announcement was not even out long enough for the tears of relief to have started to dry when the restlessness set in. Where next with this broken world?
Whom do you trust?
The evidence shows that it makes sense: you can trust women to make their own reproductive decisions. No floodgates tend to open, and they don’t tend to go off having a load of abortions – that’s what the statistics say. They still have kids, families still prosper, despite the lack of a constitutional amendment forcing them to. It just seems unlikely, shocking almost. Trusting a man is easier, somehow – even when the evidence shows he’s a murderer.
Change or no change - let's talk about fears
The type of abortion you fear is already happening, and there is nothing you can do about that; the type of suffering you’d like to help minimise, however, you have a very real chance to do something about.
Love thy neighbour
She’s a lovely woman. She often stops by to chat when she’s on her way somewhere and my two sons are playing in the front garden. She tells me they’re adorable, such a gift. And she’s right – they are a gift. She means it in a slightly different way to how I see it, of course; she thinks of them as gifts from God. But we agree that they’re a blessing, if in a non-religious sense for me.
No woman is an island
“Happiness is within,” so the self-help books say. But what is self-help if the self needs help, reaching out and away for respite, for togetherness? Sure happiness must be within when the outside and beyond is cold and lonely, bills unpaid and children hungry, wombs a battlefield and homes hollow as ghosts. You must find strength within to get up early in the morning, pay your taxes, look after your own, never complain – good man. When there’s no such thing as society and Thatcher rests in peace, take a deep breath, try yoga.
Down Syndrome, reproductive choices and the need for a social welfare state
How narrow can the perception of the perfect child get? It’s an interesting and important question from a philosophical point of view, but when asked in the context of the reproductive justice discourse it becomes puzzling at best – not least because monitoring pregnant people’s motivations is tricky.
