I'm Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America

by Rebecca Little

Is that hard for you to hear? You think it’s harder to hear than to experience? Grow up.

abortion “has always been a contest not only over women’s reproduction, but also over the reproduction of political power—because in a (putatively) representative democracy, power is a function of population.”

Abortion laws have usually rested on a cultural ideal of who is deserving of this care, whose tragedies matter.

(Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and there are few enemies more Biblical than “Woman.”)

“Picture it this way—if somebody showed you an X-ray of your loved one’s skeleton that they were going to use in an ‘In Memoriam’ tribute, you would be horrified. But people publicly share their sonogram photos all the time.”

A D&C procedure is used for an abortion and miscarriage. We’ve talked about this already, but these procedures are the same.

On paper, it’s simple; in reality, it’s quite complicated. How do you prove you’ve been raped, let alone under extreme time constraints? How do you decide the mother is sick enough to save her life?)

Childbirth is far more dangerous than abortion or miscarriage,

“If a baby lives for ninety minutes and is struggling, do we feel good about that?

In America, our maternal mortality rates are a stark reminder of how little we actually value women’s health.”

At the time the Constitution was written, abortion wasn’t considered a right. It would not have been considered much at all. (Oh, by the way, at the time the Constitution was written, women couldn’t vote, Black people were enslaved, and people routinely died of simple viruses and infections. Not a super inspiring period on which to base modern law.)

Crazy” meaning a woman over age seventeen having a big feeling for more than six weeks.)