Fighting Fetal Pain Bills

I’ve been so concerned with Texas SB5 that I haven’t been paying attention to my personal issues on the national level. H.R. 1797: Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act passed the other day and now goes on to the Senate. Think Progress has a really good explanation of the issues.

Of course, Ted Poe voted for it. Why wouldn’t he? He’s a God-fearing Christian who has four healthy children with his wife, so he isn’t affected by abortion at all.  So I sent him a letter telling him that as a voter, I wouldn’t forget this. As a woman, I wouldn’t forget this. And as a mother, I wouldn’t forget this.

I then e-mailed John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, again both Republicans, who have the responsibility of voting this bill down. I’m sure they won’t, but I felt that it was my responsibility to share my story with them and let them know that they represent ME and MY interests.

I got into a screaming fit with my father the other day about this. He still can’t get it through his thick skull that I had an abortion. Medically approved, but he doesn’t seem to understand that it was an abortion, and that these laws. for the most part, don’t distinguish between an elective abortion and an ELECTIVE abortion(the twenty week ban was removed from Texas SB5, but we expect it to show back up). He understands that we are trying to have another child, and this I’m scared to death that I’ll not only be faced with another fetal anomaly, but that this time, I won’t be able to legally and safely protect my child.

I just laugh at the idea that people want to protect my child from the pain of the abortion (mind you, her heart was stopped days before the procedure AND I was drugged the entire time), but don’t seem to give a damn about the pain that she’d be in ONCE she was born! There was a very real possibility that she would have pain so sever that narcotics couldn’t dull it.

I just don’t understand those who have no empathy for anyone else. Ted Poe’s reality is NOT my reality. Rick Perry’s reality is not my reality. They can kiss my ass.

Thanks, Dad

I have a bizarre relationship with my father. I honestly believe that he arrested at 16, and that if I don’t expect much out of him, I’ll never be disappointed.

I’ve only had a real relationship with him over the past ten years, and he’s horrified to find out that I’m not only all grown up, but that I’m… (gasp) a liberal. Mind you, *I* don’t think I’m a liberal. I honestly believe that I’m a moderate, but you’ll never get him to believe that.

I’m a member of the NEA, eat organic food, and refuse to shop at Wal-Mart. I guess these things make me liberal leaning, but I’m pretty conservative in other areas. When I take political tests, my two highest party alliances are the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. Is there such a thing as a Green Libertarian? Maybe the Justice Party. I don’t know.

Mind you, my summary of last night’s conversation will jump around a lot, because HE jumps around a lot. He can’t hold a coherent argument, and he doesn’t accept any facts or statistics that I offer. He doesn’t trust anything except what he gets from Michael Savage or Glenn Beck.

In any case, I called him last night, and he asked me my opinion on the politics of the day. Honestly, I really only have been paying attention to women’s reproductive rights lately.

I swear, I think he laughed.

He asked me if I thought that the federal government should get involved. I said yes, if the state government is taking away my rights. Like North Dakota.

I told him that no federal money goes towards abortions at Planned Parenthood, and he almost choked with vitriolic laughter: “You believe what the federal government tells you? You are telling me that my money isn’t going to support abortions?” There was no way to convince him otherwise, even after my analogy where a child was sent in to the grocery store with ten dollars and told he can buy anything in the store except soda. There is plenty that the grocery store sells other than soda. Stop focusing on it.

I also asked him if he had ever been to a Planned Parenthood clinic – I knew the answer before I got the answer. I tried explaining about funding categories, but he didn’t get it and rambled on about his rights and his money.

I was told that there was nothing wrong with states outlawing and criminalizing abortion, and that if I wanted one, I could just go to another state to get one.

He had no answer about if insurance would cover it.

He had no answer about forcing women to get L&D at a hospital rather than a D&E (D&E is way cheaper).

He insinuated that all liberal people should live together because there is no way that conservatives and liberals should live together.

First of all, I don’t think he completely understands that I had an abortion. He doesn’t get it.

Secondly, did he really just tell me that I would have move, relocate my entire life, just so I can fit in with people who will treat me as a human being?

And finally, how can this man have so little sympathy for his daughter? I understand that he won’t/can’t have empathy – it’s not his nature(he’s a 16 year old at heart, remember?), but I was expecting him to give a little on this issue. It’s not even like he’s still a Catholic – he’s mocked religion for as long as I can remember. Why can’t he understand?

I ended up telling him that I wanted the government to stay out of my business and that the only strange man I wanted to be interested in my uterus was my OBGYN, and I even used the cliche “If you don’t want to have an abortion, then don’t have one”, but it didn’t work well. I swear, he doesn’t understand that I actually had an abortion. It’s almost like he is pretending that my baby died in utero, and then I had the D&E.

I had to hang up on him yesterday because I was so upset. It kept me up all night, and I just now had to take an anxiety pill (Ativan) because I’m still upset over it.

He doesn’t really care about abortion one way or another I think, but he’s so caught up in his quest to destroy the Federal government that he doesn’t realize what would really happen if the states essentially had free reign.

And he wants to know why I don’t want to make it up for family reunions.

He’s right. I don’t belong in Missouri.