February 18, 2025

Hello, Readers.

Wow! Hi! Been a while.

Yes, yes it has. I’m sorry about that. You see, I’ve been too depressed to blog about feminism for several months now.

Is that because of the election?

No, surprisingly enough. I was depressed before that. Last fall, I faced something very difficult: a medically required pregnancy termination. 

(Consider that your content warning.)

Or, in the common parlance, I lost a pregnancy, had a miscarriage, had an abortion.

Aren't those common parlances for 3 different things?

Eh, not really. Or at least, they overlap a lot more often than anti-abortion legislators and activists want to admit. Let me back up a bit and tell you the story.

I found out I was pregnant, and I was super excited. I’ve wanted children for a long time, and my health problems have made it harder to make that dream come true. Even though it was very early on, I started dreaming about the future - names, nursery design.

Less than a week later, I woke up at 5 AM to pain and a certainty that something was wrong. When I got my doctor on the phone, she asked if I had someone to take me to the ER. “I don’t want you to be there all alone,” she said. I knew what that meant almost immediately. 

You see, from ages 17-21 I volunteered as an Emergency Medical Technician, and there was a line in the textbook:

A WOMAN OF CHILDBEARING AGE WITH ABDOMINAL CRAMPING HAS AN ECTOPIC PREGNANCY UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE.

I guessed that that was happening to me. I was right.

What's an ectopic pregnancy?

It’s when a zygote implants, not in the uterus where it can grow into a person, but somewhere else in the body. In my case, it was stuck to my right ovary. Since there’s no way to move it into the uterus, it has no chance of survival. The only treatment is termination.

What happens if you don't terminate?

Much of the time, the pregnant person dies, or at least loses an ovary or Fallopian tube. See, the cells in the zygote keep dividing and growing, but there’s nowhere for them to assemble into a fetus. Eventually, the structure explodes, with dangerous results.

What causes it?

In my case, nothing at all. I had literally no risk factors. “It just happens,” the doctor told me at the ER. “It happens all the time.”

Oh. I didn't know that.

Neither do the people writing anti-abortion laws, apparently, because at least 6 states that ban abortion have no exceptions for protecting the health of a woman with an ectopic pregnancy. In 18 states - aka 36% of our country - doctors can only terminate an ectopic pregnancy if the patient is actively dying from it, even though it will be obvious from the day of diagnosis that there is no other possible treatment.

What was it like?

I sat in the ER for several hours that day. Most of the time, I was alone; my husband had to wait in the family waiting room while I was evaluated. First there was a urine test, then blood tests, then 45 minutes of ultrasounds (one external, two internal). Then there was 2 hours of waiting for results. 

Meanwhile, I sat, bleeding and in pain, and wrote emails to all 4 of my jobs, telling them I needed some time off. (I took 3 days, total.) 

Next, a doctor told me I had a “suspected ectopic” pregnancy, and would need to wait for an obstetrician to come down from that department and speak to me. In the interim, I couldn’t eat or drink anything except ice chips, because I might need to have emergency surgery. 

At this point, they let my husband in to sit with me. I told him the bad news: our potential baby was now an actual risk to my life.

How'd he take it?

Everyone asks that. I’m happy to report his only priority was my health. When the OB consultant got there and confirmed I had an ectopic pregnancy, he asked her exactly one question: does it always have to be terminated, or is there a chance Claire can pass it on her own? 

What did they say?

That termination is a blanket recommendation for all ectopic pregnancies. After all, the situation is already hopeless. “There's no baby,” the doctor said in an attempt to comfort us. We still cried.

We had to wait some more for the hospital pharmacy to dispense methotrexate, which is a chemotherapy drug. Then an OB resident gave me an injection, and I was sent home to miscarry.

How long did that take?

Much longer than I expected. I was bleeding for more weeks than I’d actually been pregnant for, which was not something I knew could happen. I had to return for urine and blood tests on days 3, 7, 14, and 21, then internal ultrasounds at weeks 8 and 16, to make sure I was done losing everything. And because methotrexate is a super powerful drug that can cause fetal abnormalities, I wasn’t allowed to have unprotected sex for 6 months.

In one of life’s little “what else” ironies, every time I went in for further testing, I had to give a urine sample in the ER ladies room. There’s a poster on the wall that literally says IT ONLY EVER GETS WORSE. The “it” in that sentence is intimate partner violence, but still, the poster did not improve my mood.

What's next?

I’ve been cleared to try, try again on the pregnancy front. Yet I’ve also been warned: once a woman’s had one ectopic pregnancy, her chances of having another are higher. (I think the doctor said 12% higher, but since this has already happened 100% of the times I’ve been pregnant, the specific level of increase is irrelevant to my level of anxiety.)

Why does that matter?

It means that I can’t go to any of those aforementioned 6 states. I can’t go to Texas. I can’t go to Idaho, Arkansas, or Mississippi. I can’t visit Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, or my friends in Oklahoma. Because if I were in one of those states when I woke up with bleeding and cramping, I’d literally not be allowed to save my own life.

Is it really that serious?

Yes. I could actually be dead if they hadn’t given me that methotrexate last October. Ectopic pregnancy ruptures are the leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester (source: NIH). Since there is no other way than termination to resolve an ectopic pregnancy, even the Catholic Church makes an exception for it (source: USCCB).

How come you say you “lost a pregnancy, had a miscarriage, had an abortion”? Can’t you just pick one?

In my case, all 3 are true. It was a loss: I had been pregnant, and then I wasn’t anymore. I grieved like it was a miscarriage, because that pregnancy was very much wanted. Yet legally and medically speaking, what I had is an abortion. It made me a member of that oh-so-evil category of the one in four American women who’ve terminated a pregnancy. (And yes, it is 1 in 4.)

The fact that all 3 labels apply is something I’m learning to live with, and it’s a reality you should be aware of, too.

What would you like us to do with this information?

1. Show a little compassion to those one in four American women, if you weren’t already doing so. We want to live. (If you were already pro-women-staying-alive, then keep doing what you’re doing.)
2. Don’t vote against my future survival. There’s currently a bill before Congress that would create a total abortion ban at the national level. Let your congresspeople know that you now know of at least one person who’d be dead if that ban were in place.
3. Be patient with me as I search for my lost blogging muse.

And, as always, keep your sexy lamps burning. ♥️