Last week, Hillary Clinton became the first woman nominee for President of a major political party and I had a miscarriage. These things have absolutely nothing to do with the other, and yet I can’t help think about the connections they raise in my life and the lives of so many women.
I’ve always tried to be the operative who stays behind the spotlight — so telling this story doesn’t come easily or naturally. Why now? I guess the answer is pretty simple.
I’m telling you this because one of the things that helped me through this ordeal was hearing about other women’s stories like mine and the choices they made.
The other reason I’m telling you this is because my story, just like yours, is deeply connected to this presidential contest. It is not the abstract of policy but the truth of our own unique experiences, hardships, and choices that will be impacted by who wins in November. Whether we are talking about banning assault weapons to prevent another act of terror and hate, like the devastation we are seeing in Orlando, or we are protecting reproductive freedom for women to make their own decisions about their own bodies. We are on a dangerous precipice with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee and we all have to do something about it.
Because don’t forget: part of the reason women seek later abortions is because anti-choice laws and policies make birth control and early abortion that much more difficult to access. There’s abstinence-only education. There are consent laws and waiting periods and the fact that most counties in the US don’t even have an abortion provider – Mississippi, depending on how a federal appeals court rules on a case it heard this week, soon may not have any in the entire state.
The anti-choice activists behind these policies find pro-choice mothers like me baffling. We disrupt their narrative of “good” women who have babies and “bad” women who have abortions. They can’t wrap their heads around the idea that women have both abortions and babies – and that one of the top reasons women give for getting an abortion is out of concern for their existing children.