My response to the long-dead abortion thread is a deep withdrawn silence. None of what I had to say (and oh have I written it) means anything. Noise. My perspective defines – not even defines but IS – my opinion. We call one’s opinion her position – “where I’m coming from” – the language specifies that my position is what I think how I act who I am. The fact that I can’t seem to say anything about this is what I have to say about it. I am 21 years old. I have had two abortions. I first had sex (if I am to call it sex, clinically) when I was eight years old. Rape, incest, abuse. These things have to do with each other the way all impactful events in my life have to do with each other/are connected; I don’t know what the cause/effect relationships are. They’re there like everything else. There there dear. I do not feel as though I have killed babies. I have no religious guilt. I feel no pride for having ex(er)cised Roe v. Wade. I am not ashamed nor do I wish I had chosen other options. I wish I had never had to decide to end a pregnancy. I do not regret the physical and emotional pain I felt. I wish I had lived this far without being pregnant. I do not regret the sex responsible. I take responsibility for both instances. There is more to these experiences, more sorrow and anger and detail of procedures and conversations and subsequent effects on the people I love. These will come later. Now there is relief that safe, legal abortion was available to me as an option. Now there is sadness and regret that my first child will not be my first pregnancy. Now there are questions on the raging debates, some of which matter and some of which are noise. Why or perhaps how do proponents of only-in-cases-of-incest-rape-threat to mother’s life-legality base their definition of Legal Personhood and reproductive right on their strange parameters of detrimental-to-host? Should we base said personhood on the judgement of church or surgeon general? Philosophers, theologians, biologists, Congress, economists. There is so much networked on who/what is person and who/what I am when I am pregnant (it changes?), in body out of body. All I can do with it right now is to compile it and then to be quiet. It will be a while before I can speak.

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From notebook
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