During my fertile years I had one abortion, one miscarriage, and one foster daughter. Because of the diligent work of The Janes and the wise women in the 1960s and 70s, when I had an abortion at 21 in 1999, I had a different experience than many in the past. My mom accompanied me to Aradia Women’s Health Clinic on Seattle’s First Hill and I had a $450 legal state-funded abortion. The procedure details were thoroughly explained to me. I wasn’t belittled, ignored, molested, or sexually assaulted by the staff. I was offered various forms of pain management but chose ibuprofen because I wanted to remain alert. For closure, I asked to see the contents that had been removed from my uterus. As I held the jar of blood and fluid, I pondered the life ahead of me and said goodbye to the alternate version of me in the jar. It wasn’t a spa experience but it also didn’t necessarily hurt. Mostly, the physical sensation of having an abortion was sharp and strange, a somatic confirmation that my guts were bloody organs and not fiber optic filament or just in my imagination. I rested in the clinic afterwards and then my mom and I drove to our family’s beach house for a weekend event. 

Before becoming foster parents, my ex-wife and I inseminated each other for over a year. She’s a nurse, and a doctor friend of ours, an abortion doctor actually, taught us how to inseminate each other. She showed us how to bring the vial of frozen sperm to body temperature in our sports bras, and how to point the speculum towards the cervix, and then inject the sperm into the uterus. The first few times we did this it was exhilarating and we’d lay together afterwards in bliss, legs elevated, giggling softly in anticipation and hope. Purchasing sperm costs more than a mortgage and we both felt we could parent and love a child that hadn’t come from our bodies as much as one that had, so after I miscarried we began the process of becoming licensed foster parents. And though I’ve ended up raising no children, having very much wanted to, I’ve never regretted my choices or agency to choose.  

When I had my abortion, I didn’t know that “septic abortion wards” were commonplace in US hospitals pre Roe v Wade. Or that in the late 1700s, as the colonies continued forcing themselves upon the people of Turtle Island, claiming their independence from England, that abortion was legal. Women managing their fertility was expected. It wasn’t until the late 1800s abortion became the addled nightmare we currently recognize. (Abortion Timeline in USA)

Those of us with uteruses understand that getting pregnant changes us forever. It is a threshold after which we are mothers, have had a miscarriage, or an abortion, but never again are we the person we were before pregnancy. We understand that because this natural process weaves us into Nature and puts us squarely at the Life/Death/Birth Threshold, it is sound wisdom to uplift the desire and agency of the pregnant person. And the rest of us are but her humble doulas, present and assisting. 

My vision is that we become a people collectively capable of supporting and uplifting this truth, transforming the fervent blackmail of shame and manipulation of judgment so that no more of us have to needlessly suffer or die at their hands.

Some fellow shamanic practitioners and I did a grief ritual a couple weeks ago and I cried into the earth for Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, Taysha Wilkinson-Sobeiski, Josseli Barnica, and all the other women of our current time who didn’t have to die or suffer, but did, because they were refused care. I gave my rage to the earth over the fervor and misdirection of the religious right, so separate from reality and love that they seek to remove agency with their feeble skirmishes. I ceremoniously offered my feelings of powerlessness that the forced birthers seek to sow within me, keening them into the earth to be composted. Allowing those energies to remain inside of me will keep me from where I need to go in the coming months and I will not allow that. As Kamala said in her interview on Call Her Daddy, “No one can take your power away from you.” Acknowledging and feeling my heartbreak was the first step in wielding my power in this situation. 

The wisdom that came to me in the soft quiet space after grieving was that our rightful place as those with uteruses is knowing that we are the threshold of life and that this position is one of inherent power, wonder, and responsibility that deserves reverence. Along with this knowledge comes the treasure of right timing: our knowing when it’s time to mother and when it’s not. 

As many of us know, the whole abortion issue as we currently recognize it is a red herring, a gaslight. And if we fight it at the level of the manipulation, there will never be a solution because it’s not the ground upon which this topic takes place. The issue is sovereignty and serves as a constant threat to those of us with uteruses that, according to some, our bodies ought not to be ours. The forced birth movement seeks to keep women in their place as property, subservient to the wayward whims of decisions and laws made by those who will never stand at the precipice pregnancy puts us before, yet they seek dominion over it. Perhaps it is uterus or birthing envy. Regardless, it’s perverse for these zombies to keep molesting us with their decaying philosophies and necrotic laws. 

We have the opportunity to continue building our solid foundation of wisdom. All the information is here for us to do this and we know how to do it effectively with courage, discernment, and kindness. We must grieve so that our sisters, mothers, and grandmothers past can heal and finally rest. We must exorcize the putrefied wraiths of domination and misogyny that have grasped at our bodies and feasted on our flesh for too many generations. And then with precision and clarity, we close the door on anything that doesn’t support our inherent wisdom; for it does not serve Life to keep this door open. In short: we continue doing the things we know work; we grieve so the energy can move and doesn’t get stuck and putrefy; and we renounce the energies that seek to prevent us from doing these things. 

Then we lay down our knowledge, steeping our wisdom not just within each other, but the Earth Herself, so that regardless of what happens, future generations can put their own hands into the earth and learn what we know, dissolving the illusion of separation between life, death, and birth. 

There are many right answers in the realm of flowing with the current of being life-bringers, and we don’t have to agree with all of them in order to support them. From medical abortion, to abortion pills, to menstrual extraction, to water births, to free-birthing outside the medical system, to having the obstetric interventions we deem necessary for us to be supported at our version of the threshold, to birthing but not being the one who raises the baby, etc. 

After Roe was overturned in 2022, I bought the book A New View of A Woman’s Body, specifically for chapter 8: Menstrual Extraction. Menstrual extraction is a safe at-home abortion procedure that is effective within the parameters in which it was designed. The original publication has this chapter but the sovereignty of it all caused such an uproar in the early 80s when the book was first published, that subsequent publishings had the chapter removed. For perspective, menstrual extraction is also what many professional athletes have done so they don’t have to bleed during games, matches, etc. The well-used book arrived to me barely intact, glue brittle and crusty. I taped the cover back to its pages and made copies of chapter 8 to give to everyone I knew. And then I purchased all the items and assembled my menstrual extraction kit. 

Regardless of who’s in the White House I feel that We, The Living, get to care for ourselves and each other in the ways we know are safe and skilled. We have the power to hold the line and progress made. We refuse to go backwards to the days of septic abortion wards, mob-run abortion services, or being forced to give a doctor a blowjob after he performs our illegal abortion. We refuse to be property again. 

And because it doesn’t work for humans to simply stand against things, we feel as clearly as we can, what we stand for. We stand for sovereignty. We stand for Life. We stand for well-being. We stand for connection. We stand for the adventure that is each of our individual lives making up our collective Time. We stand for grieving and healing so that we don’t become zealots or perpetrators ourselves. We stand for choosing these things and living them, and refusing to follow rules to games we don’t believe in. 

Links:

Abortion pills anywhere in the US
https://aidaccess.org/en/page/2880027/advance-provision

Chapter 8 of A New View of a Woman’s Body:
https://bodysex.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Menstrual-Extraction.pdf

Book: For Her Own Good, Two Centuries of the Expert’s Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English
https://www.amazon.com/Her-Own-Good-Centuries-Experts/dp/1400078008

Menstrual Extraction information from Women’s Health Specialists
https://www.womenshealthspecialists.org/self-help/menstrual-extraction/

Lincoln is currently in training as a Bodysex Coach. 

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