The Things We Do For Love . . .

I've been thinking for awhile now that if our default mode was one of love rather than fear, we could probably make a big dent in the number of abortions that take place. 

Isn't that what everybody wants anyway?

No woman "wants" to have an abortion, even those of us who have had one. 

And duh, the pro-lifers are all against abortion. 

What better way to have it all?

And then a couple of weeks ago, my daughter's boyfriend showed me a perfect example. 

He made a decision based on love, not fear. 

He chose to walk in my daughter's shoes long enough to understand her reproductive choices were "their" reproductive choices. Her comfort or discomfort was his too. When she was not healthy, it impacted him also. They both knew before they began their relationship that they didn't want to have children. Neither pressured the other to think the same way about a future with or without kids. After watching her medical struggles for a year now with various hormones and patches and their impact on her body, mind and spirit, he decided he would do his part. 

He made a decision to have a vasectomy. 

Now, more than a few folks think he is crazy. Or, he's too young (26) to know whether or not he wants kids. He may change his mind. My favorite - why would he risk a knife to the "family jewels" in the first place? 

Maybe there is a new generation of men out there who are more open to this kind of sharing. I hope so. I've met men who refused to wear a condom, much less decided to have a vasectomy. This young man's actions seem pretty extraordinary to me. 

I don't know what the final straw was that propelled him to make this decision, but I know that he loves his girlfriend, my daughter, with his whole self. He's watched her pain and seen her anxiety. I believe he's felt these things with her. 

He made a choice for unity instead of separation. 

He made a choice to operate with compassion and love for the benefit of the whole of the relationship, not for the benefit of himself. 

He made a choice for love over fear. 

He leaned into, not away from. 

He built a bridge to greater intimacy, he did not dig a bigger moat. 

He earned his "man card". 

He's a modern day Knight in Shining Armor in my book. He's taking responsibility for himself and the woman he loves. He leaned into a decision that many other men don't ever make. He chose love over fear. (And, ironically, a decision that will hopefully prevent an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy). 

I don't know what will happen tomorrow, but I do know, as a mom, I couldn't feel more grateful for the partner my daughter is with today. 

Ahhh, the things we do for love!

What will you do for love today? Lol!

Namaste. 

A Manifesto

I heard Cheryl Strayed speak once about why she wrote her memoir, Wild. She said up until that point, her life was completely encompassed by the loss of her mother. The question that consumed her, "Why did she leave so young and so early?" framed her life.

That's how it feels for me with abortion. It began 30 years ago, in 1988, when my childhood BFF found out she was pregnant after being date raped (and drugged?) at a college party. She had been a virgin and had no idea she was pregnant.  Four years later, it became more personal for me when I found myself with an unplanned pregnancy.

Like Cheryl Strayed, there has been one experience that has framed my life. It all revolves around abortion. I've spent decades asking myself two interrelated questions.

Having been raised in a fairly strict Catholic household, the first question was "How do I get past this?", because the fact is, for me especially with my religious upbringing, it had some pretty intense fallout. Especially when I started having my own family and was able to "see" my decision as I watched my babies come into the world.

Once I was on my way to finding the answer to the first question, the second question that began to take over my brain was "Why does abortion exist?". I am still wrestling with that question. I have a lot of thoughts and information from my own experience and from listening to the stories of other women who made the same choice I did. I love the way the Universe works and I am seeing a tapestry being woven as I lean into this question with curiosity.

My purpose and direction gets refined and is having more clarity with time. The continued threat to a woman's reproductive freedom gives it more urgency. There are three distinct components to it.

I believe many women who've had an abortion(s) and have feelings of regret or grief afterwards often feel alone. The Pro-choice movement denies that there are aftereffects, so they mostly likely cannot find support there. The Pro-Life movement condemns their action. They may feel left behind or left out. Where can they turn? Where do they fit in now? Building community for women who've experienced abortion is the first part of my mission.

The second piece is to help those who have unresolved feelings from their abortion to come to terms with those feelings. After spending over a decade on find the answers for myself to question #1, I've come up with a three part process to help women address those feelings and bring them back to wholeness. Healing for women who've experienced an abortion is the second component of my work. 

The last aspect I feel deeply committed to is to bring healing to the divisiveness in our country around this issue. I think most women who've had an abortion never dreamed they'd be part of this "club" and would have preferred not to ever faced that decision. But our world, is not a perfect and safe place. We make this decision because it is the least onerous one for us. How can we make this world a different and better place where this choice isn't so necessary? There are ways to reduce abortion without taking away a woman's reproductive freedom. I believe we can come to more peaceful resolutions around this issue. This third component is imperative. 

Who am I? I am a woman, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter and a girlfriend.

I believe in women's freedom, women's intuition and our ability to make good decisions.

I believe in the power of sisterhood to transform lives and the world.

I believe Divinity lives inside us and wholeness, happiness and joy are our birthrights.

And I believe the power of love and connection can make anything possible.

Dear United States Senator

Dear United States Senators,

I am frustrated, angry - no make that enraged, and despite the last two years - incredulous. Our country needs leadership right now. We need leadership that will build bridges to peace, not further the already historic divide in our once great nation. The past two weeks what I have seen makes me sick. My heart is breaking tonight for our country's women, children and all marginalized people. The game of which party is bigger, better, or more deserving isn't serve any common interests, only self-interest. I'm so tired of the fighting, the adversity and the inability to see the big picture over the bickering between all of you. Shame on you! The Democrats used Dr. Ford the same way Norma McCorvey was used by the Pro-Choicers. A means to an end. Has anyone checked on her this week? Do you know how she is managing? Do you even care?

And Republicans, including and especially Donald Trump - you have used power over others yet again to get your way. This is not just about gender - it's about abuse of power. I am sick and tired or your platitudes on the value of life. If you valued women, we'd have access to insurance that covered birth control and equal pay to that of men. Do you know how many sexual assault victims commit suicide? According to Rainn, 33% of rape victims contemplate suicide, 13% actually attempt it.  Do you understand the permanence of that trauma to a person's psyche or do you just not care? Please help me understand how your inability to address the epidemic of sexual abuse is valuing life.

This is a pivotal moment in our country's history. We need leaders who can listen - not just to words, but to what actions are behind the words. Intonation. Respectfulness. Intent. Motive. Empathy.

We need leaders who can step back from the war between the Republicans and Democrats, the left and the right, the conservatives and the liberals, men and women, whites and non-whites and open the  lines of communication. We don't need more leadership that shuts down and uses power over others to get their way. This country has lost all its humanity for the taking of winning. America has lost it's soul.

I fear for my children. If we can't count on our nation's leaders to be a voice of reason, to evaluate and educate and listen to each other, we are truly rudderless. Judge Brett Kavanaugh demonstrated an inability to listen. He showed his bias against Democrats and liberals in a clear and angry fashion. Whether or not you believe Dr. Ford is no longer the main issue. If Judge Kavanaugh had any tenderness for his family or his country, he would step aside. He is not thinking of anyone but himself as he fights for his "right" to be a supreme Court Justice and he is certainly not acting in the best interests of our country with his paranoia about the left being out to get him. He is not capable of listening, of answering a question or showing respect. He is certainly not capable of being impartial. How can we ever expect him to be part of the solution to heal our wounded and disenfranchised people?

I hope you're proud of yourselves. I am disgusted. I thought we'd elected leadership for all the people. - leadership that recognizes the crisis we are in and wants to work to fix it. We need you to find a candidate who can facilitate that, not make it worse. You can do better. Our children deserve better. May the God you worship every Sunday have mercy on you when you meet your Maker. You're going to need it.

Sincerely,

Christina Haas

Grey's Anatomy Nailed It

Dear Pro-Choice Movement,

I don't want you to think I've left you out after my little meltdown with the "Pro-Life Movement", now known by me as the Anti-Abortion Movement. You need a new name too, because your name doesn't fit like a glove any more than theirs.

Are any of you Grey's Anatomy fans? Remember Season 11? That's the season Dr. April Kepner finds herself pregnant with a baby who's bones are so fragile, they are susceptible to breaking even in utero (Ostogenesis imperfecta 2). April is a devout Christian who lives and breathes for God. She is married to an atheist - Dr. Jackson Avery - creating a simmering tension between the two of them, culminating in the biggest conflict of all - whether or not to terminate their pregnancy. 

As the couple wrestles with their personal views on the suffering of their child, a climatic moment occurs in the middle of Episode 10. Jackson and April's mother are arguing in the kitchen while April is trying desperately not to be a part of their argument. Finally, April can't stand it anymore and screams at them,

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!  None of this is helping. You are not helping. Neither of you. I'm standing here listening to you tell me that God only gives me one choice and you telling me that I should forgo God's choice. And the truth is I don't know anything except that I am scared, and sad and I am alone.  You're both just standing there yelling at each other and talking at me, but I am alone and and it is terrifying!  And the louder you get the more terrified I become so I just need you both to shut up. Can you do that? Can you please both just shut up!"

Shonda Rhimes, the creator of the show, nailed it. This is exactly what's been happening to women who want to have reproductive freedom. They, like April, are in the middle of an escalating fight and the women you chose to help way back at the beginning have been tossed aside, scared out of their minds, while you battle for the win. 

Pro-choice movement, is this the way you help women? By defending their rights while avoiding their turmoil? You say your movement is here to help women - but I don't think you're listening very well. Many of us feel pain - physical and/or emotional pain - from our abortions, but you ask us to deny that pain, again and again and again. Your tactics on the battlefield are causing us to lose our minds! 

A couple of years ago, a woman named Emily Letts, filmed her abortion to show the public how easy and painless it is to have an abortion. Emily says she is uplifted and positively transformed by her abortion. No regrets. At the end, she is interviewed a month after her abortion and says she still feels great, empowered by her abortion. And while I believe that may have been true for Emily - she feels like she is a warrior for your movement and that she has just beaten the enemy - for many women, that is not the case. The writer, Katy Waldman, states at the end of the piece "And because the anti-choice myths are strong, the resistance fierce, the corrective must be too." 

You've gotten sucked into the gamesmanship of the anti-abortionists. You're reacting to them, not acting for a woman's best interest. Just like April, women are suffering on the sidelines while you engage in battle, ignoring the real physical and emotional needs of women who make a decision to terminate a pregnancy. 

Make no mistake, the strategies of both sides are about winning - not about a woman's life. Or I might add, that of her unborn child. Many women who've had abortions and who were once pro-choice, now feel abandoned, like Norma McCorvey, and are even choosing to go to the other side and take up the anti-abortion banner. 

And there it is. This is where we are now. Arguing. Fighting. At each other like Jackson and April's mom. And there are a million April's out there alone and sad and terrified and confused. I've seen them in support groups all over the internet. They need to know that what they went through was more than just a "right" they deserved. Having an abortion is a multi-faceted experience that can take it's toll on a woman in many ways. To ignore that is to ignore the group of women you say you are serving. 

So, pro-choice movement, I don't believe you have a woman's heart and soul in mind any more than the anti-abortion movement does.  You may be support a woman's right to choose, but I don't see any evidence that you are acknowledging the humanity of the women you purport to serve. Just like April, we've been left stranded, isolated and alone in the middle of the battlefield. Do you even remember what this battle was about? 

When the other side went low, with horrendous photos of fetuses and other vicious maneuvers, you went lower. Videotaping an abortion to "prove" that having an abortion is empowering and uplifting? I gotta hand it to you - there certainly is some shock value with that one. 

I don't know what to call you anymore. You may be pro-choice, but you're not pro-woman. The end is more important to you than the means it takes to get there. In th meantime, I will do my best to support women who still feel isolated, stuck, sad or regretful. Because I know there is A Third Way to do this. 

A Thousand Previous Outrages

Dear Pro-Life Movement,

We need to talk about your name - Pro-Life. It has to change. 

Last week I listened to the podcast, The Daily, by Michael Barbaro for the New York Times, on the issue of Roe v. Wade.  It was eye opening.

The first of this two part series begins by telling us about Norma Nelson McCorvey's (aka, Jane Roe's) life leading up to her desire to have an abortion - how she was raised in poverty by a violently alcoholic mother and abandoned by her father at age 13. She tried to run away from home many times, and at the tender age of ten, gets into trouble for stealing money from a gas station. After that, she's sent to a Catholic boarding school where she is sexually abused. After a stint at a girls' reform school, she is sent to live with a friend of the family, a man, who she says rapes her almost daily for three plus weeks.

She meets her husband at age 15, Woody McCorvey, who is also abusive and beats her relentlessly when he finds out she is pregnant. Unable to live with him, she returns home to her mother. The same mother who is a violent alcoholic. She becomes pregnant a second time and gives the baby up for adoption and it isn't until her third pregnancy that she reaches the decision to have an abortion. She's had one child, given another up for adoption and realizes she can't go through either of these alternatives again. To think the safest place she can find is back home with a woman who abused her as a child is mind-boggling.

Norma Nelson McCorvey

You can listen to the podcast, linked above, to hear more about her life story.  I haven't been able to stop thinking about her childhood all week.

How is it that we've spent decades being outraged over her desire to have an abortion and not in any story that I have heard or read are not outraged with how she was treated as a child?

Alcoholism, domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse are all part of the fabric of her young life - where is fury over those atrocities? How is it you say you are "pro-life" and yet the quality of this young life is so horrific and yet the details so absent from any discourse of what "pro-life" means?

Coincidentally, I happened to watch the documentary series on NetFlix, The Keepers, last week. Teenage girls were sexually molested and raped for years by clergy from the Archdiocese of Baltimore in this story and yet no one is talking about this either.

The quality of many of our children's lives is unimaginable. Who can truly imagine an adult violating a child in such monstrous ways? It happens in families and in the church. It is constantly swept under the rug and both the children and those who stand up for them are disregarded, made out to be crazy. The secrecy of what really happens behind closed doors has stayed locked up tight. Denial is a powerful force, but enough people have spoken out. It can no longer stay hidden.

And yet it is in the name of family and the church that we deplore abortion. The very groups that are so righteous in claiming they believe in and fight for life - the life of an unborn child - are the very ones who are either perpetrating or looking the other way when it comes to other horrors of childhood.

Pro-life movement - you need a new name. From here on out, as far as I am concerned, you are the anti-abortion movement. That is all. You may be against abortion, but you do not stand for life. If you were truly pro-life, we would be far more horrified by the thousand or more outrages suffered by Norma Nelson McCorvey before she ever decided she wanted to have an abortion. 

Which, at the end of the day, she was never able to have anyway . . . .

Sincerely,

Christina Haas
A Woman Who Will Not Pretend Anymore

I Might Have Been a Republican

If I was born 160 years ago, I think I might have been a Republican.

A new party, it was conceived in 1854 with the intention of abolishing slavery. Six years into it's beginnings, our first Republican President was elected - Abraham Lincoln. He lead us to and through the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery. It was party of rebels and activists, focused on human rights.

Yeah, I think I might have been a Republican if I lived back then. 

Fast forward to 2018, we have a different kind of Republican President. He's one who gloats about "grabbing women by the pussy", who tears children out of the arms of parents seeking asylum in our country and has just nominated a Supreme Court justice who he intends will make it his mission to overturn Roe v. Wade. It's not a party that's being lead by someone concerned with human dignity or human rights. 

Is this progress? 

This site is about caring for women who've had abortions. Make no mistake - the politics in the US right now are attempting not just to vilify women who would choose an abortion, but imprison them  by making it illegal. Like our President's election, which very few believed would happen, it is entirely possible that Roe V. Wade will be overturned. This is not a party I can support today and I have to imagine, Abe Lincoln is rolling in his grave watching the freedom of women now at risk.

Human dignity is an important aspect of being for life, "pro-life". And yet . . . .

Is it pro-life to imprison and separate families seeking asylum who are being persecuted in their  countries of origin?

Is it pro-life to have have the second highest rate of childhood poverty (after Romania) of 35 developed nations in the world? 

Is it pro-life to do nothing about gun control when our children can't be safe in their schools and even elementary school children are not spared from gun violence? 

Is it pro-life to prevent gays from having all the benefits and privileges of heterosexual couples? Is it pro-life to allow public establishments to refuse to serve someone of a different sexual persuasion? 

Is it pro-life to allow incest and domestic violence to occur because it is a family matter or because DNA should trump this type of "bad" behavior? 

I consider myself pro-choice, but I also consider myself pro-life. I believe all people deserve the right to live his or her own life under their own terms and with the same freedoms. Women and minorities deserve to be paid for the same job as a man at the same rate of pay. Children deserve to live without abuse or neglect and to have three meals a day in their bellies. We all deserve to love whomever we love - regardless of race, gender or religion. And this beautiful earth that we pillage and rape every day in the name of progress, I believe she is sacred and deserving of better treatment too.

Pro-life and Pro-Choice. I am both, and. 

And -  while sometimes, these values conflict, I believe in the end, it is my choice as a free person in these United States to decide for myself how address that conflict. 

From a President who abolished slavery to one who wants to enslave women.  Wow. We've come a long way, baby, and I'm not sure it's the vision President Lincoln ever had for his party or the Presidency. 

A Tale of Two Sisters - The End and The Beginning

Thank you to everyone who has read and followed my blog over the past five years. When I started writing about abortion, it was a mission spurned by my need for closure and understanding of my actions and experience. I wanted to share what I had learned and was learning so that others might have peace in their choices too. I never dreamed this last piece would take this shape.

In 1992, when I chose to have an abortion, I didn't think much past the end of my own nose. I didn't consider the moments leading up to that choice or how each moment of my life prior to that one informed my decision. I didn't think about my family tree or the possible impact to my family in the future. I didn't think about my unborn baby or what she might have wanted. I remember thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I acted quickly enough, it wouldn't be a baby yet. There was a deep, visceral fear - a fear that permeating my whole being. Was this my fear? Or the fear of generations before me?

As I researched and learned more about abortion, a bigger picture began to unravel. I felt for the first time, the double bind of the many women who become pregnant in poor or abusive relationships. I considered the conflicted feelings of a young, pregnant woman, once abused or neglected herself, struggling to hope for a better future for herself and her child. I began to explore the notion that as much as the decision to abort seemed like mine, and mine alone, it was all part of a larger symphony of souls, that never in my wildest of dreams, could I have imagined.

**************

Twenty years after my abortion.  I thought I was done with my healing and learning from that experience. I had come to believe that there was soul contract between my unborn daughter and myself, that she had known ahead of time what my choice would be, but that she chose to enter into this contract with me anyway. I saw her as a martyr, saint, an angel, for giving up her life for my lesson. I still didn't realize that in this belief system, I was still seeing my soul as less than perfect. I still saw myself as a sinner. 

Not long after I began writing, I had an encounter with an intuitive. This seer told me that my unborn daughter was very glad she had not been born. I remember wondering how she knew I had had an abortion, and if that was something she told every woman who had one - to make them feel more peace over their decision. She went on to tell me my unborn daughter, Mary, is around me constantly. But then she said something else, something that haunted me for the next four years. She said "your unborn daughter says she would not have been able to endure her sister's life. She could not have survived."

I felt like I had been hit with a ton of bricks when she said that. A recently lapsed Catholic, I was still highly prone to self-blame and flagellation and this statement gave me a lot to think about. Was I really such a terrible mother that she didn't think she could have found some happiness and joy in that life? Had I really done such a terrible thing by divorcing her father that I made all my children's lives tortuous? I had just moved my children 3,000 miles away from their father after a highly contentious divorce. I was in a abusive marriage, and leaving a man who didn't want to be left cost me a lot. Going to California seemed like the only way we would ever have peace again. Had I made a bad choice yet again?

*******************

Fast forward to the fall of 2015. My college-age daughter shares with me for the very first time, what her life as child was really like. How her father began molesting her at the sweet age of four years old, ramping up the abuse over the years in nature and frequency of the abuse until she was twelve. For many years, I had the feeling he was having an affair...I just never imagined it was with our little girl. How does one ever imagine such a thing? Years of odd and lewd behaviors flooded my mind and my body shook with the truth of knowing. Suddenly, everything in the past made sense.

Finally, I understood for the first time what my unborn daughter, Mary, meant, when she sent me the message that she couldn't have survived this lifetime. All that time, I made it to be about me. But all that time, it was about something more, something bigger than me. I wonder now, did I make that choice to abort because I was so afraid? Or was I hearing quite loudly my daughter's voice, telling me she couldn't handle that lifetime, a lifetime that would have been filled with sexual abuse?

I have come full circle on my blog about abortion, right back to my first month of posts, where I had learned on an intellectual level, the battle that women face on daily basis in protecting themselves and protecting their children. Only today, it's not just an intellectual understanding. It is one of an emotional and spiritual understanding that we are all connected, we are all part of the same Force, and almost nothing is what it appears on the surface - including and especially the experience of abortion.

Namaste.