Yep. I’m about to get political up here in my blog.

With politics at the forefront of everything right now it’s clear to me that many people just can’t handle or understand the greys. Everything must either be black or white. Liberal or conservative. You must be either for or against something or you’ll get lambasted. And if you aren’t all for or all against, again, you just don’t fit in.

So I’ll open up and tell you a story about me and why I feel that many of the issues that are being fought about don’t have a clear cut answer. That the answer must be more nuanced. That the solutions aren’t as simple as implementing bans and preventing services.

So here’s my story:

My daughter was around 4 and a half and my son was almost 2 when we found out we were expecting again. Yay! We wanted another and were thrilled. Doctor visits confirmed and we were sent home with prenatal vitamins. Being my 3rd pregnancy, I knew the drill.

But at around 10 weeks I started having sharp pains in the left side down near my hip. At first I thought nothing of it, pregnancy comes with its own weird aches and pains, but it grew more pronounced so I called the doc who said to come on in and they’d take a look.

So met with the doc and went over the symptoms and he decided to order an ultrasound. As the technician moved the wand over that side I could tell something was off. You’ve probably read or heard (or experienced) the stories where the technician would go quiet, then slip from the room to call the physician. Those typically don’t end well.

So she came back in and said she had my doctor on the phone and handed it to me. He explained that the ultrasound showed that the pregnancy was ectopic. That means the baby was growing in the Fallopian tube – it hadn’t travelled on down to the uterus like is should have.

So for those who haven’t heard of this, imagine a grass snake. One of those tiny little ones. Imagine if it ate an egg. You’ve probably seen cartoons like that – the long slender snake body with a big round thing distending it in the middle. That’s what was happening. Except in this case, the reason I was feeling pain is because the baby was growing. And that fallopian tube will only stretch so much.

So I’ll stop the story here so you can ponder the options a woman in this predicament has:

• Option A: If there is no indication of imminent rupture yet, get sent home with a prescription for Methotrexate which will ‘interrupt’ the pregnancy.
• Option B: if there is a rupture or signs of imminent rupture, go to the hospital and undergo laparoscopic procedure to remove the baby from the Fallopian tube. (And no, it can’t just be moved to the right spot. I asked.)
• Option C: Do nothing. Then when the growth of the baby does rupture your Fallopian tube, pray you get to a hospital in time to prevent infection, sepsis or even death.

Those are the options. I don’t know about you, but to me all of those options were pretty shitty ones. So for those hard-core pro-lifers out there what’s the solution?
Because if you wanna get technical about it, options A & B are technically abortions.

For us there wasn’t really a decision to be made. We had 2 kids at home that needed their mom and per my doctor’s advice we headed up to the hospital for laparoscopic surgery. And it sucked. And we had to fight with our insurance to cover it and have our doctor prove it was medically necessary before they would pay for it. (All while grieving the loss.)

Now back to the comments in my first paragraph. About how things aren’t always black and white. There are shades of grey everywhere. This is one.

And you can say that the abortion regulations aren’t for issues like this, but where is the line drawn?

And when the definition of medically necessary is something different to everyone how can that be defined or regulated?

All it takes is ONE PERSON in charge who decides that Option C is acceptable in our nation for the 1 in 50 ectopic pregnancies to end in maternal distress or death.

That’s why I’m frightened to leave issues like this in the hands of politicians. And honestly it’s even worse that it’s in the hands of mostly male politicians. Because they will never ever be able to understand or empathize with what that pregnant woman is going through.

We had a terrible decision to make that day. I am a believer that life begins at conception. And I was faced with a lose/lose situation.

And I firmly believe that the ONLY people qualified to aid in that decision were my husband and my doctor.

Not my Senator.

Not my Governor.

Not my President.

It’s mine and my husband’s jobs to raise our children with our values.

It’s not the job of our Government to do that. Right?

So let’s let them stick to more important issues (like providing accessible health care and affordable birth control options to everyone) and we’ll stick to ours.

If everyone were to raise their kids right and support each other and provide accessible healthcare and prevention, there would never be a need for abortions unless medically necessary anyway.

Boom!

There you go.

So I guess that’s why I get frustrated when I see all this back and forth about pro-life and pro-choice and anti-abortion.

I fall into that “I’m all of them and none of them” category because of my own experiences and beliefs.

And I don’t understand why anyone would want a bunch of politicians making these types of decisions.

You don’t want them to regulate or take your guns, because you are responsible enough to handle them properly yourself.

I don’t want them making these decisions for me for the same reason. I’m responsible enough to make those decisions myself.

If you want to make me take a class first, great. But if you have enough faith in me that you’ll let me walk around with a loaded weapon at my hip, then have enough faith in me to let me be responsible for making these decisions.

I AM NOT going to debate any of you on this topic. My feelings are very clearly written above and I’ve done so to provide a glimpse as to why someone might not have such black and white or clear cut views on this issue.

And how someone can be pro-life but pro-choice all at the same time.

And that we might want to think long and hard about those people up there in Washington and where we should draw the line between governing and interfering.