Leave my vagina alone.
I got into an argument today on Facebook over this. I am not one to argue on Facebook, or debate, or whatever it is you call it, but this is really, really getting to me.
I am a woman. I have anatomy that requires different doctors and proceedures than males get on a regular basis. I take medication every day - birth control pills - to control a painful, debilitatitng, and even potentially life threatening medical condition that a man can never have, because it's regarding my ovaries. I have a child that I am raising pretty much on my own. I know how hard it is to carry a baby to term, to give birth, to recover from birth - and that's just the beginning. Children need nurturing, they need financial security, they need clothing and shelter and food and love and time and devotion. Knowing what I know now, as a single mother, I know that if I were to have irresponsible sex and find myself pregnant again - pregnant and unloved and alone - I would have an abortion as soon as possible. Immediately. Without a second thought. Because I have thought about it for a long time, what being a mother means to me as compared to what it means to other moms I know. It's sort of hard to say it, but I know I never want to go through it again: pregnancy, birth, infancy, motherhood. I have my child. I'm done. But mistakes happen, accidents happen, anything could happen. And I should never, EVER have to be punished or shamed for asking for a medical procedure that is currently legal under federal law, and no one else should be either.
So my argument was that it wasn't necessary for all women having abortions to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound. Gestational age and the size of a fetus can be determined by the date of the last period and from feeling the size of the uterus from palpating the abdomen. It's not rocket science. Any woman who has been pregnant knows that she didn't get an ultrasound the first day she went to the doctor with her positive home test and sore boobies. You have to wait for that goodnees. At least most of us do. But regardless, an ultrasound MAY be part of an abortion PROCEDURE. That's what I was arguing. That when a woman is about to have an abortion, a doctor may use an ultrasound to guide the procedure. Maybe.
It isn't necessary to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound BEFORE an abortion procedure. That is my argument and I am sticking to it, and thankfully, so are many members of congress.
Listen. Wait. Look at this picture, and then listen.
I had my first trans-vaginal ultrasound about a year and a half after Elise was born. Now they are more common during pregnancy, but six or seven years ago when I was pregnant I never had one. It was only after, when I started having problems.
I'd been having really rough, heavy periods ever since Elise was born and things got back to their new normal. They were worse than they had ever been, and they were accompanied with debilitating cramps, and when I say debilitating I mean I missed work over them sometimes, because all I could do was lay curled up in bed, moaning and motionless, until the searing pain the spread from my abdomen to my back let loose its grip and subsided. Before giving birth, I had hardly cramped during periods. Something was wrong, I knew, but I didn't deal with it as fast as I should have.
One night I was at a bar with Brian and Alisha and I had some sort of attack. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a cyst on my left ovary bursting. I was in agony, but I was also a couple three or four beers past being totally drunk, so I half laughed and half cried and went to sleep, promising to make a doctor's appointment in the morning, which I did. I called my OBGYN and was referred right away to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound to figure out what the heck was going on in there.
The day I went for the appointment, Alisha and Michelle came with me. They waited outside and I was led into a dim little room with a massive wedge on top of a rickety gurney. A woman, not quite friendly, told me to undress and get up on that wedge, get my butt as high in the air as I could with my butt right on the edge of the wedge. I did it, squirmed around while she watched, and it was remarkably uncomfortable. I had put my feet in many a pair of stirrups and spread my knees, but this was different.
The tech lubed up the probe - there is nothing else really to call it. It was huge - I mean well over a foot long, and wider than I had expected. It had a curved, nubby edge like a penis.
The tech asked me to relax while she inserted it into me. Now, years later, I know that most doctors or ultrasound techs will ask you to reach under a sheet and insert the probe yourself, which is in my opinion a testament to the fact that the trans-vaginal ultrasound is much more invasive than other gynocological procedures. You certainly don't have an OBGYN asking you to please insert your own speculum and swab your own cervix for a pap smear.
The probe went in and in and in, the tech was twisting and turning it as she slid it in, and then she hit the cervix and the pain began. The pain that didn't stop for next ten minutes as she took pictures of my ovaries, particularly the left one, which looked as it were as cratered as the moon.
It hurts when things touch your cervix. It just hurts. It makes you cramp, it makes you ache, and it's something no man - like, for instance, the men on the panel against contraception yesterday - will ever feel.
But then we come back to the basics of it. Your ass is in the air, your legs are spread wide up on a wedge of hard foam that, let's face it, belongs in the bedroom, not a doctor's office. You're being vaginally probed by a stranger, and it's hurting you. It's hurting you.
When it comes to abortion, it is not necessary. It is just a tool for bigots to hurt and shame women into not exercising their right to an abortion, the right granted to them under federal law.
Damnit, it makes me so angry. I'm ANGRY!!! Aren't you?
Friday, February 17, 2012
Reader Comments (2)
I feel for you hun, and yes it makes me angry. There is really no need, and men against contraception, bet they wouldn't have the same opinion if they ended up with an unwanted pregnancy!
Really? I'm not sure it's a tool for bigots. I really like to think doctors use their instruments to degrade and humiliate you. Think about it! Politicians are not in treatment rooms. Doctors are. And doctors whose moral consciousness' dictate that abortion is murder are very unlikely to conduct abortions. Now, if you think I'm casting this off, let me tell you that I experienced the very same procedure you did, but in a foreign country. In my case I had a very bad case of food poisoning, but because it was in my colon, and not my stomach, the doctor mis-diagnosed this, and thought I was having a mis-carriage, although I was not pregnant. Not to easy to explain things in dire pain in a foreign language, either. But I don't think he did this to humiliate me. And yes, I know that practised reply, "Please relax it will make everything easier." They might as well say it to my cat at the vet's for all the good it will do. Who can "relax and enjoy themselves" in a situation like that?
But in many cases I think they need to do this for two good reasons: to determine the situation inside your body, lest they make so sort of grave mistake in removing the embryo/foetus - and determining the age of the embryo/foetus through better images. Where I live you can only have an abortion during the first trimester. You have to receive three counselling sessions before they will allow it; and the social medicine insurance will cover an abortion if you are determined to have one. You have to pay for your own contraceptives, however. The counselling is not necessarily to encourage you to keep the child, but to allow young women to explore alternatives like receiving state support to raise the child or giving the child up for adoption. Still, if you are determined to have an abortion, they will not only allow it; they will finance it.