...then I completely ignore them and base my decisions on my hatred of freedom and women.

And I also love my children with all my heart. And I still am pro-choice, precisely because of those 4 beautiful girls I have.

I cried when I saw the heartbeat. That was my baby's little heartbeat.

But I wanted those babies and I chose to have them. I am fully pro-choice.

Every issue you talk about, every single one, you illuminate so perfectly, in such a way that I see it as I have never seen it before.

I cannot thank you enough.

My grandson is a Down Syndrome child. His is Trisomy 21, which means he has an extra #21 chromosome.

Though I could be wrong. It was six years ago now. They tell you about the worst possible scenarios because it makes you more likely to order the test. But if you know, as we did, that the results won't affect your decision, then what's the point.

How old is your grandson?

The Plaid Adder

Everybody loves him. People we don't know seem to know him and love him. They call him by name and talk to him when we are out shopping, etc. It is amazing. Sometimes we think they know of him somehow through the school he attends. It is a large one, K-8. He is in the special needs 3rd grade class.

I still don't know it was a good idea to bring that up in a nationally televised debate, though.

The Plaid Adder

didn't mean to be flippant..

Don't mock me. It is what's got me through the rough times. I'm not a one time miscarriage, but multiple. Each one was painful on a personal level. When the political narrative turns this way, it's a personal insult to me.

We're all different. How I dealt with my loss worked for me. I don't need some politician trying to thrum my heart strings to manipulate my grief. It angers me to listen to someone say things on a national television event my own physician avoided.

How can it be acceptable to hurt people like myself, who are in a much larger majority than those who chose not to continue a pregnancy, in the name of pandering to their political extremist? I'll never understand their logic.

I hate this part of election season. Despise it, and every single person who exploits it.

One of the things I truly hate about the gay marriage "debate" and other such things is watching something which is so close to everything that matters for me get turned into political fodder by people who have no idea what it means to be in a relationship like this. Ryan's little story did that to every woman who has ever lost a pregnancy.

I am sorry to hear about the miscarriages. Even one is hard enough.

The Plaid Adder

I've had a full term intrapartum death (she died during my emergency c-section two weeks past my due date) and three miscarriages. All were painful, horrible experiences and yet, I remain fully and unequivocally pro-choice.

Actually, even more strongly so since I've met so many women and men in the infant loss community. Their stories are universally heartbreaking, especially those who made the painful choice to terminate wanted pregnancies for various reasons.

The fact is, I've never known anyone to terminate a pregnancy, wanted or not, without soul searching. It isn't a decision any woman I've ever known has taken lightly. Ryan and his ilk seem to think that only they, as publicly pious men, take women's reproduction seriously.

Thanks for posting this.

It is funny how once something like this happens to you, you find out that it is much more common than you had ever supposed. I think people are still reluctant to talk about it--and probably more reluctant because of stuff like Ryan's BS.

My grandmother let it slip, when she was in her 80s, that there was a girl born to her before my father who only lived a few days. She had never told my father this. He was shocked to find out. I often wonder what it was like for her to have that in her memory and never tell him.

The Plaid Adder

Thanks for your kind words. Julie would be 14 this year, so it's been a long time.

A lot of why we don't really know about this until we've joined the ranks of parents who have lost an infant is related to our society's current view of death. It isn't something we speak of, especially the death of a child. Women don't want to hear about it, unless it is a miracle of a very premature child being perfectly OK. It makes them uncomfortable.

When we lost our daughter, the thing that was most shocking to me was that the virulent pro-lifers were the most dismissive of our loss. When my husband bought me flowers for Mother's day that first year after our loss, my MIL, a woman who will fight for the earliest of fetuses, told him that was stupid because I wasn't a mother.

Of course, this is a woman who honestly believes that her stillborn daughter is in hell for the sin of dying before being baptized, so I mostly ignore her on this subject.

I bet your grandmother, still thinks (sorry, don't know if she's still alive) of that baby and wonders "what if". My own grandmother does of her lost baby

she must have thought about it all her life--or else why would she bring it up in a conversation with my sister about something else, only a couple years before she died?

Also, I know it was a long time ago, but your mother in law, holy cats. But this is pro-life in a nutshell. You are a mother when we say you are and otherwise not.

The Plaid Adder

She thinks the embryo/fetus is a person but the mother who loses a baby at term is "not a mother". So if you were not a mother then how was it a person? It all comes down to how much hatred they have for women, how they dismiss the woman's own personhood out of hand, it is never even mentioned. I am so sorry for your loss, that must have been so awful for you.

My due date was supposed to be November 17th. They said it died when it was likely 8 weeks along but I didn't "lose it" until 12. When we realized things were going down hill I had an ultrasound and they thought that we were just off on the due date because this was a complete surprise to my husband and I but I saw the little bean. But no heart beat.

When I went in to the hospital, they did a D&C and by the end of the day it was all over. Unfortunately, the minute I found out I was pregnant I started buying fabric to make curtains and my mother had given me a little stuffed elephant.

You will not believe the number of people who lined up to tell me how lucky I was to have lost it because there was "obviously something wrong with it" And how lucky I was that it was "now instead of later"

To me, the minutes that test was positive, I had that baby in my arms and I grieved for years for that baby I lost mostly because my family decided it never existed and I had to hide my grief because if I showed it I was "ridiculous".

My grief and fear that something went horribly wrong went so deep that in 1994, when we started trying to have another baby, I was so worried I stopped ovulating and it took 8 months and my focus shifting to my mother being ill to finally conceive.

I have two beautiful daughters, one is 17, the other is 13. No mother could be more proud of the young women they have become.

The reason I am telling you this story, is because I am passionately, devotedly, unquestionably, pro-choice.

Also, I cannot understand why people say shit like the stuff they said to you. I suppose they think they are trying to make you feel better, but in fact I think it's just because people are uncomfortable with the pain of other people and want you to put it away again as soon as you show it to them.

Anyway, thanks for telling your story.

The Plaid Adder

It is amazing isn't it...how someone can switch from being happy for you to being so callous about your loss?

I hated it when people said "well, you're lucky because _______________. Yeah, I didn't feel so lucky and I just wanted to punch people who said that, but I didn't because I'm mostly non-violent.

And nothing is more stressful than a pregnancy after loss. Glad you got your girls here safely.

I've got three sons myself now, 11, 10, and 4. One was a surprise, but a good one.

And I'm even more strongly pro-choice than I was before.

because it happened too often. "Oh, you're lucky they caught it so early." Yes. Yes, I am glad they caught it early. But please do not put "lucky" and "cancer" and me in the same sentence, kthanxbi.

The Plaid Adder

Here is a goody that fun period of time:

You are lucky its ONLY breast cancer

Mine was endometrial. Yeah, I'm glad it wasn't ovarian. Still. Not pleased about losing a part of my body to which I was very attached, despite all the trouble it always gave me.

The Plaid Adder

Because you know it was just flesh.

That makes me very angry.

The Plaid Adder

I was even surprised at how violated and mutilated I felt. I wouldn't let my husband see me. HE was perfectly fine and amazing and loving and the most supportive man in the universe but I couldn't stand seeing myself or letting anyone see me. I closed my eyes getting in to the shower. Not to mention clothes were uncomfortable and having to stuff one side was horrible.

So reconstruction made me feel human again and made me feel physically better. But you wouldn't believe the people who wondered why I bothered because I was happily married (implying I may not be) or that I was just being vein.
It is really amazing how judgmental some people can be even when they don't realize it. Then there were the "Isn't it great you are getting a free boob job" people!!

Sometimes I wonder how I keep from murdering people!!!!!

Honestly. What is so hard to understand about that? Just because they don't really 'do' anything (unless you are nursing an infant), that doesn't meant they're somehow expendable. The callousness, it burns.

@#$!,

The Plaid Adder

Unfortunately the title of the post is correct. Over the years, my wife and I have lost 3 children to miscarriage, all within 12 weeks of conception. Each of those were painful. Very painful. We grieved, picked ourselves up, dusted off and carried on. The last one was the toughest though.

We knew my wife was pregnant and because of her history of miscarriage, she was in the high risk category. For anyone that doesn't know, high risk means you get to visit the doctor every two weeks and get an ultrasound and nearly every visit. At the 12 week checkup I was out of town with work. There was not supposed to be an ultrasound done at this visit, so I felt safe going out of town. Then my wife called in tears.

The doctor had performed an unplanned ultrasound during the visit. My wife (who is a cardiovascular nurse) could tell from the ultrasound that there were obvious anomalies. Her fears were confirmed when the ultrasound tech left to go get the doctor. We've done the ultrasound thing enough to know that getting the doctor in the middle of the imaging is not standard procedure. The doctor viewed the screen and explained to my wife what appeared to be going on. We were sent to see a specialist the next day.

The specialist introduced us to a medical diagnosis that we had never heard and never will forget...Pentalogy of Cantrell. For the weak of heart, do not google that term. He was also diagnosed with amniotic banding syndrome which made his legs severely deformed. As with most medical diagnosis, there are different levels of severity. Our son's couldn't have been any more severe. For whatever reason, when he was still a bean, as Ryan refers to it, the cells that form the abdomen didn't line up properly. This resulted in the abdomen, including the chest wall, not forming. The organs formed in what is called an omphalocele. Again, google at your own risk. Some omphaloceles can be corrected through surgery after the child is born. For our son, not only were ALL of the intestines in the omphalocele, but his little heart was formed outside of his body since there was no chest. This child had zero chance of survival outside of the womb, and more than likely would not have made it to term. We made the heartbreaking decision to end the pregnancy. Let me tell you...even knowing what the ultimate outcome would be no matter what, seeing our son...our new, little possibility, on the screen...seeing him move around...seeing his heart beat...and knowing what we had decided to do was soul crushing. How anyone could ever make that decision flippantly like the right wing seems to think all pro choice supporters do is beyond my comprehension.

Was it fair to that child to put him through the trauma of birth only to die within minutes? Was it fair to us to watch my wife's belly grow for the next 6 months knowing that no matter what we did, no matter how much we loved that unborn child that he would die? Was it fair to our then 4 year old son to watch the same thing and wonder why mommy and daddy didn't bring his baby brother home? Would it have been fair for my wife to go back to work and have everyone look at her and know what had happened and awkwardly avoid the subject? Mr. Ryan, don't tell me you can legislate the answers to those questions!! Why should unelected justices with a political agenda be able to craft and enforce a law that would end the right to chose, while at the same time force torture on families in our situation? We love that child as much as we love the two that are with us.

I won't argue that we made the right decision for everyone, but we made the right decision for us. And that's what this debate is about...personal decisions. I'm not a fan of abortion, far from it in fact. But until you have walked the path of a person who has made that heartbreaking decision you can't possibly comprehend what it does to your soul...how much it hurts, and how you never, ever forget it and how you are never the same person afterwards.

And a terrible decision to have to make. I am so sorry you went through that.

The Plaid Adder

You do what you need to and others can do what they need to do.

I know a woman who had a lethal recessive gene in common with her husband. The doctors told them there was a 25% chance of it recurring. They were on the wrong side of the statistics four times, on the last one, she terminated the pregnancy, just because she couldn't go through it again. Then, they just stopped, happy with their one living child.

That is the thing I don't get. Why can't they just leave others to make their own private decisions. I'm not in their faces demanding to know personal things about their lives.

?

are a very difficult and emotional time. A woman should be able to choose who she wants to discuss her pregancy - usually her partner, her family and of course her doctor. No woman would EVER choose her politician to be a part of that discussion UNLESS that politician happens to be her partner, her family or her doctor too.

I have never heard or read a more eloquent and moving statement of the case.

Peace

Thank you for writing this.

I have two children, but I've been pregnant three times. I lost my second baby when I was 8 weeks pregnant in 2010. I chose not to have a D&C for several reasons, so I allowed things to progress naturally and I can tell you that it was 100% just like labor for a full term living baby. My miscarriage rocked my world and plunged me into the deepest and darkest depression. The only reason I am even here to tell you about this is because I loved my son too much to take my own life. If this had happened during my first pregnancy...well, I don't know what I would have done. My family and some of my closest friends were incredibly supportive, but I received a lot of hurtful comments and judgments from a few co-workers and other friends. I was told she wasn't really a baby at only 8 weeks. To me, that was my baby. I had seen her alive with her heart beating two days before she died. She was completely real to me. I was told to be happy I didn't lose a baby later in pregnancy. I was told that God knew better than I did, so just accept it. I was told to "get over it" so many times. I had a woman who was a close friend tell me that she didn't know if our friendship could survive because my grief was too "awkward" for her. I eventually got a tattoo with my baby's name, River, and an image of a Sparrow. They even made fun of me for that. I had insane rage from the miscarriage itself and from the comments I heard. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. One thing that helped, other than friends and family, was writing about it. I'm one of those annoying natural parenting and natural living bloggers and I wrote A LOT about my miscarriage, hoping to help someone or even give a clue to others as to what not to say to grieving parents. Losing a baby is actually a taboo subject in our society. People don't want to talk about it - it makes them uncomfortable - so they shut the grieving parents out. It's terrible how we treat people who have lost a child.

I don't know how to label myself when it comes to abortion. I AM against abortion. I wish it didn't happen. However, I don't think legislation is the way to go. I don't want abortions to happen, but I don't want women dying from coat hangers in a back alley. That doesn't solve anything. I've had pro-life people tell me that women who die "deserve it" and that kind of attitude makes me want to vomit. I hate how a lot of the pro-life people only care about getting to the birth. They don't care about providing adequate aid for prenatal care. They definitely don't care about providing any aid to mothers and children after birth. That's so damn hypocritical. And the whole birth control thing is ridiculous, too. More birth control = less abortion. I'm also an advocate of teaching young girls EVERYTHING that happens during their cycles. They should know all about ovulation, menstruation and TRUE fertility charting (nothing like the rhythm method). Yet, there are all of these evangelicals who don't want girls to learn about that because they think it'll make them want to have sex. What the hell? They just don't want women to be empowered about their bodies because they want to be able to control them.

Even though I am personally against abortion, I cannot imagine telling another woman what to do with her body. I can't imagine judging her. I can't imagine wishing death on her because of her decision.

I'm sorry to all of the other parents here who have shared their stories of loss.

...and, to any "friend" who says that your having intense feelings about something traumatic is "awkward"...@#$!!!!!

The Plaid Adder

I am so sorry that you have gone through such pain.

As a pro-choice advocate, I think I can speak for many. Nobody is "for" abortion. I don't know many pro-choice-rs who given an option would have an abortion themselves... and that's okay.

If you believe that Women should have the right to her own body and be able to makes choices about her own health you are defiantly pro-choice.

That's all any of us can say, isn't it?

DU is a better place when you are posting here.

They are insane & hypocritical beyond belief. So much concern for this little clump of cells, but none for the living, breathing woman standing in front of them. Or for any children she already has.

For me, this election is a referendum on bigotry & hate. If the repubs win, they will feel their hate is validated. It is not. There is no room for their kind of behavior in a civilized society.

The unborn, on the other hand, do the right wing nothing but good, until they actually come out of the womb and start thinking they're entitled to, you know, food.

The Plaid Adder

a mother. You are a potential mother, with a potential person inside you. Your body may reject it. It may have genetic issues that cause it to stop growing. Some women's bodies reabsorb the embryo/fetus and the woman never even miscarries. So I have never understood how a conscious decision to deliberately abort was wrong. Nature does it all the time. If a god exists I don't think he/she creates a Facebook page for every zygote at conception, that would be completely illogical.

For both of my pregnancies I was afraid of even breathing the wrong way, eating the wrong food, doing anything that would cause my potential child to stop growing in my womb. When you want a baby, you know for an absolute fact that conception doesn't mean much of shit. It means you keep your fingers crossed for 9 months and hope that at the end you will, indeed, have a child.

We lost a pregnancy at 36 weeks. It was a stillbirth rather than a miscarriage. There was some drama with ultrasounds that revealed that the umbilical cord was not working properly and one of his kidney's was not functioning. We had an appointment to see a neonatal urologist to figure out what we'd have to do once the baby was born but he did not make it past 36 weeks.

I was on bed-rest for the last few weeks but also had a 1 yr old to take care of. On the fateful day, the person who was going to help me out with my 1 yr old did not show up so I was up on my feet more than I should have been. When I got my 1 yr old settled for a morning nap, I noticed the baby wasn't active. At the hospital, the doctor could not find a heartbeat.

First, for all the people who are dealing with miscarriage or still birth, I want to share something the nurse at the hospital warned us of. She said that some couples pull away from each other as if they have to deal with this on their own and that assigning blame on yourself or the other person is not helpful. Armed with the warnings, we made sure that we leaned on each other rather than away from each other. After lots of tears and hugs we made it though the grieving time. And, when the day finally does comes that you don't think of the child you lost, don't feel guilty about that. Let yourself heal.

I am vehemently pro-choice because I think that if abortion were illegal - even with limited exceptions, MANY things will happen in addition to the return of "back alley" abortions and women dying of horrible complications:

In honor of Sesame Street, do you remember the cartoon with the girl holding a balloon with a cat nearby when she ask "What would happen if I popped this balloon?" Here's what will happen if we pop the Rove v Wade balloon...

1.) The rich and well-connected will still have access to safe and discrete abortions.

2.) Some women who experience miscarriages and stillbirths will be subject to scrutiny. Imagine the miscreant Akin talking about a "legitimate miscarriage." Imagine prosecutors determining if there's enough evidence to press charges against a grieving woman. I often wonder if my situation would be suspect. Would someone second guess my decision to take care of my 1 yr old and press charges for murder because I didn't follow doctor's orders for bed rest?

3.) Some women who are raped will be accused of falsifying testimony in order to have an abortion.

4.) Some women who get pregnant through consensual sex will falsely accuse their partner of rape in order to have an abortion.

5.) More children will be born into loveless homes where they are neglected and abused.

6.) More children will be found cut up and stuffed in freezers or buried in shallow graves because their parent(s) (or grandparents or other caregiver) are not equipped to take care of them.

7.) The court system will be overwhelmed with contested cases and the clock will run out for many women that "qualify" for an abortion.

8.) Men will be widowers when they lose their wives to things like ectopic pregnancies (I bet Akin doesn't even know what that is) or treatable cancer. (If no medical exception.)

9.) Rapists' DNA will be passed on along (more than it already is) with all the mental illnesses that led to them being rapists in the first place. (Evolution is supposed to work against this but what do we expect if the lawmakers don't believe in evolution.)

10.) Worth repeating...The rich and well-connected will continue to have access to safe and discrete abortions.

I really think that the way to reduce abortions is to have insurance for all with contraception covered and a great prenatal care program; have a good low cost adoption system; have financial support for single women and low income families that provides a healthy and safe environment to raise a child and have community programs that supports kids and teens so that they are not left on their own while their parents are working.

I really am so SICK of the simultaneous positions that every fetus is sacred AND once a child is born into a less than ideal situation, that people should take care of themselves without being "moochers" or the mother should have not gotten pregnant in the first place if she couldn't take care of the kid.

I think Biden addressed this well in the debate. He wouldn't impose his judgement on others.