beside the fact that their are ‘forced birthers’ running clinics (there have been several locations across canada, where women have sought termination, and instead have children) there is a huge discrepancy between care, that if you hadn’t experienced, would never even cross your mind. when i was in my early twenties i was living in montreal, the largest city in the french speaking province of quebec. it is also the birthplace of the morgantaler clinics, which is strange, considering the catholic nature of the province, but not if you understand the enlightenment of the jewish doctors of the day.
i was experiencing adverse symptoms linked to my birth control that i’d been on since i was 16. there was a mishap and needless to say, i was treated at a normal run of the mill hospital, as most everyone is under our ‘universal’ medical system. THEY. USED. NITROUS. i am very pleased to know that i don’t have any unwanted children running around the world. i am not pleased that i needed to undergo torture to achieve this. at one point during the procedure, because nitrous just makes you really uncomfortably high feeling, out of control, and vaguely nauseous, the assisting nurse was gripping my a very hard and telling me i had to stop bearing down or i might break the instruments. i was the terrified i would die of internal bleeding. they had a single panel of a nat geo scuba picture from an article, taped to the ceiling, the half-assedness of it also pissed me off. i still have recurring PTSD issues about the experience, some of which are compounded by the complete uselessness of my partner at the time.
flash forward three years, and i am living in calgary. i need another termination, different guy. this time i was fitted incorrectly for a diaphragm by a male doctor. in the office discussing the procedure with a nurse she noticed my behaviour seemed very stressy, like i was climbing the walls. i explained what happened in montreal, and the appalled look on her face was priceless. ‘we haven’t done that out west, since the seventies!’ she said. that experience was the complete opposite. now i have a low dose pill that works great for me, and has less adverse side effects, as my particular physiology does not allow for IUD type devices, and some friends had a really hard time recovering from tubal ligation, which is vastly more invasive and complicated than a vasectomy.
there is just so much more involved in deciding to terminate pregnancies besides irresponsibility. i myself am an adopted child, and my story is horrific, not wonderful, i could never have given a fully formed human being, to be possibly treated the way i was, and to try and fix themselves in the world that we have. many times i have wished that my biological mother would have been given the same medical supports that i had available, even with the psychological cost of ‘comparison shopping.’ i have met my biological mother and we are friendly, but i can never tell her what i went through after she gave me up. she knows it wasn’t good, but i know it would crush what’s left of her soul if she knew, so what i hope is that one day no child ever has to grow up like that, and raising wanted children is the only way to accomplish this.
