Tag: pregnancy

In some ways, the world is getting kinder

As I was writing this essay, I got a call from a blind man named Henry. He needed help finding the front door of his apartment, and then help making his way through the somewhat maze-like halls of his building, around several corners, through several sets of doors, down a ramp, and into the lobby where the stairs were.

He walked holding his phone, and I guided him based on what I could see on the live video. At one point, it was too dark for me to see where he was going, so with his permission, I tapped my screen to remotely turn on his phone’s flashlight, lighting his way. When he got to the lobby, he thanked me, we wished each other a good day, and we hung up. Simple as that.

The call came through an app called ‘Be My Eyes’, and it works wonderfully well. It connects blind and visually impaired people with randomly-chosen volunteers who can help them out in various ways. At last count, there are 431,970 blind people using the service, and nearly six million volunteers. Someone always answers.

If you want evidence that the world is getting meaner, you don’t have to look far. I won’t even supply examples, because I’m sure several sprang to mind. Entire careers and industries are dedicated to keeping supplies of human cruelty fresh and constant, and to making sure we all think about it all the time.

But there is also evidence that the world is getting kinder. The ‘Be My Eyes’ app is just one. Despite how it may feel some days, we’re not all engaged in some inexorable downward slide into Gehenna. There are countless happy warriors everywhere, waging tiny battles to retain their humanity day by day, and to find ways to be kind to each other.

Here are some I’ve noticed recently, when I decided to look:

Many libraries no longer charge late fees. I’m sure they were partially forced into this decision, because people were simply not returning books, and then never going to the library again; but the general impulse — “all is forgiven, just return to me” — is a wonderful one, very much in keeping with the Gospel. Good stuff.

Several video games now have what could be called “little buddy mode” — a setting or character designed for a younger, less competent companion player who tags along with a more skilled gamer. They can feel like they’re part of the action, but they aren’t at risk (or else they can regenerate endlessly), so it’s harmless fun for them to join in. (Super Mario’s Nabbit, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Yarn Yoshi, and Mario 3D World are some examples of some variety of this feature.)

To be sure, this isn’t altruism. It’s a product made because the company thought it could sell something. But it’s a beguiling idea, and caters to a wholesome and friendly consumer need, rather than a cruel and low one, which is something you don’t see very often.

More and more parking lots have reserved parking spots not only for disabled customers, but for pregnant women and for parents with babies. One of the greatest baby gifts someone ever gave me was a reserved parking spot in the last month of my sciatica-ridden pregnancy, saving me a short but very painful walk to and from the school door five days a week. Again, partially consumer-driven, but kind and merciful all the same for the grateful woman who really needs that spot.

The proliferation of GoFundMe’s, meal trains, money pools, Amazon wish lists for strangers, and other easily-sharable means of supporting people in need. Yes, sometimes they are foolish, and sometimes they are scams, but very often they literally save lives, and people in crisis are rescued with their dignity intact. This is something that simply didn’t exist 15 years ago, and it’s very good that we have it. It just about redeems the internet, and it’s good that people with only a little money to donate are given the chance to join in on a good deed.

‘Buy nothing’ groups have also proliferated on the internet. This is a resurrection of a practice from another age, when people would “wear it ’til you wear it out; make it do or do without.” Now, pushing back against the tsunami of discarded consumer goods, there are myriad groups where people can list what they no longer want, and I have rarely seen anything go unclaimed.

The other day someone said she had several spaghetti sauce jars without lids, and I rolled my eyes, thinking no one would want her excess recycling. Within minutes, another woman happily claimed them, saying she was selling cut flowers at the farmer’s market and needed more jars for vases.

I have also seen people request furniture, clothing, and all manner of things for their families, and someone always something to share. People want to share; it was just the mechanism for doing it easily that was lacking.

Any time we need to fix something around the house, or make a car repair, or even make a costume or a party prop, we head to YouTube, and there is almost always a useful instructive video.

Sometimes they are slick, monetized videos that someone produced as a business, but very often, they are just little movies that people have made because they know how to do something, and they would like to help other people out. There is no money or fame involved; they’re simply being helpful. This is purely lovely.

Little free libraries, and little free food pantries, and other little free structures have been erected all over the landscape, just so people can share what they have with each other. These little free-standing miniature sheds started popping up a few years ago and people have not gotten tired of them yet. It’s easy to see why.

There’s no paperwork, no income requirements, no humiliating process where you have to display your poverty before some beneficent committee. If there’s something you want, you simply take it. If you have something to give, you simply leave it. Simple and kind.

The concerns of children are taken more seriously than they were even a generation ago. Some of this is legislated, with child labor laws and efforts to abolish statute of limitation laws regarding abuse; but some of it has just made its way into the social order.

You don’t have to “but abortion” me. I know that there is immense cruelty and hardheartedness toward unborn children at the same time. That doesn’t negate the good that is happening, and it’s truly good that adults today are much more likely to listen to a child who says they are being bullied, or who says they are feeling anxious or afraid or overwhelmed, or who says something bad is happening to them.

In general, we treat children more like full humans, and this is a very good thing.

There’s a real trend away from remarking on people’s appearances. I was skeptical at first, and thought that this trend was merely lip service that people would be trained to do so as to appear correct; but my younger kids seem truly acclimated to the idea that it simply isn’t normal or acceptable to judge someone based on how they look.

It will be fascinating to see how far this trend goes, and how it affects people’s actual behavior toward each other, but even if it only reaches so far, it’s been pleasant to see that it’s no longer socially acceptable, for example, for a man to dismiss a female colleague simply because she isn’t attractive to him. Guys still behave like this, of course, but at least in many quarters, there is now always pushback. When I was growing up, no one would have batted an eye. There really is change afoot.

It’s become more and more common for businesses and schools to offer free menstrual products in their bathrooms, along with other hygienic necessities like toilet paper and soap. Since about half the population menstruates, and these products can be prohibitively expensive, it’s wonderful to see more corporations acknowledging a responsibility to provide these goods so women and girls can show up and function at full capacity.

There is more and more integration of adaptive equipment in public places for people with disabilities. More playgrounds have adaptive swings and other play structures; more churches offer sensory-friendly services and more gyms and entertainment centers offer sensory-friendly evenings; more crosswalks have auditory aids; more museums have adaptive displays for the impaired; more supermarkets have adaptive carts.

These accommodations are not only great so people with disabilities and their families can live their lives, it’s good for the rest of the world to constantly recognize that people with disabilities are fully part of the community, and that their needs are different but just as legitimate as the needs of abled people.

And there is more. I’m sure you can think of examples, if you look. These things have a way of building on each other. If you see that the world is kind and kindness seems normal, then it’s easier to start contributing yourself.

What can you add to this list?

*

A version of this essay was originally published in The Catholic Weekly on October 5, 2022.

Photo by Greg Dunlap via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A different NaPro story: Leah Libresco Sargeant speaks on loss and kindness

Last week, during Infertility Awareness Week, I published an interview with a woman who was served very poorly by her NaPro doctor. He failed her medically and caused her unnecessary physical and psychological harm. 
 
Leah Libresco Sargeant had a very different experience. Sargeant, 31, was married in 2016 and has one living child, Beatrice, who is 15 months old. Before Beatrice was born, Sargeant lost six babies. 
 

Those children are named Robin, Ariel, Blaise, Casey, Camillian, and Luca. Her third pregnancy was a possible ectopic, after which she began seeing a NaPro doctor. She then had a very early loss, sometimes referred to clinically as a ‘chemical pregnancy,’ and two more ectopic pregnancies before conceiving and carrying Beatrice to term. 

These are not dueling interviews, and they are not mirror images of each other. I wanted to share both women’s stories to give the conversation around NaPro more depth and nuance, because it’s so often presented in Catholic circles as a miracle cure, and entirely different from what mainstream fertility doctors can offer. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it  isn’t.

As Sargeant says,”Both stories are true. It’s a reason for people to hold Catholic doctors to a high standard of charity, as well as ethics. It’s not an unreachable standard.” 
 
Here is our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity:
 
A lot of people lose their first babies. When did you become aware that what you were dealing with was out of the ordinary?
 
 With our first baby, Robin. I didn’t care if it was out of the ordinary or not. People would say things like, “Your odds are good if you try again,” but who cares? Our baby just died. Nobody would say that if your baby got hit by a car. For each of our pregnancies, we focused on the risk to this baby, rather than thinking of it on some abstract level. 
 
After Blaise [the third loss] it was only partly that we were looking for a NaPro doctor. We were looking for a doctor who was a kind person, which wasn’t how we felt about the two doctors we had seen before. It felt like they didn’t see our babies as babies. They barely saw us as people.
 

When we came in for the last ultrasound, we suspected we had lost the baby by that point, and right before [the doctor] came into the room, I heard her say, “Okay, so there’s nothing there?” And they were brusque with us when we were crying in the waiting room. I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for people to see that, but what did they think was going to happen? It felt as though they had never delivered the news of a miscarriage before. You’re surprised by this? 

Even if it didn’t make any improvement in our medical treatment, [having a Catholic doctor] would mean someone who would take our losses seriously. 

How did you go about finding such a person?

We were in New York City, and we were in a Frassati Group for young married and engaged couples, and they said Dr. Nolte and the Gianna Center was really good. 
 
She took a very exhaustive NaPro history with a dozen blood tests, testing every possible hormone. She also asked about all our miscarriages, and when she took notes, she wrote down the babies’ names in the charts. I spoke to her recently, and she wanted to make sure she had accurately transferred all their names. 
 

So it sounds like this is one of those geographical things. Elizabeth had to drive four hours to get to a NaPro doctor, but you had a choice. 

 

Yes,  just walked across town. It was a 30 minute walk, and there was a park nearby. 
 
How did you first hear of NaPro? 
 
I had heard about in general. I took it with a grain of salt, the same as with people who say NFP is the best possible thing for your marriage, and whatever problem you have, NFP will solve it. 
 

It’s hard to make really strong promises, because women’s health is so under-researched. It’s important not to overpromise, not because the science is unsound, but because women’s health is always under-researched. Progesterone may be helpful. Depending on [your underlying condition] ,some studies have found yes, some have found no. It depends on what the nature of the fertility problem is. It’s certainly plausible it could save the life of some babies, but it’s not a given.

We talked about the side effects of medications, and whether it’s worth the chance to try it. I didn’t notice any side effects of taking progesterone, so there was very little down side of taking it. It might help, and it wasn’t difficult to take it. She said we could always come back and discuss how it was progressing. 

The thing that was most difficult was that it was a lot of different pills to take. It was depressing taking a little pill canister around, taking things at every meal, and having that be a reminder of how hard this was for us. 
 
Did you ever sit down and discuss what the parameters would be, how far you would go, what you would try? 
 
It would  have been something we would have evaluated if we had been [pursuing treatment] over a longer period of time. But we did keep getting pregnant. It was, “Is this baby going to make it?” It wasn’t this long, undifferentiated slog. 
 
You mentioned in an interview that, pre-conversion, you found some appeal in the gnostic idea that the “real you” is housed in the body; and in another essay that NFP did some work to heal that. I wonder if having struggles with your body not “functioning” right awoke that struggle at all. 
 
It’s been a long and continuing conversion of heart. There’s a difference between teaching women that their cycle has a structure, versus teaching as though there is no cycle, there’s just periods, and it’s a problem, and here’s how to manage it. That bodies are basically bad, but you can stay ahead of them if you work hard.  [Although, with some situations with NFP,] it can feel like your body is sending you signals from a distance, and it’s foggy. It’s not as though NFP is a magic bullet. 
 
A lot of women struggling with fertility problems talk about feeling like their bodies are broken, or that they betrayed them. 
 
I didn’t feel that way. Although a lot of medical terminology pushes in that direction. “Miscarried” sounds like you were carrying the baby, but you screwed up. “Losing the baby” makes you feel like, “Did I take my eye off the baby? Somehow I lost him.” A lot of language circles around blame. I didn’t have this [particular] problem, but “incompetent cervix” [is another example]. It’s not like you personally went cervix shopping and picked out one with a bad expiration date. 
 
A lot of medical language ticks me off. It sounds like it’s a woman’s fault. [My doctor wrote on my chart] “early loss,” rather than “chemical pregnancy.” Part of what happened was I felt like my body was doing the best job it could.
 

It was personally comforting for me [that I didn’t have to have a DNC]. I got take care of my baby till the end. It could be in my family without involving aggressive medical attention. 

With Camillian, it was an ectopic pregnancy. The blood tests started getting bad, and when we went in for the ultrasound, we were steeling ourselves to hear that the baby had died. But we got told the baby was in the wrong spot and had probably already died, based on the lack of heartbeat and how far along we should be. That really changed things. We were in the doctor’s office in New York, and they said, “You need to go to the hospital.” We took a train to New Jersey [so as to avoid] a surgeon who had been unkind to us. 
 
It was one thing to lose the baby, and for the baby to leave on their own time, but the idea that they were going to take the baby really upset me. The sense of peace I had with the other babies, I couldn’t feel with Camillian. It didn’t feel like it was happening on God’s time table or on the baby’s time table. 
 
Dr. Beiter had just met us. He hadn’t know us before. But he also stopped and talked through all our options. It was a Catholic hospital. Because the baby had already died, we had more options than is sometimes the case. We wanted to know how can we take care of the baby, even if the baby has died?
 

We didn’t like methotrexate very much as an idea. It would have been licit, but I didn’t like the idea of dissolving the baby. You have to wait longer, and it doesn’t always work. 

[The doctor said,] “You could avoid surgery; isn’t that better? You can go home today, and possibly just be done.” We talked it through, and he definitely had a preference for the drug, but he talked through what we preferred. Both options were morally fine and medically effective, and we made the call, and he took good care of us. 

Surgery is a harder recovery. It was locking in a harder recovery, but we wouldn’t expect to go back for another treatment. [With methotrexate, the symptoms of the drug can be similar to those of a tubal rupture, so you may have to go back to the ER.] I just wanted to go home and be done with everything, even if I’m recovering from abdominal surgery.  
 

That’s a tough thing with not just fertility medicine, but with medicine generally. Sometimes things are black and white, but sometimes there are different degrees of benefit and side effects, and there isn’t a single right decision. 

Did you ever receive any specific medical treatment from NaPro doctors that a mainstream fertility doctor would never have offered?

 

It’s hard to know for sure. Some mainstream doctors won’t consider progesterone at all, but my original doctor tested and had me supplement. There were tests that a doctor might have done later that our NaPro doctor didn’t need to wait for many many losses to do. None of them came through, but if I’d had a clotting disorder, I would have been very grateful for her being up to check.

The big (evidence not fully in) treatments we had were metformin for PCOS, and antibiotics for endometritis (which is different from endometriosis). Both of which, from my review of the literature, don’t have enough evidence behind them to make them an obvious right choice. But they have plausible mechanisms of action and (for me) mild to no side effects.

Did you ever have to deal with Catholics judging you for family size or for not having a honeymoon baby? 
 
We’ve been pretty open about our losses. Anyone who knew us enough to ask would know. Sometimes strangers will see Beatrice and say, “Is she your first?” I usually say “She’s our first to make it to birth.” Just because it’s true. 
 
Despite your good experience with Catholic doctors, is there anything you would like to see changed about the culture around NaPro or the conversation around Catholic fertility issues in general?
 

It’s good to remember that there’s not necessarily anything there to be fixed. [Sometimes people speak] in terms of something secretly wrong with you, and NaPro can fix it. We still don’t know for sure. We really don’t know if there was an underlying problem, or if we were just unlucky. 

If you feel like every person’s story ends by finding and fixing a problem, you can get emotionally blackmailed, by yourself, even. “I must have a really secret, obscure problem!” I saw that a bit in the miscarriage support group I was in. For the most part, it was really helpful, but [people would go to extreme lengths like] really aggressive elimination diets. I think people do that because they’ve tried everything, and it hasn’t happened, so they have to look harder for what’s wrong. 

God does make people who don’t have children, because that’s His really exhausting will for them, and not because His will is that they find and fix anything. It’s not comfortable, but it is true. That means people who do fertility care have to talk about the theology of suffering, not just aspirational fixing. 
 

One thing that helped me is that I have a friend who’s a Dominican sister who cares for people who are fatally ill with cancer. That’s their charism: They care for indigent people who cancer who wouldn’t otherwise have anyone to care for them. Not to cure them, but to care for them. That’s what my job was as a mother. 

Can you say more about that?
 
Some moms get to take care of their babies for the mom’s whole life. That’s not what I got to do. Instead, I got to take care of them for their whole lives. 

To care for them without the hope of curing them: That could be my work as a mother. 

Hopefully it’s because He trusts me with them. “I’m going to give you this baby who’s going to die. I’m entrusting you to love this baby in the way that baby needs to be loved, not the way you want to love that baby.”
 
And I worried, what if I get really good at this and God only wants me to do that? 
 
Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like people to know about your experience, or about infertility in general?
 
Sometimes people weren’t sure what to say to us. Trying to get us not to be sad is a lousy approach, but a common one. They didn’t say “Don’t be sad” out loud, but that is what they were saying quietly. If you could say quietly “Don’t be sad” in front of what you’re going to say, don’t say it. It’s better if you could say “I’m sad, too” quietly. 
 
What I wanted to hear was, “I’m sorry I won’t get to meet your baby. I would have liked to meet your baby.” 
 
 
***
 
Leah Libresco Sargeant is the author of two books, Arriving At Amen and Building the Benedict Option, and she runs a Substack called Other Feminisms: Creating a culture that values interdependence over autonomy. 
 

Do women need ascesis?

I recently interviewed the developer of Exodus90, a spiritual exercise aimed at Catholic men who want to find spiritual freedom through prayer, ascesis, and fraternity. One thing lots of people wanted to know: Why is this only for men? Why was there no companion program for women?

Although I have mixed feelings about the program in general, I was impressed by his answer to this question. He said that, while “there’s nothing exclusive about prayer or asceticism or community,” the program had been written with men and fatherhood in mind, so he didn’t want to just — boop! — shift it over to women. But people kept pressing him to write up and market a version for women. He said:

“We’re a bunch of men. You don’t want us writing a program for women. So we got a religious order we respected. Their whole mission revolves around feminine identity. We asked them, ‘Would you study Exodus, and if you think this is a model of healing for women, would you write a program, if you feel called to?’

“Six months later, they said they didn’t believe this structure is a model of healing for women.”

I have my own theories for why this may be. Warning: I’ll be painting with a broad brush here, so please keep in mind that my words won’t apply to every last individual human. (I know you’re going to complain anyway, but at least you can’t say I didn’t warn you!)

In general, women are introduced at an early age to the inescapability of suffering, and to the ultimate helplessness of humans in the face of nature and before the will of God.

When women hit puberty . . . Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

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Image: Portrait of a Young Woman As a Sibyl by Orazio Gentileschi (Wikimedia) / Public domain

In which I am not pregnant

I could say, “I’m not pregnant, and I’m not going to have a baby, and this is not a pregnancy announcement, but I have a different, non-pregnancy-type announcement to make, which is not about a baby in any way. Here’s my announce–” and twelve people will cut me off to shriek, “OH MY GOSH, IS THIS A PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT?”

Yes. Sure. It’s a pregnancy announcement, and I’m naming the baby after you. I think Shut Uppa You Face Fisher has a nice ring to it, don’t you?

Read the last of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

I kinda look pregnant, and I kinda don’t care.

Warning: Lady essay ahead.

Today, while we were running, I asked my husband, “Okay. Do I look pregnant?”

He got that blissful expression on his face that husbands get when their wives ask neutral and in-no-way-dangerous questions like this. I added, to ease up on the poor guy a bit, “Sometimes. In some clothes. Do I?” And he said, “Yes.”

Message me for our address, so you can mail him his medal for courage.

And then he told me how beautiful I am, and how much progress I’ve made since we started running. Which is true, and which I expected him to say. The thing that surprised me was how little it hurt to hear him say that I look pregnant.

I gave birth to our tenth child almost two and a half years ago. I had a bad year last year and gained a bunch of weight, and now I’m working on losing some of it. I’m running several times a week, eating less, and correcting a lot of bad habits and bad attitudes surrounding food. But I have this solid, poochy belly. I see people glancing at it, wondering if I’m pregnant again, and I don’t blame them.

I guess I have diastasis recti, or separated abdominal muscles. All those little unborn savages weren’t content to eat all my nutrients, suck the calcium out of my teeth, permanently jack up my hips, and turn my brain into gruel; they had to tear apart my muscles from the inside, too! The ingrates! And now they want a ride to the library!

There are special exercises you can do to heal your diastasis recti. They’re not terribly hard. I’m already in the habit of exercising, so it wouldn’t be that difficult to do some abdomen work. But I just, deep in the heart of me, don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like I need to be “healed” of having a poochy abdomen. It’s not that I’m proud of my belly. I’m not big into that “Yeah, bay-bee, I EARNED these tiger stripes and if you don’t say my stretch marks are BEAUTIFUL than you are RAPING MY SELF WORTH and I WON’T LET THAT HAPPEN DO YOU HEAR ME?” stuff.

At the same time, every cell in my body, every corner of my soul utterly lacks the motivation to make it appear that I haven’t had ten children. I don’t enjoy being a fatty. But there are so many worse things I could be. I could hate my body, or be filled with self-loathing, or feel that I don’t deserve love because I’m a size 18. And I don’t do any of that. I’m taking care of myself, and I feel pretty good.

This is by no means a condemnation of women who are working hard to get back into pre-baby shape. I think you ladies are amazing. I will freely admit I’m mostly just too lazy to even look up the exercises, much less do them faithfully. I don’t think there’s anything morally superior about leaving my tired muscles alone, and I don’t think that losing belly fat is a sign of self-hatred. For some women, taking on the challenge of getting back to pre-baby shape is the right thing for their mental health, maybe even for their spiritual growth. Maybe they just want to look nicer. Yay, ladies! I’m sincerely impressed!

But for me, at age 42, married almost twenty years, sending the first two kids off to college . . . I’m moving on to the next stage of my life. Where I am, it just doesn’t seem important to erase all evidence of the previous stage of my life. I had a bunch of babies; I look like I had a bunch of babies. So what? I’ll buy brighter lipstick and go out anyway.

Check back with me in a couple of weeks, and I’ll probably be all teary and desperately scrolling through shape wear reviews. Right now, though, I feel kind of like a moderately strong, moderately attractive, moderately confident woman who doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about belly fat. It feels pretty good.

I’m sharing this because maybe you don’t have anyone in your life telling you that it’s not the end of the world to be fat. So here I am telling you: It’s not!

A sentimentally brutal response to the artificial womb

Remember the scene in Monsters, Inc. where all the various monsters are getting ready to be scary? They each have their own style: One is a blob with many eyes, one has retractable spikes; some are sneaky, some are creepy. And then there is the one who makes his point by flailing his orange tentacles around and rushing forward with a hysterical shriek.

This is the approach taken by a blogger for the Register a few days ago, in a post called “The Advent of the Artificial Womb: Suddenly, it’s a braver, newer world.”

The artificial womb is a long-awaited technological breakthrough which, it is hoped, will eventually allow very premature babies to continue gestating until they are stronger.

Currently, preemies must adapt prematurely to breathing air and receiving nutrition orally — an ordeal which sometimes saves lives, but still often leaves survivors with profound, lifelong disabilities. Rather than being intubated in an incubator, sedated and on a respirator, premature babies in an artificial womb would grow in a pouch filled with lab-made amniotic fluid, which would be gentler on their tiny bodies, and would allow their lungs and brains to develop more normally.

But this blogger calls the artificial womb a “travesty.” In nearly 3,000 words, he devotes only a few brief paragraphs to the idea that the invention, if successful, will keep premature babies alive, and he allows half a sentence for the idea that it’s a good thing to keep premature babies alive.

And the rest of his post is flailing tentacles, as he drags in everyone from Descartes to Dune to homeless schizophrenics to Simone de Beauvoir to Octomom, to the right to spank and homeschool, to (of course) the gays, and finally to – shudder – “feminists,” saying, “The artificial uterus is fraught with danger to the point of moral disaster on the par with abortion.”

He looks into his crystal ball and sees nothing but horrors:

Now that artificial uteri are to soon be a possibility, how many more made-to-order pedophile sex slaves are we to expect? How many of more will a liberal media refuse to shed a spotlight on?

Also, can a woman who has used an artificial womb truly bond with her child? Can the child develop normal feelings for the person who purchased its birth in a plastic Ziploc baggie?

Does he have a leg to stand on?

Well, it’s true that some folks will immediately scheme how to use this medical advance in ways that are harmful and contrary to human dignity — like incubating a child entirely and electively in an artificial environment, so that women no longer have to give birth, or so people can design and purchase a child to their specifications, with motives ranging from selfish to monstrous. I’m no fool: I know that there are people who desire these things. (It’s already being done, only we use poor Indian women rather than a plastic bag.)

But it’s also true, once artificial wombs are functional, that some of the tens of millions of babies born prematurely may live instead of die, and may be born closer to full term, with less trauma and more of a chance of avoiding life-long health problems. This is not nothing. This is not some negligible perk that we can easily decline for fear of potential abuse.

Artificial wombs are not intrinsically evil.  They may someday be used for evil, but so may every other medical advance you can name. The medical syringe, for example, was invented to inject painkillers; now it’s also used to heal the sick, to administer vaccines, and to save lives. Syringes are also used for delivering heroin, and consequently are responsible for the spread of HIV and hepatitis, which is transmissible to unborn children of the infected. Bad, bad stuff. Things that make the world undeniably worse.

But that doesn’t mean that syringes are a travesty on par with abortion. It means that human beings are prey to original sin, and will immediately set to work perverting the use of everything they can lay their hands on.

The outraged blogger fails to draw a vital distinction between two kind of scientific advances:

  1. Things that are morally neutral, and may be used well or misused, and so should be approached with caution, and
  2. Things that are intrinsically immoral, even if they may be used for good ends.

IVF and abortion fall into the second category. The artificial womb falls into the first category. But he seeks to blend the two categories, essentially arguing, “Just think how very wrong this could go!”

And what if God the Father had made this very persuasive argument when He made our first parents? Lots of potential for abuse there. Should He have scrapped the whole project?

There should always be special caution when we see medical advances related to the conception and gestation of humans. Because human life is sacred, it is especially heinous when it is treated as a commodity, as a means to an end, or even, God forbid, as a trinket.

Because human life is sacred, it is wrong to use technology to create a human life in a petri dish, even if the parents of the child love him. It is wrong to use technology to deliberately end human life through euthanasia, even if the patient is suffering.

And there are some murky areas about which, as far as I can tell, Catholic bioethicists have still not made a definitive pronouncement. For instance, it’s possible that a theoretical womb transplant might be moral or immoral, depending on the object, the end, and circumstances surrounding the procedure. It’s uncertain whether it’s ethical to “adopt” a frozen embryo which would otherwise be destroyed.

So I have some grudging sympathy for the blogger. Medical advances and human gestation make uneasy bedfellows, and modern folks are not especially particular about which bedfellows they choose. It’s no use pretending that there are no dangerous possibilities when medical technology makes another leap ahead. It’s no use pretending that everyone who might use new technology will be pure and noble. Horror are all around us, and technology is advancing faster and more recklessly than we can keep up with.

But nothing will be gained — nothing but more horrors– by shrieking hysterically and wishing for the good old days when people just went ahead and died. “It’s a braver, newer world suddenly,” says the blogger. “It’s moments like this that make me long for simpler days.”

I was at a cemetery yesterday. One large grave plot included one man, his first wife with a string of child’s headstones, and his second wife with her own string of dead children.

Those were simpler days.

Babies died, women died, over and over and over again, because the medical technology available was a bowl of hot water, a poultice, and a prayer. Things were simpler then, and children flickered in and out of life like stars, too tiny ever to send their light all the way to earth.

Was it simpler? Yes, it was. Was it better? No, it was not. Evil ebbs and flows. It adapts to whatever the current age can offer. There was evil, and carelessness, and the devaluation of human life back in the old days, and there is evil, carelessness, and the devaluation of human life now. An artificial womb may look scary and dystopian to us. For perspective, maybe browse baby coffins.

I won’t lie: I’m horrified when I look into the future (or even the present) and see that science is separating us more and more from our humanity. But I’m equally horrified when I see Catholics retreating into a sort of sentimental brutality that sighs heavily, dons a cloak of false nobility, and grandly chooses death for others over hard choices for us all.

 

Hey, doctors: Big families are not on trial

The thing that finally relieved my anxiety about giving birth

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

A youngish mom with a bunch of kids goes to her doctor with a medical problem. Doesn’t even matter what the problem is: problems with excessive bleeding, problems with postpartum depression, problems with heartburn, problems with sleep. Problems with her knee, her skin, or the way her hair just won’t curl the way it used to.

Any problem, doesn’t matter. If she has more than a few kids, she already knows what comes next: A glance at the chart, the eyebrows go shooting up, and here it comes: “Ohh, I see you have [any number greater than two] kids.”

And that’s all they want to talk about from then on.

They certainly don’t want to listen to you when you tell them, “This isn’t about family size.” They tuck your multipara status into your buttonhole like a red poppy so you can never forget, never forget that you brought this on yourself in some way with allllll those kids, so let’s talk about that, then, eh?

You’ll think I’m exaggerating if it hasn’t happened to you; but ask around among women who have five, six, or seven, or even three or four kids, and you’ll see nods and eyerolls, or even tears. Because it hurts. Women with lots of kids have to prepare themselves mentally every time they step into a doctor’s office. Not only do they have to deal with whatever problem they’re actually there for, they have to defend themselves against insinuations, disapproval, patronizing jokes, and sometimes open scorn.

Now, sometimes, a woman’s maternal history is relevant. If a woman is trying desperately to stop having children, then it makes sense for her doctor to talk about how she can accomplish that (while being respectful of her religious concerns). If pregnancy and childbearing are damaging her health, it makes sense for her doctor to talk about her plans for the future. That is the doctor’s job, and a good doctor thinks more wholistically, beyond the immediate problem at hand.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.I’m talking about women with many children being treated as if their wombs are a pandora’s box from which all ills and troubles flow. I’m talking about doctors behaving as if we’re nothing but a walking, whimpering uterus, and there is no sense in even discussing any other medical issue until we figure out how to put a cork in it.

Here’s what happened to me in the last week of my last pregnancy:

I had already given birth nine times. I knew what it was going to be like. There was no maternal amnesia strong enough, and there was no new technique I was going to learn for pain control or emotional calm.  I knew what was coming, and that it was going to be rough, because that’s what childbirth is like. I was weeks or days away from giving birth, and I couldn’t sleep, night after night, because I was nervous about the delivery. Naturally, my exhaustion only fed into the anxiety.

So I went to the doctor and asked if she could prescribe something safe to soothe my anxiety and help me sleep, just to tide me over.

She refused. Their policy said I had to visit their staff psychiatrist first. Okay, could I make an appointment? Oh, sure — there was an opening in three days.

Three days may not sound like a lot to you, but I was within five days of my due date. I hadn’t slept in maybe four days. Everything hurt, all the time. And I knew with all my heart that I wasn’t going to magically enjoy peace of mind just because, thanks to my doctors, I could look forward to talking to a complete stranger about my emotional state at 39 weeks. Could I maybe get a three-day prescription to get me through until then, just to take the edge off? No, that wasn’t their policy.

I WAS SO ANGRY. There was no reason for this. No reason at all. But they wouldn’t budge.

So I cooled my heels at home (actually, my heels, like the rest of me, were puffy, inflamed, and in constant pain) and turned up for the stupid appointment. The first thing she wanted to know, after introducing herself, was how I felt about having so many children.

Yeah.

Imagine there’s a building on fire, so you called the fire department — only to discover that, before they would even unroll a hose, they wanted to file a request for documents proving that the contractors who built it had been unionized.

Would that be reasonable? Maybe they were unionized and maybe they weren’t, and maybe the answer to that question would shed light on the current situation and maybe it wouldn’t. But right now, maybe let’s PUT OUT THE FIRE.

So I knew already knew I was being treated badly. But I also knew that, the more I protested, the more likely I was to be flagged as a drug-seeking patient, so I tried to speak calmly. I had already plotted out what I was going to say.

I told the doctor, “I am happy with my family size, and I do not need advice about family planning. That is not why I am here. My anxiety is not related to anything but childbirth. It is purely situational anxiety. When I give birth, I will no longer feel anxiety about giving birth. What I need is something to help me through the next few days, because I can’t sleep. That is the problem I need help with.”

And you know what she did? She kept me in that room for another fifteen minutes, probing and questioning me about my history, my long-term psychological state, my experience in past deliveries, and anything else she could think of, based on nothing but the number of times I had given birth. There were no other red flags in my history, nothing that would signal to any medical professional that I was being abused, that I was unhappy beyond normal pregnancy ills, or even that I was overwhelmed with my life in general. But she kept asking. And I just kept repeating:  “That is not relevant. This is situational anxiety. I just need to get some sleep.”

Finally, with deep and obvious disapproval, she wrote out a prescription for a mild antihistamine, which didn’t work at all. I burned through the next week in a sleepless rage, angrily gave birth, and spent the next week remembering how to sleep, and calming the hell down.

Now, you tell me.

If I were, say, a topless dancer, and I told my doctor I was nervous about upcoming foot surgery, and I wanted a prescription to help me sleep for a few days until the big day, would I have gotten a slew of lifestyle questions, probing and digging for signs that I harbored some secret regret about how I spend my days?

If I were a trans man with AIDS, and was feeling tons of anxiety about an imminent job interview, would my doctor have given me a referral for next week with a psychiatrist who wanted to sit me down and have a chat about my past and future choices about my body, my family, my life goals?

If I were anyone at all, and I turned up in a doctor’s office with an obvious and solvable problem, wouldn’t the doctor just . . . help me solve that problem?

But I had lots of kids. Lots of kids, and I was in a long-term, stable marriage, and I was fully employed, a long-term patient with no criminal record, no history of drug or alcohol abuse, no smoking, no psych issues, no weird bruises, no nothing. I got regular exercise and took my vitamins. I had turned up at every appointment well-nourished and well-informed, with no panic, no hysteria, no delusions, no complaints about anything other than, “I am pregnant and my feet really hurt.” It was very easy to explain why I was feeling anxiety and dealing with insomnia. It was very easy to predict when I could conquer those issues.

But she didn’t want to hear that. She didn’t want to believe me, because I had a lot of kids.

Guess what? That experience of not being listened to was so frustrating and painful and infuriating, it made it ten times harder for me to make another appointment later, when I really did need help with larger psychological issues (also unrelated to childbearing!). I thought, “They’re just going to say, ‘Well, this is what you get when you have so many kids; sorry, we can’t help.'” Because that is what they have always said.

So I didn’t go, and I didn’t go, and I didn’t go.

That’s what happens when you treat women like they can’t be trusted: You lose their trust.  And that means you’re not doing your job.

Doctors, this has to stop. When you see a patient with lots of children, she should be treated like any other patient. Keep eyes and ears open for signs of abuse and signs of distress, just as you would with any other patient, but do not behave as if the large family itself is a red flag. It’s offensive and disrespectful beyond belief, and it puts women constantly on guard. It’s okay to ask if she’s happy with her current family planning; but if she says yes, then you simply must let it go. Even if you don’t get it. Even if you don’t approve.

Believe her when she tells you what the problem is. Believe her, even if she has a lot of kids.

Pro-Choice Feminists and Pro-Life Feminists should march together

Here’s a cheering thought about 2017: It’s gonna be a banner year for comedians.

It’s also shaping up to be a surprisingly good year for pro-lifers. Not because Trump has done anything whatsoever to help save babies or protect women. Maybe he’ll take the trouble to reinstate the largely symbolic Mexico City policy, maybe he won’t; but so far, his pro-life credentials are exactly zero, if you’re generous. [ETA: Shortly after I wrote this, Trump reinstated the Mexico City policy. Credit where it’s due.]

But never mind him, because people who are actually pro-life aren’t waiting for him to remember there’s such a thing as us. Women in seven continents turned out for the Women’s March, to protest his election and to support causes dear to women — causes like education, healthcare, racial justice, protection and respect for the disabled, and, well, everything else. Women are interested in all kinds of things; and even progressive women have more on their mind than abortion abortion abortion. That’s the nice thing about a protest: You show up and say what you want to say (even if you can’t even talk yet).

Yeah, the protest was organized and funded by pro-choicers. Yeah, “abortion rights” became one of the planks of their platform, after a stink was raised in some quarters. But tons of pro-life women showed up anyway, because pro-life is a feminist cause ne plus ultra. As the giant banner said — the banner that led the march, because Students For Life decided to run right out in front — “ABORTION BETRAYS WOMEN.”

So there were pro-life feminists there. In some venues, they were attacked and screamed at; in some venues, they were greeted with respect and support, even from women who didn’t agree with them. These are the reports from the women I know who were actually there.

Even more heartening than this reception is what happened on Saturday Night Life. You can see the entire segment here, but here’s the money part:

Did you catch that?  The man just told his audience that pro-lifers are feminists, and that they absolutely belong in a pro-woman march, because a feminist is simply a reasonable person. He used the phrase “pro-life,” not “anti-choice” or “anti-abortion rights.”

Here’s the transcript of this segment:

It was an amazing show of support for feminism, but some feminist groups were asked not to march because of their pro-life views, which raises the question: “What makes a feminist a feminist?” It’s confusing. 

My mother raised seven kids by herself and she’s the strongest woman I know, so I asked her if she was a feminist, and she said, “Boy, God made Adam and EVE,” I was like, “That’s not what that means.”

A feminist is really just someone who believes in rights for women, and that’s easy to get behind. Until you get behind a feminist wearing a uterus hat and then you’re like, “There are levels to this.”

I just think it’s weird to have a special name for just being a reasonable person, because that’s all it is. Believing in equality just means you’re not a dick, and for me, that enough.

Folks, Donald Trump is a dick. Not because he claims to be anti-abortion, but because he treats women and children, and anyone else who seems vulnerable, like dirt to be trampled under his feet.

Shall I tell you what I want, as a feminist?

I want no girl, teenager, or woman to feel that she has to have a sexual relationship she doesn’t want.
I want no girl, teenager, or woman to feel pressured to act out the porn that’s shaped the desires of a generation.
I want no girl, teenager, or woman to be mocked, pressured, or chided by her friends, her boyfriend, her doctor, or the culture at large for deciding not to have sex with someone.

I want every woman to know that, if she gets pregnant unintentionally, the father of the child will behave like an adult — not just ponying up a few hundred dollars and a ride to the abortion clinic to erase his mistake, but taking on real, shared, self-giving responsibility. I want women to know that the pregnancy is not just her problem.

I want rape victims to be treated with dignity and respect, not suspicion and blame and aggression from schools, from the legal system, and from their neighbors.

I want unplanned pregnancies to stop meaning stigma, shame, and horror.

I want unplanned pregnancies to stop meaning that a woman’s education must end.

I want unplanned pregnancies to stop meaning that a woman is doomed to poverty.

I want unplanned pregnancies to stop meaning the end of a career.

I want women carrying a disabled unborn baby to know that her child has a shot at being treated with dignity by the world, if she’s allowed to be born.

I want women carrying a black unborn baby to know that her child has a shot at being treated with dignity by the world, if she’s allowed to be born.

I want women carrying an unborn girl to know that her child has a shot at being treated with dignity by the world, if she’s allowed to be born.

I want a world where it doesn’t even occur to people to consider abortion, because there are so many, many alternatives. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers can work together to provide these alternatives. And that’s what we have in common.

If pro-choice feminists agree with even part of this, then you’re damn right we are sisters. You’re damn right we belong marching together.

Don’t underestimate the power of popular culture to change hearts and minds. It’s already becoming more acceptable to be pro-life. It’s already becoming more evident that there is more to us than “no, no, no.”  Today’s young adults are looking around at the cultural wasteland left behind after the sexual revolution, and they’re thinking, “Well, that didn’t work. What else can we try?”

Some of them are trying on pro-life feminism. I think it looks pretty good on them — and apparently, so does Saturday Night Live.

So, you folks who are stamping your feet and huffing and puffing over the scandal of pro-lifers turning up at a pro-choice march? You Catholics who are up in arms over pro-life women inflating the numbers of the march, and giving aid and comfort to our ideological enemies? Check it out:

Pro-life feminists who marched got Saturday Night Live to utter the phrase “pro-life,” and to call them reasonable people, to admit that they are feminists, too. Tell me how you were planning to achieve that by sitting at home in your MAGA hat, annotating your list of Catholics We Find Upsetting.

While you were busy taking incriminating screenshots of your neighbor to send to your priest, pro-lifers feminists were bringing their message home. And they’re changing the culture.

Keep marching, sisters.