Hood Feminism Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot - Mikki Kendall Page 0,82
new-age problems that allow for care at home, aging in place, and a dozen other programs that provide assistance for the women who may never earn a middle-class income, but who deserve the same level of care and concern from the candidates and the systems that rely on their votes and their labor.
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE, EUGENICS, AND MATERNAL MORTALITY
My brush with maternal mortality came during my fifth pregnancy. Pregnancy has always been hard for me, and I have had more miscarriages than live births. I have been pregnant five times; three of those ended in miscarriages. My fifth pregnancy turned out to be my last. It was troubled from the start: I didn’t experience any of the normal indicators of pregnancy—no missed periods, and in fact I was seeing an ob-gyn who specialized in treating fibroids and endometriosis in part because of the increased heaviness of my cycle—so I found out about the pregnancy when I was already ten weeks along. When my husband and I heard the news (on account of that standard pregnancy test before surgery, which turned out to be necessary after all), we talked about it, and we debated aborting—I even got as far as the clinic—before we ultimately decided that we would try to make it work. We already had two sons, and while we weren’t sure we could afford a third child at that precise moment, we wanted a daughter. My doctor advised me right off the bat that she wasn’t certain of a good outcome. I had large fibroids along with endometriosis, and my pregnancy would be very high risk. I did exactly what she said in terms of taking it easy, because I wanted to give that child the best possible chance. But after another eight weeks, the intermittent bleeding wouldn’t stop, and I knew that there was a high chance that I would not be able to carry the pregnancy to term.
I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started. Waking up to find blood gushing up my body is an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The placental abruption that my doctor had listed as a possibility was happening, and I was going to have to do my best to take care of both of us. My husband was at work and my almost-two-year-old couldn’t dial 911 for me, so I had to make it to the phone and make my own arrangements. I’ll spare you the gory details of my personal splatter flick, but by the time I got to the hospital, I needed the abortion that would save my life. I didn’t get it immediately, despite the bleeding, and my attempts to tell the story of how flawed my care from the first doctor was led to a piece on Salon and months of harassment from so-called pro-lifers, including a group that follows Jill Stanek, a former nurse best known for claiming that premature babies were being left to die in a utility closet at a hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois.
Her followers and others sent me death threats, claimed that I had no business being pregnant because of my status as a disabled vet (I never did figure out how my bum leg and my uterus are supposed to be connected), and generally did their best to make my life hell. Some even contacted my former employer in an effort to get me fired from a job I had already left. It was harrowing, and I did my best to stand up to it while still protecting my family. Meanwhile plenty of people who had not been in my shoes were opining on what I should have done, or whether I was telling the world enough of my personal medical details, and whether I was coping the right way, as though there’s a guidebook for the worst moments of your life.
I would like to be able to say that I felt supported by feminists. But it wasn’t my experience. Although mainstream feminists paid lip service to the idea that I deserved support, they mostly made demands. They wanted me to speak at rallies, to testify, to give them copies of my medical records. My article had gone viral, you see, and there was no shortage of attention, though the negative reactions far outweighed the positive. Amid the lawyers and activists reaching out, no one seemed to care that I was scared, that my family was being threatened, or that