Pray God you can cope
I’ll stand outside
This woman’s work
This woman’s world
Oh it’s hard on the man
Now his part is over
Now starts the craft of the Father – “This Woman’s Work” – Kate Bush
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you… Jeremiah 1:5
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13
I kept a picture of my first baby, captured via sonogram at 10 weeks gestation in my black leather-bound bible. Some time after week 12 that baby stopped growing. At my next doctors appointment there was no heartbeat. I was officially 14 weeks along. My doctor called it a missed miscarriage and told me I could wait for the process to happen naturally or be scheduled for a d&c. I was in shock. But I had a choice.
I kept the picture of my first baby until my personal healing demanded I let it go. Again, my choice.
This was just another entry in the log of my womanhood, the stories lived and deeper magic of being a Daughter of Eve.
In the greater scheme of choosing life or not for an unborn child, this was a small and perhaps easy choice…but it’s a choice I got to make – as a woman.
I don’t write this post without thinking of the men who support women, who walk with their wives and women when grief strikes. I don’t. The role they play in this is a hard one. I only know a smidgen about it because of the man who walked with me – the man in my life who graced me with the loving support of a shoulder to cry on when I had to make choices about my reproductive health.
I have not had an abortion. But today I’m writing about women, thinking about women out loud. Allow me the opportunity.
A woman’s reproductive life begins when she confronts the weight and gift of being a womb man. It’s no coincidence we carry our reproductive organs internally. It’s a hint at the holy work of going in, digging deeper. Women work to get to know themselves and in knowing ourselves, we encounter God. Through the choices we’re face with. Whether it’s a virgin menstrual cycle, the agony of infertility and loss, or simply the care and keeping of our breasts and bellies…it’s all an encounter with God. It’s a life-altering, soul-breaking risk. All of it.
For the record, I am pro – life.
For the record, I am pro – women.
And that makes me pro – choice.
Right?
I’m a woman, I think I’m both, and, and all.
This won’t be a post about that. Or maybe it will be. This woman’s work thing is complex.
In the gray area that only God can enter I refuse to judge a woman in a difficult situation. I grieve the extermination of life at any stage and know intimately how deeply connected I felt to the babies I lost through miscarriage. Basic biology will never trump the spirit-filled life of a “ball of cells”. Womb work is supernatural. You have to be a believer to even begin to understand.
It’s “behind the veil” work and we don’t get to go with a woman when she has an appointment like that with her God. I know women who’ve made the choice and who’ve regretted the choice. I know women who’ve made the choice and although bittersweet, have made peace with their God about it. I know women who chose life and live to tell the truth of that. But He’s offered grace. There’s grace for every choice.
I respect a woman’s right to choose. I’m in awe of the God who reconciles and redeems this expression of free will. I’m grateful the 3 women who birthed 3 of my children, when faced with the reality of that choice – chose life.
The decision to defund Planned Parenthood, doesn’t feel like a pro-life choice. And it doesn’t feel pro-women. Here we go again with the complexity of this subject.
I lived a handful of years as an intermittently employed artist in New York City. Planned Parenthood was the only place to receive quality affordable gynecological care. We can talk bout having sex before marriage and how the need for gynecological care might not exist were young women practicing abstinence or we can talk about the reality of living under-insured and the wholly human work of the government to provide these services to women who need them.
We can clutch our pearls and gather in a corner enjoying a glass of wine a little too much or we can acknowledge the holy mess of this thing called women’s work. We can remember and allow a little of the grace from our own stories to spill over into another’s. Being pro-life isn’t a grace given specifically for the unborn. It’s a grace that should extend to the women who carry or might potentially carry those lives. The scriptures about being formed in the womb apply to the women who need care. She is known by God too.
Selling fetal organs for a profit is a felony and I’m not insensitive to the shock value of the videos but defunding the organization leaves millions, whole communities of women at risk. If it’s policing or penalizing that needs to happen, let it be, but not at the expense of routine mammograms, Pap tests, and screening for sexually transmitted diseases – routine care. Continued attacks on places like Planned Parenthood sully the reputation of the organizations that do genetic testing and research for the greater good. It brands the work they do in shame and avoids answering the real question – why do women have abortions anyway? If abortion is a financial choice, how can we empower women faced with that decision to believe they will be sustained and encouraged in tangible ways if they choose to keep or place the baby for adoption.
No woman should be denied affordable reproductive health care or be stigmatized for doing so at a crisis pregnancy center. The greater question, the only question – should be what can we do to help?
To the women who choose life, who change the lives of women like me…and the women who don’t.
Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight…#GiveMeGrace
♥
[inlinkz_linkup id=550565 mode=1]
