An open letter to Julie MacLellan,
Re: So, Sam Oosterhoff, you want to make abortion 'unthinkable'? Here's where to start
You don’t know me. But we do share some things in common. For instance, we both think Sam Oosterhoff is a moron. I’m from Ontario, and I still don’t think what I have to say will be of concern to him. But it should be of concern to you.
I started to read your open letter because several people in my Facebook newsfeed thought it was “a great read”. Agreed. It’s really well written. Thank goodness you write for a living and have the opportunity to influence other people with your words. It’s important that some of the web content out there goes beyond a meme with purposefully misspelled words. It’s important to have educated, well-spoken individuals address controversial issues that they admittedly know nothing about, but make it sound good enough for people to digest and appreciate.
Me? Personally? I got to the part where you said you had one successful pregnancy and then I started to scan. I do thank you for taking up arms. For deciding that you speak for all women who believe in the right to make autonomous decisions about our bodies and access to safe abortion.
But you do not speak for me. Because I’m not sheltered enough to think that abortion will ever be unnecessary. I don’t have a goal of making it unnecessary. I will not approach Sam Oosterhoff with a list of socioeconomic issues for him to address in order to make abortions unnecessary.
It seems you once identified as pro-life and even cheered on the Tremblay in Tremblay v. Daigle in some young and confused Roman Catholic haze. I was 17 at the time, went to church every Sunday, but I still knew how important that decision was. I too thought there would never be a circumstance under which I would have an abortion, but it was important to have the rights in place. Other women should have the choice, even though I would never need it. I did not even consider the reasons why one would have an abortion. I watched Degrassi Junior High. I knew mistakes happened.
You did own the fact that you likely “missed something” in your article. Again, your focus was on how Sam Oosterhoof could make socioeconomic changes in order to make abortion unnecessary. Now, I am willing to make room for the possibility that your entire article is meant to be a sarcastic diatribe. A list of the un-accomplishable. But you need to make room for the fact that not everyone recognizes sarcasm in online articles. Some people will read your article and think…”Hey, we can make abortion unnecessary if we just do these things.”
So, let me tell you a little bit about me. I’m 47. I’ve been pregnant exactly eight times. I found pregnancy to be very stressful. I guess after the first few losses one tends to lose that glow of ignorant bliss. My third pregnancy was a real zinger. At 20 weeks gestation, a possible malformation was identified during a routine ultrasound. It took another three weeks to confirm that my unborn son was missing the lower one third of his face and all means to breathe outside the womb.
I was presented with the option to carry to term or “interrupt” the pregnancy. I was told that if my baby survived labour he would suffocate the minute the umbilical cord was cut. I was also told there was a possibility that if I decided to interrupt the pregnancy, I may have to go south of the 49th parallel because abortion in Canada was not permitted past 20 weeks, and I was 23 weeks along by that time.
At 24 weeks gestation, I made the decision to end the pregnancy. There was not going to be a positive outcome, just more suffering for both of us. And I had already spent close to a month knowing that he would likely not survive. I then had to switch doctors and the hospital where I was planning to deliver because St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario – the hospital where I was born, the hospital where my first son was born – would not assist me.
Shortly after I gave birth and said goodbye to Seamus, I came across a group on a parenting website. A very large group. Some might even call it an “army”. It was a support group for women who had “terminated for medical reasons”. And this group was not confined to women who were facing a major malformation. Some of these women would have risked their lives if they carried to term.
So, ya. You missed something. You see my baby’s jawbone didn’t form. This is a process that starts before most women even know they are pregnant. With no jaw, there was nothing to move his ears into place on the side of his head. So, they remained fixed in the middle of his neck, where his esophagus should have been.
And there is nothing you or Sam Oosterhoff…unless one of you has an ‘in’ with Mother Nature…can do to address that. Abortion will never be unnecessary. It saves lives. It decreases the unspeakable trauma of finding out your baby...sorry…your fetus has a malformation that is incompatible with life. Throughout your opinion piece, you refer to ‘unwanted’ pregnancies. This is a symptom of being ignorant to the realities of pregnancy for some women. Some abortions have nothing to do with socioeconomic factors. What happened to me can happen to any woman. And I guarantee you that these pregnancies were very much wanted.
Sincerely,
Heather Romito
P.S. There’s no such thing as a ‘pro-life, pro-choicer’. Either you believe in the right to choose or you don’t. It’s black and white, and you don’t get to grey-wash it.
