Dear “pro-life” anti-choicers:

This is what your anti-abortion stance, your callous disregard for the people involved in an already fraught situation, does. This is the practical effect of your belief that you have a right to dictate and control someone else’s life.

I am so angry that you gleefully enact laws that make people suffer, that put people through hours upon hours of unnecessary turmoil, that heaps one indignity upon them after another, all while you pat yourself on the back for a job well done and go back to your nice, cushy world where you don’t have to acknowledge the effects of your tyranny. I am furious that you are so choked with your own smug self righteousness that you are blinded the heartache and the reality of other’s situations—a heartache you have caused and magnified ten fold.

I am disgusted and contemptuous of your paternalism, that you think you know what’s best for anyone other than yourself, that you ignore and deny the rights of 50% of the population, deny the dignity of their humanity, because of “the children” and “the greater good” and “religion” and “morality.”

Allow me to express a sentiment from every fiber of my being: fuck you.

—-

“I’m so sorry that I have to do this,” the doctor told us, “but if I don’t, I can lose my license.” Before he could even start to describe our baby, I began to sob until I could barely breathe. Somewhere, a nurse cranked up the volume on a radio, allowing the inane pronouncements of a DJ to dull the doctor’s voice. Still, despite the noise, I heard him. His unwelcome words echoed off sterile walls while I, trapped on a bed, my feet in stirrups, twisted away from his voice.