And so I thought of her as I gave birth. Over and over. We didn't tell my grandmother, then in her early 90s, that I was PROMS, because we knew she'd know what it meant, and be frightened - because in her day, when antibiotics were still new, it was a thing that could be fatal.
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I cannot think about the birth of my child without also thinking about Savita Halappanavar; and though I love my son dearly - though I wouldn't trade him for anything - it's impossible not to remember that carrying him, bearing him, has damaged my health, perhaps forever.
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So often, when men talk archly about the sanctity of the unborn, they do so as if there's no cost to pregnancy, not really, because Medicine; or worse still, as though women are wrong to flinch from that cost, because pain in childbirth was Eve's punishment for the apple.
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And then they wonder, these men, why the old women they thought conservatives and the middle-aged women they thought matriarchs and the young women they thought docile - they wonder why women, why anyone with a uterus, would dare support abortion.
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And the answer comes back, through time and space, in the ancient triple-voice of the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone: because we have dominion over our bodies, not you. Because our lives are formed of wellbeing, not just existence. Because you cannot choose for us.
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Because pregnancy and childbirth always, ALWAYS carry the risk of death, of permanent damage or injury, and that MATTERS. Because the choice exists to be made, and removing one option completely doesn't change that - it just means you've chosen for everyone.
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