pussy the fuck up

To whomever it concerns,

I’m afraid you misunderstood me. Pro choice doesn’t mean anti life. I’ve never met any one who didn’t want both; life and choice. 

Life is a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly and landing on the leaf without the slightest of disturbance. Life is making love with someone you love. Life is unknowingly unfolding like a sunset; the exact combination of colors, unique formation of clouds, placement of the moon, we may know the ingredients but will never be able to predict the yet to be discovered process. Choice, can come easily; left leg lifts on gas pedal at the green flash of a traffic light. Or maybe its guttural; bent over on a sidewalk, and resisting to give up.  

I want to ask that we remove the charge of these words that somehow became two opposing sides and recall their essence.  Every day, there are millions of intersecting moments of life and there are infinite choices. 

What would it cost if we took abortion out of the equation. Because right now it’s costing too much. If it wasn’t you against me, where would we be? I’ve never met a woman who enjoyed the often difficult nuanced decision, the medical process of incision, and the society that shamed her. I don’t want to keep playing victim and march against nonsense. When have you ever seen someone threaten or harass a man receiving a vasectomy?  

I want male responsibility. No, I want penial responsibility. Your 10 sec release could be my lifetime.

I want more promotion and educational awarensss on the most reliable, cost effective, least invasive male brith control: vasectomies. Performed in ten minutes with local anesthesia and reversible. 

I want investment and research in other forms of male contraception.

I want systemic, interpersonal and cultural commitment to dismantling patriarchy in relationship.

I want to prevent rape and incest.

I want medicaid to pay for my IUD.

I want equitable responsibility for unplanned pregnancy from consensual intercourse.

I want the person in a supportive relationship to be able to say “I do not want to be pregnant.” And know they can terminate the pregnancy without question, judgment or picketers spitting on them outside Planned Parenthood.

I want medical, communal, spiritual, emotional services and support readily available, accessible, affordable and high quality. 

I want to be able to say, there is a loss here, even when chosen. What can I do for you?

In nature mothers make decisions some we as humans and scientists still don’t understand.  There is a species of birds that leave their babies with another animal who acts as a “foster parent” to take care of their young. A sloth bear at the Smithsonian National Zoo gave birth to a cub and then 20 minutes later bent down to eat her cub.  When mammalian mothers give birth they must begin nursing their infants and if they are unhealthy or the infant is deformed or carrying an infection, the mother may consume the cub. This might feel immoral to us.  But actually it’s quite simple.  It’s maybe the most brutally ethical, lethally kind.  You can’t provide so you kill instead of letting it suffer. 

If someone is anti-abortion than they have to accept every unforeseen, economic, emotional and systemic cost of a greater population of growing humans with ill prepared parents or people that for whatever reason don’t want a lifetime commitment to raising a child and pair it with an ill fitted government who can’t care for their young. 

No one is casually ordering abortions as if its avocado toast for Sunday brunch. I will not buy what this dichotomy sets up. These are intricate, delicate, often hidden decisions, where the one pregnant is primarily and all too often doing all the emotional labor and after is playing defense in the streets desperate for decency. Signing petitions and protesting while carrying full-time jobs and infants. 

I want to shift it. I want penises in the street cheering for vasectomies, consent, commitment, contraception and sperm ownership in the co-creation of a fetus. 

In other words boys, pussy the fuck up. This is not a woman’s issue.

Photo: Body Positivity workshop at The New School, 2012