2016: The New 1972?

Today is the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion. Today is also the 6-month anniversary of my own termination.

Since posting my story about being 1 in 3 yesterday, I have received about 30 private messages of support, and even more public support for being so open and honest about my experience.

In the past 24 hours, five friends have confided in me about their own experience with abortion. One stranger even took the time to contact me through email and share her experience with me, explaining that I have given her validation for her feelings and that my story truly helped her.

My 1 in 3 blog post has climbed to over 600 views; my post I Stand with Planned Parenthood has just passed 200. Knowing that my words have reached so many people - some even in other countries! - gives me hope for change and continued progress in women's reproductive rights and freedoms.

However, today I want to speak about the laws circling this matter, and the barriers women face. This discussion is about so much more than just me and my story; it's about all women and their right to safe and legal procedures.

Since 2011, state legislatures have passed 288 laws to restrict abortion - nearly as many as the 15 years prior (1995-2010), which had 292 new restrictions. This alone shows us that not only have we continually made it more difficult for women to obtain the procedure safely and legally, but we are at a crucial point where we must fight back and speak up before we regress to a time prior to Roe v. Wade.

With the current total of 1074 state restrictions nationwide (and many more in the works now, such as the Indiana Heartbeat Bill), the laws enacted from the past five years alone make up 27%. Of that 27% (288 laws), our lovely conservative state of Indiana makes up nearly 10%, while a combination of nine other states (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas) cover another 50% alone, each state having 10 or more new restrictions.

I'm throwing a lot of numbers and statistics at you, so let me give you a cheat sheet version of this:

While we move forward in time, we are moving backward in women's reproductive rights. 

Why is it that each time we take a step forward in human rights and social justice, it is followed by even more obstacles and hoops to jump through for us to put our rights into practice?

1973 was an important year for women. We made a difference that year, and took a big stride forward in women's health. Do we really want to keep on with this continuous regression in 2016, and end up back in 1972?

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Statistics obtained from www.guttmacher.org.

I am 1 in 3

Murderer.

A title many of my friends have given me unknowingly - according to their Facebook posts anyway - echoes in my head daily.

Never have I held a knife to someone's throat.
Never have I pointed a gun at someone's head.
Yet many of my "friends" believe I destroyed a life that hadn't had the chance to live.

I believe that too.

There were days that I woke up and wished I hadn't. The first few months after I killed my baby, I was severely depressed. I went to bed at night wondering how many pills I should wash down with the tequila in my freezer - how many would be enough to end the pain? to end me? - and I wondered how anyone could love a girl who had done what I did.

I wondered how many days it would take for someone to realize something was wrong. I lived alone, relatives never visited, I often went days without talking to friends. It could be a week before anyone would find me, only after missing work.

But I went through day after day. Still hating myself. Still feeling guilty every time I looked in the mirror.

I didn't deserve anything in life that made me happy.

I didn't deserve to have anyone care about me romantically. I didn't deserve friends. I didn't deserve a family. I didn't deserve an education. I didn't deserve to be healthy.

I deserved nothing in life for what I had done, so I gave myself nothing.

I allowed myself to be used by guys who didn't care about me emotionally. I cut off my friends, aside from the scattered suicide-scare texts. I refused to talk to my family. I dropped out of school, and blamed it on my financial situation. I would go days without eating, and then binge eat on my days home from work.

Not only did I punish myself afterward, but the universe punished me that day too.

I spent hours in the bathroom crying because the pain was so excruciating I couldn't move.

At 8am, my body started to empty my stomach - an unpleasant experience that lasted an hour.
By 9am, I was bleeding profusely as the drug kicked in - painkillers did nothing to alleviate the agony of my uterus wringing itself out like a washcloth.
By 10am, I fell asleep on the bathroom floor - my own stifled sobs comforting me to sleep.
Around 11am, I managed to crawl back to my bed - literally on my hands and knees.

Every centimeter I moved sent a dozen new knives into my abdomen, a reminder that my body was angry with me. It wanted to nurture this life, not destroy it.

But the drugs kept forcing it to expel, and around noon, it was physically over.
Emotionally, the pain never ends.

I looked at my still-developing baby and wept.
Out of sadness. Out of anger. Out of relief. Out of shame.
Out of disbelief that as easy as it was to create this life, it was just as easy to end it.

I'll never know if he would've been a boy who looked like his father.
Maybe she would've been a beautiful baby girl.
Knowing that I took away her life without ever meeting her breaks my heart.

Today I would have been approximately 35 weeks.

Every day that my pro-life friends call me a murderer online rips my soul a tiny bit more because they will never know.

They will never know how terrifying it was to sit in a waiting room hoping the doctor tells me it's just stress, only to realize I was going to have to terminate a pregnancy.
They will never know how heartless I felt hearing the heartbeat of a baby that I knew wouldn't be beating a week later.
They will never know how ashamed I felt when I had to drive past protesters and security just to get into Planned Parenthood for an ultrasound.
They will never know how traumatizing it was to suffer through the medical procedure at home with nobody there to comfort me and reassure me that I was making the right decision.
They will never know how much I question my choice every day, and how much was taken from me that day.

Unless you are 1 in 3 women who has experienced abortion, you will never know.
And for that, you are lucky.

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If you would like more detail regarding my experience with Planned Parenthood and why I #StandWithPP, please click here.

More than Severus Snape

Today the world received the news that Alan Rickman has passed from our world and onto the next. While we all are still in shock and figuring out how to cope with the fact that after Alice Through the Looking Glass premieres we will no longer have Rickman appear in new films, I have seen a few posts criticizing fans for only seeing him as Severus Snape, and for not recognizing his other accomplishments within the entertainment industry. Before you get more upset about my generation crediting him mainly for his role as Snape and not his other great performances, let me explain.

While it is true Rickman had many other major roles in film, his role as Snape in the Harry Potter series is arguably his most iconic.

That's not to say his first major film break as Hans Gruber in Die Hard wasn't important. Remembering him as Snape does not erase him as Metatron in Dogma, nor his voice as Marvin in Hitchhiker's Guide. And who could possibly forget Love Actually? Not to mention the countless other roles he had in which his very distinct voice could never be mistaken.

But here's the thing: Professor Snape was more than just a character to the younger generation of fans.

Sure, we've seen Rickman perform quite well in other works. But none of those movies were Harry Potter. And to a Potterhead, the wizarding world was our second home growing up.

I remember seeing the first movie when it premiered in 2001, and even at 9 years old I knew HP was going to change my life. I began reading the books, and each time a new one was released, I would read it from start to finish with no breaks in between. When the last book came out,  I spent a solid 14 hours reading. From 10pm to noon the following day, I didn't even set the book down for bathroom breaks. I cried when I finally realized the truth about Snape, because I saw Rickman playing out the scene in my mind and it broke my heart. Then in 2011, just after graduating high school, I went to the midnight showing of the final installment of the movies. I cried as I saw Snape's death scene on screen, just as I had pictured it. And when it all ended, I cried even more. It was the final chapter of my childhood, literally and figuratively, and it had ended.

You see, HP was more than just a story to its fans. The actors I saw on screen fifteen years ago became the characters I saw acting out in my head when I read the books. Since seeing the first film, not a single page of HP is read without picturing the actors as the actual characters. Daniel Radcliffe became my Harry, Emma Watson was my Hermione, and Rupert Grint was my Ron. Alan Rickman portrayed Severus Snape in a way that no other actor could have ever done, and his performance throughout eight films (and seven books, in my head) brought the wizarding world to life.

Without Rickman, Snape could never have lived up to his characterization in the books. Without Rickman, Potterheads wouldn't have felt such hate and eventually love toward Snape.  Without Rickman, HP may not have been nearly as successful.

Rickman was more than just Severus Snape. He was our hero.

It's true that without Rickman, we never would have felt so broken about Snape's death. But without Snape, we never would have felt so broken about Rickman's death too.

R.I.P. Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman 

February 21, 1946 - January 14, 2016