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Tuesday, November 09, 2004

The Quest to Sprog (cont.) & a footnote about Abortion

Currently taking a break from printing 185 wedding announcements by letterpress (not invitations!). Didn't choose a new easy design that lets me whip them through the press twice, once for front and once for back, did I? No, had to choose one that means each one of the 185 goes through no less than five times, and have to be left to dry overnight inbetween prints. Sigh. Serves me right. Anyway, I'm 3/4 through session number 2.

I went to the gyneacologist the other day (the same one who said, while examining me with my legs up in stirrups, 'I think I was at the birth of your son'. I kid you not. What else could I say but 'Why, does it look familiar down there?'. She had the decency to blush and laugh.) about my fibroids and the lack of pregnancy therewith. Apparently I have to have a laproscoscopy (I think I've spelled it right) which is a horrible invasive procedure which puts a telescope through my navel while my abdomen is pumped up with gas. Thank goddess I am to have a general anaesthetic during this. So I am on a waiting list, since I refuse to pander to Government blackmail about private health insurance.

Meanwhile my fabulous aunt, a Chinese-Medicine practitioner, has prescribed four different pots of herbs for me to drink through my cycle. One is for my bleeding days, the next for the days between my period and ovulation, another for the three or so days around ovulation, and the last for the days until I bleed again. Auntie has a great reputation in her country NSW practice as a baby-maker. She is trying to make the fibroids less dominating, and trying to enhance my fertility. I tell you what, they taste foul, but anything is better than a telescope whacked through my navel.

So I will persist, and hopefully something good will happen. We are giving ourselves two years to try everything, even IVF if needs be (but only with our own components, i.e., eggs and sperm), and then we are just going to stop and get on with having a happy life.

And for the record: I have had an abortion, way back when I was too young to be able to cope with a young child; I have also given birth to a child who turns out to have been a complete miracle and maybe the only child I will ever have. It doesn't make any difference to my attitude towards abortion.

I support, and always will, the right for a woman to choose what she does with her body. Abortion is something which women will always seek if they have to. It has been around for as long as Humankind has been. When abortion is illegal, women have illegal abortions. Far better for them to have access to safe facilities than to die in unsafe environments under dirty tools with doctors (if they are lucky) who are terrified of being caught. The only difference between legal and illegal abortions is the rate of death -- with illegal abortion, more women die.

But don't just ingest my little morsel on this debate -- take a great big mouthful of crazybrave's sensitive polemic.

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