I read an article in The New York Times recently about ultraconservative Christian groups coming for in vitro fertilization. This came on the heels of the February decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to treat embryos as children, essentially paving the way for the end of fertility treatments as we've known them.
I have an IVF story. I have an IVF child. I went through more blood draws, needles, internal ultrasounds, figures and odds and percentages, more decisions than you could ever want to hear.
It was rough on my body, which sometimes has a response to blood draws resulting in fainting; which has across the board responded terribly to hormone changes since the time hormones first affected me; which had a strange reaction to the anesthesia in the egg retrieval process and a stranger reaction to the embryo transfer.
But there is nothing so clarifying as motherhood. His kicks in my belly, the first feel and smell and sound of him, the way he says "mama" now. I'd do anything, I'd do it over and over and over again, if it meant having him. It was never about me. It was about him, and my body stepped up.
It turns out that women's bodies are pretty remarkable. A few things I've seen women's bodies do in the last few months: Run a steeplechase -- nearly two miles with 28 barriers and seven water jumps in less than nine minutes, breaking an Olympic record. Accept a presidential nomination. Try on wedding dresses. Run a school, a company, a family.
And if you extend that out to years, I've seen women's bodies endure childbirth without drugs; coach basketball games with a baby in a carrier; prophylactically remove body parts to avoid an inherited cancer affecting female family members; move around a kitchen in a complex dance that produces food that is something like art; endure the loss of a baby, a grown child, a partner, a parent. I've seen one fight COVID-19 at 90 years old before eventually succumbing.
Not all of these were my body; some were. Sometimes it feels it doesn't matter. I felt everyone of them almost as if they were mine.
We face a world in which people in robes and suits and behind desks or in front of whiteboards -- often men in robes and suits and behind desks or in front of whiteboards -- are deciding what we are allowed to do with our magical, mysterious, mind-bending bodies.
I can't imagine how they could ever get a say. I could never pretend to want a say over what they are allowed to do with theirs, nor could I imagine I could ever have one.
Beyond ideology, beyond political orientation and narratives that we adhere to because they make sense given our backgrounds and histories and who we believe ourselves to be is the truth of our bodies and what they can do.
Just think of women's bodies. Think of the women around you. How could anyone think to tell them what they can or cannot do?