Tag: ectopic pregnancy

Samhita Mukhopadhyay on Abortion

Today I did an ig live with Samhita on abortion!

You can find the conversation here on my instagram feed, or under the “lunch with amb” IGTV series.

This is the list of links Samhita wanted to share related to our conversation:

Convo with @ReneebraceySherman on @themeteor about what to do and what’s next: https://wearethemeteor.com/people-are-trying-to-get-abortions-today/

Jia Tolentino on the criminalization of pregnancy: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-going-back-to-the-time-before-roe-we-are-going-somewhere-worse

Jessica Valenti: on pro-life women , “your complicity will not protect you,” https://jessica.substack.com/p/your-complicity-will-not-protect

Groups to support:
We Testify: https://www.wetestify.org/
National Network of Abortion funds: https://abortionfunds.org/
#VoteProChoice: https://www.voteprochoice.us/

shrill be teaching

THIS IS FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN THE SHOW. OR DON’T PLAN TO SEE IT BUT COULD GET PREGNANT.

OK?

OK.

did anyone else recently receive a crucial piece of belated sex education in the instant classic Shrill?

specifically in the part where she uses the morning after pill (multiple times) and still gets pregnant and then finds out that the pill is only dosed for bodies that weigh up to 175 lbs?

that part?

did anyone else think back to getting pregnant after taking that pill? and having an ectopic pregnancy (like me) or an abortion (like the 11 people who responded to my initial instagram post about it) or becoming a parent when you were explicitly trying not to?

and did y’all then think back to buying the pill as someone clearly over 175 lbs and having no mention of this limitation from the pharmacist or on the package?

or did you think back to being in the hospital praying to survive a condition that has been a death sentence for most of human history? and no one mentioning this as possibly connected to this fatphobia?

some people responded to tell me about copper iuds as an after-sex pregnancy avoidance method – i’m glad it’s an option.

BUT also why isn’t there a plus size plan b pill? or a weight appropriate dose?

whew. just wanted to lift this up in case you have sex that could result in pregnancy, are 175 lbs or more, and haven’t read/seen Shrill…yet.

whew.

love love love

i believe we are living on the precipice of the next phase of our species. and i’m with such good people, people who cry hard and laugh harder. and do one to move through the other, rolling across the full emotional span in epic waves. we feel what’s gaping and yawning underneath both of those releases, that scale of lovegrief that can’t be captured in any words i know…we let it be in our eyes, at our core.

the more i learn/remember how to feel, the more in love i fall with the particular aliveness that only sparks between us. that met longing felt when the interior world unfolding in me comes to a border and longs to be porous, expansive, vast, one, multitudes. this opening, these moments, this work, this makes a viable future possible.

today i remembered a song i was taught over a decade ago:

“oh i say thank you
oh i say thank you
oh great spirits
in this way
i long to give my life to you
in love and devotion
in love and devotion”
(this was taught to me as a gwitch’in song from haida gwaii)

even now, especially now, with a mask over my mouth and a storm at my back, i am learning what i must realize in myself, what i must defend and protect, what i must cultivate in the face of fear and death and supremacy: love, love, love.

letting a baby go

there is more blood than i can comprehend
my mind is full of the idea of the blood and
in the weeks after
i say more about this abundant blood lost into my body
than the baby
i look at the pictures
which seem to be from a planet of darkness
a claustrophobic place
i can see how you could get lost in there
i had a lover who was supposed to be light and casual
and then another
this is sometimes my way
and but this time
between one and the other
in the space of a month
i became with child
i was pregnant
and i don’t live a child friendly life
not in my body
the whiskey, the weed
the travels
the long nights creating in the half dark
i am a certain kind of woman
i love the woman i am
did the baby notice this
did the baby understand me so clearly
and turn it’s miraculous life
into a passing trauma
was i unworthy or unwilling
was he underwhelmed, unimpressed
was she unborn for any reason
a year of study has yielded no answers
only more tenderness and more
and this truncated
immeasurable love
this theoretical love
this vigor for a wholeness
no longer material
but magical
little lost one i want you to know
i have thought of you often
lived a parallel life with you
expanded into a great goddess full of you
labored for your entrance
nursed you from these magnificent breasts
rocked you past midnight
shown everyone your beauty
i have thought of how you were already whole
even if you were never viable
even if you got lost
as i often do
you were just like your mother
rooting everywhere
regardless
and yes
i have looked for you
in every other child
but you are nowhere to be found
outside my heart
so i know this
i know you would be 4 months old today
and i would always track time by your breath

i know everything i can know about you
and i will always love you
and i will always
always
love you