There is out there ridiculous and dangerous information on abortion that threatens who women are in this country.  It is said that women who have abortions sometimes suffer depression for the rest of their lives.  It is said that they carry with them, for life, what they have done to an innocent zygote or fetus.

It is also said that women make the decision to have abortions frivilously, that we believe in ‘abortion on demand.’  There is a dangerous notion that we decide late in our pregnancies that we just simply don’t want this ‘kid’ so we go shopping, we have lunch, and then we stop in at our local, friendly clinic and tell them to scrape and vaccum away, we’ve got a party to go to.

Depressed and traumatized on the one hand or party girls on the other.  Is it really that simple?  What happens to those who don’t have a choice?

What we don’t hear about is what forced motherhood does to too many women.  What we don’t hear is how long it takes, how much courage it takes, how heartbreaking it is to find our way back from the terror and horror.
What we don’t hear about is what forced motherhood does to too many women.  What we don’t hear is how long it takes, how much courage it takes, how heartbreaking it is to find our way back from the terror and horror of bearing a child we didn’t want.

After I posted my diary the other day, The scars that keep on giving and taking I received an email from the founder of a group that works to stop the violence against women and children in this country.

In the email I was asked if my diary could be posted on their website and forwarded in emails to its members.  Stories like mine are going to be sent to the governor’s office in South Dakota to illustrate other forms of violence, the violence behind women’s desperation when we don’t have the choice to abort or to give birth.

I’ve thought of little else these past few days.  I’m haunted by my scars.  I’m grief stricken because we are going down a dangerous path here, a path that will lead to more and more scars on the wrists of young girls and women.  I can’t get the images out of my head, the ones of blank faces that carry these scars for a lifetime.

There is in me a new madness that every single one of these white male heathens should be haunted as well.  They should have to read what it is like to come back from the brink of despair.  They should have to read every word I’m about to say not because my story is any different or better or more tragic or well written than others.  They should have to read these words precisely because they are no different than thousands and thousands of other women and young girls stories.

I wrote this in response to the woman who requested my permission to post my diary.  I post it here because I do think it makes a difference.  The scars last a lifetime because coming back from the abyss takes a lifetime.

Dear XXX … thank you for the opportunity to perhaps make a difference with my story.  I am humbled and honored to have you post it on your website.  The work you tirelessly do knows no bounds in it’s importance to women and to children.  Please feel free to email it to your members or share it with anyone you think needs to read it.

One of my biggest nightmares has been seeing Roe v. Wade overturned on our watch.  It’s the kind of having something come full circle that none of us from pre Roe want.  We must do whatever we can to stop this madness.

I, like far too many women, had a childhood with sexual assault being one of the scars we carry with us throughout our lifetimes.  It’s astounding to me that this country allows this violence to go unabated year after year without much more than a nod.  That’s another diary though, a subject I’ve written on more than once.

Because I am a survivor of both sexual assault and attempted suicide I don’t have a problem with any implications that may be drawn from my story.  All violence against women has to be addressed.  However, I am in agreement with your second email to me.  [there was talk about rape in her initial email to me.]

Part of the intention in telling my story was to illustrate that there are other forms of violence that women suffer.  It’s no less violent when we are pushed against an unwielding wall and thus forced to do something desperate and drastic like taking our own lives.  It isn’t just our hands that that violence lies in, it’s also the hands of those who deny us a choice.

I’ve had a hard time concentrating on anything else since the legislation was passed in South Dakota that doesn’t consider the woman in anyway close to the fetus.  It’s an abhorrent message to send to us all, women and to young girls.  It’s as if our lives mean absolutely nothing beyond bringing babies into this world.

It’s so often said that those of us who choose to have abortions do it frivilously, without much thought.  The meme ‘abortion on demand’ furthers this insane impression.  There is also the dialogue about women who are depressed for the rest of their lives after having an abortion, that they are never the same.

What needs to be said is how long it takes to pull ourselves out from under forced motherhood.  The year after my suicide attempt I wasn’t able to engage in conversations because I was like a wounded bird, I couldn’t think clearly enough or get out of the madness that was my mind enough to talk.  I felt safe curled up in the corner of the couch where the arm meets the back.  My parents had to move my bed against the wall so I could feel it while I slept.  I had to feel boundaries around me, I had to know I wouldn’t fall.

I couldn’t engage in conversations because my mind no longer had the ability to grasp anything but the constant fear and terror I felt from still being alive, from believing I was crazy,  from  the reality in my head that I wasn’t where I belonged.  If I had succeeded in my attempt I would have been where I truly belonged, dead and gone to wherever it is we go.  Since I didn’t succeed I was left incapacitated with a mind, soul and spirit that were no longer my own, they were unrecognizable, they were foreign to me.  There was no other way to see myself but that of a crazy person who didn’t belong in the warmth and comfort of my parent’s arms and home.  Where I belonged, where all crazy people belonged was in state run mental institutions.

The one constant in my head was the girl in “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.”  I lived in terror that I was going crazy, that I would be institutionalized in one of those hospitals.  It was a very slow process bringing me back into a world I felt safe in.  When a woman or young girl losses her sense of self, when a woman or young girl losses the sense that she owns her own body, when a woman or young girl losses the sense of freedom to do with her life what she chooses her whole world can fall apart.  When we lose our way of being we also lose our grip on reality because our reality is no longer ours to shape.

I couldn’t bear to be in the dark for many years.  The darkness was too much like the crazed darkness that was my life during those first few years.  It was a chilling darkness, an unrelenting darkness, a dangerous darkness, a darkness I couldn’t escape.  I couldn’t escape it because I had constant reminders, my scars and my son.  What kind of world is it that turns a young girl’s own child into a reminder of the loss of her sanity because she had no choice?  What kind of a world is it that is an enabler of madness, the stark, wild madness when all one has known is lost?

That was my world for far too long.  That was the world that was created because I didn’t have a choice.  I lost all my confidence to know I could plan my life, the confidence it takes to put one foot in front of another on the path we should be allowed to forge ourselves.

I’m not sure which form of violence is greater.  I’ve been the victim of both but what I truly believe is the violence of raping my future was as great as the violence against my little nine-year-old body.  It was an assault in both cases.  I sincerely don’t think one or the other was any more or less traumatic.  I was raped by a family friend and I was raped by a government who told me I wasn’t capable of making my own choices in life.

The scars are the same.  The scars that never go away, the scars that remind us every second of every minute of everyday, 365 days a year, that we were born to be told by men what is possible for us and what is not.

The sheer terror of that never leaves us.  Is that freedom?  Is that liberty?  Is that what living in the United States of America means?  Does the flag wave for us or does it just wave for those who are the ‘chosen ones’ who tell us what we are worth?

The tragedy is that I don’t have an answer.  Is that what being a woman in America means?  The answer to that question is sadly, yes.

This is crossposted at DailyKos and My Left Wing