Personal Stuff

Let's just say I've got some things going on. If we're close, you can call me or email me and I'll tell you more. Money is a major factor and right now I'm getting kind of freaked out about the stability of my current situation, so I'm going to be pulling back from the blog and maybe videos for a bit, while I frantically try to finish this book and get an agent, and continue the uphill battle to get disability benefits.

And no, this has nothing do with abortion.

Love you all. Be back when I can.

angieantitheist [at] gmail [dot] com
Skype: angieantitheist
Twitter: antitheistangie

Read more!

Pregnancy

Image via Wikipedia

As a child, I knew I'd give birth at home. I knew home birth was safer than hospital birth - why go to a hospital, full of germs and disease and people, when I could have my baby at home, delivered by my own grandmother who delivered me and my siblings and cousins? I felt quite a lot of pride at having been born at home myself, although it always bothered me a bit that no one knew exactly when I was born (especially once I hit teen years and became interested in astrology. How on earth was I going to make a star chart when all my mother knew was that I'd been born "sometime in the afternoon, between 2 and 6 probably"?)

When I found at I was pregnant at 22, I had a lot of hard decisions to make. Would I get back together with my exboyfriend I'd broken up with the day before, father of my fetus? Would we just date or would we get married? Where would I get money? How on earth was I going to tell my mother? The extra question I had was, where would my baby be born?

I knew I wasn't healthy. I'd been doing drugs with my boyfriend (which was why I left him) and I'd been suffering a particularly bad bout of anorexia. I also knew there was a good chance I was fairly far along in my pregnancy. While my periods had changed, and for the last two months even stopped, I'd assumed it was amorrhea caused by my low weight. I decided to go see a doctor, to at least see how far along I was and whether or not the fetus was healthy.

I tried applying for Medicaid for Pregnancy, but there was a funny hitch in the process: You had to have "proof of pregnancy" and apparently the stick test I'd peed on didn't count. I had to have something signed by an MD saying I was pregnant in order to get the insurance help and food stamps. Fortunately, a wonderful man by the name of Dr. Arkin was running the Peace of Mind Clinic within the local Catholic Charities office at the time. The sole purpose of that clinic was to help girls and women get their proof of pregnancy and to assist them with the Medicaid application process.

I sat in a terrible waiting room - full of posters reminding me that "When a pregnant woman drinks, she never drinks alone" and copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting. I waited in the ripped leather chair while two girls before me went into the ultrasound room. When it was my turn, Dr. Arkin's wife cum ultrasound technician cheerfully told me, "It's been a twin day today. The last two girls were having twins!* Let's see if you are, too!" This was already a dread and fear. My boyfriend's father had been born a twin (although his twin had died sometime in childhood, and he was now an only child.)

I walked into the exam room, full of trepidation. She bustled around and chatted amiably, as I stripped and put on that horrid paper gown. Her husband came in and asked me to scoot down to the edge of the of the exam table. Feet in stirrups, completely alone, and with this bubbly woman going on about the miracle of twins, I bit my bottom lip and waited.

"Oh, look," Dr. Arkin told me, "You're having a boy." I turned my head and wept for joy, relieved to only be carrying one, and already in love with the tiny life in my womb. Wow. I stared, mesmerized by the ultrasound image. There he was - head and body, limbs and even sex organs. There was nothing obviously wrong with him, and somehow he'd survived the first 4 and a half months of my ignorance and negligence. He was *beautiful*. Dr. Arkin let me know that I was 21 weeks pregnant, and that my boy would be due on August 30th, just five days after his father's birthday.

I put my pants back on and collected the ultrasound pictures, including the one where Mrs. Arkin had rather gleefully circled the image of his penis, with a label "It's a boy!" She told me, "The daddies are always proud of these" which threw me a bit. (Are mothers "proud" of the size of their daughters' labia?) We sat down in a conference room down the hall, and Dr. Arkin helped me fill out my Medicaid and Food Stamp application.

"You need to gain weight," he told me, looking at my 5'3" 104 lbs frame. "You need to gain 50 pounds, and you need to do it yesterday." That was my battle for the next four months, trying to put on and keep on enough weight to make sure the fetus' brain developed properly.

I quit smoking pot, and mostly quit smoking cigarettes. (Yeah, I snuck a few here and there, most memorably on my wedding day, early in my third trimester.) I laid off the diet sodas, energy drinks, and diet pills I'd relied on to get me through school, and dropped out of college. I changed everything about my body, from what I put into my body, to how long I kept it there (no bulimia for me, as the electrolyte imbalance that would cause could be extremely damaging to the fetus), to what size I tried to be. I dropped bad habits, bad friends, but regretfully, picked up again the bad relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend. We fought constantly, and he did all he could to punish me. Secretly, I think he was thrilled. What better way to get me back, to trap me for good, than a baby?

I tried to put off the wedding. "Let's wait till he's born and old enough to be our ring-bearer! Then it will be our whole family," I said, knowing in the hidden honest parts of myself that Ronnie was in no way prepared to be a father, and not sure how much I wanted him for a husband. But he pushed. His mother pushed. My family (except my mother) pushed. I caved.

We were married during my 7th month of pregnancy, and I felt like a walrus, waddling down the aisle in my sister's borrowed and altered wedding dress, in one inch heels that were absolutely killing my feet.** We said the vows, tied the knot (literally, the priest's sash), and I threw the bouquet. We took pictures with both our wedding ring hands resting on my domed belly, featuring our future child as an unbodied member of the wedding party.

People have this week how I could feel so differently about these two pregnancies, but really they had nothing in common. If anything, my life conditions were exponentially worse for bringing a child into the world back then than they are today. I was poor, unemployed, single, unhappy, and underweight. Yet I knew I wanted him. Also, frankly, I was so far along by the time I learned I was pregnant, optional abortion wasn't really on the table anymore.

I found out I was pregnant back then because for some reason, my weight loss platued and my goal of getting below 100 pounds suddenly seemed impossible. But the real moment of truth came, not when I took the home pregnancy test, but a day before then, when I felt something odd and firm beneath my skin (that'd be my uterus). Within 48 hours of taking the test, I felt the first kicks. Even still, I knew he wasn't a baby *yet* and that there was a good chance he might never become one.

I struggled to stay healthy, while planning a wedding (on an extremely lean budget), fighting with my fiancee, fighting with my mother, and moving three times. I didn't always win that fight, and I spent days and days in the maternity ward emergency room, on IV drips and supplements. My iron levels were low, but the prenatal vitamins with iron in them made me throw up. I was living off pizza, ice cream, and Subway sandwiches, but I couldn't keep weight on to save my life (or my fetus'). A week after my honeymoon, I went into the ER with a fever and a stomach flu, and over the course of that week I lost 10 pounds through vomit and diarrhea. I wondered if either one of us would make it out alive.

At 41 weeks, 2 days, at 6 o'clock in the morning on a Thursday, I started having contractions. We timed them at about eight minutes apart, and waited till the doctor's office was open to give her a call. Once my Medicaid was approved, I was able to start going to regular prenatal visits, and found a fantastic former-nurse OB/GYN and mother to deliver my baby. We'd picked her because she was near the hospital, and we'd picked that hospital (about half an hour away) because it had the best neonatal intensive care unit in the region. Her nurse told me they couldn't make recommendations on whether or not it was time to go to the hospital until they'd examined me, so I woke up my husband and had him ride with me to the doctor. (He had multiple DUIs from before meeting me, and didn't have a license at any point during our relationship, a secret he had me keep from my family.)

[Okay folks, sorry, but I've gotta go make dinner and do those other mommy things. My total labor took 98 hours, so I imagine writing it will take at least a few pages. I'll try to pick this up tomorrow or on Tuesday. Be sure to keep an eye out for my live appearance on CNN this Monday, 3/8/2010 at 10 am EST.]








*Clearly, HIPPA was not her primary concern that day.

** I routinely wear 4" heels without incident. Heck, I used to have a pair of 7" platforms I only wore when going out with a gay friend who was 6'9".

Read more!

Holy Blowjob, Popeman!`

Image by Toban Black via Flickr

Ah, the Vatican is in the news again - how many children were raped or beaten this time?

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Jeezy Creezy, the Pope will fire someone for getting a male prostituted, but not for raping kids or hiding that rape, or exposing those rapists to more children, or abusing kids on almost every country on the planet? Okay, Mr. Benedict - you've got your priorities out of order.

Personally, I'm for the legalization and taxation of both prostitutes and marijuana (gotta admit, I feel differently about, say crack cocaine/powder cocaine than I do about weed, but that's a different conversation.) You know what I'm not for? The legalization of child rape. And no one would be, right?

Let's see... What's the age of consent in Vatican City, anyway? Big bunch of judgmental virgins, surely they must have a very high age, like thirty or something, right? Right? Wrong. It's 12 (making it the lowest on the globe.) Wow, so okay - sex with 12 year olds is fine by the Vatican's standards, but not with grown men engaging in sex work professionally. Where's the logic in this?

The Guardian story goes on to explain more of the details, including why a wiretap was in place to begin with. The sacked gentleman in question Angelo Belducci, an usher in the Papal household and senior Italian official, is under investigation for allegedly awarding public works contracts "toward favored bidders". It was during this investigation that the hiring of prostitutes was discovered (along with details about the kind of men he desired, how they should look, etc.) One of the men he contracted with was studying for the priesthood. And yet,

While Catholicism does not condemn homosexuality outright, its teaching is that homosexual acts "are intrinsically disordered". The Catechism of the Catholic church states unequivocally: "Under no circumstances can they be approved."

How on earth can the Vatican, Pope, and Catholic church have such rigid standards for homosexuality, yet none for the *RAPE* of children? I cannot undersatnd how anyone still views the Vatican as a source of morality, or how anyone continues to tithe to this horrid institution.

Go worship your god all day if you please; pray to a million saints. But please, stop letting these monsters pretend they have moral authority. Stop funding the legal defense of pedophiles. Stop giving them money which they will use to crush people, inhibit rights, and hire prostitues. (Bet you didn't think *that's* where your tithe money was going, huh?)

I cannot stomach this hypocrisy. Two adults engaging in sexual intercourse is "disordered" but grown men taking advantage of children and raping them - this is merely something which needs more prayer and faith? From Secularism.org

In a statement, the Vatican said the Pope had told the bishops the sexual abuse of children and young people was not only a heinous crime, but also a “grave sin that offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image”.

The Vatican created another storm by announcing that the Pope had also told bishops that the “weakening of faith” was a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors.

What. the. catechism. I have no faith at all - my faith is as weak and atrophied as it can be less than two years out from true belief. *And I am not raping children and I never ever will.* Frankly, I doubt I'd ever hire a prostitute either, although the thought doesn't absolutely disgust and horrify me the way pedophilia does. I don't think "all sin is equal" and I don't think hiring an adult prostitute (whatever their sex, gender, or orientation) is on par with or worse than the rape of children. Clearly, the Vatican does. After all, both the pedophiles and the bishops who shuffled them from parish to parish are still employed, yet the man who hired (adult) male prostitutes has been fired.

Fuck the Pope.

Read more!

Family Choices

Back in the 1960s, my Giggy fell pregnant for the fifth time. She had been married before to the father of her first four daughters, but when the last one died of a congenital heart defect as a baby, she left him because she couldn't bear the pain of being in that house or with him anymore. It all reminded her of her dead little baby.

Early during this fifth pregnancy, Giggy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her doctors recommended a pre-Roe v. Wade abortion, and her friends and family largely agreed. "Stay alive for the three daughters you already have - don't risk everything!" But she did. At 6 months pregnant, my grandmother had an emergency cesarean and hysterectomy, or as she likes to say, "I lost 20 pounds that day!"

My aunt Kelly spent the first few months of her life in an incubator, but grew up to be healthy and strong (and built like Barbie). She's a mother of three and grandmother of two now, and has been the worship leader at each church she's attended for years and years. Two years ago she started training for a triathlon and competed so well she won a super-expensive racing bike.

She is one of my favorite people, and has always been my favorite aunt. Her first child is my cousin Jason, who was practically my twin growing up. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without them. My strong love for my aunt shaped my pro-life views as an asexual child. Even though I had seen horrible pregnancies and deliveries, I believed somehow that God would make sure each baby born would be healthy and happy and in a good home.

I also somehow thought that the person my aunt was had been determined before she was born; that she was somehow the "same person" she'd been as a zygote, embryo, and fetus. And of course, I thought maternal mortality only happened when people had C-sections or gave birth in hospitals. If people would just have their babies at home under God's supervision like they were *supposed* to, clearly nothing would go wrong.

I didn't have any sort of "life begins at conception" idea, because frankly I didn't know what conception was, or very much at all about how people *became* pregnant. I don't think I was even aware of women who were pregnant in early stages: almost every pregnant woman I saw was either in or about to be in labor, so it was unquestionable to me that pregnant women had babies in their tummies (somewhere).

All this is to say - I get it. I was a fiercely pro-life little girl. I wrote a letter to President Bush Sr. as a child, begging him to overturn abortion before the election. (That whole "Supreme Court" thing was still a mystery.) By the time I got a response form letter and signed photograph, Bush had lost and Clinton was in office. I remember sitting in the backyard tearing that picture into tiny, tiny pieces. It was obvious he had never read my letter, and I was being dismissed.

I just wanted babies to be okay, and to not be killed. Since I lived in a vagina cult*, it seemed perfectly normal to me that women would want lots of pregnancies and babies. And of course, by the time I was 8, I'd heard I could never bear children of my own. The idea of someone throwing away a life, when I couldn't make one, tore me up, and I must admit a lot of my original anti-choice stance was founded on either ignorance or jealousy. I've since come to realize it is not the obligation of fertile women to provide children for the infertile.

Nothing monumental here. I'm just saying that ignorance of biology, ignoring the women, and jealousy at their ability to bear children in the face of my (supposed) inability were my reasons. I know more about the early trimesters of pregnancy now, and how few of those early zygotes and embryos even make it to the fetus stage. As a Christian, when I first became pro-choice, I theorized that the soul didn't enter the child until birth or quickening or until the brain was developed (neurology was already changing my views on the soul). Of course, I don't believe in anything like a soul these days, but I also don't believe a zygote has a personality or a guaranteed personality. So much of who we are is influenced by our brains and our environments; even with a genetic predisposition, I might never have developed OCD if I'd lived in a less hellacious home.

So, to the pro-life advocates who really are concerned about the teeny tiny babies, I can sympathize - some. But I'm not so ignorant now about pregnancy and birth. I know a lot more about the toll it can take on even the healthiest woman, and I don't think my ideology gives me the right to tell another person what to do with her own body. Yes, you can go on and on about whether or not the embryo/fetus has its own body (debateable) or what rights we have to harm another, but the fact of the matter is, pregnancy occurs within a *woman's* body. And so I think no one but that woman can say what risks she "should" be willing to take.

I support my grandmother's right to risk everything and bring my aunt Kelly into the world. I support my right to risk little, and not bring another child into the world. That's pretty much what pro-choice means: I'm for the right of women to make their *own* choices.

* Kelly's a made-up name. What? Only cult leaders don't get a say in whether I talk about them on the blog with a real name or not.

Read more!

I love my sister

I called my prolife evangelical Christian sister yesterday, to tell her about the whole "public abortion" thing before she saw it on the news. Frankly, since we're Facebook friends I thought she might already know, but somehow the *entire* thing had escaped her attention. (To give credit where it's due, she has a thriving small business, loving husband, and adorable daughter to care for, so maybe Facebook isn't where she spends all her time.) Here's what she said to me.

"Well, you know I am prolife and I'll probably cry when I get off the phone, but I love you and I'll always support you."

Go show her some love and browse the sexy costumes, wedding gowns, corsets, and custom-fit bras she's known for!

Read more!

Media Circus

Um, is it me or did the world just kinda flip its lid? Every other email calls me a whore* or a hero. An ABC News team was here a couple days ago, and the piece should air on tomorrow night's news (2/28/2010). I've done interviews, plural. A guy from the St. Pete Times talked to me for over an hour yesterday, and I'll be the lead in a larger piece on the TMI question regarding social media. (If you don't wanna read it, don't read it. Just like the rest of the internet. Why is this so hard to grasp?)

I don't think it's right to call me a hero. I think there was a lot more naivety than heroism in my initial decision to tweet this. It wasn't even that conscious of a choice - I tweet everything. I write about everything. The rewards of honesty, in terms of a personal sense of "wholeness", can't be adequately described. No one can hurt me because, everything they know is something I chose to reveal about myself. No matter what they do with that (including writing a so-far 7 post long series decrying me as an evil mentally disturbed skank, ala Jill Staneck, she in desperate need of a good lay) it's not... real.


Once I realized that taking the advice of a bunch of middle-aged unhappy divorced women (ahem, "family") on whether or not I should get married at 23 was a really stupid thing to do, I started to consider the source of feedback more seriously. There are some people in this world who's good opinion I desire - they are my son, my boyfriend, my friends (Christian, atheist, Muslim, Wiccan or Satanist). Even there, my two closest girlfriends are both somewhat troubled by my decision to abort - one because she is pregnant herself right now, and has decided to give her life a complete makeover to prepare for a child she never planned on having; the other because she is an orphan, and has always craved family. I can't fault either of them for their discomfort with my decision, and both have remained supportive to me personally, if perhaps a little distant right now.

This entire reaction has been so out-of-proportion and insane. I've written about illegal drug use, sex, spousal abuse, child abuse, crazy cult stories, personal foibles and failings, and most of all, I've talked smack about Baby Jesus. Yet the reaction was minimal. People might tell me I was misunderstanding the Bible, or else that I was going to hell, but no one suggested I should be physically hurt for my views.

Maybe coming out as an atheist, and longer ago as bisexual, set me up for false expectations. I didn't see this as being more controversial. I know several pro-choice Christians, and I assumed more people were pro-choice than atheist, for example. Abortions are really common, right? And a first trimester abortion, to save the life of the mother, that's supposed to be the kind that every reasonable person supports, right?

Wrong. Apparently I'm a murderer, a killer, a Nazi, Hitler (also, from another "prolife" advocate, I'm apparently a "dirty jew"[stet].) I've been told I made my choice when I "opened my legs", "dint giv him the brown hole[stet]" or "have dude cum on youre ugly face". People threatened my son, insulted him, called me a child abuser and told me I don't love my kid. (One threatened to call child services, under the mistaken impression, one supposes, that abortion is illegal, or child abuse.)

When people say I'm a hero for talking about this, I think they assume I knew what I was getting into. I didn't. Maybe it's because I only really started watching the news during the presidential campaign, and since the election ended, I've only watched sporadically, but I didn't expect this. I knew some people would call me a baby killer, sure. But for the first two days, before I put up my Abortion YouTube video**, I didn't think I was talking to anybody I didn't always talk to.

The media attention has been somewhat overwhelming. I'm just doing something women do everyday. Abortions aren't rare, and when they're legal, they're safe. Maybe it's because I'd spent the days leading up to my clinic visit reading ImNotSorry.net, but I honestly didn't realize that *no one* talks about their abortions. It's been pretty baffling to me, considering how many illegal things people can and do talk about every day.

I've been compared to an antebellum slave owner, a Nazi soldier, a pedophile, and a god. All because I said, "Hey, I don't wanna be pregnant anymore. I'm gonna have a (legal) abortion."

Maybe I'm naive or maybe I just can't tap into black-and-white thinking anymore like I used to. I still can't completely get my head around why people flipped their lids like this. The media are acting like what makes this story interesting is the setting, Twitter. They're missing the point. If women talked about their abortions - on TV and in books and in women's magazines and with each other, and with our significant others and friends and children - then tweeting one wouldn't be a big deal. When people say, "You shouldn't tweet about an abortion" I can't help but feel what they really mean is, "You shouldn't talk about abortion."



















* Well, actually they usually write it WHORE!!
** Since I posted this video 5 days ago, it's had over 49,000 views. What is going on with the world? 1/3 American women have abortions.

Read more!

Brief Update

Image by clockworknate via Flickr

I'm doing fine so far. I took the first pill at Planned Parenthood yesterday (with the oldest doctor I've ever seen. He must have been well into his 60s - we need more younger doctors training in this!) I can start the next pills at home (swallow 2 and let 2 dissolve in my cheeks for half an hour) as early as 3:30 pm today and as late as 3:30 pm tomorrow. I'll be doing it once Kid is in bed.

Here are a whole bunch of abortion stories, both medical (chemical) and surgical.

I'll be posting more about my story, and the other people in the clinic (with permission & changed names) later this weekend or early next week. One young couple's story was.. impressive? Horrible.

He's from Honduras, but goes to university here in Florida. She's from Guatemala. They met over winter break and fell in love (so adorable together in the waiting room.) She had to let him know by Facebook message that she was pregnant. Abortion is 100% illegal in both Honduras and Guatemala because they are Catholic countries. She tried to buy RU486 by bribing a doctor. Whatever he gave her, it wasn't what she asked for. She made herself violently sick taking all these pills, and still two weeks later hadn't bleed and still felt pregnant.

So they had to fly her to the US to get a surgical abortion. Just think about that for a minute, and think of how lucky they are that he goes to school here and that they were able to come up with the money for first the bad doctor and the bad drugs, and then for a plane ticket and a $480 abortion in the States. It absolutely horrifies me and I just looked at him straight in the eye as he was telling me this, while his girlfriend was being vacumed in the other room, and I said, "I want to find the Pope and go personally kick him in the nads."

She's 19. They are both college students, and they live on different continents. They get to decide that's not a good time to be parents, and since she doesn't *like* children, or ever want any, I think it's a good choice for them to make.

More later. Love you all. Oh, by the way, I was only 4 weeks. Which means the firs test I took that said "No" was when I was only 1 week. I'm glad I caught this so early.

Read more!