A Picture Worth a Thousand Fights
A discovery on the anniversary of the fall of Roe.
Darklings,
Recently, I was looking through old photographs from my years of poetry tours with Derrick C. Brown when I came across an image, taken by Matt Wignall, that stopped me in my tracks:
The memory of this moment is forever with me, though I had all but forgotten about its documentation—this photograph—because when it was taken, we didn’t know what was happening to me. We didn’t know I was in the middle of having a miscarriage.
I revisited this moment earlier this year when I shared the essay I contributed to Amy Schumer and Christy Turlington Burns’ important anthology, Arrival Stories: Women Share Their Experiences of Becoming Mothers. In the essay, I recount being on the road mid-tour with Derrick and Matt in 2008 and having an experience with my body so awful and painful that I wouldn’t be able to step on stage that night.
It wasn’t until years later, after consulting with my doctor, that I was given the language for what Matt had captured with his camera that day: miscarriage. Lying in the grass on the side of the road in Oklahoma, clutching my stomach, unable to get up as another wave of agony rolled over me, my body tried—painfully—to remove something I wasn’t even aware existed. A few hours after this picture was taken, Derrick would go on stage without me, worry weighing heavily on his mind. As Derrick tried to continue on with the show, Matt was by my side in a hotel room, laying cold washcloths over my head while I writhed in pain. Matt said I looked pale, and if things didn't get better soon, he was going to take me to the ER. Things did get better, finally, when I went to the bathroom and passed a golf ball-sized clump of blood and tissue. The pain eased, and I was flooded with exhaustion and tears of relief.
Looking at this picture today, one year since the U.S. Supreme Court stripped us of the constitutional right to abortion, I'm filled with all kinds of new emotions. In this picture, I see my own experience, one that I share with countless people in the U.S. and across the world, but I also see a dire prediction of what’s to come: people exhausted and in pain, laid out with arms over our faces, lost in the cruelty of it all. We live in a country where not only the right to abortion is at stake but also the right to autonomy, privacy, safety, and health care for over half of the population.
Like many of you, I’ve been deeply troubled reading the devastating stories of people being denied treatment for life-threatening pregnancies and miscarriages because their state bans abortion. Take, for instance, Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who almost died after being denied an abortion for an unviable pregnancy. There are countless other stories: people bleeding out while trying to get to an ER that will treat them; women going to jail for having miscarriages; and doctors who could be prosecuted for performing the procedure.
The word “abortion” covers so many different types of experiences, from D&Cs that prevent fatal infection to emergency procedures when complications in pregnancy arise. Anti-abortion propagandists use inaccurate language (the misnomer “heartbeat bill,” the medically meaningless “late-term abortion,” etc.) to conjure up the wildly inaccurate image of an adorable, healthy infant being ripped from a womb for no reason. In reality, the reasons for needing these procedures are vast, but every single reason for having an abortion is the right one. The right to abortion is a vital piece of our democracy, one that no other person or governing body should be able to dictate the terms of.
When I look at this picture now, I think of how lucky I was to have Matt and Derrick by my side through my experience that day and how lucky I was that my body was able to pass the pregnancy without emergency medical assistance. I think about the people who have not been as lucky: those of my mom’s generation who lived—and died—in a pre-Roe world but also those of us here now and those who may face these same battles in the future. Those who are terrified to exist in a country that, by law, is telling them they are second-class citizens with bodies and choices and lives that do not belong to them.
When I look at this picture, my fight is reinvigorated, and I’m fired up anew for every person who’s ever gone through something like this. I hope you’ll join me in destigmatizing abortion by sharing your own stories and by supporting organizations doing the hard work on the front lines like Plan C, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the ACLU. The importance of our local, grassroots organizations doing this work cannot be overlooked either; please comment below with any organizations in your area who are in this fight with us. Additional resources that have been collected by our community are below.
We need each other, and we can't win this fight alone.
Center for Reproductive Rights
In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda
In 2008, I had 2 miscarriages.
I was an Army Officer at the time.
If Tommy Tuberville gets his way...Officers like me would just simply have died.
My DnC and subsequent care saved my life and allowed me to have 3 kids
Tommy Tuberville would rather me be dead.
My reproductive years are over now. I am grateful that I was able to make my choices...as hard as they were. A year ago, I wrote about them. https://substack.com/notes/post/p-53478367