I want to talk about why #AbortionIsHealthcare , personal story time. And I know I'm one woman in a sea of billions, but I'll be damned if this my story isn't added to the conversation because some of you (mostly white cishet men) don't fucking get it.

And it's not that I'm expecting this to be a lifechanging experience for you pea brains, it's just that y'all need to fucking understand what scumbags you are and it would be my absolute pleasure to explain why.

To start: my parents are dysfunctional at best. They probably always have been and, to an extent, probably always will be (my dad's getting better, but there are still boundaries there that will likely always exist). With that being said, this story is about my mom before...

...she married my dad. She was married to someone else, and abusive man that I have been fortunate enough to have never met. And she was a drug addict on top of that, a fact which she has been pretty open about for as long as my sister and I have known about it.

Now, while she was married to this abusive man (we can call him Tim, I really can't remember his name but I don't wanna keep saying "this abusive man") she got pregnant with his kid. Tim, as I understand it, was physically abusive and also contributed to her becoming an addict...

...ie: forcing drugs on her. And when she found out she was pregnant she was scared. Scared for the baby because now she had something else that he could use to keep her attached to him, and scared for herself because she didn't know how Tim would react.

And she saw how hard it was to have a baby at such a young age and in such a state of vulnerability because her older sister had already gone through this. And...as much as she knew she wanted babies one day, she knew that this baby would suffer and she knew enough about...

...the foster care system to know that even if she somehow managed to get this baby to safety after she gave birth, that baby would just suffer in a different way. We all know how the foster care system fails children, so I don't think I need to go into further detail about that.

So, she told that same sister about her situation, and that sister immediately knew what she had to do. She was the one who drove my mom to @PPFA in secret, the one who helped my mom get the money she needed to pay for it, and the one that probably saved my mom's life.

In a way, she also saved my sister and I too. If my mom would have had that baby instead of making that heartbreaking decision, who knows if Tim would still be in her life? She doesn't even know where he is, what he's up to anymore, whether he's even still alive, nothing.

Who knows if she could have escaped him? Who knows if she would have met my dad and had my sister and I? I know I talk about how much I hate life (cuz I do lol) but regardless...Bible-thumping bitches wanna talk about saving babies' lives, well guess what?!

My mom probably saved her own life AND my sister and I's! Hell, let's be honest...if my mom went through with having that baby, I wouldn't have even been a thought in someone's brain. I am almost certain of that. But her abortion allowed her to leave Tim, get clean...

...find my dad, and have my sister and I. Abortion is healthcare in the most literal way possible, whether we're talking mental health, physical health, or anything else, and while I want kids and never ever want to have an abortion, I will not be having a single child...

...without the safeguard of abortion in place. I am diabetic, so my pregnancy would be complicated as hell as it is, and I could VERY easily have a child who would either have a VERY painful life, or would just be a stillborn anyway. I don't want to breathe life...

...into this world if it is going to cause pain for that little life. That is irresponsible. And I'm not talking about disabilities, for the record. I am talking about painful, extremely short, extremely poor-quality-of-life cases, cases where viability isn't even possible.

I think the point that I was trying to make is...abortion saves lives, and criminalizing literal healthcare does not make it go away. It just means more women will die trying to get them and more OBGYNs and ultrasound techs and nurses will have to sit down...

...and tell their patients that their baby, with all of their organs outside of their body, will live it's entire short life suffering. They will have to tell the rape victims who are petrified and traumatized that they must carry their trauma to term all because a man...

...decided to disregard them as a human being. They will have to tell the parents that the mother who will surely die when she gives birth to her baby that there is nothing to be done.

#abortionisNOTmurder and #AbortionIsHealthcare. That is all that can be truthfully said.
Love, a person who exists because of legal abortions.