Not in Jail — No Dog Food

Today my husband kept me out of jail, which is why we don’t have dog food.

Yeah. That really did happen.

We went to lunch at a favorite place because we’re on a stay-vacation and trying to act like people who rest. It’s difficult, but we were figuring it out. Afterward we decided to get this specialized iced tea we love. To get the tea, we drove past the PetSmart we use, and for at least a mile the roadside was lined with anti-choice protesters: mostly middle-aged to older, holding the usual signs, wearing the usual certainty like a reflective vest.

I got mad.

Then I got mad.

As I drove past them, I started flipping them off. At a stoplight I complained that it was dangerous.

My husband, being my husband, said, “You drive. I’ll finger them.”

And he did. (I love him so much for understanding.)

I drove with both hands on the wheel, white-knuckling, while my rage built and built. He rolled down the window and gave them both fingers as we passed. I started yelling back at their signs, screaming at them out loud, swearing with a creativity that would make a sailor take notes. I doubt they heard me, unless it carried through his open window, but he heard me and never said a word about it.

When we finally got to the tea place I was still ranting, and he did that thing he does where he lets me rant without trying to fix me.

I dropped the volume and was as polite as I could manage to the tea people. Then, tea in hand, I asked him if we had enough dog food. I thought it was getting low.

This is why I love him: he knew that was not a mundane question. It was a pressure gauge.

He asked. I confessed. If one of those protesters stepped into my path, I was afraid of what my brain might do in that moment. There were a lot of bodies near the PetSmart. He reminded me, gently, that he would prefer I not go to jail and that I would not be able to do any of the things I enjoy if I’m behind bars.

So on the way home he dutifully rolled down the window and flipped off every last one of those jackasses while I drove.

And as the adrenaline started draining out of me, I realized my reaction was oversized. Way oversized. Like “why are you screaming because someone said they prefer vanilla instead of strawberry” levels of oversized.

He asked me, “Does it make you think sometimes that I don’t care because I’m quiet about stuff like this?”

Here’s the thing: I know he’s on my side about women’s issues. I know he understands bodily autonomy and consent. I know he respects and loves me. I know he cares. He is my partner, and I have zero secrets from him.

So I told him where the volume was coming from.

When I was around twenty-five, I decided I did not want to be pregnant. I had been practicing safe sex, but I wanted the extra precaution of getting my tubes tied. Stealthing existed even back then, and I did not want to take chances with my body.

Multiple doctors refused.

Not because it was unsafe. Not because I didn’t understand what I was asking. Because I might change my mind later. Or my hypothetical future husband might want kids. They didn’t care about my stated wishes. They deferred to an imaginary man with imaginary needs, and they treated that imaginary future as more real than my actual present.

They did not consider what if I was gay. They did not consider what if I was raped. They did not consider that I just didn’t want children. It didn’t matter. A possible future took precedence over my current autonomy.

Years later, when I discovered I was pregnant in my late thirties, I suggested my husband get a vasectomy. We went to Planned Parenthood because it was the most cost-effective option. I waded through the protesters calmly, looking them in the eye while they called me a murderer, told me to choose adoption, tried to sell me on Jesus, shoved inaccurate pictures toward my face.

They did not say a word to him.

Even though it was obvious he was with me.

Inside, we told the doctor my husband wanted a vasectomy. There were forms, because there are always forms, but there were no interrogations. No hypothetical future wife. No “what if you change your mind” speeches. The doctor did one snip, joked that my husband was now “half vast,” and then finished.

No one asked him to justify his autonomy.

Because I found out I was pregnant late, around six months, I had a very short window to make decisions. I carried to term and chose adoption because at that point it was the third trimester and the brain was developing. And in my own personal head, that brain made it a person.

That is the single worst decision I have ever made.

Not the adoption. The giving birth part.

I tried to get a better idea of what to expect. I posted in a forum about how terrified I was. I asked if there was a way to be knocked out so I didn’t have to feel pain that people describe like torture.

You would have thought I was proposing to murder an entire schoolyard.

People piled on. They told me it was “natural.” They told me I was a monster for not wanting to suffer. They told me I was horrible for choosing adoption instead of keeping the baby. They told me I was a terrible mother before I had even delivered. They asked if my husband knew what I was doing, as if he owned the veto. As if his feelings were the deciding factor.

Again: nobody considered my needs. Nobody considered that I was in a pregnancy I did not want, had never wanted, and was trying to make the least-worst choice while living in absolute, abject terror.

Meanwhile we read story after story about women who die during childbirth. We read about women who die because a dead fetus is making them septic, but the church-run hospital refuses needed care. We hear women say they cannot have another child because they cannot care for it, cannot afford it, cannot, cannot, cannot.

And it is not enough.

The girl I gave birth to is thirteen this month. I chose a couple that was as close to secular as I could get. She is now the age where all of this starts aiming directly at her body.

And she is not the only one.

There are millions of girls who are going to become women, and religious extremists are doing everything they can to push their god into our uteruses. They want control. They want compliance. They want us to be good little baby machines even when we want something else, even when it will destroy us.

We have to fight this. We have to keep each other out of jail while we fight it. Because if we don’t, they’ll drag us back into the dark ages and call it morality. We have to fight because bodily autonomy matters. We have to fight because if we don’t, we will keep dying.

And also because I do, in fact, need to get dog food soon.