Sweet land of liberty

Happy Independence Day.

Between the 4th of July and the Republican primary campaign and anti-tax posturing in general, "freedom" has gotten a lot of lip service lately.

But I don't know what it means, really. What do they mean when they say it? Freedom for the powerful to do as they please at the expense of everyone else?

Meanwhile, everyone-else is seeing their dreams for their own life recede farther and farther out of reach. Or they don't dream anymore, they just try to make it through each week without a disaster, putting out one little brush-fire after another, choosing between new shoes for their quickly-growing kids or keeping the power on, between $$ they don't have each month for reliable birth control or the odds of $$$$ down the road for an abortion. Meanwhile, I almost hope everyone's abortion lottery-number comes up sooner rather than later, because the possibility of getting a needed abortion a few years from now is looking dimmer and dimmer and dimmer.

We exploded bright beautiful fireworks. Huge ones, the real kind. For one day I didn't think about the $$$ that they cost, which we could have put toward everyone's abortion. Probably I should have.

Certain people talk "freedom" but also want to make abortion impossible. They have never explained: If the law were to abide that our very bodies be subjugated to the demands of another entity -- fetus, man or whoever -- then how could we ever be free? How could the remaining liberties mean anything? And if only some are free, is there such thing as justice?

Here in Abortionland these days, temporary injunctions have become our way of making it through each week narrowly staving off disaster, the blanket on these brush-fires that can't be doused, because actually the powerful were pouring gasoline. My feeling is that this year's long parade of anti-freedom legislation is just a way to distract from the total void where economic redress was promised, and to distract from the ever-yawning divide between the powerful and everyone else. Meanwhile, everyone-else is more and more disempowered, with our freedom, supposedly inalienable, actually increasingly contingent on disaster staying at bay, on the odds landing on some other poor bastard and not us.

Where's our revolutionary spirit when we really need it?

I would always have an abortion

Every day is a snap shot. So hauntingly concise. A few minors (at least one alone), a few women over thirty-five. Most are in their twenties. Most have children, jobs, school. Some have boyfriends, husbands, fiancés and some are single. Some bring friends/ some laugh/ some cry/ some rage/ some all of the above.

There are moments when there are so many patients and significant others, lovers, mothers, fathers and friends waiting for surgery and pills that I imagine the doctor is the Wizard, that abortion is a rock star and I do her bidding. I want to scurry to the kitchen to shake some martinis, dole out gingerbread and kisses until people start warming-up to this, red-nosed/rosy-cheeked, not staring, not hungry, not pregnant, not waiting, not heart-breaking. But alas, it's an abortion not your holiday and we don't give those kinds of kisses.

We do, however, talk to you about your abortion like it's not The Plague. We describe an incredibly safe and generally dignified process and reassure you just how quickly you'll recover--physically, how the uterus is a most-fascinating! muscle. We'll talk to you about birth control in realistic terms, as it applies to you and your lifestyle. And we won't use strange scientific language, nor judge you if you decide to negotiate a path free of synthetic options. We may suggest you use spermicide, or in some cases, emergency contraception (can be purchased over-the-counter tomorrow for next time). We will remind you that abstinence is not 100% enjoyable and then we will all laugh about how men could stand to learn a thing or two.

Most importantly, it's okay that you hate the word abortion, that you don't want to know what the surgery entails, that you believe you're killing or have made a mistake. It's okay to wish you weren't here, to pretend you don't know us when you see us at the grocery store. But oh, how we wish we had more to give to you, that abortion was a wellness check-up and that you left with a basket full of everything you needed to know about your body. How we wish you'd tell a few good friends, that you'd celebrate all the months in your life when your menses flow freely, that you'd pat yourself on the back.

Wordle image, entitled Abortion is Love, can be found at http://www.wordle.net/.