On Being the First

Who’ll be first?

Who’ll be the first American woman to die being constitutionally unable to access abortion?

Will she be from Tennessee or Ohio? Missouri or Oklahoma? Will it be tomorrow, next week, or next month? Will she walk from her canceled clinic appointment to the alley behind it, or will she try to find resources before she caves in? Will she die from an unsafe procedure, a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, or birthing a fetus with no brain? The possibilities are nearly endless.

Most likely, she’ll already be a mom. Who’s gonna tell her kids that she’s not making them breakfast in the morning? Who’s gonna make it for them? Who’ll take them to the dentist next week? Will it be a family member, a neighbor, or a foster parent? Maybe they can get a nice CPS worker to take them. Will he remember to tell the hygienist that their back teeth are sensitive and to be careful, like mom always did? Or will the appointment be canceled? The possibilities are nearly endless.

Most likely, she’ll be among the working poor. Who’ll scrape the rent together now that she’s gone? Who’ll work extra shifts so that her daughter can afford her cheer uniform this year? Who’ll beg her boss to let her go early because her son has a fever? Maybe their father can sober up enough or stop hitting them and help out more. Or maybe they drop out of cheer and go to school sick. Maybe they don’t go to school at all. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Most likely, she’ll live in a trigger law state. Are the police posted up outside clinics, waiting to wrest instruments out of a doctor’s hands? Will they pull the drape down over patients as they pull them off exam tables or does this loss of privacy rights include every loss of common dignity? If we don’t have privacy rights in our uteruses, do we still have them in our vulvas? Our breasts? Or are we just bodies for the state?

Will she die like Savita Halappanavar, the dentist whose non-viable pregnancy killed her? The fetus had a heartbeat; now neither does. Or, like a Polish woman named Izabela, will the amniotic fluid drain from her uterus before she and her wanted baby die in a hospital bed? Will American hospitals in red states have to create “maternity” wards where the women just wait around for a heartbeat to end — who will be first? The mother or the fetus? The possibilities are definitely endless.

We don’t know who’ll be the first. We don’t exactly know when or how, either.

But we do know she won’t be the last.

At least we can console ourselves with the iconic words of our former Vice President: “Life won.”

And when “life won,” it won with the specific caveat that the decision makers are not done yet. What will win next? Will heterosexuality win? Will banning contraception win? Will white marriage win?

Because “life won,” the possibilities are now nearly endless.