(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . We're Not Going Back, Man [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-03 Now is the time -- vote -- because we are not going back: He Didn't Care Whether The Women Wanted It Or Not We met a doctor once who appeared to make his own decisions about abortion. He didn't care whether the women wanted it or not. Family planning is health care. Informed personal decisions really matter to families. It is no one else's damn business: We were not yet twenty, but we were happily raising our eighteen month old baby boy. My then wife's recurring nausea and missed period let her know that she must either be terribly sick, or else she was certainly pregnant again. She felt frightened, because our son's delivery had been difficult for her. She was not ready to have a second pregnancy, she felt. Obtaining an abortion was still legal under Roe vs. Wade at that time. She consulted with a neighbor, Sue, asking who she saw as her gynecologist. Sue offhandedly told her that she always saw Doctor So-&-So over yonder in Eagle Rock. Foolishly, we made the appointment, and drove to the sleepy town of Eagle Rock. The male doctor examined this young woman, who was then still my wife. She put her trust in him. She definitely made sure he knew why she was there. She had missed her period and needed to determine whether she was pregnant. He understood that she was barely nineteen and already had one child, not yet a year old. He understood that she was terrified of childbirth because, again, our son's delivery had been difficult. He must have understood that we were poor, on Medi-Cal assistance like many other of his patients, because our modest means were limited to my minimum wage burger flipping job. I barely made enough for rent. But the doc asked her what she had in mind to do, if she were to find out she was pregnant. She definitely did not want, and was not ready for another pregnancy at that time, she told him, and if need be, she would certainly choose to abort. He ordered some imaging and lab work. Then days went by with no reply. When we next heard from his clinic, they reassured her that, No, she wasn't at all pregnant. They said she would just need to return to his clinic in six weeks, for more imaging. She then became more worried. Why she had been feeling so awful? She arranged a sooner appointment -- and came out in tears, very upset. It turned out that the latest imaging revealed that she was in fact quite pregnant - but she was, by then, so far along that she would have required a saline forced labor, rather than D&C abortion procedure. Because that man, as a doctor we trusted, had misdiagnosed and delayed, she found herself so many weeks along, that she was no longer able to terminate the pregnancy. When Sue later heard this, she laughed carelessly, and said, "Oh yeah, did I forget to tell you? Everyone knows that doctor is a fanatic born-again Christian who doesn't believe in abortion - he always does that to women." That religious zealot of an unethical doctor had just played my wife for time -- purposefully stalling her decision, once he heard that she was seeking to terminate the unplanned pregnancy by her own choice. He didn't care whether the women wanted it or not. We immediately consulted at a more reliable hospital clinic, where we quickly we determined that she was so far along by then, that it became reasonable to carry to full term. So it was, that at nineteen years old, my wife and I were forced to talk about giving that newborn girl up for another family to raise. That adoption of our second child soon created a deep unease and unspoken sorrow, and interfered with something between us. The relinquishment of a baby at birth so disrupted our budding family that soon we felt kind of broken, and she became very unhappy in our house. She left, and found work at strip clubs, and decided to rent a room in the house of another man, then took our toddler too, and by then everything fell apart. I cleared out our former home, and packed up all our belongings, to be lost forever in storage. I left the key off with my former landlord, and apologized for the mess. After that, I was just a guy again, not really a dad. Our little family was shattered, and so was I. Steered wrong about medical care and family planning -- led there by that biased, religious zealot of a doctor -- all our hopes for our young family just sort of crash landed. Politicians and the religious Right, keep your hands out of our pants. Informed decisions really matter to women, and matter as well to those men who care about them. We now vote loudly, as we vote to be free beside millions of our fellow Democrats -- and we find, even many of our decent Republican friends too -- for this magnificent opportunity to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Respect families, and protect our freedom. Zealots have no place in government or medicine. Abortion and family planning is truly a necessary part of all regular health care. I'm going to use my raised voice now to VOTE -- to stand up like a man for women's choice! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/3/2282188/-We-re-Not-Going-Back-Man?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=community_spotlight&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/