THE OBSERVER
MIRENA MATH WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING A REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH MELTDOWN.
O
n an unseasonably hot afternoon in May, The Observer took the elevator to the second floor of the UAMS Women’s Center for her annual gynecology appointment. The Observer doesn’t have children and doesn’t plan to, but here in the waiting room, reminders of alternate babycentric universes were everywhere: An easelmounted Foam-Core panel embossed with a QR Code portal to UAMS’ (presumably substantial) network of pregnancy resources. An identical panel in Spanish. Pamphlets with the word “Expecting?” flowing in graceful cursive across their covers. A laminated card calling for participants in a breast milk study. A framed photo of a bright-eyed infant on the wall, sporting a winning smile above the words “Your Baby Deserves the Best.” Out in the lobby, we’d passed a pregnant acquaintance, greeting them with a wave and an under-the-mask smile. It’s a strange time to be a person with ovaries. Born into the Reagan era with the Roe v. Wade decision as the law of the land and seemingly a given, The Observer grew up going to a fireand-brimstone Baptist church in a no-stoplight small town, where “pro-life” was a synonym for “morally upright.” Sunday morning sermons, when they weren’t enumerating the perils of listening to 2 Live Crew or “the homosexual lifestyle,” positioned abortion as baby murder — something pitiable that happened to girls far older than I who drank or smoked or “got in with the wrong crowd.” Conspicuously, I never seemed to hear about rich girls at school getting pregnant. On the Jerry Springer daytime talk show circuit and at my middle school alike, the idea of getting knocked up before high school graduation was shrouded in a cloak of rural poverty I’d learned to resent (and which I’d desperately and clumsily try to
66 JUNE 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
shirk in adolescence). “Babies having babies,” as the church ladies would shake their heads and say, was unfortunate but also accepted as inevitable. In my preteen eyes, it was a death sentence for dreams of college and a career, or for the possibility of escaping Arkansas for the erudite wonders that surely lay beyond state lines on either coast. Worse in retrospect, the topic of teenage pregnancy never seemed to include any discussion about what a pregnant teenager should actually do, or what options she might have. The Big Questions at Hand, either explicitly or in hushed and coded language, came across less like a paragraph from a sex ed textbook and more like a shame-mongering tabloid blurb: Do her parents know? Was she drunk? Does she even know who the dad is? Inside the examination room, a nurse asked me the usual: “Any problems? Discomfort? Lumps or bumps around the breasts?” Sporting a nametag with a happy ovary cast in resin with anime eyes, she expertly dodged my questions about whether or not the clinic had received an influx of calls following the SCOTUS headlines of the last several weeks. She mentioned that her family does ask lots of questions about her and her husband’s pregnancy prospects, though it was pretty clear those weren’t the questions I was curious about. Getting nowhere with my attempts to take the temperature of the reproductive health zeitgeist, I asked the chiefest of questions on my mental list: My intrauterine device was set to expire in December. With the imminent encroachment of right-wing politicians into my ovarian designs, would it be OK to go ahead and have it replaced a few months early so as to give myself five more years of reliable birth control? “You know it’s seven years now?” “Seven years?!” I shouted. “Some European
countries leave them in for 10 years,” she told me, and the FDA had, last year, approved Mirena for an additional two years of safe pregnancy prevention. My whole body felt relieved; I like sex and would just as soon not put it on the shelf til menopause-o’-clock. On that good news, the nurse left and told me my nurse practitioner would be in shortly. I peeled off my clothes and donned the crinkly blue disposable gown (“Leave it open in the front!”) and a different feeling settled in. I did the math — seven years from 2017. So, 2024. What would the repro rights landscape look like in the winter of 2024? The SCOTUS leak had upended expectations overnight, prompting a flood of genuine dread and concern mirrored in “Handmaid’s Tale” memes, rallies at the state Capitol, and a flurry of infighting among the various contingencies who’d like to see Roe v. Wade stay — tensions around the push for more gender-inclusive language, and about the problematic postures of privilege and whiteness that plague the battle for so-called “women’s rights.” When I got into the car and cranked up the air conditioning, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) was mid-soundbyte on KUAR. “Who should be making this decision? Should it be a woman and her doctor? Should it be a politician? Should Ted Cruz be making this decision?” A commentator cut in, adding that “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had said it was possible that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, we could see a nationwide ban on abortion if Republicans regain control of Congress this fall.” I dread doing the math for my fellow Arkansans here — weeks on the gestational countdown accrued, miles traveled to an out-of-state clinic, days of work missed, percentage of paychecks diminished, hours of sleep untaken.
