If you were in charge, I'd be dead.

I often hear about politicians putting their foot in their mouth and spouting out inaccurate statements, seemingly without any regard or respect for truth and without regard to the consequences of ignorance.  Most recently, US Rep. Joe Walsh said some completely inaccurate statements, which he quickly took back following media backlash.  At bottom, what he said is that with modern technology and science, an abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother:

"The controversy stemmed from a Thursday night debate at WTTW-Channel 11. Walsh declared that abortion should be outlawed in all circumstances, including to save the life of the mother.

Afterward, Walsh told reporters that medical advances had rendered it unnecessary to ever perform an abortion to save a mother’s life.

“With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance,” Walsh declared.

Asked then if he was saying it was never medically necessary to perform an abortion to save the life of a mother, Walsh responded: “Absolutely, yes.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-new-firestorm-joe-walsh-comments-abortion-todd-akin-20121019,0,127789.story

First off, I have lived an amazingly blessed life.  I am extremely grateful for the life I've lived and I know that many people have been dealt a less favorable hand.  However, I've seen my lows, like everyone else, and I find Joe Walsh's comments offensive and insulting.  He is completely disregarding the entire group of women who have had to come face to face with a "life of the mother" experience in order to promote his own political agenda.  This guy put himself out there and said this entire group of women doesn't exist.  Thanks to advances in technology and science, "you can't find one instance".  Hey, jerkoff, I'm right here.

I was pregnant at a wonderful time in my life.  I was married, finally nearing the end of my education, and looking forward to moving back to Texas to start a job.  After several months of trying to conceive, I was pregnant.  I vividly remember reading the dipstick in my apartment in Indiana and being absolutely ecstatic when the color changed.  That moment was, without a doubt, one of the best moments of my life.

I never made it to my follow up ultrasound appointment.  Prior to the going in for the ultrasound, I was struck with an excruciating pain in my right side and rushed to a doctor to find out what was was wrong.  The doctor couldn't help me and sent me down the road to the ER. After some drugs, blood draws, examination by multiple people in a manner that was extremely uncomfortable, and an ultrasound, I was finally told what was going on.  There is a blur here in my memory as far as the language that was used to explain what was going on but I remember one thing for sure, I remember a doctor I'd met two minutes prior, looking me straight in the eye with his piercing blue focused eyes, telling me: "You could die from this."

- The first option was to do nothing. If I did nothing, there was a real and immediate possibility that I would die.  Fetuses are meant to grow in a uterus, not in your fallopian tube.  A fetus in a tube can cause the tube to rupture at any moment.  The area where the fetus was is extremely vascular, more so than various other parts of the body, and a rupture might cause me to bleed to death internally.

- The second option was a drug.  The drug attacks all the dividing cells in your body, specifically targeting cells that are multiplying rapidly.  The drug would essentially disintegrate the fetus into smaller pieces that could then be eliminated by my body.  My nails would probably be brittle, I might lose clumps of hair, and all of my other rapidly dividing cells would be affected to some degree.

What about the baby?

There will be no baby.

Of course I considered my own well-being.  Of course.  I love life.  That is what this post is about.  I lived.
I don't want this life to be over.  But I wanted to know baby's future too.  Baby had no future.  The baby needed a womb to grow in.  It needed an umbilical cord and a sac around it and nutrients and space and...the fallopian tube is insufficient.

I laid down on my stomach. I felt two shots, one on my left hip and one on my right hip.  I laid there for what seemed like forever, waiting to be told it was ok to leave.  The next few months were filled with prayers, curses, anger, peace, sadness, hope, numbness, you name it.  I was thankful that I was alive.  I was thankful that I had a future.  I was terrified about what had happened.  I wasn't ready to go.  A few times a week my blood was drawn and each time I was told I was doing better.  You're doing better.  You're going to be ok.  We're in the clear.

Did I have a choice?  Did I choose to have an abortion?  Did I choose my life over that of another being? Who has a right to decide that the first option - doing nothing - was the right option for me?

I made this decision. Though in a cold objective & detached realm the choice is clear, it sure as hell didn't seem clear then.  I was at the brink of an exceedingly bright future being told I might not have a future at all.  How do you wrap your mind around that?  How do you process that in a moment's notice?  Have you made a life or death decision in the middle of a medical emergency?  One life was doomed but the other had a chance. Why throw away that chance?  How can you tell women, a woman who's heart might be breaking at the loss of hope that comes with a lost pregnancy, that she does not have a right to choose to live? I chose life.  I chose my own life.  I chose the life of the mother because, despite what some politician on tv tells you, my life was at risk and the other life was over.  Period.  He wouldn't make it but I could.