They call death heaven only sometimes

My parents would not allow me to watch MTV throughout my youth—Trust me—I know delusion. I thought, Pour some sugar on me, was an awfully silly song.

I also hoped the protestors would give us a week. One week.

But it has nothing to do with me. Or the women. It’s about the power our mothers have over our gestation, our birth, our existence.

To want dignified abortion care by request is not edgy because abortion is common and I get awfully fiery but it’s not something I‘ve chosen to trouble myself with. It’s troubling.

Those who take the time and money and invest their deepest efforts to build grandiose and dangerous networks to stalk and patronize best survival practices for an evolving species are pro-life even when they’re having their abortions. Villainous, dimwit pests who wish to diminish your reproductive rights before you ever wish to acknowledge them. How we sit around and spout lines we’ve been tube-fed on how to despise women’s experiences without knowing the origin of our reference.

I do what I do because I’ve never seen so many strange and frightening folk who desecrate women’s experiences with lies about a bountiful truth dwelling under the smug heading of Pro-life, who every so often murder our expert medical directors in front of their families.

I’m so sick of hearing about the babies.

Indeed, in his lifetime, Dr. Tiller terminated thousands and thousands of doomed fetuses for real, live, compassionate, breathing women of functioning and malfunctioning families. Shooting him pixilated his spirit. Multiplied him by thousands and thousands. The fruits of his labor—sporogenesis.

This week when I counseled women prior to their abortions despite his death, despite the ever-present rude and crazy prayer-hounds with posters of our deadest babies, I felt my heart had grown—blossomed-outward from the pit in my woeful stomach for our peaceful doctor. My heart bloomed by his words. Indeed.

Artwork: Basimycetes by Ernst Haeckel