2001-06-13 - 12:46 p.m.

i wasn't going to post this publicly, but i've had a change of heart. the abortion "debate" is always too black and white, but in reality there is no easy place to draw the line... the following is an email i sent to myself because i needed to vent...

...

hey me,

i don't know where else to write... i don't want to post in public... and yet i do... and i don't want to freak out mel while she's at work...

anyhoo... it must be a busy day in the clinic today... i went up for the keys around 8:30 and already the waiting room was full... some sad faces, some blank stares, some faked smiles as they looked up at me... just a few minutes ago, Linci came down with some "biohazard." looked like five bags she was carrying... five bags, five sacks of flesh and blood, five lives? five dead babies? sometimes this job gets to me... no, not the job, just the workplace... the "biohazard." why do i put it in quotes? that's what it is isn't it? it gets put in red biohazard bags and thrown into the biohazard bin and taken away every week by the biohazard pick up guy and driven away to the incinerator in east oakland... but sometimes, it gets to me. given time to grow, that "biohazard" could've been children... living breathing human beings... life... that which is more precious than anything else... life... it's a cruel cruel world... the rich pigs running the show want to be moral and condemn abortion (while at the same time embracing state murder), but it's not that easy... the women who come here, they can't possibly afford to have a child... without access to abortion, they face a life sentence... and for what? for a mistake? for being poor and not having a stable enough life to raise a child within? mel and i get by, but if she were to get pregnant, i don't know what we'd do... we want children... very much... i can't wait to hold a baby of my own in my arms... to sing it to sleep... to teach it to love... to love... but i seriously don't know what we'd do if mel were to get pregnant... if she IS pregnant... i know we can't afford to raise a child now, and i don't want to burden our families... but it hurts to think of what sort of life we could have brought into this world if we were to have an abortion... if mel were to have an abortion... if a part of us were to end up someone else's "biohazard."

it gets to me sometimes... i sit at a desk on the other side of a "wall" from the "biohazard"... i call it a "wall" because it is barely so... there're two frames, one boarded up and painted over, the other a door... and sometimes, it stinks... the biohazard bins fill up quick some days, and when we don't have a pick up scheduled, the lids don't close all the way, and like any other trash, it stinks... but it's not any other trash... it's dead flesh and putrid blood... and some other trash... used gloves and any other disposable acoutrements... but really, in my mind, it's the human factor that stands out, the human waste, the wasted humans...

it saddens me that abortion is needed... that it's NOT something to be used simply to make lives more comfortable... that for people like mel and me, abortion is a necessity... even though we want kids, even ache to have them sometimes... but we can't.  if we do, we're doomed to living lives of subsistence, of working to get by, of managing debt instead of paying it off... i don't know if we'll ever be wealthy... or if we'll ever come close to breaking even... but i know that as it is now, we've got some ways to go before we've reached our potential, and as it is now, the best choice for all involved will be to have an abortion if that is a choice that must be made.

and i guess that's why i do what i do for a living... because i know that in the society we live in, until that society can provide for those who can't provide for themselves and do so without strings attached and without scowls and backlashes and attacks from on high and low... until we can level the playing field... until we can usurp patriarchy and more than respect, but HONOR women for their role in LIFE... a woman's right to have an abortion must be upheld. the lives that do exist should take precendence over the lives that might... in part because the lives that might, if forced into this world, will be doomed to subsist and will only exist to further feed the system of inequalities...