Katrina Fernandez is someone I love to read usually because she makes me laugh.
My first waking thought hit me like a sledge hammer and I was instantly transported back ten years. I was standing alone in a sterile room wearing a hospital gown. In my hand was the sheet that I had pulled back off the portable suction machine that sat in the corner. Memories I thought I had drown bubbled up despite mentally wrestling with myself for years to un-see them.
What I am about to write next is horrifically graphic. I’d been debating with myself all day whether or not I should share this memory or just stuff it back down in the murky recesses of my addled brain but then I was reminded of something Elizabeth Scalia wrote.
And somehow, I can’t imagine that any of our elite female voices — the ones who, in every election year, can be counted on to take up the fake “war on women” mantras and tape PSA’s about “keeping abortion legal” because it “empowers women” — have any sense of the realities of these under-inspected, under-reported hell-holes, where the only ones being empowered are the profiteers.
And a hell hole it was. There is no way to advocate what I am about to describe. None. There is no reason, no exception, no situation in which what I saw could possibly be rationalized away as a “reproductive right” or an acceptable choice.
**** If you’re post-abortive what you are about to read might be too graphic and upsetting.****
I encourage you only to proceed with great caution. Please know I don’t write this to cause you any pain. I write this post so that people who advocate abortion can read what it is exactly they are advocating.
The vacuum.
I remember thinking it looked like a regular vacuum cleaner with a glass canister which allowed me to see the contents. I clutched the sheet that covered the vacuum in my hand and stood staring at it for quite some time trying to decide if what I as seeing was real. I just couldn’t comprehend it. Why would any one leave that there, like that, for a patient to see? I kept thinking, surely this was a mistake and any minute an apologetic staff member would come in and take it away. Someone was careless and just forgot to clean up after themselves. Yeah, that was it. Why else would I have been left alone in the room with that thing?
The glass container was half full and splattered with blood. Even the tube that fed into the container was crusted with blood. What I saw inside the collection container defies belief...
Of course there's more and it's not for the squeamish yet it needs to be read by everyone. I would even encourage adolescents to read her piece entirely.
What I find remarkable is the hope and encouragement in her ending.
Read it and see for yourself.
And pass it on.
