Roe v. Wade/Heart v. Spade

Loss just north of Gilead

Spontaneous abortion. That’s the paperwork term for a miscarriage. “It sounds harsh,” the doctor warned me. It sure did.

I had a positive pregnancy test on April Fools Day; May Day morning I miscarried in my bathroom. I knew it was coming: the day of the Roe v. Wade leak, an ultrasound confirmed that my nearly eight-week fetus was measuring closer to six weeks, no cardiac activity detected.

I remembered the tech from my first pregnancy, and I knew something was wrong as soon as she stopped talking. She had the screen facing me, and I was looking for the thing I couldn’t hear, the little lub-dubs from a heart that never beat.

Samuel Alito was appointed to the Supreme Court during my last semester of law school. I have absolutely no memory of this, being possibly the least-interested-in-jurisprudence student ever to study the law. It seems, now, like something I would have cared about. It seems, now, like something I should have.

Spontaneous abortion partially complete. That was the paperwork from the next appointment. This time, the ultrasound tech kept the screen facing her; the doctor let me sit in the regular chair the whole time. They offered me pills, or a d&c. I live in New York, so these options are safe. Even so, in the waiting room, they kept the televisions off.

I didn’t opt for the pills, or the procedure. I wanted this pregnancy, the baby that would have resulted, and wasn’t sure if there would be another. I wanted to spend as much time with it as I could.

I bled for as long as I was pregnant. It was devastating, and painful, and then it started to get better. I was surprised that when the flow subsided, when the blood turned pink and then brown, that the grief scaled back up in intensity, felt as raw as the first days.

Pregnancy can be lonely- the responsibility, the change in self- but there’s something there with you. At the end, that little baby went through it all, was there the whole time. When you lose the pregnancy, you lose that partner, however brief your time together. You lose a love you never got to hold. You lose a chance. You lose a dream.

The aftermath is a middling nightmare, low-stakes, an almost-secret too awkward to carry. You can’t wake up, you can’t let go. I spent the days in a functional haze, sobbed it away in the shower. Waited to stop bleeding.

In Virginia, protesters marched in front of Alito’s house all week. Good.

My miscarriage made me more pro-choice than ever. These decisions are sacred. I felt angry, and helpless. I felt limp and worthless and less than myself. Our stories are different, but our hurt has a similar source.

A week later, I make another choice, to rejoin the world. We talk about trying again and I decide to focus my eyes instead of starting into the void. Enjoy sitting in the grass while my son plays. This is where I start.

I make this choice as the country runs out of baby formula. There are perspectives from which my personal tragedy looks like a luxury, a loaded pause that will add meaning to my story. Even at the saddest parts, there is no one blocking the path. There is no force to contend with but nature.

Nature proceeds. Over the next two weeks, my ever-duller cramping culminates in a final, painless surge my doctor prepared me for. She turned out her office lights and backlit the ultrasound film with her phone. “See that,” she asked, pointing at something I could not see. “That clot’s about and inch and a half.” She bent her thumb, measuring the space for me. When it passed the next day, I tried to gauge the size with my own bent thumb. She was exactly right.

The next week my tests come back normal. ‘No need for a follow up’, my doctor notes. I start dreaming again, start planning, start hoping.

That afternoon, an 18-year-old kills 19 kids and two teachers in a Texas elementary school while the police wait outside. Personal tragedies fade like nightmares.

The Supreme Court is back in session today.