I’m writing this Mother’s Day post through a fog of a nasty sickness, so I can’t guarantee it will be as polished as I intend. My hope is that it will make a modicum of sense! I am here on this day to write about the issue of childbirth, choice, maternal healthcare and the violations that are rampant in the U.S. regarding all of these things. I want to open the conversation up about an aspect of women’s choice that I have not heard discussed even once in mainstream feminist circles: The choices that women should have to decide how and where they want to have their babies.

Yesterday, with my throat too sore and my brain to busy to sleep, but my body too sick and tired to do much of anything I came across the documentary “Pregnant in America: A Nation’s Miscarriage” on netflix, available for instant view. Despite the fact that the average childbearing age in the U.S. is 29.4 years old, and I am a mere 25 years old, I can think of a dozen women around my age who are my good friends who have kids (many of them have more than 1 by now) or are pregnant. And that is just off the top of my head! “Why the heck not, I thought. This will be illuminating if nothing else,” so I watched it. And mind = blown, a little bit.

Continue reading “Happy Mother’s Day: On Choice and Childbirth in the U.S.”