I'm Alive Because of Roe v Wade

I'm 100 percent certain that if Roe v Wade were not the law of the land in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was trying desperately to have a child, I'd be dead.

My endometriosis was severe. Endometriosis is a disorder in which the tissue similar to the inner lining of the uterus (endometrium) grows outside the uterus. This results in pelvic pain and irregular menstrual cycle. The tissue can migrate all over the pelvic area and has even been found in the lungs of some women.

In my case, the first signs were pain. Pain during menstruation. Pain during intercourse. Pain all the time, some months.

Birth control pills helped control the pain so I could function. Otherwise, I would miss an average of two or three days of work a month. Over the counter pain pills didn't help. 

It is hard to hold a job or go to school and deal with that kind of pain. It is hard to have a marriage and have that kind of pain. It's hard to do much of anything with that kind of pain, quite frankly.

Since the use of birth control pills is something that many people believe may be threatened by overturning Roe v Wade, I would not have been able to utilize that outlet to control my health problem.

I married at age 20. I wasn't ready to have a child at the age of 20. We had little money when we married - taxes that first year wiped out our savings, and it took us a while to recover from that blow. (It was called the marriage penalty tax back then. I think they may have done away with that, but I'm not certain.)

The birth control pill was essential not only for birth control but for my pain and problems. We built our house in 1987 and in December of that year, I stopped taking the birth control pill so we could attempt to have a baby.

I was 24 years old.

Almost one month to the day I'd stopped taking birth control pills, I developed a fever and horrible pain in my abdomen. I went to my doctor who sent me off to a gynecologist immediately. He did a sonogram and saw that I had a huge cyst on my right ovary. 

It was the size of a grapefruit, and it had twisted. I had sepsis. And there was a second spot they couldn't identify on the sonogram.

It was possible this second spot was an ectopic pregnancy, (a baby outside of the womb) and without Roe v Wade, the doctor wouldn't have been able to operate. He could only have watched me die.

But because Roe v Wade was the law (and currently still is), the doctor sent me to the hospital, where they performed emergency surgery and saved my life. And while it turned out to be not one but two cysts, technology in 1987 was not what it is today. They couldn't have been sure.

And to be honest, I don't know if any of the treatment I received afterwards to try to help me have a child would be allowed without Roe v Wade. After the removal of the cysts, the doctor put me on a high-powered dose of a drug that stopped my menstrual cycle for months. The idea was to trick my body into a false pregnancy with these pills so as to give my body time to stop creating the endometrial tissue.

But it did not work. As soon as the doctor took me off of those drugs so we could try to have a child again, the cysts returned.

And I had another life-saving surgery because I again had sepsis. The cysts kept twisting and locking in infection. They grew huge. They were the size of grapefruits.

And each time the doctors opened me up and went in, they removed scar tissue and pieces of my ovaries, until finally, in 1992, after having already opened up my abdomen seven times as my husband and I tried to have a child, the doctors performed a hysterectomy. (They left the scar tissue because there was so much of it, but the problems that created is another story.)

I was 29 years old. I would never have a child.

If Roe v Wade had not existed, I would have died before I was 20. The doctors were sure that the birth control pills kept the cysts from coming on sooner, so without them, I'd have had the cysts much earlier, probably before I married. Would they have seen that second spot and decided it could have been an ectopic pregnancy, and let me die?

And if I'd died at 20, what difference would it have made to the world? Is that how people who want these safeguards to women's health removed see the world? What difference does it make if this woman dies, even if the pregnancy is already null and void (ectopic pregnancies generally do not go to term)? Really, is that how they think?

I know Roe v Wade saved my life when I was trying to have a child.

And now I see a future when women who want to have a child but have issues will die. When the treatment they need may be withheld . . . just because.

It is that simple.

And it is that sad.

What kind of bitter, horrible, twisted people wish such a fate on another human being?