Free to weave…
(and other things)
I am fortunate to be able to weave. And sew, and spin, and garden, and cook. I am fortunate to do all these things I love, because if I had been born a generation earlier this would not have been possible.
For over 30 years I have been able to live a happy, productive, and relatively pain-free and healthy life - largely because of “better living through chemistry.” If I had been born a generation earlier, I would have lived with constant pain, fatigue, fever, and painfully swollen joints that would have left my body twisted and crippled.
But I was born in the second half of the twentieth century, and there was a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis called “methotrexate.” I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that methotrexate saved my life.
Developed as a chemotherapy drug, methotrexate has some pretty nasty side effects. My doctor explained them to me when he first prescribed the drug. Among those side effects are severe birth defects and a high risk of miscarriage. Be careful, he said, not to get pregnant while taking this drug.
Since the recent Supreme Court decision, young women are being denied medical treatment with this highly effective rheumatoid arthritis drug by their doctors because they are of child-bearing age.* The methotrexate might cause “an abortion,” they are told. In hospitals in some states, women with ectopic pregnancies are being monitored until the situation becomes life-threatening. Only after the woman is dying will they act to terminate a pregnancy that is not, and has never been, viable!
Yes, this is a “political post.” As the old feminist saying goes, “the personal is political.” And this is personal. It is personal to me because I have lived it.
If you are “pro-life,” I urge you to see a bigger picture. Start with seeing the woman who is dying from sepsis because the hospital insists that “nature must take its course” to complete her miscarriage. See her widowed husband and orphaned children. See the ten-year-old rape victim who must travel to another state to terminate a pregnancy. Look at your own ten-year-old daughter and imagine the devasting effects that pregnancy and childbirth would have on her immature body. See the woman on trial for “killing her baby” when she fell down the stairs and miscarried. See the nursery that she decorated and the baby clothes she had bought. See the woman in the morgue who was killed by her abusive husband because he did not want another child. See me - the thirty one year old woman crying from pain and fatigue and wondering how she’s just going to put one foot in front of the other, today, tomorrow, and for the rest of her life. See all this and more – because they are all true stories that happened here in the USA.
See a bigger picture. Please.
* Yes, there are other effective treatments for rheumatoid arthritis now. Guess what? They are not recommended for women who might become pregnant, either. They are also much more expensive and not always covered by insurance, if you are fortunate to have it.
