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[[@else: I suppose it's time to tell my abortion story. Of the abortion that didn't happen, that led to me.

A lot of anti-abortion people put words & thoughts into the mouths of the unborn.

Well, I'm one that was recommended to stay unborn, who got born, and here's what I say.

My mother found our very early in her pregnancy that there was an extremely high risk to her if she continued.

Terminating the pregnancy was floated by one of the doctors. It would have been legal due to the risk to her, but heavily stigmatized.

Her family was deeply Catholic. She was deeply Catholic.

She did not terminate. The risk became a reality.

So I'm here, and she's not.

I'm glad to be here.

It is hard to put into words the gratitude you feel to a mother who sacrificed herself entirely for you, and I'm not going to try here.

Because I'm also very angry.

Without in any way taking away from the courage and selflessness with which she bore her situation and which she showed in all aspects of her life

I don't believe she ever really felt like she had a true choice.

The stigma, the religious dogma, the judgement - everything she'd ever known - told her she could not save her own life.

Her parents would have, however sadly, believed she'd go to hell. Her family and friends and community would have judged her.

Everyone she'd ever loved believed it was wrong. And so she believed it was wrong.

Needlessly.

I don't know what choice she would have made if it had been a true choice.

Maybe she would have chosen me anyway. Maybe she would have chosen to stay for her two already-existing children and for all those who loved her so deeply.

But she should have had a real, true choice.

Would I trade being here for that?

In a heartbeat. Without hesitation.

My siblings could have grown up with their mother.

My grandparents could have seen their beloved daughter live out her beautiful life, instead of mourning her every day until their deaths.

Her brothers and sisters would not still thirty years later feel the pain of losing the sistre they loved so much.

She could have continued to bring the light to the world that she had always brought, that I have heard so much about.

My father perhaps would not have descended into the grief & guilt that destroyed him, our relationship with him, the innocence of our childhoods.

Now, I think about how my young nieces & nephews will grow up without her, without the kind of grandmother I had. That pains me too.

I grew up in the devastation of her death.

I've watched the consequences of it play out for thirty years.

I can see what might have been differently if she'd had a true choice and it snatches my breath away, to see the suffering that didn't have to be for the ones I love most.

I know that it is not my family, but it is also profoundly difficult to know that it is because of me.

Or to be more exact, because the world did not allow my mother her right to a true choice, and my being here is perhaps a result of that.

It's not a burden I'd wish on anyone

I wish that I could have told her. It's okay. Stay. Live. Be happy.

I wish I could know that she knew that that was more than ok.

Don't I want to be here? Don't I want to be alive, aren't I glad to live??

Now that I'm here, sure. But had I never been, what would I have lost? Nothing.

You can't miss what you never had. Can't lose anything when you never existed.

There's no pain or loss in not existing.

I didn't exist then, to want anything. I didn't exist to hope or wish or fear anything.

I didn't exist back then. Not me. There was a possibility. An idea, a hope maybe. Some cells, a process in her body. Not me, any more than a sperm was me or an egg was me.

*I" didn't become until much later. Til I was born.

My mother wouldn't have taken anything from me or cause me any pain by living for herself, because I didn't exist to lose anything.

There was so much pain, so much loss in losing her. Loss that will ripple down generations.

So I will say to my dying breath, as the person who only lives because she didn't abort, that whatever she thought or chose or did not chose, she should have had a real choice to abort.

That she should have felt that aborting me was valid and good a choice as not.

Everyone should feel that, and have real access to enact that choice without obstruction or shame or question.

Whether it is their actual life at risk, or not. A forced pregnancy can be the death of many things, not just the end of ther person's life.

Having me took away from the world everything that my mother could have given it.

Forcing someone to have a child against their will can take away what that person could be and bring if they had their choice, whether they live through the pregnancy or not.

Most of all it takes away their right - their inalienable right - to choose how they live their life in their own body.

A non-person, a hypothetical future event, the birth of someone who doesn't exist yet, doesn't have that right.

Other people, who claim to speak for the unborn do not have that right.

We all lose so much by it. It can cause such pain and suffering, for child-bearers, for children, for everyone.

Do not pretend to speak for the unborn.

Do not pretend to speak for the children born against their mother's will.

Do not pretend that you care for them while you hide misogyny behind dogma.

My mother deserved her right to a real choice.

Everyone does. Unconditionally.

As the child who could have been aborted, I tell you - to oppose that right, let alone work to criminalize it, is unforgivable.

I'd like to emphasize because I didn't say it loud enough in the original thread:

There doesn't need to be a tragic story or a threat to life to make abortion ok.

It can be simply because you don't want to have a child. That's all. You still have the right to a choice.

I told my sad story because:

a) it is important to me to counter the rhetoric of anti-choice folks, that claims that if the unborn could speak they would be anti-choice

b) forced pregnancies can really f*ck up lives in many ways and that needs to be recognized.

But:

There shouldn't have to be a tale of woe to justify bodily autonomy.

It's a right. An absolute right. It should be protected by law.

That's it. That's all.

Last thingL I want this point to be heard, but I don't particularly want to deal with blowing up on twitter.

I will probably lock my account down at some point, but I would like this still to be shared. Maybe use an unroll app and share from there if you would like to.]]

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the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

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It is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

And I have some big feelings, as a part of the diaspora. Remembrance Day is an inappropriate title for a time in which Armenians still face genocidal forces. Just last year, Azerbaijan, armed by Turkey, ethnically cleansed over 280,000 Armenians from Artsakh. The illegal colonizer state of Israel, currently in the midst of their 6+ month-long genocide against the Palestinians, has placed the Armenians who call Jerusalem home under threat and siege.

The Armenian struggle and the Palestinian struggle are deeply linked.

In his rise to power, Hitler is quoted to justify his actions against the Jewish, Roma, Queer, Disabled, and other victims of the Holocaust, to say "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Echoing these chilling words, Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish wrote:

Who Remembers the Armenians? I remember them and I ride the nightmare bus with them each night and my coffee, this morning I'm drinking it with them You, murderer - Who remembers you?

The trauma sustained during a genocide is not limited to the people experiencing it right now. The echoes of that trauma leak forward into the next generations, passed down through survival, and that is so insidious. My grandmother got to live, but did so believing that her parents did not love her, because the trauma they endured prevented them from expressing it. Abuse and unhealthy attachment were passed down because that starving hunger for love and acceptance was passed down. It is so deeply cruel and unfair that our oppressors get to reach through time and hurt our children's children.

We need to band together and stop the present-day abusers, the genocidal monsters that oppress the people of Palestine, Armenia, Congo, and so many others.

We need to uplift art made by those who survived, and by those who are surviving. Art is always targeted by the oppressor to erase cultural identity, to destroy legacy, and to break spirits. Support Palestinian and Armenian poets, and artists, and writers.

If you are one of the many who never learned about the Armenian Genocide, learn today. Ask yourself why people worked so hard not to educate you on this piece of history.

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What I was taught growing up: Wild edible plants and animals were just so naturally abundant that the indigenous people of my area, namely western Washington state, didn't have to develop agriculture and could just easily forage/hunt for all their needs.

The first pebble in what would become a landslide: Native peoples practiced intentional fire, which kept the trees from growing over the camas praire.

The next: PNW native peoples intentionally planted and cultivated forest gardens, and we can still see the increase in biodiversity where these gardens were today.

The next: We have an oak prairie savanna ecosystem that was intentionally maintained via intentional fire (which they were banned from doing for like, 100 years and we're just now starting to do again), and this ecosystem is disappearing as Douglas firs spread, invasive species take over, and land is turned into European-style agricultural systems.

The Land Slide: Actually, the native peoples had a complex agricultural and food processing system that allowed them to meet all their needs throughout the year, including storing food for the long, wet, dark winter. They collected a wide variety of plant foods (along with the salmon, deer, and other animals they hunted), from seaweeds to roots to berries, and they also managed these food systems via not only burning, but pruning, weeding, planting, digging/tilling, selectively harvesting root crops so that smaller ones were left behind to grow and the biggest were left to reseed, and careful harvesting at particular times for each species that both ensured their perennial (!) crops would continue thriving and that harvest occurred at the best time for the best quality food. American settlers were willfully ignorant of the complex agricultural system, because being thus allowed them to claim the land wasn't being used. Native peoples were actively managing the ecosystem to produce their food, in a sustainable manner that increased biodiversity, thus benefiting not only themselves but other species as well.

So that's cool. If you want to read more, I suggest "Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America" by Nancy J. Turner

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ngl I keep forgetting that Hobby Lobby is a real store that people go to. That people actually think of it as a craft store and not as a crazy Christian mass artifact smuggler. I google "Hobby Lobby" and get a page full of results that make me go "wtf is this craft supplies and operating hours shit, I thought we all knew this place for smuggling looted cuneiform tablets out of Iraq"

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Sudan still desperately needs aid--it needs a lot of things, but it is approaching a dangerous point with famine and mass death due to hunger imminent.

These are the kinds of headlines we're getting now:

Here's an ongoing fundraiser:

I linked it before, to help with Ramadan, but it's an ongoing initiative, the need has not stopped.

I picked this gofundme because it's been boosted by people I trust and you can see pictures online of the food they've provided, e.g.:

But I also picked this because you can see the amount of donations. It's 2pm ET on Saturday, April 20th right now? For the next week, whatever's donated, I'll match for a total up to $2,000 (we'll say 2,750 CAD, since the gofundme is in Canadian dollars).

You don't have to send me a receipt, I just ask that you donate and boost.

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Update Harvard students are walking out in solidarity with Columbia’s students

These are billion dollar for profit institutions that directly impact financial backing of Israel’s apartheid regime

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Three years ago this week, I had a hysterectomy as part of a surgery to remove stage IV endometriosis that had taken over my body. The endo was so bad, my uterus, ovaries, and bowel were all adhered together in one large mass. My surgeon removed a large number of endo adhesions, cysts, and fibroids as well as removing my uterus, tubes, cervix, and one ovary.

It was unreal how even the immediate post-surgical pain was noticeably less than what my pain levels were beforehand. There's no cure for endometriosis, but the hysterectomy at least meant I would no longer have periods that caused me to black out from pain.

That alone was a huge bump to my quality of life. Unfortunately, endo is a relentless disease and within nine months of surgery, I started experiencing that well-known pain again.

I ignored it for as long as I could, not wanting to admit that it was back already, not wanting to go back to the non-stop appointments and scans, where my body belonged to the medical system.

Subconsciously, it was like if I didn't say it out loud, if I didn't seek treatment, it meant it wasn't real. I played wilful ignorance for nearly a year, but of course, while I was ignoring the endo, it was busy spreading.

The thing about endometriosis is, the only way to fully identify how bad it is, is to have surgery. Ultrasounds and MRIs can give an idea of what's going on, but surgery is the only way to medically dx it with certainty.

Surgeons can remove the adhesions, but that causes scar tissue and unfortunately, the more scare tissue you have, the more endo grows back. Even the most skilled surgeons can't remove every cell of endo in a patient.

How long it takes to come back varies by person, so I guess I just drew the short straw with only getting nine months of relief.

Luckily, there are some ways to manage the pain. I've been doing a chemical menopause treatment for about 18 months now. I get a monthly implant that stops my one ovary from producing hormones (which can make endo worse). And it's been LIFE CHANGING, to say the least.

This treatment has been SO effective on the pain, I mostly forget that I have endo at all. I rarely feel the pain, usually it's in the week leading up to my next injection when my implant is wearing off -- I feel it and the pain stops me in my tracks.

Lately, that pain comes earlier and earlier each month, and every month, the pain is worsening. I am terrified about what this all means. Usually, the treatment I'm on is only used for 6-9 months at a time. I'm already at 18 months, which I am grateful for. But even this isn't a long-term solution.

I'm so scared. I'm so scared of going back to the life I had before surgery. The life where I was in debilitating pain every day, the life where I was bed bound for weeks and months at a time, the life where my body belonged to the medical system, the life where I was always being poked, prodded, and scanned. The life where I made such regular visits to the emergency department, we had to keep a hospital go-bag at the ready.

I don't know what comes next. I don't see my gynae again until April and I desperately hope she says I can keep doing this treatment, because at least it manages the pain 80% of the time. But if I can't, if the long-term risks are too high and I have to come off this treatment, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I guess I'm posting about this to not only get this off my chest, but also so other people with endo might see it and know that you're not alone. This disease destroys lives and is a constant battle, but you're never alone. I see you. I'm so proud of you. All we can do is keep fighting. <3

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iran's retaliatory attack comes after israel bombed the iranian embassy in syria, killing seven. the inviolability of diplomats and the extraterritoriality of their property is the fundamental basis on which any kind of diplomacy operates: it was international law for thousands of years before international law existed, it has been respected by the most disgusting regimes in existence (e.g. both the soviets and the nazis deported each other's diplomatic missions, killing none), any transgressions have always been the blackest stain on the violator. a few days after israel's attack, ecuador raided the mexican embassy in quito to arrest the former vice president, who had been given protection by mexico. that a state-on-state attack on an embassy occurred is horrific enough, pointing to the rabid, brutal, rogue nature of the israeli state; that two happened within a week is a dire signal. we live in a much more stupid, dangerous, violent world

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YOU MUST TRY TO LOVE YOURSELF WHEN NOTHING ELSE DOES. THIS WILL BE THE HARDEST PART

#HEY TBUS IS COOL AS FUCK

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A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

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Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

#literally the time will pass anyways changed my LIFE

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it's amazing how ordinary objects can become so significant to only the owner

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This actually makes me laugh every time

#unfortunately this was a funny season #LOL #spn

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Hold the fuck on no way WW3 jokes are trending on Twitter when this is an extremely serious situation that’s threatening to destabilize an entire region. No way everyone’s gleefully looking at this as if it’s the grand show finale they’ve been waiting all along. There is no fucking way