PLEASE NOTE: If you are strictly anti-abortion, you probably won’t want to read this. Better yet, perhaps you should, because it deals with a particular “method of conception,” as one lawmaker so callously put it recently.  So that makes me… a walking uterus?  And since I’m post-menopausal, that would make me useless… It’s like how they called cigarettes a “nicotine delivery system.”  And don’t get me started on “legitimate rape.”  It’s violence and power, not sex.  Hey, women can see past this malarkey.  Remember in November, sisters!

Scroll down a bit for the poem.

 

 

 

 

Since the Procedure

First appointment since
her miserable abortion.
She’s 18 – nervous, tearful.

The nurse who knows her and
helped with the procedure
is by her side. Part rock, part teddy bear.

Then Doctor steps in.
Without a word, detached,
he flips up the stirrups
like it’s a mechanical bull and
not an exam table. “Slide up,”
are his first words to her.

He invades her with icy hands.
Palpates roughly.
Orders her to relax.

This from the man who
vacuumed her womb
only last week. He performed
the abortion, but you can feel
his disgust toward his patient.

“I said RELAX.” She tenses at the command.
Then, he mumbles, “I can’t do this
if you don’t cooperate.”

Briskly sheds his latex gloves;
brusquely exits the room.

Nurse holds the girl as she shakes and sobs,
“Take the money and run, doc.”

Later, Doctor gripes, “These girls
get in this type of trouble
and I have to take care of it but
they don’t help, not a bit.”

Nurse blurts, “Yeah, don’t you hate it when
girls go out and get themselves raped?
Honest to God, you have no idea, do you?”
Her indignant outburst is lost on him as he
flips through a Bermuda Vacation catalog.

© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

Three Word Wednesday (yes, it’s Sunday, I’m well aware!) asked for a poem including the words Miserable, Brisk, and Detached. I knew a doctor like this… one of my friends was raped and he had ZERO pity, zero compassion. There are plenty of wonderful doctors, but this guy wasn’t one of them. That nurse (Catholic by faith, dedication to social justice gospel) quit the practice and opened a counseling center for girls and women recovering from abortion. “It has to be legal, clean, and safe,” she said, “but it doesn’t have to be even more traumatic than what some of them went through to need the procedure in the first place.”

I will also challenge readers at dverse Open Mic… perhaps I’ll get some flack.  In fact, I hope I do, if only to open the door for mutually understanding and conversation.   May every child be a wanted child, Amy


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