My bleeding heart plants are blooming again. There are many of them by now, signs not only that spring has come, but that the anniversary of my miscarriage 32 years ago is about to arrive.
Pete and I waited nearly four years to try for a baby after our daughter Anna was born. I was thrilled to be pregnant again, although I anticipated the usual months of discomfort. But I quickly realized something was wrong. After 11 weeks, an incredibly painful final 24 hours and the sight of more blood than I thought possible, my pregnancy was over.
A few days later I bought the largest specimen I could find of the shade-loving annual Lamprocapnos spectabilis. The bleeding heart bush had arching branches heavy with pink flowers, each blossom with a pink drop of what looked like blood. A perfect outward symbol for my inner grief.
The plant proved easy to split and divide after wilting every year in early summer. So they flourish in several areas around our house and barn.
Now, more than three decades after my miscarriage, I think: How lucky I was to have gone through that ordeal when abortion was legal and Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land. Nobody would have had grounds to question whether or not what amounted to an abortion was self-induced or natural. And through the blessing of geography, I lived in a state that has not now and did not then assign personhood to an embryo. Such a distinction elevates the legal status of fetuses while clearly reducing women to the status of mere, inconsequential vessels.
In the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court stripped women of the right to control their own reproduction, 14 states now have a total abortion ban at every stage of pregnancy. It seems as though not a week goes by without some new outrage occurring as governments and legislatures act to control women. All in the name of “life,” mind you. These regions may vote against providing free school lunches, may refuse to expand health care to the poor, may levy sales taxes on food, for pity’s sake, but threaten an embryo at the earliest stage of development and the full force of the law may come crashing down on females.
An uproar occurred in Alabama in February when the state Supreme Court ruled that the accidental destruction of embryos at a clinic for in vitro fertilization (IVF) could be subject to wrongful death lawsuits. Alabama law elevates even a zygote composed of around 16 dividing cells (five days after in vitro fertilization) as the same as a child.
The legal status of a woman should be more than that of 16 dividing cells.
“Unborn human life is sacred,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in the decision. “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness.”
The Alabama legislature moved quickly to pass a bill shielding IVF clinics and the governor signed it into law. Yet the measure does nothing to change the legal status of embryos as children in Alabama. It’s one reason why the state leads the nation in arresting pregnant women in the last decade - more than 600 according to last month’s U.S. Senate testimony of Lourdes A. Rivera, president of the nonprofit organization Pregnancy Justice.
But not to be outdone, last week Arizona decided to put the “AZ” in crazy. There the state Supreme Court resurrected an 1864 law banning abortion that was part of a 400-page legal code approved in a brief session by 27 white men who made up the nascent legislature. The law passed long before Arizona became a state; It had fewer than 10,000 non-Native American settlers, during a time when the Civil War still raged and decades before women had the vote.
God only knows what will happen next. Perhaps we can all look forward to a return to the Salem witch trials of 1692.
If you have read this far, congratulations on your fortitude. This topic of the erosion of women’s legal status and rights post Dobbs v. Jackson just makes me nuts. I am decades past child-bearing age, and I live in a state where women don’t have to worry about being considered as less than dividing cells. But I am furious that women anywhere have to live in fear on this issue, and my white-hot anger about the direction of abortion rights in America is shared by millions of women. I only hope that the lava of our rage is felt on election day this coming November.
And my bleeding heart plants? They make me remember a difficult time, yes, but their blooms also remind me of something positive. Without that miscarriage, I never would have planned another child – my wonderful son Tim, now 30 and a high school history teacher, who was born less than two years later.
House Enrolled Act 1337 in Indiana would have required my daughter and son-in-law to have burial or cremation for each of their three pre-11 weeks lost pre-born babies. As if they didn’t have enough grief and stress to deal with.
Beautiful. I will now think of you every time I see this beautiful flower.