Feminists For Choice

I picked up this wonderful book the other day at the library called Choices. I fell in love with it right away as it is emblazoned with a pregnancy test on the cover. It is a collection of true stories about the kinds of choices women make, or should be able to make, concerning reproduction and being a parent. I want to try and cover a few stories from this book if not all of them as the weeks progress. This week I chose a story by Harriette E. Wimms called Harrison: Battling for the Chance to Make a Choice.

Harriette was dead set on becoming a mother from an early age while those around her dreamed of ivy league schools and rich husbands. She was encouraged as an African American woman to forgo having children right off and pursue college and a career and be successful first, but being a mother was all she knew she really wanted, and why isn’t that ok?

She went to college and got her degree in English and worked in marketing and married another so called “not good for me” man. They tried for a year to get pregnant and when nothing happened she sought help. She was diagnosed with PCOS which was making it next to impossible for her to get pregnant. Not to worry, as a married heterosexual woman there were a variety of procedures available to her at 90% coverage from her insurance company. She was encouraged to try them all as it was her right as a heterosexual married woman to have a family. Harriette was ready to try but her husband was not. Their marriage ended as Harriette had also fallen in love with a woman.

Harriette moved on with her life and eventually met, fell in love, and married her partner Pat. They decided together to revisit the idea of Harriette having a baby but all the doors that had swung wide open for Her when she was married to her husband had now slammed in her face. Doctors refused to treat her, her employer and her insurance company argued back and forth over who was refusing her coverage as a lesbian and technically single woman. When they finally found someone who would even consider talking to them and they chose to use a non anonymous donor (as choosing anonymously would mean a six month waiting period) the sperm bank refused to let them use their donor as he was a gay man and they had policies on gay donors as they feared the spread of AIDS. Harriette and Pat gave up.

Harriet relayed her choice to a close friend to not have children and spend her days with Pat as a childless couple, but it was all thrown back at in her face. Her friend knew its not what she wanted because all the time she had known her she was Harriette the woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mother and Harriette knew she was right. She and her partner once again decided to revisit the options of becoming parents and were now accepted into the clinics that once turned them away as times has changed and non traditional couples and lifestyles had become more acceptable to the outside world, of course at their own cost. They managed to finally conceive their son Harrison and Harriette gave birth to him in 2004.

This story seriously made me cry. We talk a lot about a woman’s right to choose and quite often mean to have an abortion or not. I don’t think we often consider a woman’s right to strictly be able to have a child if she wants to. I do not have any children but my clock is ticking something fierce, and I hope that when the time comes and I am ready to consider having a child, I will be able to without jumping through too many hoops just because I may or may not be in a “traditional” relationship.