The danger of swine flu in pregnant women has received a great deal of press attention recently. As concerns over the health of pregnant women rise, the abortion debate has slyly emerged as a a central influence in the dialogue.

Yesterday, the New York Times told the story of Aubrey Opdyke, a 27-year-old woman who was pregnant when she contracted swine flu last June. What began as mild symptoms of aches and fatigue turned into a harrowing four month ordeal. Writes reporter John McNeil:

In the four months she was hospitalized, she spent five weeks in a coma, suffered six collapsed lungs and a near-fatal seizure. High-pressure ventilation blew her up like a molten balloon until “she looked like she weighed 400 pounds,” her husband, Bryan, said, and she has stretch marks from her neck to her ankles. Her muscles and lungs are still so weak that she uses a walker.While hospitalized, she missed seeing her 4-year-old daughter, Hope, learn to swim and start pre-school.

And, most important, she lost her baby. Parker Christine Opdyke, almost 27 weeks in the womb, was delivered by emergency Caesarean section on July 18, when her fetal heart rate plummeted during Ms. Opdyke’s third lung collapse. Her airways were too blocked to let a breathing tube in, possibly a side effect of the drugs saving her mother. She lived seven minutes.

In McNeil’s profile of Opdyke, losing the baby was “most important”—more traumatic than even falling into the coma, suffering a seizure, temporarily losing the ability to walk, talk, and see her family, and facing death. The trauma of losing a child in the womb is clearly central to Opdyke’s experience. But it is still Opdyke’s experience—the ordeal is hers, not her baby’s. Compare that treatment to a previous profile of Opdyke, which ran in the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. It’s worth it to examine the entire lede:

The baby was beautiful, with tufts of long eyelashes—just like her mother.

But she didn’t cry.

Her heart stopped minutes after doctors delivered her from the belly of Aubrey Opdyke, who had swine flu and lay in a medically induced coma.

Aubrey never had the chance to see her.

So the baby’s grandmother, Joanne Felker of Stuart, readied tiny Parker Christine for photographs and a video.

She bathed her and held her.

“She looks like she’s just peaceful,” Felker said of the images, shot by the volunteer group Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

One of these days, the family will show the images to Aubrey.

They’ll fill in the blanks about the time she has spent in a coma at Wellington Regional Medical Center, battling a case of H1N1 influenza that took Parker’s life on July 18 — more than two months before she was supposed to be born.

This is a story about a fetus. Opdyke, who endured months of comas, collapsed lungs, and seizure in a fight to stay alive, is introduced in a prepositional phrase: “from the belly of.” Joanne Felker is not Opdyke’s mother; she is “the baby’s grandmother.” The loss of Parker Christine is mourned at length, but the fact that Opdyke herself was on the verge of death is never mentioned in the story. Tellingly, Opdyke was not even able to speak at the time this profile was written about her. Given her condition, it’s doubtful she had a hand in authorizing the story at all:

Now that doctors have eased her off coma-inducing medication, Aubrey can blink in response to visitors.

She indicated that she recognized her husband, Bryan Opdyke, and can wiggle her toes.

The sources in the story are Opdyke’s mother, her former co-workers, and her former Girl Scout troop leader. Opdyke’s husband is not quoted in the story. That’s too bad, because he provided an extremely interesting insight to the New York Times:

Mr. Opdyke was warned he might have to choose—her life or that of the baby, who was just at the border of survivability outside the womb.

“I said, ‘Save Aubrey,’ ” he said of the woman he married last year. “I can make another baby, but I can’t replace her.”

Her third lung collapse forced the issue. Parker had to be delivered, but she did not survive.

The Times addresses the issue head-on: Losing Parker was a tragedy for the Opdykes, but it may very well have saved a woman’s life. Andrea Opdyke wasn’t given many choices throughout her horrific ideal. At least, in the New York Times, she’s afforded a voice in her own story.

Photo by flickr user Andres Rueda, Creative Commons 2.0

What if Bill Clinton had openly announced, as he later did to his biographer, that Al Gore was “blowing” the 2000 election by refusing to allow Clinton to campaign for him? Maybe George W. Bush would never be president!

What if Bush had openly announced, as he did privately to his speech-writer, that his “heart was never into” banning gay marriage? Maybe gay people could be married!

And what if Richard Nixon had openly announced, as he did to his Oval Office tapes, that he thought abortion was okay “when you have a black and a white”? Maybe . . . Barack Obama’s mom would have aborted him, and “the world’s most famous mixed-race man” would never have even existed!

Wait, what?

It sure is fun to “wonder.” But pretending to pinpoint the precise political conditions that would have convinced a dead woman to have aborted her pregnancy 48 years ago instead of carry it to term is both dishonest and offensive.

Even if Nixon had announced that interracial couples would be free to abort their fetuses with impunity, why would that have convinced a white woman in a relationship with a black man to do such a thing? Why would anyone have cared what Richard Nixon thought, anyway? When Barack Obama was in the womb, Richard Nixon was already a lame-duck Vice President. And Nixon didn’t record his thoughts on interracial abortions until 1973, when Barack Obama was 12 years old. What is Egan even talking about?

The larger question is: why are commentators so quick to assume that Obama’s mother would have been interested in having an abortion at all, under any circumstances, ever?

Egan isn’t the first to jump down the rabbit-hole of Obama’s non-abortion history. In July, Republican Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt suggested that if Barack Obama’s mother had been offered “financial incentives” to have an abortion, then Obama may have been aborted and we would never have had a president who supported abortion. Wrap your mind around that one, liberals!

The speculation over Obama’s mother’s what-if-abortion is not a fun exercise in how even the smallest actions decisions can affect human history. It is, however, obviously racist (in his anti-abortion screed, Tiahrt also wondered aloud whether Clarence Thomas would have been aborted), and patently anti-choice.

Obama’s mother isn’t around to say, “I never would have had an abortion,” or, “I would have had an abortion if I could have afforded it,” or, “I would have had an abortion if Richard Nixon had been president over a decade before he was actually president, and had broadcast his racist Oval Office tapes over the radio in my first trimester.” This doesn’t seem to matter to the “What if” abortion set. When these commentators claim to know whether a dead lady they’ve never met would have had an abortion half a century ago, and why, they are saying that the mother’s opinion is unimportant to the discussion of abortion. They are robbing her of her ability to choose. In this case, commentators are posthumously robbing Obama’s mother of her ability to choose an abortion she never had, which just goes to show how seriously they take the whole “choice” thing.

Bizarre Breastfeeding Contraption: The Breastfeeding Curtain

Patent No.: U.S. 7207070

Inventor: Swarez-Ballesteros, Eva R.

Description: ” A nursing garment and method enabling women to nurse a baby in public by covering the mothers. Maintains the breastfeeding relationship by allowing breastfeeding to occur anywhere at anytime. Provides a nursing mother a true sense of privacy and modesty, and provides a mother the added security that most nursing garments or blankets do not. The nursing garment is formed by lined lightweight material and is designed to cover the mother’s upper torso, partial back and the nursing infant. The curtain is attached around the neck of the mother by a semi-rigid annular hoop. A layer of material lies across the front panel forming a valance or curtain for added privacy. Added inside the nursing curtain is a pocket for the nursing mother to place nursing paraphernalia and attached to the pocket is a small sized sanitary cloth for the nursing infant and mother.”

Why It’s Milkable: Doubles as puppet show theater.

Why It Sucks: “The curtain is attached around the neck of the mother by a semi-rigid annular hoop.”

Previously:

Bizarre Breastfeeding Contraption #1

What the Nursing Bib Means for the Right to Bare Breasts

Last week, Adrian Fenty unveiled the new “I Am A Healthy D.C. Mom” campaign, targeted at encouraging moms to keep their children healthy and safe inside and outside of the womb. The campaign’s launch was accompanied by the release of the administration’s 2007 Infant Mortality Report [PDF].

According to a press release, the campaign asks pregnant women to “commit to forty weeks of prenatal care, staying fit and eating right, and keeping their baby safe and healthy.”

How reasonable is to to expect a full forty weeks of prenatal care from a woman? It means she’ll have to act like a good pregnant lady—like folic acid in place of booze, or whatever—from the moment of conception. That’s before she even suspects she’s pregnant. Before she misses her period. Before she takes a pregnancy test.

Usually, it’s also before she wants to be pregnant.

Half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. There’s no current data available for how many D.C. pregnancies are unplanned, but there’s reason to believe the number is much higher than the national rate. We do know that 62 percent of children in D.C. live in single-parent homes, compared to 32 percent nationally. Forty-six percent of children in D.C. have an unemployed parent, compared to 33 percent nationally. D.C. also has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation.

Here’s what the campaign will consist of:

* “resource materials “for doctors and moms

* a “pregnancy assistance toolkit” which covers prenatal care through the first year of motherhood

* transit posters

* PSAs in radio, Web and print

Healthy moms and healthy kids are great. Providing women with more information about prenatal care is great, too. How about committing to some other options, too—increased funding for birth control and abortion could go a long way in decreasing infant mortality rates, too.

Photo by freeparking

For this edition of “Sexist Beatdown,” Sady (of Tiger Beatdown) and myself (of the Sexist) would like to extend a warm invitation to all men, children, good mothers, and bad mothers (abortionists will be tolerated, but the childless will be ignored).

This week, up for discussion is Ayelet Waldman: wife to Michael Chabon, mother to four, author of “Bad Mother,” in that order! Waldman made women hate her in 2005 after announcing, in the New York Times, that she values her husband over her children. We don’t really give a shit about that. What we want to know is: Does Waldman value husbands over children over good mothers over bad mothers over abortionists over the childless?

Let’s sort of find out!

SADY: hello! are you ready to talk about how some lady HATES and/or does not maniacally worship her children?

AMANDA: I can barely begin to think about it because i HATE this woman so much!

SADY: i, too, am driven to the verge of madness by her statements! actually, this is technically somewhat true. i mean. i read the “modern love” column that “bad mother” was based on, and: all i could think of was, seriously, you’re opposing the fetishization of motherhood by talking about how much you WORSHIP YOUR HUSBAND?

AMANDA: i know, right? where is the response Modern Love column that says, “i probably don’t love either of them.”

SADY: hahaha. i mean. if the whole weird mother/wife axis is about (1) being an untiring source of boundless Virgin Mary love and devotion for your children, and (2) keeping your man sat-is-fied, writing the article that’s like, “i can’t be all boundless or whatever with my kids because i’m too busy DOING IT with my hot husband, who I LOVE, and have i mentioned WE DO IT” is kind of… not necessarily a step FORWARD, you know?

AMANDA: yeah. i think she’s a controversial figure for another reason, too. she wrote this essay, right, and it’s basically a slap in the face to the whole love-transfer idea that’s expected of a mother, and she even goes far enough to say she’d basically save her husband’s life over her child’s if they were like being held hostage by Two-Face or whatever and she had to choose. but then, she’s spent about 4 years having to explain herself for that, and EVERYTHING SHE WRITES—her fiction, her nonfiction—is about being a mom! and obviously it’s something that she appears to struggle with, but it has consumed her.

SADY: right? like, for someone who doesn’t want to be defined by having babies, she sure does write a lot about having babies. and the “bad mother” label – the thing she seems to castigate herself for most fiercely is having an abortion when she knew the fetus wasn’t totally healthy.

AMANDA: i know, that part made me so sad, that she has these own expectations for herself, and that even though she freely choses not to meet those expectations, she feels like a bad person for doing so

SADY: right? i mean, i can understand that being a difficult, emotional decision, but it really seems like that would only make you a “bad” mother if you had a really over-demanding list of requirements for being a “good” mother.

AMANDA: yeah. there is another really interesting unspoken element here. she met chabon 12 years ago and has had four of his children since then. she indicates that he was very early on — the day they met, i think! — clear that he wanted children. but that was never a priority for her. when she quits her job, it’s not because she wants to spend time with her kid. she makes it clear she finds that boring. it’s because she’s jealous of him wanting that. you have to state the obvious here — the man that you love so much is the reason you have been burdened with motherhood.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and, i mean, she mentions that they got engaged three weeks after they met! which is clearly indicative of the fact that the whole “let’s talk about kids and whether i want them on the first date” thing was not, ultimately, a dealbreaker.

AMANDA: yeah, and was her voice heard there? i mean she spent four of their 12 years just being pregnant with the kids. plus another pregnancy that was physically and emotionally straining. she sure had a lot of kids for not wanting them too much, right? what is the deal with that?

SADY: yeah, and then there’s this, from the “modern love” column: “Every so often we escape from the children for a few days. We talk about our love, about how much we love each other’s bodies and brains, about the things that make us happy in our marriage… And afterward my husband will say that we, he and I, are the core of what he cherishes, that the children are satellites, beloved but tangential.” this is really caitlin-flanagan-y. SOMETHING is going on here, with the husband who tells you he wants kids and then you have four kids and then he tells you that you’re the one that’s most important, not the kids. SOMEONE is understating how important the kids are here, you know?

AMANDA: add that to the “abortion makes you a bad mother” thing and it’s almost like, not making babies when you’re able to make babies makes you a bad mother. what else explains the apparent lack of contraception here?

SADY: i get the sense that, really, waldman’s either way more into having kids than she’s letting on, or she’s backed into this corner of defining herself as a mother while constantly talking about how she shouldn’t be defined that way.

AMANDA: yeah, and i wish the people interviewing her (ok—i will send her an interview request when we finish this) would ask her these things

SADY: like, the mommy-guilt thing is interesting – “of woman born,” by adrienne rich, is a good thing about mommy-guilt – because, yeah, women are constantly told HAVE BABIES HAVE BABIES HAVE BABIES and then they’re told YOU’RE NOT DOING WELL ENOUGH WITH THE BABIES, so, it’s like, childless or with tons of kids, you don’t get to measure up, EVER.

AMANDA: and i get that she feels there are all these expectations that she has to face and can’t live up to. but at the same time, there’s the expectation to HAVE the kids in the first place, and she didn’t have to do that—and then do it again and again and again. it would be interesting to know why, you know?

SADY: yeah, and we sentimentalize maternal instinct to the point that women who express ANYTHING deviating from the message of “i spend all day and all night thinking about my children and wanting more children and then knitting them booties and baby blankets and did i mention they are thirty-four and twenty-three” are demonized. but: there’s got to be a way to tell the story of, “ok, so i have kids, and i didn’t magically become a caring and perfect person who would allow her children to feast on her own flesh if necessary overnight” without slapping a title on it that’s like “BAD MOTHER” and having to state that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if your kids were run over by a truck. i guess my thing is, there’s a good story in here, and i wish it weren’t so hyped and Mommy-Wars-ified.

AMANDA: yeah. i do appreciate that she’s coming from a place of sincerity (almost to a fault), but i wish other people were asking her the right questions (instead of just, ’star jones doesn’t like you what do you think of that’). or why don’t you like play doh. ok — i have to GO. have four babies. wait, i mean, do my job

SADY: oh, well, good luck with that. YOU BARREN MONSTER.

Photo by viZZZual.com

This weekend, I watched Coraline, the new stop-animation film that gives the Nightmare Before Christmas treatment to Neil Gaiman’s book about a discontented girl who finds a portal to another world. Coraline has some pretty serious mommy issues in her first life:

Mom neglects her daughter in favor of her laptop, won’t buy Coraline new gloves for school, and worst of all, she doesn’t cook. After enduring another of her father’s mushy vegetable concoctions, Coraline asks her mother why she can’t cook for once. It’s just not in their shared-parenting arrangement, it seems: Coraline’s father cooks; her mother cleans. Later in the film, Coraline’s mother’s lack of cooking skills borders on the criminal. At one point, she peers in the refridgerator and asks Coraline if she’d like a “ketchup mustard salsa wrap” for lunch. Coraline’s father is also a distracted, frustrated figure, but he takes the time to be sweet to Coraline and makes it clear he’s just taking orders from “the boss”—mommy.

In Coraline’s alternate universe, which she accesses through a Malkovich-esque tiny door-leading-to-wonky-tunnel, her mother—known as her “Other Mother”—is much improved on the original. She cooks chicken! She cooks cupcakes! Gravy comes around the table on a choo-choo gravy train! She has well-proportioned hips! But even though this mother seems perfect—she cooks!—it turns out that she’s just an anemic spider lady who wants to run Coraline’s “Other Father” into the ground, replace Coraline’s eyes with buttons, and collect children’s ghosts in her dungeon. Also, her elaborate meals are simply practice for when she inevitably consumes Coraline’s soul.

So Coraline’s got two mommies, and they’re both bitches. It’s a bummer, especially because both bad mommies seem to buck up against some very outdated images of motherhood. In both worlds, good motherhood is defined by a) cooking well; b) not choosing work over parenting; and c) not acting as the dominant parent. In the end, Coraline ends up grateful for the mother she has—mom even buys her the gloves she wanted! Let’s hope she can learn to get used to her father in the kitchen, too.