You're Next

Julie and Cecily said it more brilliantly than I ever could.

I am not going to lie. I cried during the debate last night. I cried when John McCain mocked all women. When he doubted our abilities to make medical decisions with our doctors and loved ones. When he discounted whether our health was important at all.

I had a difficult pregnancy. I never came close to dying. I never got very sick. But I am not going to lie that I was afraid of that every second I was pregnant. That I had already had a loss heightened this problem. I knew but did not know until I was pregnant how dangerous it was. How it all could have gone terribly wrong at any second.

I did feel safe, trusting my doctors, having talked these out with my husband before. We had access to a lot of great care.

I don't really care about how you feel about abortion. I think how we talk about this issue in this country is stupid. Because I think most of us feel the same way--we don't like them. We don't want anyone to die. We never want to have one. It's how the rest of it is managed that divides people into camps. Camps that don't change anything.

I didn't really believe until last night that there was anyone, anyone in this country at all that really believed that the mother wasn't important at all. But John McCain does.

I wish I could force people to read Cecily's story, even though I know that people discount her experience and do not believe her or her doctors (because strangers on the internet know more than her personal physician). But I feel a little smaller today, knowing that the country cares so little for me, for my gender, for my life, that a man running for President can go on TV and tell me that my health is not important.

You're next.