womxn • history • sex • education • social justice
Can you describe an ectopic pregnancy?--And why it matters
Here’s a little quiz! Is an ectopic pregnancy:
When a fertilized egg fails to implant in the uterus and exits the body as menstrual blood?
When a fertilized egg implants and begins to develop somewhere other than the uterus?
When a single fertilized egg divides in the uterus to produce twins?
Here’s a little quiz! Is an ectopic pregnancy:
When a fertilized egg fails to implant in the uterus and exits the body as menstrual blood?
When a fertilized egg implants and begins to develop somewhere other than the uterus?
When a single fertilized egg divides in the uterus to produce twins?
If you guessed “B”, congratulations! Option “A” actually describes a miscarriage or pregnancy loss. Option “C” doesn’t have an official term (as far as I know) but it is the single most asked sex ed question from my elementary school students who, for some reason, are obsessed with learning about twins.
As a sexuality educator, I often teach about ectopic pregnancies. It’s when an egg that’s already been fertilized (meaning it’s connected with a sperm and is traveling down the Fallopian tube) decides to stop its journey in the Fallopian tube–or in the ovary or stomach or cervix or other inappropriate place. Rather than correctly implanting in the side of the uterus, where it can safely develop into a fetus, the fertilized egg instead implants someplace else in the body and begins to develop there.
This happens in 1 out of 50 pregnancies in the U.S. and if untreated, is deathly or disabling to the pregnant person.
In fact, untreated ectopic pregnancies are a leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester. And in the US, our maternal mortality rate is shockingly and unjustly high for a developed nation.
Ok, another question for you all:
Myth or fact? Ectopic pregnancies can be safely implanted in the uterus to develop into a healthy pregnancy.
The answer is nope. Not at all. This is completely a myth, one that’s being touted by anti-abortion protesters with no medical research to back it up.
The only way to protect a pregnant person who has an ectopic pregnancy is to have an abortion.
In very rare cases, the ectopic pregnancy ends in miscarriage on its own; but in the vast majority of cases, medical intervention (i.e. an abortion) is required.
An abortion is a completely safe medical procedure that safely ends a pregnancy by expelling the contents of the uterus. It’s safer than actually having a baby. It’s even safer than driving a car! (Compare abortion death rates to car accident death rates; it’s 1 in 100,000 versus 1 in 107….)
As someone who wants to get pregnant one day, I read the U.S. news today and got really scared. Today a Supreme Court brief was leaked stating the court’s majority opinion that the historic Roe vs. Wade case be revoked. This would overturn Americans’ constitutional right to abortion and would allow individual states to create policies for their constituents around access to abortion.
22 states in the U.S. have “trigger laws”, or laws severely restricting or banning access to abortion that would go into effect the moment Roe vs. Wade is overturned. Many of these laws would even ban abortion if the pregnant person’s life was in danger.
In Missouri, a bill would make it illegal for pregnant people to abort ectopic pregnancies. In Texas, a bill makes it illegal for someone to perform an abortion or aid someone in getting an abortion (like driving them to the clinic), even if the pregnant person is experiencing an incomplete miscarriage, or an embryo that has stopped developing but hasn’t left the uterus. Leaving the non-viable embryo can cause non-stop bleeding and infection for the pregnant person. In Oklahoma, a bill would make it illegal for someone to perform an abortion or aid someone in getting an abortion even if they’ve been raped or have experienced incest.
And this doesn’t even begin to touch the reasons for safe, legal, legitimate abortion outside of protecting the health to the pregnant person.
What this all means for me is that if I lived in Missouri and developed an ectopic pregnancy during my own pregnancy journey, I would likely die from complications since I wouldn’t be able to access a legal, life-saving abortion. If I lived in Texas, had an incomplete miscarriage, and had bleeding that wouldn’t stop, I would likely die of an infection since I wouldn’t be able to access a legal, life-saving abortion. If I lived in Oklahoma and–God forbid–was raped during my pregnancy journey, I would only have the option of a dangerous, illegal abortion if I didn’t want to give birth to my rapist’s child.
Oh but Leslie, you say. You don’t live in any of those states. You live in North Carolina where abortion access is currently (albeit shakily) protected. Oh but Leslie, you make enough money that you could travel to another state where abortion is legal if you had a complication in your pregnancy. Oh but Leslie, you have had access to comprehensive sex education and affordable birth control so you wouldn’t get pregnant in the first place if you didn’t want to.
Sure, but it could be me. These situations could happen to any of the uterus-bearing folks in your life–to any of the 50% of Americans with uteruses. And if any of our national political bodies turn more red, abortion could be nationally banned and only international travel and lots of money would make abortion accessible to me and everyone else.
It is vital that we find the empathy within ourselves to imagine what it’s like to have a different experience from our own. What would you do if you were in a life or death pregnancy situation? How do you think many uterus-owning folks are feeling right now after hearing this news? How do you think it feels to hear the nation’s most powerful leaders say that your life doesn’t matter? What do you think a person with a different background and set of privileges and oppressions than you has to worry about and consider related to pregnancy, abortion, and reproductive choices?
This news is terrifying. And definitely hits too close to home for me. So I urge everyone: go out and vote (midterm elections are here!). Practice and embrace empathy. And tell everyone you know about how ectopic pregnancies really work because we all–at a bare minimum–deserve to know the medically accurate and comprehensive facts about our bodies. And we all deserve to be healthy and safe.
We Can't Forget
My partner and I lived in Rwanda awhile back, and there is one story that sticks in my mind above all others. A friend I got to know in Rwanda worked with an organization called Hope for Life, which provides housing and rehabilitation to children and youth living on the streets of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. She told me the story of a 10- or 11-year-old boy who came to their center one day seeking help. He eventually shared with the center staff that he had been living on the streets for awhile with his younger brother after their parents had died. He and his brother struggled to find food and often had to steal food to get by. But there was a period of time when even stealing food wasn’t working, and every night the boys went to bed hungry. The boy at the center described the heartbreaking moment when he held his younger brother in his arms as he died from starvation. Traumatized, grieving, and starving himself, the boy eventually stumbled across the center, where he was given a place to stay and food.
My partner and I lived in Rwanda awhile back, and there is one story that sticks in my mind above all others. A friend I got to know in Rwanda worked with an organization called Hope for Life, which provides housing and rehabilitation to children and youth living on the streets of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. She told me the story of a 10- or 11-year-old boy who came to their center one day seeking help. He eventually shared with the center staff that he had been living on the streets for awhile with his younger brother after their parents had died. He and his brother struggled to find food and often had to steal food to get by. But there was a period of time when even stealing food wasn’t working, and every night the boys went to bed hungry. The boy at the center described the heartbreaking moment when he held his younger brother in his arms as he died from starvation. Traumatized, grieving, and starving himself, the boy eventually stumbled across the center, where he was given a place to stay and food.
This image–of a boy holding his younger brother as the child died from starvation–will probably stick in my mind forever. To think that this was happening right in my neighborhood was heartbreaking. Dying from starvation was a reality so far from my own that it felt impossible that it was happening to this boy right in front of me, especially in such a modern, spotlessly clean city as Kigali. (If that image conflicts with your vision of an African city, you’re not alone–but do some research to learn about what African cities really look like today.)
I also will never forget the memory of taking our trash out at our apartment in Kigali. We lived in a relatively economically advantaged neighborhood, with our apartment building across the street from the large home of a former government official. Each week we would bag up our trash and plop it on the side of the street outside our gate. And each week, as soon as we emerged with trash bags in hand, a group of men and women wearing dirt-stained, tattered clothes would rush up and grab the bags. They were always so respectful of us, never snatching the bags directly from our hands but waiting until we set them down before jumping to be the first to grab the bags and take them away. We could then watch as they dragged the bags down the street, opened them up, and began sorting through what we had considered waste. They collected bottles, plastic containers, old clothes and shoes, even food scraps, sorting and organizing, seeing what they could use versus sell.
This memory is also burned into my mind, along with the image of that boy holding his dying brother. Now back in the U.S., it’s so easy to feel detached from these realities. I live in a nice house with my partner, and we have plenty to eat. Our worries include how the stock market is doing, which brand of Tofu to buy, and how to find time to go to the doctor’s. Of course, I don’t want to minimize the very real challenges of folks living in the US: mental illness and suicide rates, rising inflation, this horrible housing market, shitty policies that impact people’s ability to get healthcare (like the recent anti-abortion and anti-trans laws), structural racism and other oppressions that impact life expectancy…. But dying of starvation and fighting over trash seem so impossible when juxtaposed with my life.
I’m often reminded of that song in the opening credits of the TV show Weeds: “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky.” Living a square life in little boxes made of ticky tacky is one of my biggest fears. I don’t want to be a typical housewife in a typical suburban house with a typical set of behaviors and attitudes. I don’t want to forget that poverty exists, that not everyone has the privileges that I do, that I should feel immensely grateful that all my basic needs are met.
Yet despite my fear of living this square life, I still fall into the trap of measuring my success against the stereotypical ladder of American (global?) success: go to college, get married, go to grad school, find a career, buy a house, and pop out some kids. I get so caught up in doing what society expects of me–and feeling shitty when my journey isn’t a simple, easy upward climb–and I forget that there are far greater problems in the world that should have my attention.
How do we not forget? How do we remember the injustices experienced by so many, both globally and right in our backyards, when we live in our isolated little boxes made of ticky tacky?
I believe that we have a choice to center these concerns–to find ways to remember. In fact, I think it’s our duty as privileged Americans who use up the largest percentages of the world’s resources to remember.
I’m definitely not perfect at remembering. But I try to think of that little boy and his brother when I’m eating my dinner. I try to not serve myself more food than I can eat, I try to finish everything on my plate, I try to use up everything in the fridge before it spoils. Whenever I throw something away, I think of those folks in Kigali and try to consider if I can reuse or recycle whatever it is I’m throwing away. We have to remember.
How do you remember?