This is not a Rorschach Test.

But apparently people are seeing different things.

Keep that in mind for right now, but put it in a mental parking lot. I’ll come back to it. Because right now, I have a confession to make. Two of them in fact. One, I’m quite proud of and will glady pat myself on the back for. While the other is largely embarrassing and comically pathetic.

Confession #1: I fixed my car this weekend. For a while I’d hear a metal on metal grind whenever I would come to a slow stop. And it got progressively worse. If you know cars, you know my brakes were worn out. So I decided to do something about it. I called Meineke and asked for a quote, they said in the ballpark of about $350 but could be as high as five or eight hundred dollars plus, which caused me to roll my eyes and hang up the phone. My rent just went up. I got hospital bills to pay. That’s a high price tag. So I decided to do it myself. And back in like September, I went to the auto parts store and bought the brakes. Got home, didn’t have the tools. I work most of the day, so I couldn’t just get up and go get them. So a few days later, I go buy a ratcheting set with 10 sockets, figured I should be good. Still working, but finally found a day to have a solid block of time to take my front wheels off, remove the brake, put a new one on. But then I find, I don’t have the right socket, so then I have to go buy another, then the bolt on the brake was stuck and I had to break that. Finally I did! I removed the brake, put the new one on, put it back on and put my wheel back on and I haven’t felt this manly since the first time I talked back to my mom. All it took was like 8 weeks and nearly $200, but I did it!

Confession #2: I don’t want to speak for most men, but we are GROSSLY miseducated about how women body’s function. But in all fairness, that is TOTALLY not our fault. I blame the media. Why? TV Commercials. We’ve all grew up watching the same ones about femine products. Every Tampax or Playtex commerical will do the same thing. They will talk about discomfort and what women will go through and do the EXACT same product demostration. They’ll show the tampon and then they’ll spill that mysterious blue liquid on it to show it’s effectiveness and we’re supposed to be impressed. Okay cool. Your product works. Only problem is, it took me an embarrassing long time to connect the dots but WOMEN DON’T SECRETE BLUE LIQUIDS! It gets worse. The other day, I found myself at a women’s private facility(longer story, won’t get into it) but I noticed small colorful tube shaped packets in certain areas and it reminded me of a time, not a long, long time ago, where I first noticed these objects whenever I was at or near a women’s restroom or a doctor’s office frequented by women or such locations. I seriously thought to myself “why are they giving women free fruit rollups in the bathroom?” I got jealous, but that was what my mind associated with the small tube-like packaging. Of course I know they were tampons now. And while it’s ridiculous, I didn’t have a frame of reference other than it look like a fruit rollup we’d have for our daily lunch in elementary school.

I don’t have the data to back this, but I doubt I’m the only man to have these experiences. Particularly the second one. Frankly, it’s not something we’re required to know and being completely honest, for the most part, we would rather not even want to think about it. And as much as the women’s body is not something we are actively able to wrap our brains around, to be fair, the science involved is not remotely as perfected as we want it to be. Especially when we’re talking about childbirth and reproduction. Understand this: in the time it takes you to read this sentence, across the world, a preganant woman or her newborn baby has died during the process of child birth. That is just mortality. Complications during pregnancies are largely common, far more common than we typically attribute. This is why we have an entire medical study and prefession of Obstetrics and gynecology dedicated to it. This is precisely why we call it Reproductive Health. Because it is all about their health.

Yet, there are those who have weighed in on this science to make the decisions that, men like me, are making, without fully appreciating the complexities of women’s health. For weeks, many of us have watched an exhausting number of political ads with candidates telling us not just their position on abortion, but their opponents position. Roe vs Wade, which made abortion legal across the nation, has been overturned and multiple states have already banned the practice, with more pressing significant changes to ability to have access to it. Despite multiple candidates candidly stating their complete opposition to it, Governor Glenn Youngkin has stated his intention of signing into law a post 15-week ban on abortion.

The Governor has stated on multiple occasions that 15 weeks is a “reasonable compromise” with those that are pro-life and those that are pro-choice. The only problem is, there was already a reasonable compromise. That was Roe vs Wade. It allowed for women to have a restricted access to their reproductive health. But Republicans are trying to move the goal post on what is considered reasonable based upon a 15-week timeline, which the Governor has said, is when a fetus is able to feel pain. And the only problem with that is the science doesn’t back this position. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist, the very profession of people who life’s work is to know the women’s body reproductive ability, has stated that a fetus cannot feel pain until the third trimester, which was where the compromise was when Roe vs Wade was decided. What the Governor is responding to is a fetus’ response to stimuli, which is one of a multitude of abitrary processes that occur during fetal development.

But the reality is, with these Republican candidates, they are the ones compromising with 15 weeks with the absolutism of a complete ban. The compromise is with them, not with the rest of us. This is partly due to the fact that most abortions occur well before 15 weeks. In fact, in 2020, only 2% of all abortions in Virginia occured after 15 weeks, some 800 cases. And I can almost gaurantee that of those 800 cases, about 800 of them didn’t just wake up after being pregnant for 15 weeks and decide to get an abortion. It doesn’t work like that. If a woman is seeking to have an abortion, there are likely reasons why she either could not or did not want to or need to have one earlier. And part of that is, as stated, women’s reproductive health is ever evolving, constantly changing risk throughout their pregnancy. And since the science is imperfect, most life altering complications cannot be discovered until well into the second trimester, far after 15 weeks. Preventing a woman from having access to her reproductive health after 15 weeks, espeically in a case where it very likely means the difference between the life and death the right claims to value, it’s a tragically consequential decision they have to make for themselves and their baby that is being made for them in the WORST way.

It’s only made worse because 15 weeks is their compromise. They’ve already passed a 6-week ban in multiple states and attempting to pass it in others. Which, again, might sound reasonable to many people. If a woman finds out she’s pregnant and then can spend the next 42 days deciding whether she wants to have an abortion of not, might sound fair. Unfortunately, reproductive health doesn’t work like that either. The gestation cycle that determines that, isn’t at conception, where many assume. Frankly, conception is rather impossible to determine since it can take up to five days for that to happen. And since a women’s reproductive cycle is never a determined time itself, the gestation period starts at the last day of the last menstration cycle. This is why most women cannot know they are even pregnant until 5 to 7 weeks in gestation. If you’re banning abortion after 6 weeks then that can mean only a matter of days to decide whether to put your life, your health and your family at risk for a decision you should have full control over.

Now, let’s unpark my first confession about my car. I’ve known my brakes were worn down since early September. I could have spent $300 to $500 to get it fixed then, but I didn’t. I had additional pressing priorities to handle. And the bigger difference between my car and a pregnant woman is, I didn’t have to drive 400, 500 or even 600 or more miles away just to pay $500 to fix my brakes. It is not an easy decision to be able to have such an expense available in your monthly budget. If it takes the time for a woman to be able to make such a decision as it did for me to fix my brakes, that’s already well pass a ban of 6 weeks. If you factor in the length of time it could take for a woman to even know that she has a pregnancy she might need abortion services for, that could extend beyond 15 weeks that Governor Youngkin feels is a resonable restriction for you to make such a decision.

Ultimately, feelings we have surrounding abortion are rather black and white. You either support a women’s choice to have freedom of her own reproductive health and ability or you don’t. You are pro-life or you are pro choice. These are absolutes. This is not a multiple choice test. You are not deciding between 15 weeks, 6 weeks or even zero weeks. Because honestly, this is not a test for your or anyone else to take.

This is not your life.
This is not your body.
This is not your decision.

So if you look at the image above and see something that needs to be controlled, regulated, or otherwise limited… look some place else. Because you are failing misreably.