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Abortion, Vacuum Cleaners, and the Power Within
By Inga Muscio
When President George Bush in his second day of office, the anniversary of
Roe vs. Wade, ordered to block U.S. money from overseas family planning
clinics that provide abortion services, those of us at W.i.g. decided to
re-run a story regarding abortion in general. The story is neither pro or
anti but rather, pro-woman. If our votes don't count (and obviously democracy
no longer means what it used to in this country) then we here at W.i.g.,
think we might as well take care of things ourselves.
The first time I got pregnant, I was 19 and lived in the agricultural
community on the California coast, where I'd lived all my life. There were a
mere two weeks between me and my move away from home to Seattle. It was very
depressing to find out I was pregnant right when I was journeying forth from
the culturally blighted town I grew up in. I felt like it was trying to keep
me there, orchestrating this evil maneuver to pervert my destiny.
Making such a major move with a tiny human growing inside my body seemed a
pretty contradictory way of setting off on my own.
The thoroughly unsavory "option" of hanging around town for nine months, then
giving my child to an adoption agency, didn't hold my attention for more than
two puffs off the continuous cigarette I'd had in my mouth since I found out
I was pregnant.
So I went to Planned Parenthood for a clinical abortion.
In the waiting room there always seemed to be 15 or 20 other women, no matter
how many left with the nurse. Evidently, it was "abortion day." We shuffled
through the clinic like beef cows. All of the women had the same
horror-stricken, empty look on their faces.I sat there for an hour and a
half, nervously leafing through People magazines in a desperate attempt to
give a rats ass about the lives of Darryl Hannah and Princess Di.
When they called my name, I probably would have shit my pants if there had
been any digestion going on in my intestines, which there wasn't. It's hard
to eat when you're pregnant with a child you do not want.
My boyfriend accompanied me into the exam room. I was told to strip and lay
on the table, feet in the stirrups. I still remember the ugly swirl designs
and water marks on the ceiling. After a while, the nurse came in and
explained what would be happening.
She referred to the machine used for clinical abortions as a "suction
device," which is a more professional way of saying "vacuum cleaner." In
theory, if not design, this machine is quite like the Hoover Upright, the
Dust Buster, or the Shop-Vac in your closet at home.
The nurse forgot to tell me how vacuum cleaners are useful for cleaning up
messes, and in our society, a pile of kitty litter on the floor is treated
much the same as an undesired embryo. The main difference (though hardly
recognizable to Western Science) is that kitty litter is sucked from cold
linoleum and an embryo is sucked from a warm-blooded, living, being's womb.
Instead, because I was crying like La Llorana, she said, "Are you sure this
is what you want?"
What other goddamn choice did I have? I muttered, "Just do it, please."
She shot something into my cervix with the ugliest needle I'd ever seen. (I
don't think my cervix was residing under the belief that it would someday
have a large needle plunged into it, and so protested accordingly.) The pain
was overwhelming; my head swam into the netherworld between intense clarity
and murky subconscious.
Then I heard a quiet motor whirring.
The lady told me to recite my ABCs.
"A, B, C, D, E..." Something entered my vagina, deeper, deeper, deeper than I
imagined anything could possibly go.
"F, G, H, I, O, W..." The walls of my uterus were being sucked, it felt like
they were going to cave in. I screamed "O, P, X, X, D, VOWELS, WHAT ARE THE
VOWELS? R? K? A! A's A VOWEL!" And then my organs were surely being mowed
down by a tiny battalion of Lawn-Boys.
"S, did I say S?" My boyfriend who was crying too, didn't tell me whether I
said S or not.
There was a two-inch thick pad between my legs and blood gushed out of me.
The motor has stopped whirring. I was delirious. I asked, "What do you do
with all the fetuses? Where do they go? Do you bury them?" The lady ignored
me, which was fine, I had to puke. She led me into a bathroom and I vomited
bile, green foam. Then I went to a recovery room, laid down and cried. There
was another nurse woman in there, she patted my hand, reassured me, "I know
just how you feel." I said, "You've had an abortion before, too?" She said,
"No, but I know how you feel." I told her to get the fuck away from me.
For two weeks, there was a gaping wound in the center of my body. I could
hardly walk for five days.
Then, stupid me, a couple of years later, I got pregnant again. I lived in
Seattle still, but was just about to move to Olympia, to begin school at The
Evergreen State College. This time, I didn't feel like the city was trying to
keep me there, but I certainly wondered if this was going to be some kind of
new trend in my life-every time I'm about to move, Hades sends a soul my way.
I couldn't really see myself having an academic edge with a bun in the oven,
so I had to face the reality of going to that machine once again. This time I
was more terrified than before. I knew all too well what that rectangular box
and its quiet motor had planned for my reproductive system.
Have you any idea how it feels to willingly and voluntarily submit to
excruciating torture because you dumbly forgot to insert your diaphragm,
which gives you ugly yeast infections and hurts you to fuck unless you lie
flat on your back, anyway? I was to withstand this torture because I was a
bad girl. I didn't do good. I fucked up.
I had the same choice as before, that glowing, outstanding choice we ladies
fight tooth and nail for: the choice to get my insides ruthlessly sucked by
some inhuman shitpile, not invented by my foremothers, but by someone who
would never, ever in a million years have that tube jammed up his dickhole
and turned on full blast, slurping everything in its path.
After this, I studied different kinds of medicines and healing methods. One
thing college was teaching me was knowledge helps me transcend anger at all
the injustices in the world. Therefore, upon self-examination over why I had
the desire to physically mutilate individuals whose convictions were in
direct opposition to mine, I delved into histories and applications of
medicines far and wide.
I found one thing that was a constant: Healing starts from within. It
appeared to be some kind of law, no, more than a law. (Is breathing a law? Is
waking up a law? If so, maybe the notion of healing coming from within is a
law as well.) This concept is completely alien, even deviant, in our culture.
In this society, we look to the outside for just about everything: love,
entertainment, well-being, self-worth, and health. We stare into the TV set
instead of speaking of our own dreams; wait for a vacation instead of
appreciating each day; watch the clock rather than listen to our hearts.
Every livelong day we are bombarded with realities from the outside world,
seemingly nonstop. Phones, car alarms, pills, coffee, beepers, ads, radios,
elevator music, fax machines, gunshots, bright lights, fast cars, airplanes
overhead, computer screens, sirens, alcohol, newspapers. One hardly has the
opportunity to look inside for love and peace and other nice things like that.
Western medicine, that smelly deaf dog who farts across the house and we just
don't have the heart to put out of its misery, is based on a law opposite the
one the rest of the universe seems to go by, namely, Healing Has Nothing To
Do With You, Just Follow The Directions On The Label.
In America, we don't ( and we're also not encouraged to) look inside
ourselves for healing, finding truths or answers. If you want to know
something, you find out what The Person In Charge Of This Area says. The
weather is not to be discerned by looking at the sky, the mountains in the
distance, or by listening to the song of the wind. You will find it in the
Report of the Meteorologist. And likewise, if you are pregnant and don't want
to be, you don't look to yourself and the your immediate, personal resources
in your immediate, personal world, you pay a visit to the Abortionist, who
will subsequently predict the climate in your body for two weeks, guaranteed.
And so, la dee dah, once, twice, three times a lady, I got pregnant again. It
was the same boyfriend as the other two times only now we were breaking up.
It was the most fucked one of all because I didn't want to be with this man
and I shouldn't have fucked him, but it was his birthday and he was fun to
romp with and blah dee blah blah blah. No force on earth could make me feel
like I wanted this child, and furthermore, I promptly decided there was to be
no grotesque waltzing with that abhorrent machine.
So, I started talking to my girl friends. I was living in a small town with a
high population of like-minded women, so that was one thing in my favor right
there. Against me was the fact that I was eight weeks along, which is too
advanced for an organiclly induced miscarriage, according to most sources. I
made an appointment at the Women's Clinic as a back-up in case my way didn't
work out.
My dear friend Judy, the masseuse and scientist, was my biggest resource. She
and Panacea found some herbal tea recipes a Boston Anarchist-Feminist group
printed. (I tried to contact this group, but they seem to have disbanded.)
She came to my house almost every night and massaged my uterus where you are
not supposed to massage pregnant women who want to keep their babies. She
also did reflexology by rubbing either side of my Achilles heel on both feet.
I knew a naturopath in Olympia, who was one of my inspirations for learning
about healing from within. She taught me this thing called "imaging." It may
sound terribly new-age, but through imaging, I got rid of this weird bump I'd
had on my labia all my life. Since imaging goes on in your own head, I can't
tell you how to do it specifically. The basic idea is every night, when you
are falling asleep, imagine the part of your body that's giving you problems,
changing. For the bump on my labia, I imagined all this beautiful soft flesh
growing over and absorbing the bump. When I was pregnant, I imagined the
walls of my uterus gently shedding.
Eight days passed from when I started inducing miscarriage to the morning my
embryo plopped onto the bathroom floor.
Judy's consistent massages and me imaging the lining of my uterus away every
moment of my days, I feel, were the most crucial elements of my success
story. I was absolutely focused on miscarrying and I felt Judy's gentle, yet
firm prodding moved things along quite nicely.
It was an incantation. Me and my women friends did magic.
Esther's love made magic. She supported me and stayed with me every day.
Bridget thoughtfulness made magic. She brought me flowers. Possibly most
magical was the fact that, after the first couple of days, I possessed not
one filament of thought that filled me with glimmers of self-doubt. With that
core of supportive women surrounding me and with my mind made up, I was
pretty much invincible.
Many women I know have tried to induce miscarriage and failed because they
drank the tea and went about their life as if everything was normal, waiting
for the herbs to work their wonders. If you want to successfully induce
miscarriage, plan on devoting Your Entire Life to the attainment of this
goal. Breathe, eat, shit, and sleep thinking of nothing else but the lining
of your uterus shedding.
The herbal teas and other oral and topical applications I prescribed to
myself were little helpers. They served to further direct my own focus and
aid me in achieving my goal. Herbs are particularly good little helpers
because plants easily and synergistically jive with one's own magic and are
quite willing to work with you if you respect them.
The herbs I chose were Blue Cohosh Root and Pennyroyal Leaves.
Blue Cohosh is an abortifacient. That mean is brings on contractions and
makes your body think it's time to give birth. Blue Cohosh is a serious
fucking plant and is not palatable. Before even looking at it in your local
herb emporium, read up on it. I suggest doing so before there's even a need.
Pennyroyal is a much tastier herb, but don't let that fool you. It ain't
messin' around any more than Blue Cohosh. If you swallow Pennyroyal oil,
chances are you'll keel over, but we're not concerned with the oil here, so
just put it out of your mind. Think about the leaves. Pennyroyal is a member
of the venerable mint family and tastes just fine. It is an emmenagogue,
which means it greatly encourages the lining of your uterus to shed it's
monthly juices, but it's a powerful abortifacient as well.
One way to let your herbs know you respect them right off the bat is by never
letting them touch metal. Store herbs in glass, boil water for tea in either
glass or enamel pans and steep your tea in ceramic or glass pots. I used
quart Mason Jars for steeping, and a wooden spoon for stirring. (Stir all
herbal teas moon-wise) The reason for all this hoopla is metal has negative
ions which draw out and absorb the beneficial properties of herbs.
You aren't supposed to take these teas for more than five days, but by my
fifth day, I knew something was happening. I also knew I wasn't hurting my
body. If you have none of the symptoms of miscarrying (sharp, jabbing pains
deep in your uterus or blood spotting) by the fifth day, or, if your body is
somehow telling you it is terribly unhappy, stop taking these herbs. They can
fuck you up (See "Does PennyRoyal Kill").
When I bought the Blue Cohosh and Pennyroyal, I also purchased a tincture of
Shepherd's Purse. If I were to start hemorrhaging, which is always a
possibility when messing around with either of these herbs, the Shepherd's
Purse would abate the bleeding until I got to a hospital. Since it could save
my life if the need arose, I never went anywhere without that little brown
bottle.
To make the tea, I cupped my hand and filled my palm with equal amounts of
Blue Cohosh and Pennyroyal. I put each herb in a separate Mason Jar. I never
let the water come to a full boil. When the bubbles were just about to roll,
I poured it into the jars, about 3/4 of the way to the top. Then I stirred,
screwed lids on and let it brew for about fifteen minutes. I poured half of
each in a cup with some honey and drank it. Sometimes it took me an hour to
finish it all off. I ate a bowl of rice or couscous (any bland, easily
digested carbohydrate will do) while I drank the tea. This was the only time
I ate. I did this tea ritual in the morning and again at night.
Along with the tea, I ate copious amounts of Vitamin C, another
abortifacient. Vitamin C will not harm you in any way, but it does cause the
runs.
That's it for the oral applications. Topically, I used regular old parsley,
which contains progesterone, the hormone present in the body right before
starting your period. Also an abortifacient, the active ingredient in parsley
was once used by pharmaceutical companies as an abortive compound. I got me a
nice bunch of organic parsley. Organic is important because you don't want
anything that's soaked up god-knows-what poisons lurking around in your pussy
for hours. I washed it, wadded seven or eight sprigs into roughly the same
shape as a tampon and slipped it on past the ol' rubyfruit canal. Don't be
shy with the parsley, shove it on up as far as it will go. You want it as
close to your uterus as possible. I put fresh parsley wads in at eight hour
intervals.
After a week of non-stop imaging, massages, tea drinking, talking, downing
Vitamin C, inserting parsley tampons and concentrating, I was brushing my
teeth at the sink and felt a very peculiar mmmmbloommmp-like feeling. I
looked at the bathroom floor and there, between my feet, was some blood and a
little round thing. It was clear but felt like one of them unshiny
superballs. It was the neatest thing I ever did see. An orb of life and
energy, in my hand.
And Jesus H., wasn't I the happiest clam? It hardly hurt at all, just some
mild contractions. I bled very little, felt fine in two days. I wore black
for a week and had a little funeral in my head.
Organically inducing a miscarriage was definitely one of the top ten learning
experiences in my life thus far. You know, it's like when Germany invaded
Poland. I once read how in the ghettos of Warsaw, the people fighting the
Nazis wer
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