Yesterday I met a patient named Maribelle* who had to terminate her pregnancy; or rather, her pregnancy had ended. She miscarried, but she had to take a pill, mifepristone, I assume, to help her complete the miscarriage. She was the same age as me, which I only learned after the visit, and which stunned me, because her demeanor was that of a young woman. I was sure she was under 30, but no, she was well into middle age. She wore a bulky sweater, a puffy vest, and a hat and leggings. We did not speak the same language, and we used an interpreter to help us communicate. The interpreter was on the ball, she conveyed tone, and was witty and sensitive. I noticed Maribelle was wearing a necklace with a medallion of the Virgin Mary on it hanging below her sternum. She was talking about her faith, and I commented on the necklace. Is that the Virgin on your necklace?
“I’m not sure, I just put this on this morning because I thought it was cute,” she remarked, looking at the necklace, as if seeing it for the first time.
It is cute, I said, I just wondered if you felt like you needed Mary close to you today.
She made a face, and answered, “I only need God, I don’t worship Mary.”
I’ve heard this before. The first time was in my own family: Jesus is the son of God, and Mary is some pregnant teen who was nothing special. Catholics worship Mary, my mother whispered to me, judgment gathering in the corners of her mouth, but you just remember you worship Jesus. I’m skeptical about why so many Christians are so quick to dismiss Mary, to downplay her power, her capacity, her import. But I recognize it as a signal of various Protestant and Evangelical theologies.
I understand, I replied to Maribelle. I also think that Mary is a nice model, I said to her.
The interpreter repeated me in Yvonne’s language, and they two spoke to each other for a moment. Yvonne made another face, this one more open and curious than the last, as if she’d heard something that she hadn’t considered, but was going to. The interpreter spoke to me. “I said what you said, Mary is a nice model, and she said ‘what is Mary a model of?’ and I said, ‘she's the mother of Christ.’”
Exactly. It’s no accident to take the mother of Jesus with you into the hospital on the day that you learn your unborn baby is no longer alive. This mother knows better than anyone else about the death of a child.
These kinds of visits are never easy, and they’re never the same. Sometimes I expect that I know how someone is going to respond or feel when they learn their body has miscarried—which is a poor term to describe what really happens, which is that their body has realized that something is unhealthy, off, or unsafe with the pregnancy, and has ended it for the safety of everyone involved. It’s not a flaw or a failing; it’s a strategy our bodies have evolved to keep us alive. But language is often coarse when it comes to these kinds of things, so “miscarriage” is the best we have so far. I’ve met folx who are grateful that they miscarried, because they didn’t want to be pregnant, and folx who have spent tens of thousands trying to conceive and this is the second, or third, or fourth time that this has happened. I’ve met folx who are content to let it go down however it will, and folx who want to move heaven an earth if it means saving the almost-life growing inside them.
Maribelle was… surrendered? She kept saying that God would have his way, that this was God’s will. I’m not sure if I believe a statement like that on the face of it, that what God wants is for someone who is carrying a pregnancy and has chosen this, to lose it. I believe that God wants us to have lives that are sustainable and rich and full of love for ourselves and others, as reflections of God. I believe that God gives us the capacity to make choices that are in keeping with sustainability and community. I believe that is with us, loving us and accepting us, in all moments of our lives. But what I believe is of no consequence in this moment; in this moment, my work is to come alongside Maribelle, and if she believes this is God’s will, I try to hold that, and make space for any feelings she has to come up.
When we are done, I invite a nurse back into the room, and I walk slowly toward the elevators, breathing and thinking about where we are. Massachusetts. She lives here. No one on the L&D team is afraid to prescribe her mifepristone, to help her body do what it is already doing, that is, ending a pregnancy that would have developed into a child with illness and developmental defect. The baby’s heartbeat stopped because her body knew what was viable and what was not. The midwives and the nurses were all grateful to be collaborating on care with this woman. She lives here. She doesn’t have to wrestle with a prescriber from a different state who doesn’t speak her language. She doesn't have to manage her abortion at home without any family or friends to support her. The social worker, Miranda, is able to get her a ride back to the hospital for the rest of the procedure, and home again. She’s able to be monitored in a hospital with providers who aren’t afraid to touch her or care for her, for fear they’ll be prosecuted. Even as she is far away from home, sad, and scared, and trying to accept reality on its own terms, she is more resourced than many women in this country right now.
There are various women that I call on when I walk the halls caring for birthing people, people experiencing fertility issues, people grieving loss. I call on Julian, who reminds me of Divine presence in loss and suffering. I call on Margaret , who would not allow her children to be taken back into slavery, and would still their heartbeat by her own hand before she would give them to the slow death of the master. I call on those who protect the women laboring, the women struggling to stay alive, the women who are scared to be themselves, the women who are scared to bring new life into this world. I call on Mary, who spoke prophecy over the incubating body of her child when she visited her friend.
The fire of my devotion to the Reproductive Justice movement still burns as brightly as it ever did. It might burn a bit less cleanly, based on how much harder it has become for reproducing people to have the privacy, access, and opportunity they need to make the good and right choices for themselves and their families. I get fewer opportunities than I might have hoped for to speak plainly with people about choosing to be a parent, choosing how and when and on what terms, and discerning how their faith supports them. But there are some days when I feel grateful for the facets of my ministry: the fact that I work in a state that has protected abortion as medical care; the fact that I work in a hospital that has resources for patients who don’t speak English; the fact that when I come alongside these patients, they are not being met by a faith leader who will judge them. They are only met by someone who will show them love, who will support them, and who will be present however they need.
*None of the names you read when I write about my work are real ones. Just FYI.