I don’t know who I should address this to! The Minister of Health? The Quebec Order of Obstetricians? Anyway, I hope that if people around them read my post, the message will get across.
How many times have I heard stories of horrific childbirth experiences, emergency C-sections where the mother’s life was at risk, severe gestational diabetes, and major complications during pregnancy? How many women get pregnant young and finish starting their families young? How many women have trouble getting pregnant, and after just one child, their family is complete? Yet obstetricians refuse to perform tubal ligations or other procedures to prevent mothers from having more children.
I’ve spoken with women who nearly died during childbirth: doctors refused to operate on them because they were supposedly too young to stop having children. In my case, I have a physical condition affecting my body and pelvis that means I can only have C-sections. I have a hard time with pain—I’ve already endured two, and I don’t think I’ll be able to handle any more. During my second pregnancy, I developed gestational diabetes and had to give myself injections every day. Eating nothing but peanut butter on toast and vegetables for 40 weeks? NO THANKS! Not twice! So for us, our family will stop after my second C-section. At just 22 years old, you’ll tell me that’s impossible! But why?
Will this doctor—who decides whether a family is complete or not, who doesn’t respect these women’s choices—take responsibility if a woman dies as a result of another high-risk pregnancy because he refused to operate on her under the pretext that she was too young? If complications arise and put our lives in danger, do we have the right to sue this doctor? What are our options? Hormone-laden contraceptives and latex condoms until we reach menopause? Is this doctor’s life, body, and family at stake here? NO! It’s ours! We have the right to make any decision, including the decision to stop having children.
We see countless protests about abortion—because it’s our bodies, our choice—but not to get a tubal ligation? At that point, do our bodies no longer belong to us? We can use abortion 32 times as a form of birth control without being turned away, without judgment, and without comments from the doctor, but we can’t decide whether our family will have one or twelve children. No! At that point, they’re the ones deciding for us.
Women who undergo insemination have to pay. Why not make those who want to reverse their tubal ligation pay? That would be a simple and effective solution—let us choose and stop denying us our rights!
If you ask me if I want more, I’ll tell you that, of course, my dream is a big family of twelve, just like in the movie! But when I look at everything my body puts me through, I remain realistic, and I’ll cuddle and love my two children as if they were twelve! That will be more than enough after all my health issues… and even without any health issues, the number I would have chosen would have been my choice, and no one has the right to say anything about it.
MY body, MY family—let me not have any more children at 22!