Kiwi Bertola
translated by Cassia Tavares and Alessandra Marimon
“People say they care about fetuses. This is a big lie, no one really cares about them. The thing about it is, obligating a woman to be a mother is a form of control, and controlling people feels good. Either you have money (another form of control) to have a safe abortion or you die, because death is also a form of control. That’s all. I’ve lost two children: Tomás, with almost 7 months of pregnancy, and Amora, with 3 months of being pregnant. Nobody in my family thinks of them as children. Our friends don’t think of them as children.
People who know that I’ve lost my children ask me when I will be a mother, because to them, being pregnant and giving birth to dead babies doesn’t make me a mother. It’s only ‘game on’ when your baby is alive. Then, you have their approval. You get to join the ‘maternity club.’
How many women who have suffered a miscarriage do you know? How many of those women have named their babies? Where are their graves? There aren’t any. On their death certificates, we read “stillborn baby”. No name or last name. And that’s if you’re lucky, because a pregnancy of three months doesn’t give you the right to have a document like that.
What kind of cruel society believes that fetuses are as human as you and me, while not giving them a grave, a name, or a death certificate? It is because, truthfully, they don’t believe in that. When I say that I am a mother of two, people think I’m crazy. They find it odd the fact that I named Amora. “Didn’t you lose her on your third month? Why did you name her?” Ask those women who have lost their babies if someone cared about them. In the hospital, they wouldn’t let me see my son because he was just a fetus (yes, they said that).
The doctor who attended me said it wouldn’t have been a problem if my son had fallen down the toilet (where they had put me to give birth) because he was already dead anyway. Is that the respect a human being deserves?
When I went for an ultrasound to check if I really have had a miscarriage while I was pregnant of Amora, the doctor told me: “That’s great, your uterus is clean. All of that is gone, you won’t even need a curettage.” All of THAT is gone.
Ask the women who have suffered a miscarriage if they had any VIP treatment at the hospital. I don’t even know how many times I’ve heard “soon you will give birth again” (as if it were easy to replace people) or “don’t be sad… losing a baby this way is normal”. Do you say that to someone who have lost an 18-year-old? No. How about a 1-year-old? No. But saying that to someone who have lost a fetus? Yes, then they can. I can give a million examples of how the society doesn’t think of fetuses as human beings, whether they are only few days old or 38 weeks old.
If having kids was so incredible and wonderful as society wants us to believe, there wouldn’t be so many children abandoned in the world! Women should be mothers only if they want to. Men already have the choice not to be a father by abandoning their child. Let the mothers have their choice too, but in a much more better way than just turning their backs to their kids. Do not be hypocrites.
