Now that I’ve had my hysterectomy, I’m not fighting my body every day. Now that I’ve come out, I’m not fighting my heart. When I was in middle school I told my friends that I never wanted to have kids. In high school I told my parents that all they’d ever get from me would […]
Husband, being the father of a Black child will not be easy, because by nature (and history), it forces us to confront the fact that the world we thought we knew is not the world we know at all. Husband, for the last few years, we’ve been very firm in our decision to not have […]
And what to do if your child was told by someone else that abortion is wrong. In coming decades, better birth control like long-acting IUDs and implants may make elective abortion virtually obsolete. But for now, unsought pregnancy is still painfully common; over a million American women have an abortion each year. Women end pregnancies for many reasons, […]
I don’t think they’ll ever offer their girlfriends Midol, but periods have lost their mystique and element of shame. I met my first real boyfriend my sophomore year of high school. Every afternoon when he wasn’t working, we hung out at his house while his mom was at work. One of those afternoons, not long […]
This is what happens when kids grow up. Innocent actions are suddenly seen as inappropriate, disrespectful, and a form of harassment. Earlier this school year, my eight-year-old son did something “inappropriate” at school. During lunch, he lifted his shirt and showed his stomach to the boy sitting next to him. A female classmate sitting across […]
If my dad hates liberals and feminists, he hates me. If he hates Muslims and unauthorized immigrants, he hates the people that I love. “You can’t cut people out of your life if their politics don’t align with yours,” my therapist told me. We were sitting in her office a few days after the election […]
We need to offer women a full spectrum view of what might happen to their future children — not showcase a skewed sample of positive individual experiences. As a pro-choice mother to an eight-year-old boy with Down syndrome, I consider a woman’s choice and reasoning related to abortion to be her business alone. Women who receive a prenatal […]
I wasn’t sure dating was the solution. What if it didn’t work out? That would leave me 36 years old, still with no baby on the horizon. “Is it hopelessly improbable to find the mother of your children on OkCupid? We’ll see, won’t we. I’ve always wanted to be a dad. I had a great […]
