As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a mother and a women’s health researcher, I strongly oppose further restrictions to abortion access, such as those recently proposed by Utah state Rep. Kera Birkeland in HB382.
Growing up as a Latter-day Saint, I was taught profound respect for the sacrifice a woman makes to grow and birth a child. In a 2013 General Conference (a world-wide convening for members of the LDS faith) Elder D. Todd Christofferson said, “Women play an integral part (sometimes at the risk of their own lives) in God’s work and glory “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”
And last year, Elder Neil L. Andersen said, “For a woman, having a child can be a great sacrifice physically, emotionally, and economically. We love and honor the amazing women of this Church.”
Church authorities now, and throughout the church’s history, have acknowledged and revered the magnitude of a woman’s sacrifice in carrying and giving birth to babies.
When I became a mother, I experienced that sacrifice for myself. Being pregnant with and giving birth to my three children was the hardest thing I have ever done. A relatively minor complication during the birth of my first child left me with months of physical and mental pain. When I was pregnant with my second child, I slept in the bathroom so I could wake up to vomit, and then try to catch a few hours of sleep.
I still carry the scars of pregnancy on my body. I recall the difficulty of those first postpartum months when my body stitched itself back together, and I learned to care for my newborns. My husband and I are far enough out of those exhausted newborn days to remember them mostly with fondness, and a sense of wonder that we survived. For us, those sacrifices were worth the reward, but they were indeed sacrifices.
My own experiences during pregnancy and childbirth led me to pursue a career in women’s health. As a researcher, the data confirms what I know from lived experience: Pregnancy and childbirth can be costly to a woman’s health and wellbeing. Women risk death, severe complications, and the psychosocial effects of perinatal depression during pregnancy and childbirth. The risk of dying due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth is higher in the United States than in any other high-resource country.
My research, my religious beliefs and my personal experience all confirm the incredible sacrifice women make in growing and birthing a baby. As my appreciation of that sacrifice has grown, so has my conviction that women should be able to choose for themselves whether to make that sacrifice.
Many women become pregnant without choosing to, through an unplanned pregnancy, as well as instances of rape or incest. I ache for these women whenever additional abortion restrictions are introduced. I imagine them shouldering the serious physical and emotional costs of pregnancy on top of the extenuating circumstances that surround an unwanted or untenable pregnancy. Imposing ever more restrictions on an already heavily restricted process forces women to carry pregnancies against their will and does not acknowledge the work and sacrifice of carrying and birthing a baby.
My choice to carry and birth my children came with incredible sacrifice and incredible reward. Honoring that choice means protecting the ability of women to decide if to make that choice for themselves.
Jami Baayd
Jami Baayd is a women’s health researcher in Salt Lake City.
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