autonomy, and the weaponization of regret

In late 2019, just before the pandemic completely changed the world, I found out I was pregnant. Before taking the test, I thought, either way, it will be okay. If I’m pregnant, this [having a kid] is just how it will happen for me. I was 32 and I always knew I wanted a child, never doubted that I was a mother, had already explored becoming a single mom by choice. When the test window immediately lit up with the positive two lines, my stomach dropped. Either way, as it turned out, was not okay. I had just started dating someone new, and meanwhile was still occasionally fucking someone that I knew damn well I shouldn’t be. I took another couple tests, all confirming my new reality. I was filled with dread. For the next two weeks, I stared down two different paths, both seemingly impossible and horrifying to me. The rest of this story is one of complexity, but the nuances of human experience are obscured in the body politic, and politics of the body.

There are obvious parallels made between the state’s attacks on reproductive and transgender rights. It is an issue of bodily autonomy, and while the right wing in the US has long touted individual freedoms among its core values, not all people are afforded the right to self-determination - and the determining factor is, of course, gender. Reproductive justice and trans rights organizers know how intertwined these movements are. All oppressions - and freedoms - are bound up in each other, but some more explicitly so.

But what I’ve been thinking about - particularly when gender-affirming care is shoved into the headlines once again, and the wellbeing of trans people, trans children, is subjected to the violent cruelty of the State - is regret.

I know something about regret. I agonized over my decision during those two weeks after discovering my pregnancy. A toxic and emotionally abusive dynamic took a turn toward suffocating harassment and I felt real fear that my life was in danger in myriad ways. Ultimately I decided to have an abortion, not because I was certain or because I didn’t want to have a child at that time, but because given all the information I had and how my world had changed in those two weeks, it was the best decision I could make. The following year was one of the hardest of my life and often, I regretted my decision. In the weeks following my abortion I experienced severe, extremely painful cramping and emotional upheaval. I began to believe that this had been my opportunity to have a child and I gave it up. I hated myself as much if not more than the person who made it feel impossible to continue my pregnancy. I was desperate to understand how things could have gone differently, replaying the relationship and the pregnancy and my decision over and over in my mind. My insomnia was the worst it had ever been, my nights spent in a spiral of anxiety and my days in a dumb sleep-deprived daze. It was hard for me to live in the wake of my abortion.

Prior to this experience I had spent my life fearing regret. I don’t know if everyone feels this way. Maybe some are more risk-averse. As for me, I’ve always tried to say what was on my heart, to make sure I always did my part, and to live in line with my values. I thought that this would protect me from living with regret. It didn’t. Life just don’t really work that way and if you’re lucky to live long and fully enough, you’ll find out. Fuck around and find out ain’t just for the careless.

I know it’s more complex than this but I see one major argument floating to the top in the Skrmetti case that was decided this week, upholding the Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors - that children need more time to live in and understand their sex assigned at birth before being allowed to make such consequential changes to their bodies, lest they grow up to regret it. This argument is, of course, a farce. But let’s play along.

I wouldn’t argue that kids or adults who transition never grow to regret some of their decisions or change how they wish to represent their gender. To argue that would be to flatten the vast and diverse experiences of trans people to one that fits more easily into a talking point. The majority of trans people who receive gender-affirming care will experience overwhelmingly positive outcomes. Certainly, there are people dissatisfied with scars from surgery or need to adjust their hormone therapies until its right for them. For some their gender identities and expressions continue to transform over their lifetimes. Some will “detransition” to varying degrees. For some, regret may be one of the feelings of their complex lived experience.

…and?

My feelings about my abortion shifted over time, as I healed from the trauma surrounding the circumstances of my brief pregnancy and the conditions under which I had to make a decision, from the violence of it. I connected with others who experienced reproductive trauma, made art, pursued my desire to have a child. After some time I accepted that my abortion was what I needed to do at the time, while also accepting that had I continued the pregnancy, I would have done my best with that too. I accepted the role I played in all that happened as much as I accepted how the violence of another was out of my control. I know my life would look very differently had I continued that pregnancy, and I’m now glad I didn’t venture down that path. It is a part of my life story. It was painful. I also learned from it and made meaning of my experience. I have never, in my deepest depression or sharpest pangs of regret, wished that decision wasn’t mine to make.

I share my story sometimes, even though it has often felt like pro-abortion activism means only uplifting how abortion positively impacted people’s lives. Many people’s abortions are more straightforward than mine and for many their decision was clear. I understand the rationale for only highlighting those stories - because when your rights and humanity are threatened, it’s safer to flatten a community or life experience into something palatable for those who would decide your fate. It’s a strategy, and it too, is dehumanizing in its own way.

There is life after life-changing decisions. There is pain and joy and connection and art. There is regret. There are options. There will continue to be change - the only lasting truth, as Octavia Butler said. Trans people and people who have abortions don’t owe anyone an exclusively positive healthcare experience to deserve access to it. As if the risk of future regret is more horrifying than children who would rather die than go through puberty living in a body that feels like a stranger. Trans children don’t owe anyone a lifetime of never having looked back, to deserve a life. This weaponization of regret is an assault, not just on bodily autonomy, but emotional autonomy.

And with that I’m done entertaining the absurd argument that gender-affirming care for children should be banned so as to protect them from possible regret.

Because in what deluded universe does the world’s war-monger, funder of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians - whose youth are left orphaned, limbless and starving - give a mother FUCK about children’s wellbeing or future? It is and always has been about subjugation of bodies, of those who are not white cis men. As of this writing, the US has joined Israel tonight in the bombing of Iran.