Friday I was to get started on my application for the SFAI alumni show. I cancelled plans with a friend to stay home and work on choosing paintings, taking pictures, and writing an artist statement.  I get into my studio about 11:00, let myself work on a few pieces to get through some angst I’m feeling. I had been listening to a radio program where people were calling in and expressing their feelings towards the planned parenthood  hearings. A man came on the radio talking about how he thought the government shouldn’t give any money to Planned Parenthood with all his reasons behind why he thought that way, as he was talking I got really mad. I said “fuck you world and your moral highground” That same day  someone had posted a video on facebook about a story of a baby who was born with an unformed skull and brain. He was a year old in the video, happy, but has started having seizures. The parents said they know he will die young. When the woman was pregnant the doctors told her she should terminate because of the deformities. At the top of the facebook share the person wrote what “selfless, wonderful people” or something to that regard. It made me angry because I feel that it would   have been just as selfless to have an abortion. The baby will probably end up hooked up to machines in a hospital, that’s not quality of life. Now I know these are things I should just ignore, not let them bother me. But I have lots of personal experience with these matters.  From a young age my body, pregnancy, and shame  were part of me. I wrote about getting pregnant in my piece  months ago, Christopher Antonio Homer   https://dirtylaundryblog.com/2015/02/19/christopher-antonio-homer/  (I just read my piece thinking it was way longer than it is! That one deserves a lot more attention! I’ll update it, be on the lookout!)  I would have done anything to get an abortion but I was scared and hid the pregnancy the whole nine months until I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance to give birth to a baby  without a brain, he only lived six weeks. I blocked the experience out of my mind with drugs and alcohol for several years until it was so buried I could go on with my life. The memories came flooding back three years ago during the peek of my journey trying to get pregnant, especially after the miscarriage. The reason it makes me so mad when people say they are against abortion and judge other people is because it’s so personal. The choice is the womans and hers alone. Fertility, having babies, not having babies, being a parent, are all complex and individual decisions that each person needs to make for themselves.

Needless to say I didn’t get any work done for my application and I don’t know if it’s going to happen! But taking that pressure off myself made me feel better and have more fun all weekend long!!!