I’m pregnant.

Thank you for all the well wishes; my husband and I are indeed thrilled to be awaiting the birth of Baby Geiger in August. (In case you missed the byline, this is your favorite ERI gal Emily Geiger, formerly Emily Albrecht. I got married last November!)

Anyways, I’m thrilled about my pregnancy.

But what if I wasn’t thrilled?

In the days after two little pink lines on a stick announced that there is a tiny human growing inside my body, I couldn’t help but imagine what life would be like if I wasn’t pro-life; if I didn’t know what I do about pregnancy and abortion; if my life circumstances were different and more challenging.

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Week 4

I’ve gotta say, the “missed-period pills” marketing strategy is genius.

As my colleague Andrew has investigated before, Missed-Period Pills are a new strategy of the abortion lobby designed to abort human embryos while being marketed to women who might otherwise feel uncomfortable with abortion. “The pills are just misoprostol—half of the typical chemical abortion regimen—and what they are designed to do is procure a chemical abortion without the woman needing to know whether or not she’s pregnant. In other words, it’s either a chemical abortion or an unnecessary, unindicated medical intervention, but the patient doesn’t have to know which one.”

Back to my story: a few days after my period was supposed to have arrived, I was cramping a lot. It felt like my period just desperately wanted to start but was having trouble.

Of course, no two women’s pregnancy experiences are the same. (Just ask any two women!) But these symptoms are extremely common; when I eventually downloaded the What to Expect app, the Week 4 section listed “PMS-like symptoms” under the Common Symptoms heading. Moodiness, bloating, and cramping are all perfectly normal in week four of pregnancy, aka the same week when most women are expecting their period to arrive. So expecting your period to arrive and being pregnant…they have exactly the same symptoms.

I’m pro-life, and my husband and I were excited to have a baby, so when my period didn’t come, I took a pregnancy test. But I was cramping so hard and it felt so exactly like my period was about to start that I was confident I wasn’t pregnant. I literally only took the test because I wanted to know for sure, so I would stop hoping I was pregnant and I’d be less disappointed when my period finally started!

Lo and behold, I was pregnant.

But if I had been pro-choice and didn’t want to be pregnant, it would have been so incredibly easy to convince myself that they were just period symptoms, and my body simply needed a little help to induce my period to start. I’d never have thought to take a pregnancy test, and the idea of a “missed-period pill? Absolutely! My body just needs a little help to get my period going, that’s all.

“Missed-period pills” are incredibly dangerous, both for women and for unborn children, yet most pro-life people have never heard of them. With the clinical trial at the University of California San Francisco set for completion in September of this year, we cannot allow ourselves to be caught flatfooted when these pills hit the market.

Week 5 & 6

As thrilled as I was to be pregnant, I only felt the excitement in my head. The rest of my body felt angry and just plain weird.

That’s the strange thing about early pregnancy; you don’t actually feel the baby or, honestly, anything positive at all. Your first physical associations with pregnancy are wildly negative. I was in abdominal pain, had spontaneous dizzy spells, and experienced frequent waves of nausea. I felt exhausted at 2 pm and was simultaneously constantly starving while absolutely no food sounded appealing. And I lived with a trash can next to me at all times, with more and more time being spent with my head in it than out of it as the days crawled by.

I’m not writing this for your pity. I’m writing this because of the approximately 80 year-old man who declared after one of my speeches two years ago, “Pregnancy isn’t hard! I mean, maybe it’s a little uncomfortable for the last month, but any woman who is complaining about pregnancy needs to put on her big girl pants and deal with it.”

I wasn’t even pregnant yet, and I felt viscerally angry.

Pregnancy is hard. Period.

Does that difficulty justify killing an innocent human? Absolutely not. But pro-life people, please, please realize that minimizing the very real effects of pregnancy on women is not only wildly ignorant but it is severely hurting our movement.

Women can do this. We are strong, and, especially with strong people in our life helping us every step of the way, we absolutely can do this!

But we need those strong people encouraging us along the way. If I didn’t have my husband, if I didn’t have my family, if I didn’t have my friends or literally anyone in my life who was supporting me during my pregnancy, it would have been so easy to let these feelings of sickness drive me to believe that I couldn’t do this. There are days that I cried with my head in the trash can while part of my brain questioned whether or not I could stand weeks and weeks more of this.

Pregnancy is hard. Instead of running from that reality, I believe the pro-life movement must embrace it, saying “yeah, it’s hard—really, really hard—but we’re here to help you.” Reach out to your local pregnancy center. You don’t have to have money to donate; what pregnant women need is that support system. Many pregnancy centers are in desperate need of mentors to walk with pregnant moms and expecting dads. Whether it’s as involved as helping teach a parenting class or as simple as dropping off some groceries or taking her to coffee, you being there as a cheerleader and lending a helping hand will mean more to her than you may ever know.

Week 7 & 8

“Congratulations! You’re having a baby!”

Having. They mean it in the future sense.

Pro-lifers, this is not that hard to figure out. It took me about three seconds on Twitter to find countless examples of pro-lifers trying to prove that because we never say “congratulations, you’re having a fetus,” everyone therefore obviously knows it’s a baby. So abortion is wrong, duh.

I even found a national organization that ran a whole ad campaign based on this idea.

During week seven, my husband and I told our families we were expecting, both because we were thrilled and because it had become impossible to hide my non-stop nausea. While searching for pregnancy announcement ideas, I re-came-across this classic pro-life faulty argument, and it frustrated me to no end.

Remember: when you’re seven weeks pregnant, you have zero positive physical experiences with pregnancy. It in no way feels like there is a tiny human inside of you; it 100% feels like you have the stomach flu, constipation, headaches, low blood sugar, and insomnia all at once. Even if you’re lucky and have basically no symptoms, you still don’t feel the baby. People say “you’re having a baby” because you are, in the future, having a baby, not because they see you as literally, right now, in possession of a baby. Sure, it’s grammatically incorrect, but that’s what they mean.

Of course, I am literally, right now, in possession of a tiny human. I know that, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

But some pro-choice people don’t see it that way, while others recognize the tiny human but don’t see that human as having any moral value (or at least not trumping the woman’s bodily autonomy). When pro-choice people say “you’re having a baby,” they are in no way, shape, or form “admitting” the fact that “obviously everybody already knows” a fetus is a person with the same rights as you and me.

Our job as pro-life advocates is to humanize the unborn. There are helpful ways to do that and ways that do absolutely nothing to advance the pro-life cause. Use your time and your words wisely. I can and do make arguments about the personhood of the unborn that pro-choice people actually find compelling, and you can, too. At no point in my pregnancy will you see me try to argue that, purely because people refer to me as pregnant with a “baby” or “having a baby,” abortion therefore must be wrong. Pro-lifers should be seen as people who think well, who value logic, ethics, science, and equality. Handing pro-choice people in the Twitter comments an easy way to make pro-lifers look stupid—which the people under those comments I screenshotted above did in less time than it took me to write this sentence—is not helping our cause.

Week 9 & 10

I saw my child yesterday.

As I am writing this, the morning after my nine-week ultrasound, I cannot help but have a giant smile on my face.

I’ve heard pro-life advocates for years discuss the power of ultrasounds in causing abortion-minded women to choose life, and I believed them. But now, I really, really believe them. 

Seeing an ultrasound in real life is extremely different from seeing one in pictures, even different from seeing my own ultrasound photo in the subsequent days as it hangs on our refrigerator. While my nine-week ultrasound photo above looks like a cross between a blob and a human, the living, moving, being you watch live on the screen in the office is unmistakably human. It wiggles. It’s little heart visibly beats, with tiny flashes on the screen at 174 beats per minute showing us just how much hard work his or her body is doing right now!

It was breathtakingly beautiful.

There’s a reason our Sidewalk Counseling Masterclass teaches that one of the most effective signs you can carry outside of an abortion clinic is “Free Ultrasound, Ask Me How.” Sidewalk counselors from around the country have told us the power of helping women leave the abortion clinic to get a free ultrasound at the local pregnancy center; seeing the tiny life inside of them can change everything.

While the vast majority of pregnancy centers have an ultrasound machine (if your local one doesn’t, help them start a campaign to fix that!), many don’t have enough staff to have the ultrasound machine up and running frequently. I feel even more strongly now that it must be standard operating procedure to get abortion-minded women ultrasounds as soon as humanly possible. I know pregnancy center nurses who’ve come in after hours or dropped everything on a Saturday to give an abortion-minded woman an ultrasound; these nurses are heroes.

I also know a lot of pregnancy center directors thanks to the many pregnancy center banquets I’ve spoken for around the country, and the story is frequently the same: “We want to be open for more hours, but we need more staff, and we really need to hire more nurses.”

Maybe it sounds weird for one non-profit organization to tell you to donate to a different non-profit organization, but that should tell you just how much I believe in their cause. In order to effectively combat disinformation campaigns that pregnancy centers are “fake clinics” that don’t provide trustworthy medical care, we must increase the presence of medical personnel in our centers. Not to mention that I believe providing quality medical care by licensed medical personnel to women should always be our goal, regardless of what the abortion lobby thinks. The unfortunate reality is that, due to economic challenges and the difficulty of finding pro-life medical personnel, it is incredibly difficult for pregnancy centers to reach this goal.

Donate to your local pregnancy center so they can increase or acquire medical staff. If you’re a nurse, consider completing training to perform limited obstetric ultrasounds, and volunteer your time or go take that job at your local pregnancy center!

Week 11 & 12

Point out genuinely virtuous behavior whenever possible.

I announced my pregnancy publicly across all our platforms this week. Thank you to the many, many of you who emailed, texted, commented, and visited me personally at our March for Life booth to say congratulations. I’ve received an overwhelming amount of support, encouragement, and excitement from you all, and it truly made my week!!

I also had the unique experience of announcing my exciting news to an audience who…let’s say isn’t my biggest fan. While the vast majority of viewers of my daily TikToks/Reels are excited about our work here at ERI, including many pro-choice people who thank me for helping them think differently about abortion, it probably isn’t surprising to you that there are some pro-choice people who are less than thrilled with my growing platform for spreading powerful pro-life arguments.

While hundreds upon hundreds of comments on my pregnancy announcement video were along the lines of “CONGRATULATIONS!!!!”, there was one comment in particular that stood out to me from one of those pro-choice people, someone I’ll call “Klaus”.

Without any context, my simple reply “Thanks, Klaus!” probably seems very strange. But Klaus is a known-entity on the ERI TikTok channel—a passionate pro-choice person who comments one, two, sometimes five times on every single video I post. I’ve made many, many TikToks based on Klaus’ pro-choice comments, which are frequently quite snarky. While the latter half of this particular comment is no exception, what caught my attention was the first half. Klaus reached across the aisle the tiniest little bit right there:

“Congrats – genuinely happy for you.”

It would have been incredibly easy to ignore his five nice words, remembering the hundreds of snarky things he’s written in the past, and just scroll on by. Or I could have rolled my eyes at his “seems like you’ve always wanted people to be pregnant” and snapped back “ummm…more like I’ve always wanted people to not kill babies ‍#it’snotthathard”.

At ERI, we teach that you should point out common ground with pro-choice people whenever possible. I believe a second thing: you should also point out genuinely virtuous behavior whenever possible. Even and especially when the person has a history of less-than-virtuous behavior.

So I didn’t scroll on by. I stopped and said thanks.

I didn’t comment on his mischaracterization of my motives or his veiled assertion that being pro-people-getting-to-choose automatically gives you the moral high ground. I just said thanks.

That happened yesterday, so I can’t sit here and tell you that he’s a changed person (he probably isn’t) or that his comments are so much less snarky now (we’ll have to see on that one). But I can tell you that how you treat people matters, and how you model a good standard of dialogue matters. He definitely wasn’t expecting me to reach back across the aisle and thank him, especially given my history of making videos based on his previous comments. I believe that over time, as we treat people who disagree with us well and positively reinforce their virtuous behavior, they will eventually rise to the occasion and treat us well in return.

—

That’s all for now.

If you’ve made it this far, wow…that was a lot of random musings from my pregnancy brain! Do you have any pregnancy advice? Hot takes? Just leave a comment; I’d love to hear from you.

~ Emily Geiger & Baby Geiger

—

Weeks 13-15

I have a baby bump.

Now, if I’m being honest, it looks a little more like I just ate too much lunch than I’m pregnant. But nonetheless, it’s real. My jeans don’t fit anymore. I took a photo to commemorate my bump. And just like that, morning sickness felt a lot easier to handle.

It’s not that my morning sickness symptoms got better; I’ve actually had some of my worst sick days these last two weeks. It’s that there’s something psychologically powerful about having a physical manifestation of your pregnancy that makes the sacrifice seem easier.

It doesn’t take genius insight to realize that it is much easier to bear sacrifice for something or someone that is tangible to you rather than for what feels like “for no reason.” And it’s even easier to sacrifice for someone that you love rather than for a total stranger. As a Christian, I, of course, believe that we should be willing to make sacrifices to help anyone in need, but those sacrifices are generally harder for us to make when we can’t and may never see their fruit. That’s just human psychology.

Not to beat a dead horse, but you don’t feel pregnant in those first weeks of pregnancy; you feel sick. You feel ridiculously nauseous and dizzy and exhausted for what seems like absolutely no reason, and at least for me, telling yourself, “It’s because you’re pregnant, duh!” wasn’t really helpful. It feels like you’re making a huge sacrifice in your life for nothing and no one because you can’t see anyone benefiting. If anything, I was doing far less to take care of my husband than I had before, so that felt like the exact opposite of altruism!

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes

But the day my jeans didn’t fit and I walked to the mirror to discover an actual, pronounced, can’t-deny-it baby bump, it’s like my brain clicked into finally believing me.

I’m pregnant.

There’s an actual baby in there (the size of an orange?! Oh my goodness, that seems really big…), so of course I feel weird!! I’m doing this for the baby! I’m tired because I’m helping the baby grow! I’m nauseous because my progesterone levels are really high to protect the baby! It’s all for the baby! 

That’s all I needed to find my second wind. I still felt sick, but the sickness was a much lighter burden to carry. Instead, I was digging through my closet to find the clothes that best showed off my growing bump. When I needed to lay down, I’d rest with one hand on my bump and the other scrolling nursery ideas on Pinterest. It finally felt real.

I think this is one of the many reasons the pro-life movement needs to be a support system for pregnant women as quickly as possible into their pregnancies. The faster we can get a woman into her local pregnancy center—seeing her baby on an ultrasound, taking parenting classes, picking out onesies and toys from the baby boutique—the more we can help it “feel real” for her, too. And when that bump finally pops, let us be the world’s biggest cheering section for her.

Weeks 16–18

I got a pretty snarky comment about my unborn child from a pro-choice person on TikTok.

Of course, the underlying argument (I don’t think he realized he was making) was pretty absurd: If our government currently recognizes a human as having rights, then they have inherent rights, but if the government doesn’t currently recognize their rights, then they don’t have inherent rights.

Yikes. I really, really wouldn’t recommend using what the government believes right now as the standard for who actually has rights and who doesn’t. Our government has definitely gotten it wrong before (*cough cough*…slavery), and the fact the government didn’t grant them rights certainly didn’t mean that enslaved people quite literally lacked inherent rights. They had inherent human rights; those rights were just being wrongfully ignored by the government.

But this comment got me thinking: should you be able to claim your fetus on a tax return as a dependent?

I think the answer is yes. I’m certainly not a tax expert, so maybe I’m wrong that it should be classified as a “dependent” specifically, but I stand by the point that pregnant women should be recognized for the money they’re spending to take care of their unborn child just like they’d be recognized for the money they’re spending to take care of their born children. 

The point of claiming a dependent on a tax return is to get recognized for the money you spend caring for that person. You don’t have to pay as much in income taxes because the government recognizes that your disposable income is lower when you’re taking care of a child or other dependent.

If you’re on Medicaid that covers 100% of prenatal, delivery, and postpartum medical care, but insurance doesn’t cover 100%, and there are certainly other pregnancy expenses, too, regardless of whether you’re on Medicaid or insurance! Here are a few things I’ve spent money on directly because of my pregnancy, not including insurance co-pays/deductibles for my medical care:

Item:	Cost:	Recurring Expense?	Total:
Prenatal vitamins	$26 per 60 days	Yes, for 266 total days of pregnancy	$115
Over-the-counter nausea medications	$15	No, for 1st trimester only	$15
Over-the-counter heartburn medications	$15	Yes, for 2nd and 3rd trimester	$30
Calcium supplements	$12 per 50 days	Yes, for 266 total days of pregnancy	$63
Liquid IV to replace electrolytes lost due to nausea	$70	No, for 1st trimester only	$70
New pregnancy-bump-friendly clothing (seriously, nothing fits anymore!!)	Vox estimates the average woman spends $500 on maternity clothing	No	$500
Gas and car mileage to and from OBGYN appointments	30 miles roundtrip at the federal mileage reimbursement of 67 cents per mile = $20.10	Yes, for appointments at 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40 weeks of pregnancy	$261
A pregnancy pillow (that supports your growing stomach while you sleep, assisting with round ligament pain)	$30	No	$30
			TOTAL: $1,033.30

That’s $1,033.30. And that’s not money I’m spending preparing the nursery for the baby; that is purely money I’m spending directly because I’m currently pregnant and need to take care of my body that’s growing an unborn human in it. And again, that’s also not including insurance co-pays/deductibles for pregnancy-related medical care.

Pregnant women should be recognized for the money they’re spending on this pregnancy just like they’d be recognized for the money they’re spending taking care of their two-month-old baby.

Our team at ERI is passionate about providing tangible support to women and families through government programs, and the rest of the pro-life movement is, too. In 2023, Josh Brahm and the leaders of several other major pro-life organizations published a joint statement calling for “bold, new pro-family policies,” including accessible and affordable healthcare, expanded Medicaid funding for prenatal care, delivery, and postpartum expenses, expanded child tax credits, paid parental leave, affordable childcare options, and fully enforcing existing prenatal child support laws. This statement has now been signed by hundreds of pro-life leaders.

Though I won’t pretend to know the ins and outs of tax law, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the government should somehow recognize the many very real pregnancy-related expenses. Let’s add that to the list of policies the pro-life movement would support.

Weeks 19–21

I spent almost two hours in a one-room museum exhibit.

My annual speaking trip to teach apologetics at Oregon Right to Life’s Launch retreat was supposed to be a tight one—flying in and out extremely close to the beginning and end of my contracted time with them. But March in Minnesota had other plans, so in order to avoid Snowmageddon and give myself a decent shot at making it to Portland at all, I moved my outbound flight eight hours earlier. As I now found myself with a significant amount of spare time and no desire to twiddle my thumbs in a hotel room, I recalled a piece on the ERI Blog from 2015 about the staff’s experience visiting a prenatal development exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland. After a disappointing Google search listed only “Tyrannosaurs—Meet the Family,” “Staying Alive: Defenses of the Animal Kingdom,” and the usual planetarium, theatre, and hands-on lab spaces as current at the OMSI, I waffled for a bit before deciding to check it out anyways. I’d heard fantastic things about the OMSI as a whole, and I had eight hours to kill with nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon.

After wandering through the Tyrannosaurs exhibit (very cool), the route dropped me at the entrance to the Natural Sciences Hall. The museum map indicated that “Staying Alive: Defenses of the Animal Kingdom,” the Paleontology Lab, the Earth Lab, and the Life Lab were in there.

What the museum map completely failed to mention was what I actually stumbled across.

The prenatal development exhibit.

It’s not on the museum map, nor is it anywhere prominent on the website. If it’s there at all, I’ve yet to find it. All documentation points to the exhibit having left on May 6, 2015, which is what the museum told Josh when he called before taking the staff to visit the month prior.

But tucked around a corner on the side of the Natural Sciences Hall, I quite literally happened to walk into the exhibit featuring 44 preserved unborn humans at every stage of development.

I’m writing this in my hotel room later that same day, and to say I haven’t fully unpacked my feelings about the exhibit would be an understatement. My experience in that 20’x20’ room unfolded in three stages.

First, I was in awe of the wonder that is prenatal development and the human body. Upon entering the room, I audibly gasped. I walked up to every single embryo and fetus, which were on display preserved in what appeared to be glass containers full of water (I’m sure it’s not water, but that’s what it looks like) above a plaque of the post-fertilization age, gender (once the sex organs were visibly discernable), and a small paragraph describing what developmental milestones were occurring at that time in the unborn child’s life.

I’m not sure exactly how long I spent in front of each and every unborn child; it felt like a moment and an eternity, all at the same time. It was only once I’d finished gazing at every single unborn child, reading every plaque along the way, that I came out of my daze and started to notice the other museum-goers around me. The reaction upon turning the corner into the exhibit was always the same: an audible gasp or a hushed “woah,” their eyes doubling in size as they couldn’t help but walk in. I didn’t see a single person pass by the exhibit during the two hours I spent in there. No one came looking for it, but when they stumbled upon it, it was magnetic.

That’s when my mind turned to abortion. My pro-life apologetics brain turned on, and I wondered how pro-choice people were reacting to standing in the physical presence of unborn children, their humanity undeniable. Their reactions were fairly easy to detect.

I watched a young couple about my age approach the earliest embryo, who was four weeks old.

“Would you feel bad?” While the man didn’t say it, it was quite obvious that he was asking whether his girlfriend would “feel bad” for aborting a four-week-old embryo.

“No!” She replied in a mocking tone that clearly filled in the rest of the unsaid sentence with, “And anyone who does feel bad for removing that tiny blob is being absurd.”

“Would you feel bad about this one?” He moved on to the five-week embryo.

“No.” The mocking tone continued.

“This one?” He continued on down the row of embryos, and each time, she gave the same snarky reply.

“What about this one?”

I saw her start to form the “n” of “no”…but she dropped it as shock slowly spread across her face. They were standing in front of the nine-week fetus.

“This one…it…it has a face,” she stuttered.

Their little Q&A game was over. She was clearly shaken. She looked to her right at the 10-week fetus.

I didn’t think it looked that developed until later on, but…I guess it does.

They walked through the rest of the exhibit in stunned silence, taking their time to study each and every fetus.

Our co-founder, Tim, said almost the exact same thing when he gazed at that same nine-week fetus during the staff’s visit in 2015:

Nine weeks in, their humanity is not ambiguous anymore. They had distinguishable fingers and toes. They had different facial expressions.

I don’t know how I feel about this exhibit existing. There is absolutely part of it that feels disrespectful; these humans should receive a dignified burial, not be kept in glass cases to be gazed upon like taxidermy. But the exhibit’s power is undeniable. You are in the physical presence of real unborn children. No fetal development images, videos, or ultrasounds could ever come close to the experience of standing right next to an unborn child, reading her facial expression, forever frozen in time. I’m a full-time pro-life advocate. I’ve seen countless fetal development images. Even I was speechless seeing just how developed, and human, a nine-week fetus is in real life. There is absolutely no more powerful way to demonstrate the humanity of the unborn. None.

That’s when I started thinking about my own child. I walked back to the three fetuses that are the exact age of the fetus in my uterus right now. That hit differently. I had honestly kind of forgotten that I was pregnant up until that point; my brain was so in awe at the little babies right in front of me and so saddened by the reality of abortion that it took me a while to remember that a baby just like one of the ones in front of me was inside of me right now.

I wasn’t the only pregnant woman in the exhibit either. Several other visibly pregnant women walked through during my two hours there, most with young children in tow. She would show her four-year-old daughter what the “baby in Mommy’s tummy looks like right now!” while the daughter gazed in awe and wonder. Then they’d walk back to the beginning of the exhibit and look at each and every fetus, the daughter peppering her mom with questions about what each baby could do and commenting on the little fingers and toes. To the children I watched wandering the exhibit with their moms, these were babies. Simple as that. I would be willing to wager that those children, especially those in first through fifth grade, will be less susceptible to the “clump of cells” rhetoric purely because of what they saw with their own eyes: physical babies who were very clearly not clumps of cells.

According to a small plaque on the wall, the exhibit has been permanent at the OMSI since 1993, so if you’re ever in Portland, don’t be confused by the museum’s apparent refusal to put it on the map. I highly encourage you to go. I recognize that standing in the presence of these babies could be difficult or traumatic for some who have experienced pregnancy loss, so please be aware of that if you do decide to go.

But no matter who you are, if you visit this exhibit, I promise that you will never look at pregnancy or abortion the same way ever again.

Weeks 22-24

It started at about week 18 as tiny flutters, easily mistaken for nerves or a slightly disgruntled stomach. By week 20, there were occasional light taps, only noticeable when I lay completely still with laser focus. But now, there’s no two ways about it; there is a full-on living human whacking my insides every chance he or she gets.

It’s not painful, but it does catch my attention! Baby Geiger’s holding dance parties and marathon training sessions in my abdomen, usually in spurts of a few hours, followed by a rest period before the next athletic endeavor begins. It’s an absolutely wild feeling, unlike anything else, and I’m completely at a loss for how to describe what it feels like when you’re pretty sure your baby just did a literal somersault inside of you.

The experience of being pregnant, especially with a rough first trimester of sickness, has made me much more empathetic for women who get abortions in the first trimester. But standing in the presence of embryos and fetuses at the OMSI exhibit in Portland made defending abortion after nine weeks seem a lot less reasonable. And then feeling a baby move inside your stomach? I am now completely dumbfounded as to how anyone who has experienced pregnancy can defend abortion after viability on a healthy fetus carried by a healthy woman.

I received another snarky comment on TikTok last week.

I’m 22 weeks pregnant as I write this. At this exact moment, in half of the United States, it is legal to kill the human inside of me right now, who I can feel moving every single day, who is uncontroversially a living human.

Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., and Wyoming.

That’s 24 states plus Washington, D.C.

If I’m this upset about abortions, I need to grow up?! How about, I’m more passionately pro-life precisely because I grew up and experienced pregnancy myself! The idea that people actually defend legal abortion after 22-weeks is more baffling to me than ever before.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that people who defend legal abortion after 22-weeks are all evil. In my experience, the vast majority of them genuinely believe that abortions after 22-weeks don’t happen except in medical emergencies. It’s not that they’re saying abortions after 22-weeks are okay; it’s that they believe banning them will prevent the only women seeking them—women whose lives are in grave danger and/or whose fetuses won’t survive anyway—from getting the life-saving care they need. In their minds, abortions after 22-weeks don’t happen for any other reason, so banning them is unnecessary and harmful.

Aside from the cultural confusion about the word “abortion,” which is being unhelpfully defined by pro-life and pro-choice people differently, causing talking-past-each-other of epic proportions when it comes to life-saving medical care for pregnant women, there’s a gigantic myth living behind that pro-choice stance.

Many times, later abortions are performed on healthy fetuses carried by healthy women. No medical emergency is involved.

In 2013, pro-choice researchers Diana Greene Foster and Katrina Kimport found that women who obtained first-trimester abortions and women who obtained abortions at or after 20-weeks gestation were remarkably similar in the reasons they cited. There was no significant difference between the reasons people were having abortions early or late in pregnancy.

And then, in June of 2022, Katrina Kimport was published again:

…the circumstances that lead to someone needing a third-trimester abortion are not exceptional.

Mind you, she’s an abortion-rights activist.

So, why would someone get a later abortion besides for a medical emergency? The same reasons someone would get an abortion earlier, except maybe they didn’t have the resources to get an abortion earlier, like the time, money, or transportation. Maybe because they struggled to decide whether or not to abort. Perhaps they had a change in circumstances, like financially or with the father. In many cases, they just didn’t realize they were pregnant sooner.

Many times, later abortions are performed on healthy fetuses carried by healthy women. It’s a little-known fact, and a wildly unpopular one. It’s uncomfortable for average pro-choice people for precisely the same reason I’ve become baffled by abortion-rights activists like Diana Green Foster and Katrina Kimport; it is dramatically harder to mentally justify abortion in a completely healthy situation where a fetus is obviously alive and human, not only as seen in ultrasound images but as I can quite literally feel multiple times an hour.  I mean, my husband can even feel my stomach move from the outside.

Later abortions are an area that we do and should have tons of common ground with average pro-choice people. But at least in my own conversations, I think I’ve underused it. Next time a pro-choice college student asks me why I care so much about abortion, I’m going to try this answer, in the calmest, most genuine voice I can muster:

Honestly, it’s because I’ve been pregnant. It’s because I’ve seen and felt the humanity of the unborn in an undeniable way. And in literally half of the United States, it’s legal to kill the same fetus I could feel moving inside of me more than five months into my pregnancy, and I’ve read the research by abortion-rights activists that these later abortions actually happen. That really woke me up into realizing what a human rights crisis abortion is. And I know most pro-choice people don’t agree with later abortion either; this is a place we could all be working together more if we just talked to each other. That’s why I’m here.

Weeks 25-27

My morning sickness came back. It makes no logical sense, but a few nights ago I pulled some leftover pasta out of the refrigerator, and my body instantly revolted. That’s the thing about pregnancy symptoms; they can make no logical sense. Scientists haven’t been able to pinpoint the cause of morning sickness; it can be triggered by an insanely long list of things or seemingly nothing at all, and it differs dramatically from woman to woman—even from one pregnancy to the next.

While the second-trimester version of my random, any-time-of-day “morning” sickness hasn’t been quite as miserable as the first-trimester version, it’s been difficult in a unique way. In the first trimester, there’s a societal understanding that morning sickness is normal. People generally give you a lot of grace for feeling ill because they’ve heard that that’s normal. However, society also believes that the second trimester is the “easy part” of pregnancy. You’re supposed to have your energy back, an adorable baby bump, and a huge appetite. For some women, that’s absolutely true, but certainly not for everyone.

20% of women experience morning sickness in their second trimester of pregnancy, and a smaller percentage continue experiencing symptoms throughout the third trimester until delivery. I’m incredibly blessed to work for an organization that is truly pro-life in fully supporting pregnant and parenting staff members and their families. When my morning sickness returned, there have been several days when I’ve had to cancel meetings and/or work from my laptop in bed next to a trash can. My coworkers didn’t even blink an eye. Neither did the ERI Affiliate Groups—local pro-life clubs and groups that our Club Coaches and I mentor. Everyone in my life has been so incredibly supportive through my sickness, washing away the strange guilt I felt for being sick when society said I wasn’t “supposed to” anymore.

But how hard would this be if I didn’t work for ERI? I couldn’t possibly have enough sick days to cover the number of too-nauseous-to-walk days I’ve had in this pregnancy. While there are no concrete statistics on this, I can’t imagine that there are very many American jobs that would be supportive and flexible enough to work with me through all these ups and downs. I’ve met so many women who are scared to tell their bosses that they’re pregnant, that the news will stunt their upward mobility and be treated like a burden to the company. And college campuses? High schools? Forget about it! It’s no wonder to me that the college girls I meet are genuinely terrified of getting pregnant and not having abortion access. While most universities have accommodations available for pregnant and parenting graduate students because that is considered “normal,” those resources are often non-existent for undergrads.

Radical idea: how about we stop assuming what is “normal” and instead remember that pregnancy—pregnancy itself, with all its ups and downs and varying circumstances—pregnancy is what is normal. It’s literally how our species continues. It’s a sign that my body is healthy. While blatant discrimination against pregnant women is illegal, there are a million little ways companies and schools fail to adequately support pregnancy and parenting. Meanwhile, many of these companies and schools will provide all the support you need to get an abortion. Hulu, which is owned by Disney, recently cut it’s paid parental leave from 20 weeks to eight weeks, even as Disney announced they would begin paying travel expenses for employees to access abortion in another state.

The reality is that supporting abortion is a good business decision. It’s dramatically less expensive and difficult to hand out the morning-after pill in a vending machine on campus or pay up to $4,000 in travel expenses for an employee to travel out of state for an abortion than it is to give paid maternity leave, lactation breaks and rooms, and extra grace for employees needing to work from home due to morning sickness or their child’s illness.

If our schools and companies supported pregnancy and parenting with the same level of dedication as their abortion policies, I genuinely believe the abortion rate would decrease. The more we make pregnancy and parenting feel doable rather than abnormal and burdensome to the society around us, the more women will choose life.

That’s all for now.

Do you have any pregnancy advice? Hot takes? Just leave a comment; I’d love to hear from you.

~ Emily Geiger & Baby Geiger

—

Weeks 28-30

Yes, I just got the RhoGAM shot. No, that doesn’t mean my body is fighting pregnancy.

Now, there are smarter and dramatically dumber versions of the “fetus is a parasite” argument, but I’ve noticed that the pro-choice slogan is being increasingly based on the idea that the female body fights pregnancy. Morning sickness, lowered immune responses, aches and pains from your growing body—they’re all signs that your body doesn’t actually want to be pregnant, and the prevalence of miscarriage is the ultimate proof that female bodies recognize embryos as invaders and expel them.

There’s countless problems with this argument.

Miscarraige is more likely to happen if there is a problem with reproduction—often a genetic anomaly with the embryo making him or her not viable, but also uterine problems such as undiagnosed fibroids or other maternal health conditions such as an acute infection. Miscarriage is the result of things going wrong, not things going right. And it is unbelievably hurtful to describe miscarriage as some kind of success story, telling parents who lost their children that their bodies were just way better at “defeating” their “parasitic” children than the bodies of parents who got to bring their living, newborn babies home. 

Not to mention that female bodies spend their whole lives specifically trying to make pregnancy happen. We release an egg cell on a monthly basis for literally decades, and that egg cell has a sperm-binding receptor called a ZP3 glycoprotein specifically trying to find a sperm to create an embryo. Once the sperm penetrates the egg, the egg gives off calcium ions to cause a cortical reaction to prevent polyspermy, which is when more than one sperm penetrates the egg and the resulting cell isn’t viable. So polyspermy would result in the embryo dying, but our bodies specifically don’t want the embryo to die, so they release calcium ions to prevent death.

And even before the embryo existed, our bodies started preparing a good environment for one by thickening the uterine lining so it’s ideal for binding a blastocyst and thinning cervical mucus so sperm can penetrate easier.

The female body works incredibly hard to reproduce long before and during pregnancy. Something can go wrong in the process, sure. But that doesn’t mean the female body doesn’t want to be pregnant. Me giving birth is not a sign that my body is a failure at defeating parasites; that’s clearly ridiculous.

But…what about the RhoGAM shot?

When I got a TikTok comment about the RhoGAM shot, it struck me as maybe the most intelligent version of the “fetus is a parasite” concept that could exist.

If you haven’t been pregnant, and even if you have, you easily may have never heard of it; it only affects a small percentage of pregnant women. You probably at least know that blood type is important in medical care; if you ever need a blood transfusion, you must be given blood of a correct type or you will become extremely ill. Your blood type comes with two markers: a letter and a + or – symbol. The + or – signals whether or not you have a protein called Rh on the surface of your red blood cells; if you have the protein, then you’re Rh-positive, and if you don’t, then you’re Rh-negative. Thus, the options for blood type are O+, O-, A+, A-, B+, B-, AB+, and AB-.

Only about 15% of the world’s population is Rh-negative, and I am one of those people.

Why the random tangent about my blood type? Because when I give birth, I may be exposed to the baby’s blood, and it’s very likely that my baby is Rh-positive. Upon exposure, my body will make antibodies that hurt and kill blood cells that are Rh-positive. In subsequent pregnancies, the antibodies my body made when I was first exposed to Rh-positive blood can cross the placenta and attack my baby’s red blood cells throughout the pregnancy, leading to fetal anemia, miscarriage, stillbirth, or hemolytic disease.

That’s why I just got the RhoGAM shot.

RhoGAM stops my blood from making those antibodies that would attack the Rh-positive blood cells in my baby. The injection is given at the start of the 3rd trimester and will be again soon after I give birth if my baby indeed has Rh-positive blood.

So, unless we artificially suppress my body, it will naturally make antibodies designed to quite literally attack my baby’s blood, causing significant harm or killing the baby. That’s about as similar to the “fetus is a parasite my body is attacking” narrative as you can get.

But that doesn’t prove what the TikTok commenter thinks it does. If anything, it proves that the fetus in my body is, in fact, a different human. Just like my body would attack Rh-positive blood if I was given a blood transfusion from a different human, my body will attack the Rh-positive blood of the different human living in my uterus. And my body will only do that if the baby’s blood is Rh-positive…so that would mean that only Rh-positive fetuses are parasites to me but Rh-negative fetuses aren’t parasites? And the 85% of women who are Rh-positive and thus don’t have this issue from the get-go, their fetuses aren’t parasites either? Literally only Rh-positive fetuses of Rh-negative mothers would be parasites under this view, which is about 10% of all fetuses. It makes absolutely no sense to say that 10% of fetuses are parasites but 90% of fetuses aren’t parasites. Two otherwise identical humans at the exact same stage of development with the exact same dependency on the mother’s body are classified as a parasite or not based entirely on whether or not they and their mother happen to possess a protein on the surface of their red blood cells? It’s absurd.

Our bodies are weird and powerful. They have mechanisms in place to protect themselves from potential harm, including harm that can come from other humans. But sometimes, our immune systems overreact and attack things that they don’t actually need to. Just like our bodies unnecessarily attack medical implants and even our own bodies, my body does not actually need to attack the Rh-positive blood cells of my baby; my baby’s blood isn’t harming me in any way, and it’s not going to. If the fact that our immune systems have the potential to attack something means that thing must be a parasite, then necessary medical implants and even our own bodies would be parasites. And the RhoGAM shot is extremely safe. Fetuses are other humans, just like everybody else, and none of us are parasites to each other just because our bodies are sensitive to blood types.

Weeks 31-33

This email stopped me dead in my tracks.

I’ve received so many beautiful messages of support and advice from you all throughout my pregnancy journey; it’s been truly a joy to read every one. In the flood of messages responding to the second-trimester edition of this article, I got an email from one of you—an ERI reader, passionate pro-lifer, and fellow third-trimester pregnant woman—and what she shared with me was so vulnerable and real that I knew I could never do justice to her story. She gave me permission to share it with you, and you need to hear it from her.

“​​Hello Emily,

Thanks for sharing your pregnancy journey with ERI readers! I am thirty weeks along with my second, and I can definitely relate to enjoying that feeling of the pregnancy “becoming real.” I remember thinking early on, “I can’t wait until the baby starts kicking because right now, I just feel fat,” lol.

Pregnancy has given me a new perspective on abortion. My first pregnancy amplified my sense of disgust at later-term abortions. I remember driving home from my 20-week ultrasound, turning to my husband in horror, and saying, “It’s still legal to kill her.” My second pregnancy, however, has increased my sense of empathy for abortion-minded women.

Mental health issues, physical health problems, changing financial and relational circumstances…In the last few months, I have faced all of these often-listed justifications for abortion. I think many pro-lifers, including my former self, dismiss them far too casually.

It is wrong to kill an innocent human being. Easily said from a cognitive and moral standpoint, but an emotional one?

It’s one thing to discuss Hypothetical Woman in Thought-Experiment-Land; another to face those situations yourself, to have them crash into your real-life here-and-now and blot out your future. The world into which I will deliver this baby is different from when she was conceived, and far from what I wished for her.

That terrifies me.

Experiencing that fear firsthand has made me more understanding of the drastic actions people take to ease it. Scared people resort to desperate measures, and scary incidents aren’t limited to the first trimester.

I haven’t changed my stance on abortion, but I have a solid moral foundation underlying my position. I can’t help wondering…what if I was a relativist? What if I had already been struggling financially when these unexpected expenses arrived? What if my culture viewed children as burdens rather than blessings? What if this was my first pregnancy? What if my only experience of motherhood was a strained relationship with my own mother, other women’s labor-and-delivery horror stories, and tales of sleepless nights leading to ‘your life being over?’ What if this had been an unplanned pregnancy instead of a carefully considered decision? What if I didn’t have the support of my friends, family, and physicians? What if they were pressuring me to abort?

Pondering these questions has highlighted the enormous privilege I enjoy. Any of those factors could mean life or death for an unborn child. Whether the health, financial, and relational troubles hit the mother all at once or fall like dominoes, the surrounding environment affects her ability to adapt and move forward. I am blessed with a supportive environment, but not everyone is so fortunate.

I can (almost) see how a bundle of joy becomes a clump of cells.

A poor response to a pregnancy announcement turns an excited new mother into a doubting one. A lost job turns bonding over nursery setup into an argument over luxuries. A health scare turns a pregnancy into a risk factor. Along the way, the baby becomes a fetus, which becomes a burden, which becomes a problem. Drowning in adversities she’s powerless to change, the mother hears a siren call offering her relief. The abortion industry is happy to “empower” her to eliminate at least one of her problems—with a legal, available, and even celebrated solution.

I have often longed for a magic wand to turn everything back to ‘normal.’ I wonder if some women view abortion as such a wand. If so, they are missing the real magic.

When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I look at my daughter. My love for her banishes my fears, leaving room for hope to flourish. My circumstances may change—for better or worse—but knowing her gives me confidence in the joy my second-born will bring to our family. Having this baby may be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but it is also one of the best. Regardless of what happens, I love this precious new life.

I know the value of what grows inside my body, and it far surpasses any magic wand.

But for the woman who chooses abortion? For the woman whose fears blind her to the value of her unborn child? Her circumstances may change—for better or worse—but her only consolation prize is an empty womb.

I no longer shake my head in disgust at such women.

I weep for them.

Abortion is a horrific tragedy, not only for the baby, whose life is sacrificed for a modicum of security, but for the mother, who is making a terrible trade. The abortion industry offers only death. I think we, as pro-life people, must offer her hope.”

She’s right. I no longer shake my head in disgust at such women either.

I haven’t experienced even a fraction of the mental health issues, physical health problems, and changing financial and relational circumstances that she has this pregnancy, but I too have had moments of longing for a magic wand to turn everything back to “normal”—to make the nausea or the stress or the emotional hormones just go away.

Being pregnant changes you. Of course, I in no way endorse the pro-choice mantra “no uterus, no opinion,” but I’ve come to realize that they’re closer to a truth than I gave them credit for. Experiencing pregnancy yourself is different. Experiencing a pregnancy in which very real, extremely difficult circumstances feel like they’re closing in around you is very different.

“It’s one thing to discuss Hypothetical Woman in Thought-Experiment-Land; another to face those situations yourself, to have them crash into your real-life here-and-now and blot out your future. The world into which I will deliver this baby is different from when she was conceived, and far from what I wished for her.”

The pro-life movement can and must be a vehicle of hope. Rather than brushing aside the difficulties, we must embrace them, offering to get down in the mud and tears with her, see what she’s truly facing, and hold her hand while we pick up a shovel and start digging her and her baby out.

Weeks 34-36

I’m going to be holding my baby in a month. Maybe even less.

Which is why a question I’ve gotten before hits me a little differently today.

This isn’t a hypothetical in the same way it was before; of course, the getting an abortion part is still hypothetical, but now I have a child. I am a parent, and I will be facing the same questions that many of you are. How do I teach my child about abortion? And when? How do I raise them so that they would never make that choice? And how will I react if they do?

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have years of parenting wisdom to impart on you, because let’s face it—I don’t. But these are my honest thoughts, today. To be clear, I’m going to use female pronouns here, but I don’t know if I’m having a boy or a girl. How I’d respond to my son or daughter in this situation wouldn’t be drastically different.

So if my child ever got an abortion, here’s where I’d start:

“I love you. I’m so sorry that that happened to you, that must have been really hard and scary going through that alone, but you’re not alone. I’m here, and I love you, and I always will. How are you feeling about what happened?”

Pause.

I know what at least some of you are thinking. You’re not going to tell her you think abortion is wrong?! 

Here’s the thing: if this is my child, she already knows what I think about abortion. I plan to start teaching my children about abortion around 2nd grade. Not all at once of course, but as a Catholic, if I believe that my 2nd grader is old enough to acknowledge transubstantiation, receive the Holy Eucharist, and realize and confess their sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, then I believe they’re old enough to start learning about the brokenness of our world, too. They’re old enough to learn the basic biology of pregnancy, that killing other humans is wrong, that women who have abortions are not specially evil but have been taught wrongly by our society and find themselves in hard situations where we must help them, and that their mom’s job is changing hearts and minds about abortion to save the lives of babies.

If I’ve done that—started the conversation early, continued it throughout their adolescent years while teaching more and more advanced apologetics, and involved my children in pro-life advocacy like volunteering at the local pregnancy center—then by the time my child could have an abortion, she already knows what I think about it. And she already knows that I don’t condemn women who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy and that I want the pro-life movement to step up and help—as we already do and must do even more.

So my first job will be to love her. I can still love her without condoning what she did. I don’t believe that people who have abortions are evil or murderers or something; I believe they were in an incredibly hard situation, and no one wants to have an abortion. No one puts in their five-year life plan “I want to have an abortion”; people have abortions because they feel like they’re trapped in a burning building, and this seems like the best way out. My job is to teach my children that pregnancy isn’t a burning building, and though you may feel like you’re in one, you’re certainly not trapped. My husband and I and our community are here to walk with you every step of the way, loving you and your baby every step of the way. We can do this, together. Having an abortion is not only wrong and unthinkable but also unnecessary.

So if she does have an abortion, my first job is to love her, just as I believe love is my first job for any woman who has had an abortion. My second job? Help her heal. I know that women can experience a wide range of emotions after having an abortion, from relief to numbness to depression to anger, and I will seek to meet her wherever she is on that spectrum. Support After Abortion is an incredible organization providing “religious or secular, peer-led or clinical, and in-person or virtual healing” for those impacted by abortion, and I would absolutely help her to connect with their healing programs when she’s ready. As a Catholic, I would also encourage her to seek forgiveness through the Sacrament of Reconciliation when she’s ready. Ultimately, how she receives forgiveness, moves forward, and heals is up to her, but I will make sure she knows I love her and I’m here for her. No matter what. 

Week 37-39

I’ve basically reached the end.

At 38 weeks pregnant, I’m “term,” so going into labor would no longer be considered premature—meaning, it could technically be any minute now. It probably won’t be, but it could be. I mean, I “dropped” last week, I’m literally having a contraction right now while typing this, and I’m 99% sure I lost my mucus plug this morning. According to my frantic google searching, that basically means labor could start in hours, days, or weeks…which is a terribly vague window. So I guess I’d better get this article finished up just in case!

Thank you for coming on this journey with me the past 9 months. I hope it has been helpful or perhaps affirming to hear my honest thoughts on being pregnant, especially for those of you who’ve had rougher pregnancies yourselves or who’ve never been pregnant and want to understand it better.

I think our society has a tendency to think of pregnancy in the extremes rather than embracing its reality. On one hand, we hear the stereotypically conservative “children are a blessing from God” mentality that—while I do believe children are a blessing from God—tends to white-wash the difficulties of pregnancy and childbearing. Pro-choice people are right to point out that “thoughts and prayers” and “here’s a basket of diapers and wipes” isn’t even close to enough to adequately support pregnant and parenting women.

But on the other hand, a lot of people think and speak about pregnancy and childbearing as if it is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Young women today are genuinely terrified of becoming mothers. Especially if you identify as conservative, I strongly encourage you to pause and read this Vox article I came across the other day: “How millennials learned to dread motherhood.” There is much I vehemently disagree with inside it, as I’m sure you will too, but it is a realistic picture of what I find college student after college student on the campuses I visit actually believes.

The article is correct: “For at least the last decade, women my age have absorbed cultural messaging that motherhood is thankless and depleting, straining careers, health, and friendships, and destroying sex lives. Today, it’s genuinely difficult to find mainstream portrayals of moms who are not stressed to the brink, depressed, isolated, or increasingly resentful.”

And this cultural focus on the difficult parts of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting has only increased since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“Moreover, in response to attacks on abortion rights, most progressive politicians, writers, and activists stress the real risks of pregnancy and the toll of parenting that no one should be forced to experience against their will, rather than any upsides to having children. This makes sense, but the result is that for many, the very act of becoming pregnant sounds harrowing, and giving birth less a choice than a potential punishment.”

That’s precisely what I’m seeing in pro-choice mindsets on college campuses and across social media: pregnancy and parenting are incredible strains on your life and your health that will make you miserable, very possibly even killing you. In one of the most viral TikTok videos of 2022, you can read 350 reasons not “to have a child burst through your vagina” —or rather, not read it, because the list is so long that it takes up the longest paper trail you’ve ever seen. If you actually want to read the whole thing, the video creator published the whole list. Here’s the gist:

“6. Your legs can swell up to the size of two potato sacks”

“28. Can’t eat what you want during pregnancy because the uterus goblin may not like it”

“63. Partner might find you repulsive”

“89. Could be the most miserable experience of your life”

“95. Creature inside you drinks it own pee at just 8 weeks pregnant (they also drink it and pee it out for the rest of the pregnancy)”

“111. Could possibly give birth in a public place (like Panera)”

“129. Your pelvis might break in half or crack (cuz the child’s head is too big)

“153. Your time will never be yours again”

“174. Kid can come out looking ugly af”

“181. EMOTIONAL DAMAGE”

“196. Post Pregnancy Shits are the worst”

“198. May get flat feet after”

“213. You will not have a social life (some say you still do, trust me, they lying)”

“239. They sneeze on your face.”

“259. They can become serial killers”

And there’s 335 other reasons I didn’t just quote for you.

It’s no wonder a pro-choice girl I met at the University of Portland last year looked at me with genuine panic in her eyes as she told me “if I got pregnant right now, I’d be terrified.” This is the narrative our society is feeding young women. Is some of it a joke? Yes; I don’t think anyone out there actually considers “288. They breathe so loud when they drink water for no reason” as a legitimate reason to not have kids.

But there are some really scary things in that list.

“113. Your clitoris might rip while giving birth” is a true statement. So is “47. Recti Divarication (abdomen splits in half).” And “179. You don’t always get paid maternity leave” is an unacceptable reality that continues to baffle my mind, as I discussed the second-trimester section of the very article you’re reading right now.

There are real risks of pregnancy, and parenting is obviously difficult. Pro-choice advocates are right; no one should be forced to experience either of those things without their consent. That’s like reason number 5831 that rape is so horribly wrong.

So it makes sense why pro-choice advocates and influencers are focusing pretty much exclusively on the negative parts of having children, but it’s causing young women to be absolutely terrified of their own bodies. And then pro-life people are focusing pretty much exclusively on the positive parts of having children, which can come across as incredibly tone-deaf, so young women just tune it out.

Everyone is missing the reality.

Yes, pregnancy is hard. It has suffering. It has bad parts. But something isn’t necessarily bad just because it has suffering or difficulty to it.

Any elite athlete, prominent scholar, literally anyone at the top of their field will tell you that it takes suffering, great risks, genuine inconvenience, and a lot of hard work to accomplish anything that’s worth doing. And that isn’t breaking news either; women of my generation are often happy to embrace the difficult work of high-level athletics—where “113. Your [insert body part here] might rip” and 129. “Your [insert bone structure here] might break in half or crack” are regular risks. Or the slog of climbing the corporate ladder—where “153. Your time will never be yours again” is a given if you’re trying to break the “glass ceiling” and achieve that high-level career that’s deemed so much more important than having children.

Yes, pregnancy and parenting has suffering, great risks, genuine inconvenience, and a lot of hard work. But it is a mission. A calling. An endeavor so crucial that our society will quite literally cease to exist without it.

And motherhood is a need that we women are uniquely qualified to fill; far from being terrified of what our bodies can do, women must be empowered to realize the incredible nature we have. Pregnancy and giving birth are so often treated as medical emergencies, but while dangerous situations can certainly arise during them, pregnancy and childbirth are not, in and of themselves, medical problems. They are 100 percent normal, and my body already knows how to accomplish them.

So can we please stop living in these extremes and instead embrace the difficult and beautiful reality that is pregnancy? Pro-life or pro-choice, let’s walk with women, be realistic about what they will face, and encourage them every step of the way. We must stop letting our respective agendas color how we discuss pregnancy and childrearing—white-washing or catastrophizing it for the sake of our abortion arguments.

Women deserve the truth. Let’s help them face it.

~ Emily Geiger & Baby Geiger

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The post I’m pregnant: The hot takes and musings of a pregnant pro-life advocate originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

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