Heartbeat

[ breif but graphic descriptions of miscarriage, reader discretion advised ]

There is a fading heartbeat. 
It is dying. 
You cannot end its suffering. 
You cannot end yours. 
You are septic, you are sick.
You're begging and pleading. 
There was no chance of saving a little heartbeat. 
You never wanted these invasive cells.

But there is a heartbeat. 

So you must suffer. 

You're in the hospital. 

You are on antibiotics. 

You are suffering... 

But still, there is a heartbeat. 

There is a heartbeat, product of conception struggling. 

Your body cannot pass it. 

There, there's a heartbeat. 
There was a heartbeat. 
You have a heartbeat. 
But it is not important. 

You live in the United States, where soon, a safe abortion is no longer an option. 

This would be a simple D and C. 

The cells are already doomed to die, but there is a heartbeat. 

This was not be an abortion. 
You are having a miscarriage. 

These cells have no chance within you. 

But the governor insists you give them a chance. 

So it will kill you, surely as a coathanger would.

You have no safe options.

There's a heartbeat. 

You have a heartbeat. 

But your heartbeat doesn't matter to them. 

You are a woman, you are property again..

You are lower you are beneath them. 

You are second plus to them.

You don't have rights. 

You don't have options. 

You just want to end the suffering of the cells to save yourself... 
But... There's a heartbeat. 

Now your heart is struggling. 

You are feverish 

You are dying

You're delirious. 

You are bleeding, bleeding, pleading...
None of this is right. 

But your rights don't matter. 

What what supposedly matters to the government? 
What matters to them is that dying clump of cells falling from your womb, the umbilical cord still connected, barely recognizable as human.

They swear this life matters to them but they will just as surely damn it to death and poverty, damn it to you fate if it is born with the cursed womb.

It is dangling by a thread. 

It does not matter that there's no chance of saving it. 

No amount of science, no amount of prayer.
It has a heartbeat

Even if it is no longer within your womb and destined to die.

It does not feel pain. 

All the pain is yours to feel because you have no rights here.

You're a criminal if you seek to end it to end this pregnancy. 

That was not a pregnancy, that was an invasion of your rights of your body, of your autonomy.

There's a heartbeat growing weaker. 

It's yours. 

You are dying. 
But there is still a heartbeat in the cells. So your death is irrelevant to them.
There are no heartbeats. 
You have died. 
For what?
Why?
The pro-birth regime; the once merely crooked government is now fully broken, twisted, and corrupted.

Church and state intertwined in a torrid love affair that will burn the bed they lie together in, fucking as the house burns down around them without care.

Church and state fucking atop your rights to your body, the patriarchal hard-on for power and control.

You have a heartbeat, but it was never truly yours in the eyes of the lovers burning the house down.

Your heartbeat, and you yourself, were only seen as nothing more than a broodmare. 
You were never a human to them. 

You were only a vessel for their sons. 

I still have a heartbeat. 

I will scream for those who don't because of these laws.

I will flaunt my tied tubes and scrambled eggs.

I do not want to birth a child into this world for fear they be born to bear the brand of the breast, the womb.

I will scream about my past use of plan B

I will applaud the man who bought it for me

I will shout that it failed me

I cannot afford to be silent about my miscarriage of 2015 because by the bastards that was abortion.

By my third tenant that was my right if you count it so!

"One's body is inviolable, subject to one's will alone."

By science it was not!

By my fifth tenant: 

"Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world."

But I was nothing more to this system than a broodmare.

Tubes tied, I am a broken vessel.

What heartbeats really matter to them but their own numbered ones...

I am horrified... but I find solace knowing I will outlive the people who put forth legislation that will cost more lives than they think it will "save". 

If I Die At Pride

If I die at Pride, my name is Andi. 

Do not call me Andrea, I hate the name; but to change it is danger and shame.

If I die at Pride, my pronouns are They/Them, do not call me she; I was not strong enough to bear that title.
If I die at pride... tell my mother I was closer to a son than I ever was a daughter.
If I die at Pride, do not mourn my death, celebrate my life, return me to the earth; for I am a witch.
If I die at Pride, know I died screaming again. Know I've died at the stake before in another time. Know I will always outlive the hate.
If I die at Pride, my paternal grandmother and the aunt on that side are not invited to the service. I disowned them.
If I die at Pride know I curse the folk who are responsible with my dying breath. Know I will haunt them, eternal in my unrest.
If I die at Pride... send locks of my hair to my brother in sweden and my friend in the Netherlands.
If I die at Pride so many voices die with me.
If I die at Pride, know I died doing what I loved; speaking my truth and standing for human rights.
If I die at Pride, tell my boyfriend I loved him with every ounce of love I had, tell his daughter how proud I was to know her dad.
If I die at Pride, comfort my unofficially adopted children, Alex and Chelley.
If I die at Pride, bury me with a notebook and a pen, bury me with copies of my brother McCallum's books, bury me with dice.
If I die at Pride, I die by the fear of an uneducated man.
If I die at Pride, put "Hail Satan" on my gravestone. Put the tenants of the TST on my headstone, remind everyone of the words important to me.
If I die at Pride, lay me down with a rainbow, do not wear black.
If I die at Pride make my funeral the gayest there has ever been. I want a drag queen to read my eulogy, I want rainbows and life and love and everything GAY.
If I die at pride... I die fighting; just the way I lived.