1981, Boston.

I found the most unfashionable item of clothing in my closet: baggy blue sweatpants. I pulled the warm, comfortable pants over my legs and tender belly and carefully tugged the drawstring around my waist. I was 27 and had been married for two years. My body had just spontaneously expelled the beginning of a nonviable pregnancy: an early miscarriage.

It was a pain I had never experienced before, it was blood, much more than a normal period. It hurt. It hurt a lot. As the bleeding continued, I grabbed towels, sanitary pads and the blue sweatpants to comfort myself. Lying on the towels, I cried, gasping for air, shaking back tears and clutching a pillow to my stomach. Was the worst over?

The pain slowly subsided. But the bleeding did not. I closed my moist eyes, leaned back on my pillow and dozed. My husband and my sister-in-law, who was visiting, stayed by my side.

“What can we do for her now?” they whispered together. We had no instructions. The bleeding would surely stop. Surely this was normal. Since my husband could not wait any longer, he called my family doctor. Since the bleeding had not stopped, the nursing team sent me to the nearest emergency room. My husband and sister-in-law helped me to the car. I felt like I was going to faint.

The medical staff met us at the door of the emergency room with a wheelchair. I don’t remember being questioned or examined. However, I do remember the doctor saying, “You’re having a miscarriage. We’re taking you to the operating room to clean your uterus and stop the bleeding. We’ll take care of you.”

Then… nothing, until a nurse hovered over me as I tried to regain my focus.

“You were pregnant, my love. You had a miscarriage and were bleeding. You had a procedure called a D&C, dilation and curettage, to stop the bleeding. You are young. You will get pregnant again.” The statement was meant to inform and comfort. Somehow it didn’t. I closed my eyes again.

First, I had been pregnant. My body was functioning! Second, I didn’t like the tone that was used to tell my confused brain that my pregnancy was over. It was over almost as quickly as it had begun. Still, it was a loss. A few hours later, my husband drove me home and helped me back into bed. I wasn’t in much pain anymore. I wasn’t afraid that I was going to bleed to death anymore.

Instinctively, I knew I had to take care of myself. I took a week off from working at Head Start in Boston. I rested, slept on the couch, drank a lot. I kept the paperback “Our Bodies, Ourselves” next to me. I read the chapters about pregnancy and miscarriage over and over as I processed what had happened.

I learned that about 25% of first pregnancies end in miscarriage, that a curettage can be used to diagnose the endometrium; in about 50% of miscarriage cases, like mine, uterine bleeding can be stopped; and in some cases, an abortion can be performed.

Feeling less alone in this, I walked around the block. I saw babies in strollers, babies in strollers, babies in arms. I had started one and lost it. And then I realized what a miracle it was that I had even experienced the beginning of a pregnancy. The nurse and Our Bodies, Ourselves assured me that miscarriages are common. Many women who have experienced miscarriage go on to become pregnant. It gave me hope of having a viable pregnancy in the future. I also accepted that miscarriage was my body’s way of dealing with a pregnancy that was not sustainable and was not meant to be.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, the constitutional right to reproductive rights of all women was protected across the country. It overturned the Texas abortion ban, which at the time allowed abortion to save a woman’s life, and strengthened the fundamental right to privacy. Protected by Roe v. Wade, and thanks to an experienced obstetrician who had the freedom to make prompt medical decisions with me, I did not die. My reproductive organs were protected from potential harm.

As I processed all of this and felt stronger, I realized something else. The nurse who cared for me after the procedure had meant well, wanted to give me information and hope, but she had only given me the facts and left out compassion for my lost pregnancy. Not only was it about my loss, but the casual tone of “You’re young. You can still have a pregnancy” was condescending to my and all miscarriages. If this approach continued, many more women much further along than me would not acknowledge their losses with compassion and care to begin healing.

I was angry for all of us who had been made to feel that miscarriages were insignificant. I decided to write a letter to the hospital administration, begging them to train their medical staff to respond to miscarriages with more empathy before offering them hope for the future. I sent it off, feeling physically and emotionally stronger. Shortly afterward, I received a letter from one of the hospital administrators saying that the hospital had heard my recommendation and would consider it when training medical staff caring for women with miscarriages to first acknowledge the loss before offering information and hope. I felt like I had made a difference and hoped it would continue.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Care, depriving women in many states across the country of basic rights to reproductive care and putting thousands of women at risk of death or loss of reproductive function.

On January 20, 2023, the White House issued a “Proclamation on the 50th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade.” It describes Roe as protecting the right of “women in this country to determine their own destinies – to make deeply personal choices free from political interference. Seven months ago, a conservative majority overturned Roe. Never before has the Court stripped Americans of such a fundamental right. In doing so, it has put the health and lives of women in this country at risk.”

My two now-grown children, their spouses, and my grandchildren, ages 5 and 2, are marching in Los Angeles for the reproductive rights of all women across the country. My heart breaks for the women who arrive at emergency rooms and are told they must wait in parking lots or at home while they bleed profusely; who are asked to carry a child born of incest or rape; who are asked to carry a fetus that cannot survive outside their bodies or, worse, that has died in the womb.

In some states across the country, doctors’ freedom to provide prompt treatment to women at risk of death or loss of reproductive capacity has been severely restricted.

The women of the generations that came after my reproductive years should have the same right that I did to safely make decisions about their bodies. They, too, have the right to make decisions about their reproductive health privately with their health care providers. They have the right to live.

Vote! Vote as if women’s lives depended on it – because they do.

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