Outtake: Have You Ever Been Pregnant?

The following passage was once slated to appear in 18 Months, though I removed it early in the writing process. It’s a true story highlighting the difficulty women can face accessing healthcare in rural areas, and it occurred well before the recent loss of legal abortion.

"Have you ever been pregnant?" Dr. Smith asked, as I sat on the exam table and pulled the paper sheet to my waist. 

"No," I said. After several decades of obsessive birth control use, motivated by an extreme aversion to having kids, I'd managed to avoid the fate. 

"Do you think you can get pregnant?"

It was an inappropriate question. But Dr. Smith was a pro-life gynecologist in a rural, heavily Catholic town. The third I'd seen. The third who’d refused to provide me with a birth control prescription, even though I was married, in my 40s, and arguably too old to safely carry a pregnancy to term. 

"At my age, I wouldn't want to find out," I answered. 

I glanced up at the bulletin board hanging nearby and scanned the newspaper clippings posted there. One linked birth control pills to depression and teen suicide, another to breast and cervical cancer. They weren't from medical journals or reputable news sources, but small publications I'd never heard of. "Natural family planning-only doctors integrate faith and science," read one, in which a doctor's refusal to prescribe contraception was praised as "taking care of the whole person."

I'd seen this type of reporting before, in my last gynecologist's office. Dr. Smith was an improvement over that guy, who’d sported mutton chops and a lab coat covered with colorful religious pins. He’d called me "darling" and hugged me after the exam, which made me uncomfortable. He’d also recommended an “irrigation” procedure not covered by insurance, and prescribed me a probiotic that a nurse friend advised me not to take. He seemed to want to put a creative spin on his practice, perhaps because he didn’t believe in prescribing the pill, either.

By now I knew the routine. I’d need to schedule an additional visit with Dr. Smith’s nurse practitioner, feigning a cold or sore ankle. There, I’d casually ask about family planning options. She'd know I didn't have a cold or sore ankle. With a thin smile and suppressed anger at the men for whom she worked, she’d pull out the pad and write the prescription.