Friday, September 25, 2020

Blogaround

1. U.S. Judge Temporarily Halts Trump’s WeChat Ban (posted September 20) I wasn't going to post this, because I thought, it's not necessary, everybody already knows about this. But LOL no, then I realized this is a huge massive deal for me, but for people who don't regularly communicate with people living in China, they probably don't know anything about this at all. 

So here's what happened: The orange antichrist made an executive order banning the Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat from use in the US. Here in China, WeChat is huge. Everyone has WeChat. It is THE social media app. We use it for texting, group chats, buying things, etc etc etc. My family in the US also has WeChat, and that's how I'm able to communicate with them. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that basically all Chinese immigrants in the US who are young and tech-savvy use WeChat to communicate with family members back in China. (The Republican party claims to be about "family values", what a joke.)

When we heard that WeChat was going to be banned in the US, there was widespread speculation on what exactly that would mean. Does it mean the app is literally going to stop working? Does it mean that it won't allow financial transactions or advertising, but the rest of it will work fine? Does it mean you can't download it, but if you already have it installed, it will still work? My family researched other apps to figure out what we could use in case WeChat suddenly stopped working last Sunday. A lot of families did.

Anyway, then Sunday rolls around and WeChat still works on their US phones. And then we get the news that this ban has been stopped by a judge in California. Phew, what a relief.

2. Coronavirus: China eases visa restrictions for foreigners (posted September 23) YES! YES! GREAT NEWS! This is a big huge deal for the international community in China. I have friends who have been stuck in other countries for months, trying to get back into China. The ban went into effect on March 28, and ever since then it has been gradually loosening, and now it's been announced that, starting September 28, foreigners with valid residence permits in the "employment", "personal matters", or "family reunion" categories will be allowed to enter China. (And if you had a valid residence permit but it has expired some time in the past few months, you can apply for a new visa easier.) 

Please note, this doesn't mean *everyone* is allowed to enter China. It's only people who have residence permits in one of these 3 categories. (For example, my residence permit is for employment.) So it doesn't include students, and it doesn't include tourists. And when you enter China, you will have to do a 14-day quarantine.

People are very happy about this. There are families who have been separated for months because they've been stuck in different countries. Finally they can come back to China. This is great news.

3. Some people rate movies or restaurants. He rates benches (posted sometime in September) "It’s a below average bench that comes with a lovely view. This is picnic territory that’s hindered by an overgrown thistle, I had to sit on my jumper to prevent stab wounds. 3/10."

4. Evangelicals Don’t Do Opposite-Gender Friendships (Here’s Why) (posted September 23) "In the church—at least, in the evangelical church I grew up in—people are never supposed to have healthy friendships with the opposite sex. Not even with their spouse."

Monday, September 21, 2020

I Voted!

Sticker that says "I Voted From China." Image source.

Well I am very proud to tell you all that today I mailed my absentee ballot. I voted for Biden and Harris. And some down-ballot Democrats too. ^_^

If you are an American living overseas, GET ON THIS NOW! Now is the time to be mailing in the ballots! Yes, the deadline isn't til election day, but this year there are concerns about delays in the postal system. GET ON IT NOW.

For more information, go to VoteFromAbroad.org.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Saturday, September 19, 2020

Do "Pro-Lifers" Know C-Sections Are Preferred Over Vaginal Breech Births?

A pregnant woman talking to a doctor. Image source.

Wrote this a while ago, when I was 30 weeks pregnant

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So I'm 30 weeks pregnant, and just had an ultrasound to check how the baby is doing. Turns out my baby is breech, which means its butt is pointing down. Ideally we want the head to be pointing down, so the head can come out first when it is born.

The doctor said we don't need to be concerned about it, because the baby will probably turn on its own before 36 weeks. (A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks.) But if it doesn't turn, I would have to have a c-section.

See, most obgyn doctors believe that, if the baby is in a breech position, it is more risky to try a vaginal birth than a c-section. If you search online for more information about this, you'll find there are some doctors and midwives who think vaginal breech births don't have to be risky; we don't need to always choose a c-section if the baby is breech. So from what I can tell, this question might not be settled, and maybe in the future there will be different standards about when to choose a c-section and when to try for a vaginal birth.

But anyway, the situation right now is that most doctors say you have to have a c-section if your baby is breech. Why? Because it's less risky. If you have a vaginal birth where the head isn't the first part to come out, there's more of a chance the baby might get stuck and can't breathe, or the umbilical cord will get pinched and cut off the blood supply for the baby- and these things can lead to injury or death for the baby. So even though the majority of the time, a vaginal breech birth would turn out fine, it's better to just not risk it. Let's do a c-section instead.

So I'm learning about all this, about the risks and the reasons that c-sections are preferred, and I'm thinking about "pro-life" propaganda that talks about doctors as if they are looking for any excuse at all to kill a fetus. The way "pro-life" advocates talk about so-called "partial-birth abortion" (which is not a real thing) and "late-term abortion" (also not a real thing). About "ripping babies out of their mother's womb." The way "pro-life" advocates talk, you'd think there are tons of obgyn doctors running around, trying to find ways to sabotage a 9-month fetus's health, completely heartless about if it lives or dies.

But here I am, in the actual reality of the real world, where my doctor says if the baby stays in the breech position and doesn't turn its head down, then I would have to have a c-section because that's the least risky for the baby. (His actual words were "you don't have a choice" which I found kind of interesting, but I don't think it's useful to analyze the exact words because that bit was just kind of an offhand remark in the context of a conversation about "is there anything I should be doing now so I can avoid having a c-section?")

Yes, here in the REAL WORLD, doctors are very careful about protecting a fetus's life. If you go to get an x-ray, the doctor or nurse will ask beforehand if you could be pregnant, just in case. When I had an unrelated health problem about a month ago and went to see a different doctor for that, I made sure to tell him I'm pregnant (even though it's obvious) and I asked if the treatment would affect the pregnancy, and he ended up giving me something different than the normal antibiotics, because we didn't want to affect the baby.

So I hear this "pro-life" rhetoric which says there's a huge widespread problem where doctors are looking for reasons to kill a perfectly healthy 8-month fetus, and wow, nothing could be further from the truth. If you actually read about pregnancy and birth and c-sections and everything, you see that it's not like that at all. It's about weighing the risks and choosing the option that has the LEAST risk for the baby and the pregnant person.

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Update: Yes, after this, the baby did turn and I had a normal vaginal delivery :)

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Related:

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Blogaround

 1. I am a Christian. Here is what I believe about abortion. (posted September 2) "I trust those women. I trust them more than any indirectly responsible actor who would trample on their subsidiary obligations by trying to usurp the responsibilities entrusted to those women by nature and nature’s God."

2. Former Avalon Singer Michael Passons Says He Was Kicked Out of Christian Band for Being Gay (posted September 11) For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love.

3. How white supremacy works in American culture and media (posted September 2) "This of course is rarely articulated openly, but I guarantee you that if a black female presidential candidate was going to lose the actual vote by millions of voters, but still had an excellent chance of winning the election, this would be considered an absolute travesty — indeed definitive proof that the system was broken and had to be changed."

4. Batman vs. Germ Theory (LSP #156) (posted September 7) This is a really interesting point, about Christianity. 

Sunday, September 6, 2020

What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice

An ultrasound at 6 weeks pregnant. Image source.
I recently announced the birth of my perfect son, Square Root. He is completely amazing and wonderful.

The pregnancy, however, totally sucked.

I was pro-choice before, and now I am EVEN MORE PRO-CHOICE. But in a different way than I used to be. Now my views are based on my actual experience with pregnancy, rather than political arguments I read somewhere.

1. Pregnancy is HARD

Wow, so before I got pregnant, I had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what I was getting into. My idea of pregnancy was, your belly grows big, and... that's pretty much it. I bought prenatal vitamins, got my good health insurance plan that covers pregnancy (which is no small task when you're an immigrant shopping around for individual health insurance plans) and thought I was ready. LOLOLOLOLOL.

Then came the morning sickness. Somewhere around week 7 of the pregnancy, my whole life became an endless parade of nausea and gagging and throwing up. Getting up in the middle of the night, every night, to throw up. Throwing up in the morning before breakfast. Throwing up if I waited too long to eat. Throwing up after dinner for no discernible reason.

I definitely threw up at least 100 times, during this pregnancy.

And suddenly there were a whole ton of foods that I could not stand to think about, let alone to smell or eat. Suddenly, it became extremely difficult to find food that I could eat.

And there I am in the first trimester, trying to work a full-time job when I just feel like throwing up all the time, talking to my manager, trying to cobble together some combination of sick days, working from home, and coming in late, so I can get through the first trimester. I'm lucky I have a job with enough flexibility that we were able to make it work.

I was pro-choice before, but wow after all that throwing up, I am EVEN MORE PRO-CHOICE. Nobody should EVER have to go through all that if they don't want to. I felt so sick, so terrible, and my husband and I kept reassuring each other that it would be worth it, because we want a baby so much. But WOW, if you didn't want a baby, or if you didn't want to be pregnant, for ANY REASON, then DEFINITELY don't put yourself through all this. 0/10 do not recommend.

(I'd like to make a disclaimer here- I think for me, the morning sickness was worse than usual. So if you're thinking of getting pregnant, don't let me discourage you. Probably for you it won't be this bad.)

Then in the second trimester, the heartburn started. Oh, and also I still had morning sickness in the second trimester- even though apparently it's supposed to stop at the end of the first trimester. Nope, mine didn't stop, it just got a lot better, so I only threw up once per day, instead of, like, whenever. But then the heartburn started. Every evening I had THE WORST heartburn. I had to get an American friend to bring Tums to China for me.

And I could go on and on about all the wild symptoms and body changes that happen during pregnancy. And on top of that, there's the actual birth, which a lot of people say is the worst pain ever. And in the US, somewhere around 30% of births are by C-section, which is a MAJOR SURGERY and can affect future pregnancies.

"Pro-life" ideology talks about pregnancy as if it's no big deal. As if it's totally reasonable to expect people to go through all this suffering just because they have an unplanned pregnancy. They say women are having abortions "for convenience"- as if throwing up 100 times and experiencing all these symptoms and problems for 9 months and then having painful contractions and maybe a major abdominal surgery is simply an "inconvenience."

Back when my morning sickness started, I wanted a baby so much, but I didn't have a baby yet. I had an embryo. And throughout the whole pregnancy, I was shocked at the sheer amount of work I constantly had to do to turn that embryo into a baby that's able to breathe on its own. In order to make Square Root, I had to throw up over 100 times. I had to- it couldn't have been anyone else. If he was going to grow into a baby who could live outside of my body, it would require me- Perfect Number- to go through all this suffering. And I did it because I really really wanted a baby. And I love him.

But WOW, "pro-life" people talk about how a fertilized egg just "develops naturally" into a baby if it's in a uterus. Like it's no big deal, like it just simply happens. Umm, no. It totally takes over the pregnant person's life. It causes all these awful symptoms.

"Pro-life" people say a fertilized egg is already a baby, already a person. Well, I wish it was- I wish it was already capable of surviving outside my body. That kind of language discounts all the work I did to develop Square Root into a whole baby with functional organs. I suffered for nine freaking months to give him what he needed to get a good start on life. He didn't already have that, at the moment of conception. I worked hard (and barfed a hundred times) to make it happen.

2. On using the word "baby"

So Hendrix and I went to our first prenatal appointment when I was 6 weeks pregnant. I had an ultrasound. We saw a little white blob on the screen and we said "it's our baby!" and I loved that baby already.

But then I thought, I'm not supposed to use the word "baby" because I am pro-choice. "Pro-life" people call it a baby, but pro-choice people call it a fetus and believe that "life begins at birth." ... Umm, actually, no, that's not what pro-choice people believe.

"Pro-life" advocates are so incredibly hung-up on "life begins at conception"- and so they imagine that pro-choice people believe "life begins at birth" and that the unborn baby has no value at all before birth. And ... I guess subconsciously I sort of still bought into some of this "pro-life" ideology; I thought that since I am pro-choice, I shouldn't use the word "baby" until it's born. I shouldn't think of it as a baby.

Well, that's ridiculous. I'm calling it a baby because it's going to be our baby eventually, and we're super excited for that. We can't wait; we want a baby so much.

Also, I realized that before I got pregnant, most of my opinions about pregnancy came directly from the abortion debate, not from the day-to-day reality of being pregnant. So there were times where my friends would use certain language to talk about my pregnancy, and my first thought was "are you trying to make some kind of 'pro-life' point?" Like when people would say "wow, is it weird having a person inside you?" ... the word "person" is so incredibly politically-charged in the context of the abortion debate. But I realized that no, people weren't "trying to make some kind of 'pro-life' point." They were just congratulating me and showing their support.

And at all the doctor's appointments, all the childbirth classes, all the other pregnant women I met- all of them use the word "baby" to talk about the fetus or embryo. Nobody was like "we need to call it a FETUS because it's NOT A BABY YET and also I am SO PRO-CHOICE." Nobody mentioned abortion or "pro-life" vs pro-choice at all, actually- because people who come to prenatal doctor's appointments and childbirth classes have already decided to have the baby. (I think maybe once or twice I heard someone mention that as a pregnant person you could choose to test for various problems or not, and maybe you make that decision based on whether you'd want to abort in the event that your baby does have that problem. But that was it- that was the only time anything remotely related to abortion was mentioned.)

So I discovered that the language I use to talk about pregnancy wasn't right- it was based on a "pro-life" strawman of what pro-choice people supposedly believe. (Honestly I'm still not sure about the word "unborn" though- is that a word only "pro-life" people use? Should I not use it? But like, sometimes I wanted to say "my unborn baby" and I couldn't really find another term that worked.)

3. Bodily autonomy is FOR REAL

So back when I was "pro-life," it seemed pretty pathetic to me when pro-choice people talked about bodily autonomy. I thought, on the one side, you have A BABY'S LIFE, and on the other side, you have "I want the right to make choices about my own body," which seemed pretty abstract and unimportant to me.

I remember seeing images like this, and nodding along because I thought it was an airtight argument:

Image says "For the logic-impaired:" then a silhouette of a pregnant woman. The woman is labelled as "Your body" and the fetus inside is labelled as "Someone else's body." Then the text: "NOT your body. NOT your choice. Abortion is murder." Image source.
Yes, I heard pro-choice people talking about "my body, my choice," and I thought it was nonsensical because it's not about your body at all, it's about the "unborn baby." And how on earth could you weight a BABY'S LIFE against an abstract concept like "choice" or "reproductive rights" and decide those things were more important than A LIFE?

The above image labels "your body" and "someone else's body" as if there's a clear and obvious separation. Well let me tell you, the WHOLE ENTIRE MEANING of pregnancy is that the pregnant person and the baby-to-be are connected. The baby/embryo/fetus relies on the pregnant person for the nutrients and oxygen it needs to live and grow. And the pregnancy causes huge changes throughout the pregnant person's ENTIRE BODY. It's not just "their belly grows big." IT'S THE WHOLE BODY. Swelling feet and hands. Nausea, vomiting, heartburn. The growing uterus pushes other organs up, and that can be painful, and it reduces lung capacity. The amount of blood in the body increases by about 50% and the heart has to work harder. Back pain. Breasts grow bigger because of the hormones. And you experience all sorts of emotions because of the hormones.

It's not something you can neatly divide into "your body" and "someone else's body."

I remember feeling sick, feeling nauseous, feeling tired, feeling weird pains in different places every day, and thinking "I want my body back." I was wrong about thinking "bodily autonomy" was just some silly meaningless thing. It's not some theoretical abstract concept; it's about me feeling sick all the time. It's about me not being able to go to work. It's about back pain and gaining weight and my fingers swelling so I can't wear my wedding ring any more.

4. My *feeling* is it's not good to have an abortion in the 2nd or 3rd trimester

At about 12 weeks, we had another ultrasound. We saw that our baby had arms and legs, and they were moving! I was so surprised; I had no idea the baby would be able to move while still inside my body.

And sometime around 18 weeks, I started to feel his movements. And they just kept getting stronger and stronger as he continued to grow, throughout the whole pregnancy.

When I started to feel him moving more and more often, I thought, "Great! It moves now! I'm finished making this baby! I did it!" But HAHAHAHAHAHA actually no that wasn't true at all; I was only halfway done with the pregnancy. Still 4-5 more months to go.

And as I continued to feel him moving every day, it made me feel more and more connected with my baby. I thought "oh our baby will be so active when it is born." Felt like I was sort of getting to know his personality, a little bit.

So because of this, I now *feel* like it's not good to have an abortion once you're past the point in the pregnancy where the baby has arms and legs that move. (So, somewhere around the start of the second trimester, about 13 weeks.) I realize, though, that this is just my feeling based on what it looked like on the ultrasound or felt like when it was kicking me, and maybe in reality it would make more sense to research when a fetus has brain activity, or when it can feel pain.

So I would advise that if you want to have an abortion, you should do it as soon as possible, because the more developed it is, the more sad it is to end its life. (And in fact, yes, this is how abortion works in reality: about 90% of abortions are performed at or before 13 weeks, and 99% at or before 20 weeks. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks.) But, MOST IMPORTANTLY, I would NOT want to make a law about this, because in reality there are always cases where people need abortions but weren't able to get one in the first trimester. Maybe they didn't know they were pregnant, maybe they couldn't access abortion because of financial or logistical issues, maybe it was a wanted pregnancy but then some terrible health problem came up.

Most people who have an abortion DO get it sometime in the first trimester. And, of course they do- if you don't want to be pregnant, and you are having morning sickness or other unpleasant symptoms, wouldn't you want to stop all that as soon as you can?

But my point is, back when I only thought of pregnancy in terms of the abortion debate, I never thought about the stages of development the fetus goes through, and how it would be more moral to have the abortion earlier. I thought, for "pro-life" people, they believe it's a full person with rights that override the pregnant person's rights, right from the moment of conception. And for pro-choice people, they believe abortion should be accessible any time at all up until the moment of birth. (Well, these are the ends of the spectrum, but of course a lot of people's views fall somewhere in between.) So I wasn't aware of anybody talking about how incredibly different a fertilized egg is from an 8-month fetus.

I wouldn't want to make a law about it. Or rather, I would support a law made by actual doctors who actually understand pregnancy. Not a one-size-fits-all law made by a bunch of cis men.

5. When we think of "pregnant women" the image that comes to mind is NOT AT ALL representative of who is getting abortions

Another thing I've learned, again related to my complete cluelessness about pregnancy, is that my idea of what pregnancy looks like was totally wrong. Typically, when asked to imagine a pregnant women, people would imagine someone with a huge, obvious baby bump. Indeed, if you do an image search for "pregnant woman", that's what you see. But these images aren't representative of what "a pregnant woman" looks like- they show what a pregnant woman in the third trimester looks like.

Instead, try an image search for "6 weeks pregnant bump." You get a bunch of results showing smiling women proudly posing for a baby bump photo to share on facebook. You can barely see any bump at all; you certainly wouldn't guess they were pregnant. But they are. This is what "pregnant women" look like, just as much as that image in your head of giant baby bump is "what pregnant women look like."

Go ahead and search "12 weeks pregnant bump" and "20 weeks pregnant bump" too. This is what pregnant women look like. Remember, 90% of abortions happen at or before 13 weeks, and 99% before 20 weeks. And also, the women sharing their baby bump photos on social media are very proud of their pregnancies and trying to emphasize the size of the bump as much as they can. But if you didn't want anyone to know you were pregnant, you could easily hide it at that stage.

(A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks- you can search "40 weeks pregnant bump" to see that. Hmm, that looks more like what everyone imagines when they think of "a pregnant woman", doesn't it?)

So there I was, in the first trimester, riding the subway in Shanghai, feeling nauseous and exhausted and wanting to sit down, and everybody knows you're supposed to give up your seats for pregnant women, but nobody on the subway could see I was pregnant. I didn't "look like" a pregnant woman. I used some tricks like wearing tighter clothes to emphasize my baby bump, rubbing my belly and groaning, and carrying around the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting" to try to get people to notice. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Also, when I attended childbirth classes and met other pregnant women, it was so surprising to me how the size of everyone's baby bump was so different. We would ask each other "how many weeks are you?" and often my baby bump looked bigger and more obvious than someone who's farther along in their pregnancy, just because of the fact that everyone's body is different. A lot of it also depends on the clothes you wear. I met people who were in the third trimester and I couldn't tell by looking that they were pregnant at all.

My point is, when you picture "a pregnant woman" and the image that comes to mind is someone with a huge obvious baby bump, that's not what most pregnant women actually look like. Maybe 30% look like that. And that's DEFINITELY not what people who get abortions look like, because the vast majority of abortions happen in the first trimester.

The "pro-life" movement is EXTREMELY DISHONEST about this. I knew they were dishonest before, but wow, now that I actually have experience with being pregnant without "looking pregnant", and meeting other pregnant people who didn't look very pregnant, I'm even more angry about the images that "pro-life" people use. Images of women and fetuses in the third trimester of pregnancy. Ultrasounds from the second or third trimester, trying to show you LOOK IT'S A BABY. Yes, as I said in point 4, by the second and third trimester, the baby has developed enough that abortion would be immoral. (But pregnant people KNOW THAT and I trust that if they decide they need an abortion anyway, it's because they have a good reason, so yes they should definitely have access to abortion.) By using images like that, the "pro-life" movement completely misrepresents what abortion is. Yes, I agree it would be bad to kill a third-trimester fetus. But people don't do that.

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Enduring a whole pregnancy has definitely changed my beliefs about abortion. I was pro-choice before, and now I am EVEN MORE PRO-CHOICE. Now it's not just abstract and theoretical; I have actual lived experience. Now I know how hard pregnancy is, and I understand the importance of "my body, my choice" in a way I never did before. And I've learned about how the baby develops during the 40 weeks of pregnancy, how I could feel him moving and feel connected to him because of that, and so it's good that abortion during the third trimester is extremely rare.

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Related:
Why I Am Pro-Choice

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