Grudge of the Week: "Pregnant? Alone? Afraid?"—Part II

The Gabriel Network sign that infuriates me the most appears outside the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. It is a parish on the way to my mother-in-law’s house, off Chevy Chase Circle. Western Avenue cuts across, dividing the neighborhood into Maryland and Washington, D.C. turfs. You cannot get more Upper NW D.C.—or Upper Caucasia, as the locals call it—than Chevy Chase. The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament sits on the District’s fringes and serves parishioners from both sides of the boundary.

Brett Kavanaugh comes from the Maryland side.

Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. Kavanaugh's Senate confirmation hearings proceeded until Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexual assault at a high school party that involved some of the same local college preps in which parishoners enroll their kids for tens of thousands of dollars a year. The church became divided over Kavanaugh’s nomination, The Washington Post reported. 

But even Kavanaugh opponents didn’t dare speak louder than a whisper, lest they upset the Beltway dinner party culture. The Post called the “quiet yet profound division” a “culture war,” as if sexual assault is a theoretical subject to discuss over canapès. Other popular “culture war” subjects include abortion limits and trans kids.

“It doesn’t have to do with Catholicism, and plenty of these people are rabidly anti-Trump,” one of the parishoners said. “It has to do with [the] neighborhood, school, all these people hanging around at the same clubs.”

At the Burning Tree Club in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, Christine Blasey Ford’s father reportedly apologized to Brett Kavanaugh’s father over a handshake. The anecdote comes from a book by two authors: Mollie Hemingway, an ultra-conservative magazine editor-in-chief, and Carrie Severino, the public face of the dark money group that bought Kavanaugh’s seat for more than $3 million. Severino is half of the power couple dedicated to unraveling the nation’s civil rights laws, I reported for GEN magazine in 2020. Her husband doesn’t believe trans people exist. Together, they posed for a glowing New York Times profile in matching Harvard Right to Life shirts.

I chose to be pregnant, but sometimes, I didn’t feel that way. It happened so fast. I had used hormonal birth control methods—first the patch, then the pill—since I was 19 years old. I’d never experienced contraceptive failure, which is a real possibility with even the most effective forms. Sometimes I wore a pink “Thanks, Birth Control” hat to the beach. I’d picked it up from Power to Decide, one of the reproductive rights groups I covered. Intellectually, I knew I wanted to have a child, but I didn’t feel like having a child. My ambivalence drifted into the “millennial mom dread” to which white middle-class women are particularly susceptible, journalist Rachel Cohen Booth covered for Vox.

The “Hot Vax Summer” 2021 after I turned 35, I stopped the pill and adopted the ethos “fuck around and find out.” I wasn’t tracking my ovulation or calculating my fertile days. Two cycles later, I was pregnant.

Some people dream it’ll be that easy. I spiraled with fear. I’d evaded pregnancy for so long! I no longer believed that it must occur under certain conditions I’d been taught in after-school Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes for kids whose parents were too cheap or too broke (or both, like mine) to pay for Catholic school. The church’s vision aligned with white supremacy’s emphasis on cishet white married couples making babies.

“Amplifying the voices of mothers of color—particularly those steeped in communities where raising kids has long been understood as a more collective, and even defiant, act—could help change these dynamics,” according to Vox’s Cohen Booth. That ethos fit within the reproductive justice framework with which I already approached my abortion reporting. Perhaps I understood too much about pregnancy and parenthood, as fellow abortion journalist Andrea González-Ramírez wrote for The Cut. Such wisdom would not be published until long after I had a baby. 

I’d always been terrified to get pregnant when I colored outside the lines. What made conception unacceptable one day and acceptable the next? Cells I couldn’t see were multiplying inside me. What else could my body conceal?

“Pregnant? Alone? Afraid?”

I don’t know what it is like to look at that sign when you’re an unhoused person or experiencing homelessness. The Gabriel Network’s reviews are full of praise from people who had nowhere else to go. And that lack of options angers me. All of the choices should be materially supported. No one should be cornered into carrying or terminating a pregnancy. That is where the state fails us. That is why maternity homes and abortion funds exist in the same country. I believe in practical support and mutual aid that meet someone where they are. Resources aren’t contingent on what I believe you should or shouldn't do.

A highly coordinated network exists to identify and dissuade vulnerable people from abortion care. Pregnancy is already a vulnerable experience. I’ve barely covered mine. “Pregnant? Alone? Afraid?” Who isn’t?