The Warm, Molten Gratitude of the Moment a Wanted Baby Enters the World

But Hannah, isn't this thing about abortion?

Unexpectedly—unpredictably!—I find myself in the Philadelphia airport this afternoon. I’m sitting at a bar by my gate, eating enough overpriced pizza and drinking enough overpriced pinot noir that my bank keeps checking in with me about the credit card charges traveling over the airwaves. I imagine the actual bank computers, personified, squinting at my purchases as they come in and exchanging meaningful looks before sending their alerts to my phone. Like, “Girl, are you in Philly? But also: are you okay?” And: “Are you sure?”

I do authorize these purchases, and I do think I’m okay, bank computers. But—as always—I’m not entirely sure.

On Saturday, I drove with my husband and toddler from my home in Maine to New Haven, Connecticut, where I was to give a book talk at Possible Futures (a new favorite “book space” of mine, and one I hope to visit on many, many more occasions) with The Reach Fund — Connecticut’s abortion fund. It was a beautiful night. I spoke with abortion funders and midwives, folks shared their abortion stories with me, I signed books, I read some passages of the book that had been pre-selected (!!! heaven!) by the fund.

I also got to hype up my very favorite children’s book and its creators. And spend a whole lot of money that I don’t have, on books and tote bags and stickers that, ok, sure, I don’t technically “need”. (The bank computers are rolling their eyes at each other now). And after the talk I had dinner with one of my favorite authors. Just a nice, routine, uneventful book tour stop, really.

On Sunday morning, we planned to leave New Haven as a family and drive southwest to visit some old friends, two separate clusters of them, in upstate New York. But then, as I stepped out of the AirBnB shower, groggy and dripping, I got an urgent text message.

Many details that aren’t mine to share later, it was time to help a doula client bring her child into the world. In Philadelphia! What a rich tapestry this life is. I hopped on a train and met her and her partner at a busy urban hospital. For the next few hours, I did the equivalent of handing an Olympic athlete water and towels as they performed a superhuman feat. Really, I can’t even write about this labor and delivery much without tripping over my own awe and admiration. Philadelphia is a beautiful city. How about that.

Anyway, all this to say: the moment I saw this living baby’s perfect hair, and then their perfect little ears, and then their perfect face emerge from their mama’s body, as I held one of her legs and cheered her on; the moment I heard this baby’s first squeaky cries, and felt their good soft warm weight in my arms for the first time; these moments are an island of verdant trees and fragrant flowers and golden sunshine in a deep dark roiling open ocean of despair. These moments have stitched together, over the past 48 hours, to form a singular, self-contained country of an experience. And I’ll carry the passport to this country in the zipped-up inner pocket of my mind—maybe flashing it to someone else once in a while but mostly keeping it private and secret and just for the country’s three inhabitants (I was just there on a tourist visa, or a short-term work visa, really)—for the rest of my life.

If you don’t know me well, or aren’t acquainted with reproductive justice as a framework for a full-spectrum doula practice, all this might not feel obvious to you. Abortion and birth mean different things, after all—except when they don’t.

All this to say: I rushed from the birth to the postpartum haze of logistics and lactation consultants to the hospital discharge paperwork to the parking garage to the airport, in a Lyft driven by a really excellent dude named Miguel. We talked about his six kids, the weather, the likelihood of making my flight. He was very confident I’d make it. Miguel had a lot of faith in me.

I missed it, though. “Nothing I can do,” the gate agent kept telling me, though I could see the plane through the window, though I had 15 minutes before takeoff. Though I was checked in, boarding pass in hand, and though Miguel had rushed me through the Old City traffic as fast as he legally could.

As I sit at this airport bar, the kind and patient bartender tolerating my hours and hours of laptop usage in his space, graciously indulging my orders of wine and pizza and San Pellegrino and Diet Pepsi (Philly isn’t a Coke town, I guess, adding insult to missed-my-flight injury), I answer emails from folks who need abortions, and from folks who are providing abortions.

I scroll through photos of my own baby, whose bedtime I’m distraught to be missing tonight (more tears). I read about tubing and cannulas needed for D&E procedures and breastfeeding tips for live babies who arrive earlier than expected and the potty schedule of my rapidly growing child.

I read about the razor wire that Greg Abbott is using to harm and kill pregnant teenagers and children (TW: horrifying). I read emails congratulating me on this. I read about craft and writing, about parenting, about organizing and care work, about all the things I’m trying to do.

I think about the labor support tools — the peanuts, the balls — that are used to support pregnant people in both birth and later abortion care spaces. I think about how my husband cried when he first saw photos of the abortion clinic where I work, because he saw so many things he recognized from the room in which I labored to deliver our living child.

I think about the island from which I’m departing, the baby on this end of my plane ride home, this new baby, two days old when this reaches your inbox. I think about the fact that they may one day be capable of pregnancy. I think about the ways in which I hope they’ll be free to live their life in spite of and because of that superpower.

I think about the baby waiting on the other end of this journey, and what he needs from his mama. I think about my own superpower, my own limitations, my own needs and desires and where my own islands are located in this sea.

I think about fetal demise, and the people who have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles and are now—at my clinic or elsewhere—laboring to deliver a fetus or a baby who will never take a breath. I think about what the babies who are breathing need and want, and how to help them get it. I think about mothers, and parents, and pregnant people in this airport and this city and swimming through razor wire.

I think about how to get to them—or back to them. I think about the borders I can cross, the countries to which I can gain entry, while carrying all my old passports and my new passport, too.