Dear Nadine Dorries,
I get the feeling you’re quite interested in other women’s uteruses, so I thought I’d tell you a bit about mine.
Today is the first day of my period and at the moment, it’s almost like a golden discharge. By the evening, it will be at its peak and a great red tide will flow from uterus to cunt, punctuated by small black blobs, like some sort of poorly-made anarcho-syndicalist flag. It will then tail off slowly, from red to rusty to brown, to nothing. By Saturday morning, it will be as though my womb were tranquil as the Dead Sea and it had never decided to eject its lining.
I’m telling you about my periods because that’s probably the most interesting thing my uterus has ever done. I don’t think I’ve ever been pregnant, but there was this one time when I missed a pill and my period was a bit more painful and lumpier than usual. So maybe I was a bit pregnant then and it fell out.
I hope, Nadine, that what my uterus does has been of interest to you. I hope that other women might like to tell you a little bit about what their womb have been up to lately. Perhaps that will satisfy your curious fascination with uteruses and provide you with a healthy outlet for your hobby, rather than letting you declare war on women’s choice.
I know you won’t stop at decreasing choice, using patronising faux-concern to protect the poor silly women from the big bad experts in crisis pregnancy. You’ve tried to reduce the abortion time limit several times, using lies and misleading information. You want control over our wombs. You’re obsessed with our wombs.
And that’s why I exercised my right to choose and told you about mine. I hope it makes you feel happy.
Yours, with insincere good wishes,
Stavvers
Update: I’ve decided to make this A Thing and sent this letter to Dorries. I strongly recommend you join me in this endeavour
Another angry woman 
Love the flag simile!
What fucks me off most about this so-called debate is the amount of twats who don’t have the first clue about what abortion services actually entail, who nevertheless feel entitled to Have Their Say about how ‘Abortion providers must have a vested interest! That makes sense! So these proposals must be reasonable!’
Never mind that most providers are charities, ie not-for-profit. Never mind that if they just bothered to ask a single one of the masses of women who’ve used these services and know what they’re talking about, they’d find out that providers are scrupulous about never trying to influence your decision. No, just open your mouth and dribble out ill-informed crap because when it comes to women’s bodily autonomy, *everyone* gets a say.
AAARRRGGGHHH.
Dear Nadine Dorries,
I do not have a uterus and never have, but in solidarity with Stavvers I would like you to know that the left is a bit itchy this afternoon.
Love,
Alex xx
I like this a lot! Brilliant work 🙂
I’m just baffled as to how she can be alligned with a party in favour of market forces and ‘choice’ in the Health Service but not willing to let people decide what to do with their own bits.
Well done Stavvers. Do you think Nadine is suffering from a condition called Wombaphilia?
At the risk of being a terrible pedant, I think the correct, Classical Greek-derived term would be ‘hysterophilia’. Which is kind of appropriate, given who we’re talking about.
Meh. If we can mix Romance and Germanic roots and use an abomination like “reheat” or “unlawful”, I’m sure we’ll survive the Greeks and Romans making word babies together.
Or the Greeks and Anglo-Saxons, for that matter. Sorry. Not sure what happened there. I think I copy-pasted the idea out of my head from the same thing with “homosexual”.
You’ve inspired me to write a letter too. Great idea!
http://emelyn-roadtomotherhood.blogspot.com/2011/08/inspired-by-stavvers.html
I don’t have much to say on abortion, but I realy like the second para’s use of colour and symbolism. If you ever turn this blog into a book, it would be interesting to hear it read out on Radio 4.
Yes, I’m still looking for a life.
On a more serious note, the best way for anti-abortionists to reduce the rate of abortions is by campaigning for better sex ed and cheaper, more widespread contraception. Of course, people have abortions for other reasons, but it would at least make a dent in the numbers as well as improve people’s lives in other ways. I cannot understand why anyone would be against sex ed.
Excellent.
It’s not even as if she (or her party) LIKES children. She wants to force women to have babies they can’t care for and then say “Stop being so feckless! Your children are FERAL!”
It must be a uterus obsession because it surely isn’t out of love of the foetus.
I don’t have a suitable blog really to host this so am posting it here:
Dear Nadine Dorries,
I am following the lead of Stavvers and writing to you about the contents of my uterus. I think you might be especially interested in mine. You see it has a 21 week old foetus in it and I know how much you love foetuses. Sadly if my baby was born now it would be extremely unlikely to survive no matter how much you try and pretend that extremely premature babies have a fighting chance of survival as an argument for reducing the abortion time limit- they really really don’t. In the very low chance they did survive they be beset by health problems. I really really hope my baby stays alive and kicking where it is until full term- this is a planned and very much wanted baby.
We recently had our twenty week abnormality scan- we are having a little girl- as far as they can tell from the scan she has no abnormalities. I don’t know what our decision would be if major abnormalities were found and I am thankful we were not put in that position to decide but I am also incredibly grateful that we would have been able to have the choice and up to 4 weeks to decide (or possibly longer if needs be due to the situation).
I think you might be interested in the history of my uterus. I had a miscarriage at 10weeks once. We had had a scan at 6weeks- I saw a ball of cells with a flicker, the cells stopped growing after that and 3 weeks later I lost it. That was a planned and very much wanted pregnancy, I was absolutely devastated when I lost it. Where was the counselling then to support me through that- or even the support about my decision whether or not to actually have a baby? How come only women deciding whether or not to end a pregnancy have to have counselling? Seems a bit unfair really.
I also had an ectopic pregnancy recently- I lost my fallopian tube and nearly my life. Thankfully although ectopic surgery although still technically being a termination of pregnancy they are not subject to rules around two doctors approval or getting counselling- because if I had waited I would have died. Again no counselling was offered but eventually after a lot of pestering and a waiting list I was able to get 4 sessions through my GP. Why wasn’t it automatic in this case?
Actually as it happens I am far more traumatised by my pregnancy losses and a horrible birth of an extremely ill baby than any of the many women I know who have had terminations. Where is our support and counselling or don’t we matter because our babies weren’t able to be saved?
Although I am extremely fortunate not to have been in the position of needing to look into the possibility of having a termination, I still wholeheartedly believe that it is an essential option that needs to be available for all women to choose if they need it. Counselling should be offered but not mandatory for a woman if she requests it. It is essential that that counselling is impartial- but that’s the thing- it already is- what you are trying to implement will be to offer possibly extremely biased prolife counselling and delaying treatment. If I ever do need a termination of pregnancy (and I do hope I don’t but I recognise that no method of contraception is 100% safe- or do you suggest I abstain from sex with my husband for the rest of our lives so that we don’t get put in that position?) I would want that termination done as soon as possible- within days not weeks- for me personally I like many women would want a first trimester abortion and really before 9weeks gestation. As you know the abortion procedure is much less invasive and traumatic the earlier it is done. Delaying will cause additional upset where there needn’t be.
I think me and my uterus are very worried about what you are trying to do. Soon I will have two daughters. I hope that when they grow up their rights to access abortion are stronger and not weaker than they are currently.
Yours sincerely
Me and My Uterus.
Great post. I write about my uterus all the time, so I won’t bore you with any more detail than is already out there, but suffice it to say: it’s a sad fact that uteruses reject foetuses all the time, or refuse to make them in the first place, or just generally misbehave.
I know that moral complexity isn’t Nadine’s strong point, but I’m going to try to spell this out in words of one syllable. The value of a pregnancy is tied up with the meaning put on it. A miscarriage at 8 weeks will be devastating for some women; whereas an abortion at 8 weeks will be an enormous relief to others. We don’t have the right to judge either group, because they know their bodies and situations better than we do.
Largely, people like Dorries should stop sticky-beaking and start listening.
Oh my goodness, this is so hilarious and true and amazing. I will definitely tell Dorries all about my uterus because I think I’m a little bit in love with you and yours.
I missed a crucial bit off my letter- Where it says
“Where is our support and counselling or don’t we matter because our babies weren’t able to be saved?” I want to add-
I’m not sure why you are so obsessed with saving unwanted babies- why do you want to bring more unwanted babies into the world when every day wanted babies are lost- surely a more positive valuable use of your time should be focusing your attention onto saving them?
My letter – all about my unicorn:
http://impeus.com/?p=147
genius. hell hath no fury