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Adding Insult To Injury

These are indeed strange times for us. Right about now I’m wishing we lived in Norway…or Canada…or Iceland, or any number of more civilized countries. For some time now I’ve been disgusted with the way Minnesota, and the U.S. as a whole, have been speeding down the slippery slope. Our civil rights have steadily been chipped away at, with this country becoming a place I can hardly recognize…and one I’m not sure I want to live in anymore. But now it’s hitting even closer to home. It’s bad enough that we now have a conceal-and-carry law in Minnesota, and that Pawlenty wants to bring back the death penalty. But in April the Minnesota Senate passed a bill, and our lousy Governor quickly signed it into law. I recall being disgusted at the time, but now it’s become impossibly painful. The husband and I very much wanted to have this baby together. But, due to circumstances beyond our control, the baby has no chance of living after birth. So next week I need to go to the hospital to terminate our much-wanted pregnancy. But only after I sit out an imposed 24 hour waiting period. And only after I have not one, but two very apologetic medical professionals read to me from a script. A script that was designed to coerce young women into keeping unwanted pregnancies, and to me feels like a slap in the face. You’d think there would be some sort of exclusion for our situation. Even more disturbing…I discovered that if I were just a few weeks further along, medical providers in Minnesota would be unable to assist me. In fact, the closest medical providers who could are in, get this, Wichita, Kansas. This nightmare gets more surreal all the time.