"My heart hurts," she said.

She came into my classroom, clearly agitated. I had a mountain of grading to do, but I could tell this couldn't wait. I asked her what was up.

"Have you seen what's going on in Alabama? In Georgia? In Missouri? I can't even process this. I just can't. I'm so afraid."

And we talked.

We talked about my own miscarriage years ago at 6 weeks pregnant, when my uterus reabsorbed the embryo, which would have been the size of a pomegranate seed. With no proof of natural miscarriage except for exceptional cramping, dropping hormone rates, and extensive bleeding, could I have been investigated for murder under these new laws?

We talked about the 4 miscarriages her own mom had endured; about the endometriosis that runs in her family, making dangerous ectopic pregnancies highly probable. "Why do these people value a fetus more than they value my life?" she asked. "Why isn't my own life important? If I got pregnant, I could die. Why do they value the not-born more than the born?"

She showed me the social media posts she had seen, where old men were spouting highly unscientific "facts" about pregnancy, clearly showing no understanding of women's bodies, nor of gestational development.

Photo by Victor Lozano on Unsplash

"My heart hurts," she said. "Why don't they value our lives?"

And what could I say to calm her fears?

Later in the day, another student came into the room, 20 minutes late to class. She kept her face hidden, her hair hiding her eyes. She handed me her late pass, avoiding eye contact. I asked her if she was okay. "Yeah," she said.

But I knew. I knew she was not okay. These men ranting about adoption and rape and insisting that pregnancies conceived in rape were more important than the women who had been raped were causing harm to this girl. This girl, who has been abused and raped as a child, was reliving those moments again and again, triggered by the news telling her that her horrors would have been blessing, were she only lucky enough to get pregnant.

What can I say to alleviate her pain?

Still later, on Facebook, a former student and dear friend works through her own pain, dealing with the anniversary of her ectopic pregnancy and the health scares and crippling depression that followed. Daily, she is stunned by the men spouting fallacies about "transplanting embryos" as she attempts to get on with her life and heal her body and her heart.

What can I say to help her heal?

Another hour, another beautiful girl, 6 months pregnant, takes a seat and opens her journal. She writes about the moment she realized she was pregnant, eating breakfast with her grandma at Bob Evans.

And still, two hours later, another pregnant girl, this one a senior, smiling gently, knowing that she will graduate. Knowing that she will not go to college or open her yoga studio or follow the dreams she once had.

These pregnant teenage girls will never again be able to jump on a trampoline, sprint down the hall, or do jumping jacks without peeing their pants. These girls will have their perineum torn as they give birth. They will have stitches, stretch marks, and scars. They will never be able to go out with friends without spending a fortune on a babysitter. They will never sleep through the night. They will probably never earn their future 79 cents on the dollar like the other women in our country who were lucky enough to not get knocked up during their high school years. And their babies will have a higher chance of crib death, learning disabilities, addiction, and childhood poverty.

My own daughter turns 13 next month.

I lost my virginity when I was 13, not entirely by choice. Thankfully, I escaped pregnancy.

What do I say to my daughter to keep her safe?

How do we explain to our girls this fetishization of the fetus, the valuing of a life only if it remains unborn, in its pure, virginal state?

Because our girls are watching; they are listening. And they understand that if these laws are allowed to stand, it means that we value a fetus--a heartbeat, but no brain and no ability to feel pain--more than we value the beautiful young women forced to give birth. Our girls have hearts that hurt with this knowledge that they are not valued, nor are they truly wanted once they have been born.

There is gum on my bathroom wall...

Tonight, as we were getting ready for bed, my partner yelled for me to come upstairs. What was this thing adhered to the wall in the bathroom next to the mirror? Was it some sort of leech? a cocoon? a snail? a horrible pod of spider eggs? What exactly was stuck to the wall next to the bathroom mirror?

On closer examination, we determined that it was, in fact, gum. Which totally makes sense, because my 10 year old son bought a pack of gum with his allowance earlier in the week, when I let him ride his bike to QD after school...

But why is there gum now stuck on the bathroom wall? Was he saving it for later? Or was an experiment to see how long it would stick there?

I mean, I know my kid. I get it. I know what happened. He had gum in his mouth and he was told to brush his teeth and he was supposed to floss and brush his retainer, but he had gum in his mouth that he wanted to save. And, hey, look outside the window, is that a squirrel? And now, looking back in the mirror, what if he held his head at this weird angle, then he'd look like an alien! And if he flexed like this, he looks like Hulk! And now mom is yelling, "hurry up because we are going to be late again!" And was that another squirrel outside? And "I'm coming, mom, I'm coming as fast as I can!" and "Come ON! We're going to be late AGAIN!" And...

And now there is a wad of gum stuck on the wall next to the bathroom mirror.

But this kid--this kid is amazing. This kid had to create a city at school yesterday that had clothing and food and books and money, but his group was only given construction paper at their table to create their entire city and they ran out of time before they'd created the clothing for their residents...and this kid...he saved the project by announcing to the class that their city was called Nude York. This kid, who is so smart and so funny and so kind and so clever, is also the kid who stuck gum on the wall in the bathroom next to the mirror.

I know this kid will be an incredible adult someday. After all, he's a pretty incredible kid. But he's also a kid who will stick gum on a wall and then somehow forget about it. And I'm just not sure that the M-Step or whatever other standardized measures of proficiency we create will be able to accurately measure this kid. I'm just not sure that he will thrive in school without being ground down into submission and bubble sheets if a squirrel happens to be outside the classroom window.

There is a wad of gum on my bathroom wall. And I'm hoping that some rubbing alcohol and peanut butter will fix it and all's well that ends well, but I also know, deep down... that there is a very good chance that my kid will be measured out there by the gum he sticks on the wall and not by his clever save of the city of Nude York. I don't know how to focus his power for good, and I don't know how to tell my son that Nude York was a genius move, even if it didn't earn him the points, and honestly, I'm not entirely sure how to get the last of the gum residue off the wall next to the mirror in my bathroom.