03/23/2024
TLDR; But it's Saturday and no one is on here on the weekends so maybe that's okay, but I feel like I should make a post, so here goes...
This week SL Weekly announced it's winners for the "Best of Utah, Mind and Body" and I won Best Birth Photographer.
Then last night, I won "Best in Delivery, Member's Choice" in the International Association of Professional Birth Photographers (IAPBP) and all but one of my entries placed in the Top 20% of images.
Awards are amazing. They are. But I don't do this work for the accolades. Every thing I do is to further the the improvement of birth choices/options and to help women see the power that they hold in their bodies, but this year has been a complete decimation of the right's of women and the ownership of their bodies is being stripped away and so these awards I think are feeling flat this year.
First, Roe V Wade was overturned and draconic anti-abortion laws have swept the nation threatening the lives and safety of millions of American women. Republicans are planning a complete nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions should they win the presidency in 2024.
Now IVF is completely under attack and by legislating that all embryos or fertilized eggs are children, it takes the rights to those embryos and makes them seizable by the state just like they can take your children and put them into foster care if you are deemed "un-fit". This opens the door to the state being able to monitor the health information of every single girl and woman of reproductive age because at any given point in her cycle, she could be carrying "a child" despite the fact that it may not implant and cause a pregnancy. Any and all miscarriages can be looked at by the state and women can be charged with murder and manslaughter or the endangerment of a child.
The steps are now being taken to out-law birth control due to the massive amount of mis-information about how birth control works, it's safety and efficacy. Birth control is not just about letting young women have "consequence-free s*x" it is life-saving medication for millions of women. It has allowed multiple generations of women to be in the workforce, parent their planned children in the way they want and desire, protect women from forced pregnancy by abusive partners, limit the effects of multiple pregnancies on their bodies and minds, control the amount of bleeding and the health implications from horrible periods or other health problems, and for people like me, keeping me alive so that I can be here for my children, the two I chose to bring into this world.
This s**t is keeping me up and night. I have held the hands of people who have had to let go of children after finding out that their very loved and very wanted baby was incompatible with life. I've kept my finger on the heartbeat until it stopped of a baby whose parents decided to give birth to her at 20 weeks instead of letting it continue to suffer and make her sick because it was the right thing to do. I took pictures and held them and supported them and celebrated with them when they gave birth to their next baby who was born healthy. The majority of the women I've worked with over the years choose some form of birth control between children because pregnancy is HARD, having lots of children you don't want is even harder. I've worked with so many couples and single women who have created their children through IVF, hetero-couples, same s*x couples, and women with no partner who were done waiting to have children.
All of this is being done to control women. To strip away their autonomy and try to take their power. I am here to continue to elevate the voices and stories of women and birthing people and will continue to use my very limited platform to speak on their behalf. If the accolades that I get help me to speak louder, I will gladly take it.
