I’m really fired up.

Yesterday I received this article about the wider implications of the new federal law regarding feticide. Read it, and then come on back. Note this, in particular: the law does NOT make it a federal crime to attack a pregnant woman--just her fetus.

So I guess we shouldn’t be shocked, then, when we discover that similar laws are being used against pregnant women, particularly those that suffer from mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction. Now, this absolutely infuriates me. Because I’m in recovery, I’ve known many women who only got sober because of their pregnancies. They all received treatment—and went on to delivery normal, healthy babies. These babies have grown into normal, healthy children with wonderful recovering mothers.

What scares me the most is the judge’s refusal to allow these women to get treatment. Some astronomical number—like 80%--of people in jail are there because of either being caught with drugs, selling drugs (usually to support some sort of habit) or committing a crime to get money to buy more drugs.

And prison isn’t working. Trust me, you can get drugs in jail. If you’re lucky, you can also get one meeting a month. Maybe some counseling. But what you can’t get in jail is treatment. So instead of providing addicts an opportunity to get help, all they get is more and more addicted.

But I digress. The fact is, what’s next? Will I be prosecuted for eating sushi while pregnant if I contract a parasite? Or get Lysteria from blue cheese dressing? Will I be taken away, still bleeding from delivery, my child wrenched out of my arms, in handcuffs?

This has to stop. Like Julia, I’m planning to be in Washington, DC on April 25 for the march. I hope I’ll see you there.

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On a totally different note, I’d like to discuss the power of protein. I’ve done a little research (you know, on Google) and read several reports of eating increased protein while doing IVF stimulation. They’re mostly anecdotal, but very interesting.

Since starting injectibles, I’ve had a great deal of nausea, and the only things appealing to me are carbs—and lots of them (course, this can be true on any given day). Yesterday, you may have noticed, I was having a very bad day. This was magically cured last night when I ate a slab of meat roughly the size of Rhode Island. It turned out, I was cranky cause I was hungry—hungry for meat, apparently. I apologize to my vegetarian readers—perhaps a pound or two of tofu would have done the same thing.

So this morning I ignored the nausea and started the day with a healthy breakfast of eggs, sausage, and French toast (ok, egg beaters, lite sausage, and whole grain French toast—it really was healthy). I feel much better. I haven’t had even the inkling of an urge to smash a customer’s face into the glass display cases.

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Just a brief update on the follicle party going on in my ovaries: I had another appointment this morning with The Cunt, and both the amazing power of steak and the fact that I had so many follicles to measure kept conversation to a minimum. I could actually see them on the monitor—wowza. I have at least six between 10 and 14mm on the right, and at least that many in my “inaccessible” left ovary. I suspect I’ll be starting the third injectible medication today and I have appointments every morning for the next three days. Yee ha! I guess retrieval will be next week sometime. Hopefully I’ll know soon.