GOOD ADVICE INTERLUDE: Help, My Friend is 15 and Pregnant!

Readers won’t stop sending the Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you’d like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the “ask” form!

A reader writes:

Hey uh if you’re still doing the good advice interlude, advice for helping a friend with a teen pregnancy? She’s 15, with a boyfriend two or three years older. They had sex and she clearly really enjoyed it. It’s resulted in her being pregnant. She wants to keep the child, and I’m obviously going to support her decisions, but I don’t know what’s best to do to support her. She’s in the hospital regularly (chronically ill), and I don’t know how to ask if she’s looked into the risks that giving birth might provide for her. I don’t want to come across like I don’t want her to do what she wants, because I do, but I’d like to be reassured she’s prepared for that, because I think mostly she’s thinking about how excited she is to be a mum. Which is great! I’m glad she’s excited! I’m excited! But yeah how do I ask if she’s prepared for health risks both in that and the fact that in general regular hospital visits with a small child aren’t ideal (I speak from experience there lol). I speak from experience because I’ve been visiting the hospital regularly since I was a small child because I have an array of health issues and always have done. Friend & I have bonded over this a little.

Hello! Thanks for writing in! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to write a Good Advice Interlude, so this is very exciting.

You sound like a lovely and concerned friend! However, and this probably is gonna land with a big-ass thud: your friend’s pregnancy isn’t about you and she doesn’t have to make you feel better about her decision to become a parent.

Right out of the gate, you say you’d like “advice for helping a friend with a teen pregnancy.” Okay! A good instinct! But when we get into the details, what you really seem to be asking for are some ways for youto feel okay about your friend’s decision to carry her pregnancy to term — you talk about what you need to be reassured about, and what questions you need to make sure your friend is grappling with so that you can help her. But it’s not clear whether your friend has asked for your help or your advice or your recommendations on how to do her pregnancy! So let’s back waaaaaay up, because the top way to not help a person going through some big life shit is to burden them with your own personal misgivings about it.

Reading between the lines, I sense that you want to be a kind, good friend who does the right thing, and you know that the right thing is to support your friend who has decided to become a parent at a younger age than most people do these days. I sense that in your heart, you know the right thing to do is to support young people’s reproductive autonomy and not to judge or shame people for making decisions that you wouldn’t make for yourself, or that are outside the norm in some way. I also suspect that in your heart, despite this, you also feel judgy and frustrated by your friend making a decision to become a parent at age 15 when she has all this other medical stuff going on, and you’re trying to overcompensate for that, because it probably doesn’t feel great, so you’re trying to cast your concerns for you friend as just! looking! for! how! to! be! enthusiastically! and! cheerfully! supportive!

But let’s be real: we live in a complicated cultural milieu wherein we internalize beliefs — whether we want to or not — about young people’s sexuality and pregnancy and parenting that have been shaped by literally the worst fucking people of all time.

Teen pregnancy and teen parenting are massively stigmatized — at least, they are where I live in the United States, and I bet they are where you live, too. This stigma is so prominent that there’s a whole repro justice-oriented, intersectional campaign around respecting young people’s reproductive autonomy called #NoTeenShame, and I strongly encourage you to check it out and share it with your friend if she’s open to it. (For more on the subject, I extremely recommend Natasha Vianna’s work for some contextual reading on parenting while teenaged, plus more hereandhereandhere on shame, stigma, and teen pregnancy and parenting.) We don’t have a lot of positive cultural narratives around teen parenting, and we have a whole fuckload of horror shit show stories about how becoming a teen parent ruins your life forever period the end full stop.

So how about … just owning that those narratives affect you, too? You could explore those feelings on your own, or try unpacking them with another friend who is not at all even a little bit involved with this situation. Examine where these pressure points come up for you — what parts of your friend’s decisions make you feel uncomfortable, angry, frustrated, judgmental, anxious, worried? What parts trigger a need to be kind of patronizing toward your friend? (Such as, for example, assuming that she doesn’t know how to navigate a medical establishment — when bonding over your shared experience with the medical establishment is already a big part of your friendship!) Sit with those feelings and acknowledge them and don’t try to cover them up with being friendly and helpful, because they will only fester, and eventually they’ll taint your actual experience with your friend, and you’ll really, really not be able to be there for her in a genuinely supportive way.

You don’t say how old you are, yourself, but maybe you know a thing or two about parenting at a young age, and maybe you’re hoping to save your friend from going through some of the same bullshit you’ve had to deal with in your life? That can definitely be a kind and loving instinct, but it can also be incredibly patronizing, and even infantilizing — especially if it’s coming from a place of you needing to feel better about something an entire other person is doing with their entire other body that has absolutely nothing to do with you in the most practical and literal sense. You’re not your friend’s parent, and you’re not your friend’s partner — your investment in your friend’s pregnancy is many degrees removed, which means you have a wonderful opportunity to be a cheerleader, and not yet another person in her life asking her “what about” questions as if her pregnancy has actually rendered her incapable of being both excited and nervous or scared or apprehensive at the same time, which is how folks often treat pregnant teens (and, frankly, pregnant adults, too, because misogyny is the fucking realest). You can certainly suggest: “Hey, I went through something similar, do you want my advice about this?” but only if you’re willing to take “Nope! I got this!” for an answer.

Anyone planning to become a mom at 15 years old is going to have plenty — P L E N T Y — of people in her life treating her like she doesn’t know her own mind or her own body. She is never going to lack people who are afraid at her all the time. She is going to mostly be surrounded by people telling her she’s making a dangerous and bad decision, and that she’s being irresponsible toward both herself and her future kiddo. The vast, vast majority of people — including her medical team, unless she has a radically progressive provider setup — who she encounters are going to be naysayers, and many of them are going to be concern trolls, and even the really well-meaning ones who love her a whole lot and only want the best for her are never going to stop asking her if she’s thought of this and that, if she’s read about the risks and the dangers, if she’s got a plan for A, B, and C, if she realizes that parenting and pregnancy are hard, if she wouldn’t rather do X, Y, Z so that she can do whatever it is people think you can’t do while parenting as a young person: go to school, have a career, enjoy your friends, have fun, etc.

And yes, raising a kid while you’re young is really hard. But it’s hard because many of our cultures mostly shame and stigmatize young people who choose to parent instead of offering them the support and resources they need to be happy and healthy. Teen parenting isn’t a scourge, but the way we treat teen parents certainly is. You can break that cycle right now!

Good luck to you both, and congrats to your friend! Sending all the great universe vibes for a safe and healthy pregnancy, and a long and happy friendship for y’all.

jelliebeanbitch:

hey just so everyone knows, It Was A Draft

the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is not official yet. someone leaked a draft of the opinion that the members of the court have been circulating and revising (the draft was created by justice samuel alito).

which is insane by the way. it’s the first time that a draft of a supreme court decision has ever been leaked in the entire history of this country.

it makes perfect sense to feel grief or panic or dread or sadness or anger or whatever you’re feeling right now. this is fucking terrible and scary. just for the sake of avoiding misinformation, i wanted to clarify this because i think a lot of the headlines have been misleading, and the info gets even more misconstrued when it’s rephrased on social media and stuff

A Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC), sometimes known as a pregnancy resource center, had a grand opening today. They opened just right across the street from one of the reproductive healthcare clinics I volunteer for. 

I think free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and diapers are great. I just hate that CPCs use this to entice people into the buildings to spread anti-choice dogma and manipulate/abuse those who are considering abortion. They are usually part of an umbrella lobbyist group and/or affiliated with a Christian/Catholic church but are somehow federally funded. Even though the staff of CPCs may be in scrubs like they’re in the medical field, it’s often that you won’t find an actual licensed medical professional or doctor in the building. These people, who again are often not actual professionals, will provide misleading medical information to the people they trap. 

Crisis Pregnancy Centers tend to be trash. So, I’m nervous about what this new place will mean for the real healthcare clinic across the street especially with the constant protesters. Oh, god. Now I’m reminded of that documentary 12th and Delaware. 

bloodytales:

jes12321:

Conservatives like to point at late term abortions as a morally unjustifiable, but the truth is that they are usually performed on women who were trying to carry to term. These women don’t “want” abortions, they NEED abortions.

My grandmother nearly died having a miscarriage. My teenaged mother had to take her to the hospital when she refused to take herself because she was in denial. She was literally bleeding out. She had a late stage abortion and it saved her life. The doctors told her that if she tried to carry another baby to term it would kill her. Not “could” kill her, it WOULD kill her.

I only got to know my grandmother because she had access to a safe and legal abortion. She never spoke about her loss. Ever. I know she remained sexually active, which means if she had gotten pregnant again she would have gotten another abortion. I dont know if that was ever neccessary as, again, she never spoke about any of this.

I only know the story because my mother shared it with me. My mother was the first woman in her family that didn’t miscarry at least once.

So yes, I support access to all abortions, even if not especially late term abortions.

trillasstransbro:

Reproductive Justice (RJ) isn’t just abortions. And it’s not just just about cis white women.

• RJ is folx of color not having children bc they are afraid of them being killed due to racist injustice.

• RJ is transmasculine (transmen, non-binary afab people, bois/boys, etc) folx being denied medical care because of our trans status, that is if we can even afford it.

• RJ is predominantly folx of color not being to keep their children or give them up for adoption, even if they wanted to, bc they can’t afford the medical bills that come with having a baby.

• RJ is folx who don’t speak fluent English having limited access to medical care, no matter what their decision is.

• RJ is dark-skinned folx receiving less pain meds during pregnancy or the doctor will ignore them all together bc of racist stereotypes which puts their bodies under unnecessary stress which in turn effects the fetus.

• RJ is transmasculine folx being misgendered by hospital staff.

• RJ is transmasculine folx having to teach our health care providers about our bodies, HRT, detransitioning (bc you can’t be on T if you’re pregnant), basic do’s and dont’s, etc. all while being sensationalized as a “pregnant man”.

• RJ is medical staff assuming you want an abortion since you’re transmasc.

And that’s all I got so far. Please add more. And I like the word ‘folx’.