‘A View on the End of the World’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

 A View on the End of the World

The sun is shining in my backyard as we experience the several gorgeous days of summer in Boston.  The pitbull and Aussie doodle are out snouting for bunny poop or some other substance that caused them to throw up on the couch last night.  It might have only been one of them, but their close alliance in all things prevents blame.  My 25-year-old daughter is on Preply with her Guatemalan tutor and they are laughing so hard that I could be jealous.  She is already fluent enough to translate at her paralegal job as she fights “all the unjust evictions happening every day”.  It’s another black-and-white issue that “you just don’t get”.  Given my record, including the embarrassing Nader vote, this phrase still shocks me into defensiveness sometimes.  But mostly we are outraged together—I try to stay in the feminist lane which is a very comfortable place to be as a 58-year-old previously divorced gynecologist.

She just asked if I would go to the protest with her at 5.  I agree, as long as there is no promotion of violence.  She rolls her eyes and I inwardly acknowledge the current situation is only about violence from start to finish.   If nothing else, we humans are determined to destroy life on the planet as quickly as possible.  I am reading a fascinating article about a course at an Ivy League school investigating how and when annihilation will show up.  For some reason, this article about brilliant young people debating AI, climate change, and hydrogen bombs makes me smile and laugh.  I think I know the reason.

I see a different path of destruction for us.  I see it close and I see it from ten thousand feet.  The fancy word is depopulation, but the real words are women are done having babies and dying for it.  At least, I am noticing a trend.  I can identify several valid reasons for this even though my education was limited to state schools and lacking in decent humanities options.

I have worked for 35 years in a hospital that takes care of poor women.  Disenfranchised women.  Women exhibiting high scores on the Social Determinants of Health needs scale.  A safety net hospital.  So many bullshit terms created to shellac over truth.  I take care of the victims of racism and capitalism on the daily, flattened by these forces like Bugs Bunny on the highway to wealth and progress shared by all us blameless folks living on the trust funds of colonizers and plantation owners in addition to tax code welfare. There I said it-one of those facts that must be beaten back as America hating progressivism as rapidly as possible.  In my years on the field of battle against bleeding and sepsis and blood pressures high enough to blow up a big chunk of brain matter, we are getting beat and it’s getting harder to keep your head up in the face of such defeat. Especially if you are, like me,  a white doctor taking care of black and brown women.  If you are pregnant and black, you are safer in any other country with decent health care resources.  And it’s become quite clear that this is not about her bad diet or uncontrolled hypertension from not taking her prescription.  Inconveniently, the data is clear.  It’s the mostly white nurses and doctors’ fault.  It’s my fault. 

Until this gets fixed, which I am guessing would take enough black and brown doctors to care for all the black and brown patients or some re-ordering of the entire human race, who can blame a black woman for avoiding childbirth?   I think that I would avoid it, but that is so unimportant that it’s funny—typical white move, to assert my feelings where they don’t belong.

But wait, more data is coming in.  Apparently, women all over the world are having fewer babies!   Women are smart and, as much as they crave these adorable creatures who magically grant them validity and resources for a short time in their brutish lives, they can assess risk-benefit ratios in their heads. Now that women in China and Korea and India and Afghanistan can sometimes live into their twenties and get a job without being sold off to the highest bidder or raped and killed or shamed into marriage, they are saying no thank you to the second method of subjugation-domestic taming with babies and housework to allow men to flourish in the world of cafes and offices.  Even in our wonderful country, most of my friends in the work world come home form 8-12 hours of paid labor to 4-6 hours of chaos and cooking and sometimes even sexual pleasing of another.  Must we do everything in addition to risking premature death or losing control of our pee forever more? 

I know I am coming across as a man-hating bitch here and that is really not who I am.  At least, that is not all I am or even mostly.  Yes, I contain multitudes and many of them are angry at the state of the world, but I have two sons who are brave and righteous humans and they agree with me on everything.  I used to just blame socialization for everything, but now I am old and I know things.  I gave my daughter trucks and let her wear only pants, but she is still dating all the wrong men just like I did.  My son is made of kindness and can’t stop adopting kittens, but his girlfriend wears Victoria Secret outfits into my kitchen on weekends in front of my (very wonderful) husband.  The only ones I can talk to about the really hard things like this are the dogs.

There’s just one more thing that could tip the replacement number off the cliff.  And it’s uniquely relevant to our great country, which seems to be one of the only places where women are maintaining their optimism toward the dream of 2.5 kids and a supportive partner.  Maybe it’s all the Barbie playtime and the illusion of liberation.  I am worried that the crackdown on women’s rights to control their own bodies will lead to unwanted results.  Like I said, women are smart and if you corner us, we will fight back.

I am guessing that if it comes down to it, we can do without the “sex with men” thing.  Many of us would be sad and missing it, but one has to be practical.  Condoms do break and pills don’t get absorbed, and then life changes forever.  I mean, a woman’s life changes forever, and sometimes that is a fireworks show of goodness and expanded existence, but sometimes it is a disaster, personally and maybe for the other kids and maybe for the guy.   There is only one constant equation in baby-making:  no swimmers - no baby.  My daughter thinks I am a radical on this issue, especially when I tell her there will be a national women’s strike if they try to federalize it and we will shut down the economy.  If there is one thing conservatives care more about than sex, it’s money, so that might work.  But inside I am scared.  Although we are smart, in the end we may be too kind for this drastic action.  Besides, we have to financially support all of our kids.

Time to take a shower and get ready for the protest.  I have time now because I left my job at the city hospital.  I was crying every day in my car and knew in the end I had mostly failed in my naïve mission to help those in need. I think that I just couldn’t stand my fragile self anymore in that place of harsh and real struggle, where bravery manifests in the woman, not the doctor.  I cannot give up the addictive joy of lifting the newborns to their mother’s arms yet, so I am presiding at a little suburban unit for now, until the world ends or my daughter needs me to help with a grandbaby.

Sarah Crane has a BA and MD degree from the University of Missouri and lives with her wonderful husband Peter and some of their adult-ish children in eastern Massachusetts.  The family has a total of 2 cats, 7 dogs, and three partially tamed yard bunnies. She still delivers babies part-time and believes that being a women’s health physician is the greatest honor and privilege possible. She has always wanted to be a writer and hopes that her next incarnation will be as a librarian.