American Freedom- What (Not) Wearing a Mask Says About You

There is a debate going on in our country during this pandemic. It is about freedom, or at least that is how it is being framed. The focus of this debate is really about life. Would you be willing to be inconvenienced in order to save a life? Would you wear a mask in public in case you carry a deadly virus? There are those who wear masks and make masks and share masks, and there are those who curse them and anyone who dares to wear them. There are people who have been assaulted and even killed for asking someone to wear a mask.

If you think wearing a mask is encroaching on your freedom, could you call yourself pro-life? I am trying to imagine how one comes to the conclusion that this piece of fabric no larger than most underwear is so harmful and awful that you can’t possibly cover your mouth for a short period of time. I am under the impression every thinking person understands at this point that we are facing a virulent virus that can spread very easily, so wearing this bit of fabric could actually save someone’s life. It is not a hundred percent effective, it is harm reduction, but imagine saving someone’s life! Now, conversely, imagine taking someone’s life. However, it occurs to me that the problem here is not lack of freedom but lack of imagination, people who would deem it unnecessary to wear a mask seem to suffer from a profound lack of imagination. Maybe no one read to them enough as children, maybe they are too busy thinking about other things (or themselves) or maybe they just never exercised that imagination muscle. If your point of view is only from your lived experience, you lack the ability to envision living in other circumstances, or walking in someone else’s shoes, and maybe even think everyone should make decisions based on your world view instead of the world in which they actually live. This lack of imagination leads me to believe those who wail against wearing a mask, to perhaps save another person’s life, may be some of the same people who feel passionately about the very beginning of an unknown life, about the merging of an egg and sperm inside another person’s body. Yet they can’t seem to imagine what it would be like to be responsible for that life.

Yes, believe it or not, somehow the small government/individual freedom/don’t tread on me type of person who balks at wearing a mask wants to tell me what to do with my uterus. Now I am sure they would tell me that a zygote, the size of a poppy seed after four weeks, is a sacred human life. Apparently also endowed with more rights than I have to decide whether or not my body should carry this cluster of cells for the next nine months. And that’s just the beginning! Once you have given birth there are eighteen more years (at least) of responsibility for those cells. If you think wearing a mask should be a personal choice but hosting another life within your own skin should not, you should keep reading.

Since this would appear to be an epic failure of imagination I will try to bring to light some of the circumstances that may make it untenable to bring those cells to fruition in a woman’s womb, but there are as many reasons as there are women, and they are all valid. Since there are many possible stories, maybe it would help you to imagine if it is told like a Choose Your Own Adventure, with many choices available to you.

Imagine you are a young woman/middle-aged woman/any aged woman who bleeds. I know, if you have never experienced this it can be difficult to imagine, but just try. The bleeding starts and stops without warning mostly so you must be prepared. Hopefully your school/work/home has a decent bathroom since you will need to go there more frequently this time of the month. If you have cramps/feel faint/or just tired from the loss of blood don’t complain, because if women want equality they can’t expect to get special treatment for something like a little blood loss (although I have thought we might all get one week off a month if men bled). As a woman you are capable of doing the most important, essential work of the world, your body incubates life. But remember to try not to expect special treatment for that either.

If that was too difficult to imagine maybe this will be easier since it involves a man and a woman. Perhaps you have even been in this situation yourself. Unfortunately it is all too common. Imagine that your boss/boyfriend/a stranger forces himself on you at work/home/a party. You are having a meeting/a date/a drink and you may or may not be able to say no. Even if you say no, it may or may not be respected. A month later you are anxiously awaiting the uncomfortable cramps and bleeding, but they don’t come. Since your job at a grocery store/nursing home/preschool doesn’t offer paid leave or health insurance, and because living paycheck to paycheck will not allow you to take any time off, the idea of having a child does not seem like an option. If you are entertaining the idea anyway, you would have to consider that the cost of childcare is going to be high and there may not be enough left in your paycheck after paying for childcare to feed/clothe/house a child. Maybe you would like nothing more than to care for this sacred human life that was forced upon you, or perhaps you have no interest in it whatsoever, either way, you will have difficulty providing for even the most basic needs of this zygote if it becomes a child. If you decide against keeping it, read on.

Now your choice in this adventure is to allow this barely visible dot to leave your body, as every month an egg makes its exit; or, some would tell you they believe you should carry it until it becomes a child, and although it may have your eyes or your mother’s nose, they want you to find some stranger to give it away to. That is assuming you survive this experience because honestly people forget that women still die in childbirth. So before you suggest that a woman carry another life and go through the excruciating experience of giving birth, just to give the child away, imagine this:

You find a tiny premature puppy/kitten/bunny and the only way it will survive is for you to carry it next to your belly, under your shirt for nine months. Now keep in mind you can NEVER take it out or it will die! Even when it is pushing on your bladder and you have to go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes and even when your back aches from the weight of it as it grows, you must carry it always. This growing thing is also somehow pulling calcium from your bones and making you nauseous and hungry at the same time (I don’t know how, use your imagination). But surprise! At some point at the end of those nine months you will have to push this life out of you and if you have ever passed a kidney stone you still have no idea how painful it is. That’s because a kidney stone is smaller than a coffee bean and this living thing could be six/eight/maybe even ten pounds by now.

So, you finally hold this little creature in your arms and you try to imagine giving it away, but you have pushed your body to its very limit to bring it into the world. It’s gazing at you adoringly and then crying for you and the sound is so heartbreaking that you forget about the tears in your body from birthing and the painful contractions that are still trying to release the placenta from your uterus. Is this a choice? Just. Imagine.

If you still can’t imagine any of this then just try imagining being in a hospital. Most of us have at least visited one. Imagine you or a loved one is on a ventilator. I have never been on a ventilator, I have never even been critically ill; but I have given birth so I can imagine it would also push your body to its very limit to be fighting to breathe, fighting for your life. I would never want to cause anyone to be in a life-threatening situation, it is certainly not my place to make life and death decisions for someone else. If you won’t wear a mask but you expect a woman to give birth without any support, financial or otherwise you are not only a hypocrite you are a selfish human who lacks imagination and I can’t imagine that is who anyone wants to be.

If you can’t even IMAGINE wearing a mask for a few minutes or hours to potentially protect a life, you are not pro-life, masks are pro-life.