Owe – Ft McMurray's Homepage

The first time we heard the heartbeat, my pregnancy app said that baby was the size of a blueberry. There it was, our second surprise baby, their little heart flickering at us. “Hi, baby,” I heard my husband say while the nurse handed him the photo of our little one. The second time we went in for an ultrasound, two weeks later, to make sure everything was progressing normally, things went differently.

Before the appointment, everything with my pregnancy seemed normal—I was more tired than usual, sometimes taking naps at the same time as my son did; I had food aversions, especially to things that had very strong smells; and I had to pee all the time. I had no bleeding or cramps. Walking into the ultrasound center, I fully expected a normal appointment. They were going to measure the fetus to see how far along I was, look for a heartbeat, and make sure it had implanted correctly in my uterus. But when the sonogram technician kept pushing the wand around inside of me and making faces I knew something was wrong. “There’s no heartbeat,” the doctor said. My body immediately went numb.

I knew this was a possibility, considering that 1 in 10 women experience a miscarriage. It was an even higher possibility for me, since doctors had discovered a polyp on my uterus after the birth of my first son. Still, hearing those words felt like running face-first into a brick wall—I was stunned, shocked, and confused at the sudden pain. Despite the fact that miscarriages are so common, nothing can really prepare you for how you’re going to feel or react in that moment.

My husband kept telling me how strong I was and how we were going to be okay, and I knew, eventually, he would be right. But right now, all I could think about was not having a dead baby inside of me.

I called my gynecologist and she gave me three options: We could wait for my body to miscarry naturally; I could also take misoprostol, a pill that helps speed the process along by inducing strong uterine contractions (also sometimes called the abortion pill); or I could get a dilatation and curettage (also known as a D&C) in which a medical professional surgically removes all pregnancy material from your uterus.

Given that the fetus had stopped developing two weeks prior and my body was showing no signs of having noticed, my doctor warned me that a natural miscarriage could take weeks if not months. I couldn’t bear the thought of living in that limbo, not knowing when or if my body was going to start the process, still feeling all the symptoms of pregnancy but also fully being aware that this baby I was carrying was no longer growing, so I opted to miscarry through a D&C.

Miscarriages are traumatic on so many levels. Knowing that there was a fetus that had stopped developing still inside of me was destroying me emotionally. It was all I could think of. The loss of that potential life was gutting enough—the thought of then seeing the miscarriage unfold in my underwear made me feel sick. We scheduled the surgery for two days later.

The day of the surgery I was pretty relaxed. I had read innumerable stories of what the process is like, and I felt mentally ready to face it. Then, while signing my intake papers at the hospital, I read the word abortion on my chart. My whole body tensed.

Technically D&Cs are used in cases of miscarriage and abortion, and so hospitals sometimes use one label for both. “Abortion simply means the ‘termination of pregnancy,’ whether by the body or an external force,” says Chloe Lubel, a midwife at Central Park Midwifery, who oversaw my first pregnancy and also saw me through my miscarriage. I understand the technicality, but seeing the A-word when you very much did hope to carry your pregnancy to term and meet what had been stirring inside you earthside is gutting.

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Graduation season is upon us, and it’s a time of celebration across the nation. But a new report revealed that 7 out of 10 women will not just leave school this month with a diploma: over 70 percent will also have to pack up student debt as well.

New data released this month by the American Association of University Women finds that women owe around $2,700 more than men do at graduation. Crunch the numbers, and arrive at this stunner of a statistic: Women hold two-thirds of the $1.4 trillion in student loans in the United States. That’s $890 billion—still more than the GDP of Austria and Norway combined—and $400 billion more than men.

For at least the last decade, candidates for elected office have touted plans to make higher education more affordable, and progressive politicians have put forth bold policies to address the problem. But few have been explicit about its gender breakdown. Women bear a disproportionate brunt of the national student debt, and that has and continues to cost them billions in lost wealth and missed opportunities.

Of course, some of that burden stems from the fact that more women enroll in American universities than men do. At the undergraduate level, women account for 56 percent of all students. But even that number doesn’t explain the share of debt women owe. As AAUW Senior Vice President of Public Policy and Research Deborah Vagins notes, just one factor can explain the the stark differential: the wage gap.

We’ve insisted for decades now that women pursue advanced education, the better to secure good salaries and more skilled work. And that’s great, Vagins adds. But after graduation and at the federal level, the nation hasn’t done enough to ensure that those women are compensated at the same rates as men. The wage gap kicks in as soon as women enter the job market, which means that from the start, they have fewer resources to pay back loans, pay them off more slowly, and rack up more interest in the process. The effects snowball, Vagins suggests.

“All of this compounds and means they have more debt, they take longer to pay it off, and they struggle more with that debt,” she says.

Researchers estimate that women could soon owe over $1 trillion in student debt, a number that lower wages and other costs, like childcare, drives upward.

And because we know now that the issue of student debt is tied to pay inequities, it’s no surprise that the report confirms that African-American women, who make just 63 cents on the dollar, have it the hardest. For a few reasons, not least of which is that they’ve likely earned less in the jobs they did before school, black women graduate with $30,000 in debt, compared to $22,000 for white women and $19,500 for white men.

Researchers at AAUW estimate that women could soon owe over $1 trillion in student debt, a number that lower wages and other costs, like childcare, drives upward. Vagins adds that the chasm between what men and women owe has almost doubled since 2014. Believe it or not, families still save less for daughters than they do for sons. T. Rowe Price found that in 75 percent of households with just sons, parents prioritize college funds over retirement accounts. For parents that have daughters, that number hovers around 60 percent.

Vagins stresses that just as there’s not one root cause for all student debt, there isn’t one quick fix to solve it. Still, AAUW has some ideas. Elected officials can boost support for Pell Grants, so that fewer low-income students have to take out loans to start. And our representatives could act to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, a move that’s a decade overdue.

In an emailed statement to Glamour.com, Sen. Patty Murray, who serves in the chamber’s HELP Committee and has championed better access to more affordable education in the Senate, wrote that she remains “committed to addressing the rising costs of college, the unmanageable student loan debt, and the wage gap,” and added that she appreciated the fact that women have more debt and take more time to pay it off than men do. To that end, the AAUW recommends that universities open subsidized child care facilities on campuses, an acknowledgment that single mothers face costs that most men don’t.

But in the end, according to the AAUW, the best solution to the problem of the gender gap between male and female borrowers are the same ones that would close the wage gap: the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Pay Equity for All Act, state laws that would work with businesses to implement new recruitment standards aimed at hiring candidates, and business practices that retain women once they have children.

“We do not want to send the message that because of debt, women shouldn’t pursue their educational dreams,” Vagins says. “We just think it’s important that our representatives act. This level of debt affects all aspects of women’s lives; we need to be focused on that.”

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