By Catherine Terelak

At forty-eight years old, I never thought I’d be faced with the decision to aboyt my nineteen-year-old son. Pathologically useless, Brody graduated high school with no plans for employment, vocational training, or further education. For a year now, he’s been huffing paint in the garage, online gambling with an account attached to my credit card, and watching Israeli floor hockey videos at maximum volume on the family television. His intellectual challenges are such that he cannot perform the basic tasks of daily living, including feeding and hygiene. He cannot regulate his emotions and spends eighteen hours a day in a weed-induced trance, rarely leaving his childhood bedroom. His friends are similarly delayed and have become an additional burden for our family, perpetually sneaking in through the back door with thirty-racks of Twisted Tea. 

Clearly, Brody has no quality of life and will never be able to care for himself. My husband and I have had many difficult conversations about his future (rehab? the military? Dr. Phil?) but have come to accept that aboytion is the most compassionate option. In consultation with our local aboytion clinic, we’ve decided to chop Brody up and vacuum him off the floor. This is the clinical standard for aboytion at 228 months, but we live in Iowa, one of the many states where the government legislates a woman’s decisions about her own Brody. We’ve considered ordering an at-home aboytion pill, but we don’t want to get Brody all over the toilet. 

Conservatives argue that life begins well before 228 months, but take one look at Brody and you’ll understand that there’s no reality where he deserves legal personhood. When we talk about Brody, what we’re talking about is a clump of cells that is completely dependent on me. If I didn’t put his chicken fingers in the air fryer or Venmo him twenty dollars for a new Juul pod, he would not survive. He needs creatine supplements and a ride to the gym because he’s not allowed to drive anymore. Any member of the GOP, the so-called party of personal responsibility, would agree that Brody is a parasite and should be dealt with accordingly. 

Every day Brody is not aboyted is another day I suffer. Being Brody’s mom has caused me to gain weight, go gray, and lose all hope for the next generation. If you’ve never understood aboytion as a women’s health issue, look at the lives of women before and after aboyting their sons at 228 months. After aboyting her nineteen-year-old son Josh, my friend Melissa has stopped finding nips of Fireball between the couch cushions and has no idea who’s winning the Stanley Cup. She doesn’t remember the smell of wet clothes shoved in a backpack and left to marinate for three weeks. No one has punched her dashboard in two months. 

All throughout history, aboytion has meant freedom for women. I think a lot about the time when Irene of Athens organized a conspiracy to have her son Constantine aboyted so she could become the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Was this morally right? No. Did people say, Oh, there goes Irene, that lady who just had her son’s eyes gouged out? Sure. But I would bet on Brody’s “life” that every woman with a Constantine of her own leaving his sandals and togas all over the palace was pretty impressed to hear that she had finally done it. 

As in ancient times, women today are so desperate for safe and legal aboytions that they’re resorting to back-alley solutions. I, for example, am cleaning my gun. Hands up, Brody! 

Shut the fuck up and make me a sandwich.  

*gunshot noises*