Womb full of Wonder

The following article by Petra Kelly is reprinted from the International Feminism and Nonviolence Newsletter, No 6, 1979. Available from Jenny Jacobs and Lesley Merryfinch, 168, Hamilton Road, Manchester 13, England.

I was pregnant: carried a child within me for six weeks, and though about the words of the Chilean poetess. Gabriela Mistral, written shortly before the birth of her child.

I lay roses on my body
and speak eternal verses
about the being which is moving within me.
In my arcade I drink in the full glare of the sun
hour by hour.

I want to fall in drops
like the honey fruit inside me.
I ofter my countenance to the wind of the pine grove.
Light and wind shall colour my blood

Light and wind shall colour my blood and wash it.
In order to purify it even more
I abstain from all enmity
and from all empty talk -
I only want to love!
Because in this stillness, in this tranquility,
I am weaving a womb
a womb full of wonder ...

But where is this peace, this tranquility? I read the sad statistics: generally unwanted pregnancies outnumber wanted ·ones.

The reasons? often socio-economic, sometimes purely medical. Who is there to support and advise when the pregnancy of the mother-to-be threatens her health, or when the embryo itself is endangered? Who will tell the truth about the danger of serious abnormality in the expected child? Who can assure me that the irradiation I received through frequent x-rays and through contact with patients in radiology departments of hospitals hasn't damaged the heritage of my womb?

What is the probability that the diagnosis will be correct? Of every million children born in the Federal Republic of Germany 200,000 are handicapped. The number is increasing all the time, just like the number of nuclear arms tests, the civil and military use of nuclear energy, the frequency of diagnostic X-rays, and the amount of carcenogenic substances in the atmosphere.

Handicapped children are in need of care from birth until death. Usually it is the mother who has to cope with this fact alone and privately. It usually totally dominates her life, and often pre-empts the possibility of her having a life of her own.

While prenatal facilities are few and underdeveloped - eg equipment which would allow prenatal defects to be diagnosed and treated - over 50% of natural scientists work on
projects of a military nature: 400,000 of them are concerned directly with the development of new weapons!

For six weeks the question remained with me - could the many X-rays that I have had over the past few years be considered an acceptable risk? And what about the additional exposure to radiation as a result of the frequent visits to my sister. Grace, in the radiology department of a hospital in Heidelberg? Also, could my visits to various .nuclear power plants while they were on stream have had further negative effects on my body? How high .is the background radiation in Belgium, where I am living at present? What is the concentration of radioactive particles in the fish, cereals, beef that I eat from the fall-out from American and Chinese bomb tests? Are there any experts in radiation protection who can tell me the truth about my embryo?

Should there be permitted radiation levels at all? Who permits the permitted levels? The International Radiation Protection Board is often cited: it lays down the basis for 'acceptable' radiation levels. But what about the embryo, the child? It is far more sensitive to radiation than adults, or children who have been born. Degrees of sensitivity to radiation vary.

Why are we lied to?

What provision is made in their calculations and figures for people who like me, are highly sensitive to radiation?

There were very few answers to my questions a few months ago, and things haven't changed since. The doctors who examined me gave me very little hope that my child would be born healthy. None, really.

Embryonic tissue is the tissue most sensitive to radiation. I have had many pelvic kidney and abdominal X-rays. And as a result I had endangered a little embryo, a potential human being.

The judgment was made: the continuation of pregnancy would mean a health hazard for both mother and baby. No one could guarantee me that we, the embryo and I, would be able to withstand it all.

Nonetheless, every other day we are offered guarantees by the government and the nuclear industry: told that there is no need to fear nuclear power stations, reprocessing plants, the storage hazards of nuclear waste. Everything is safe - except my womb. And so I had to sacrifice the embryo. And now I can no longer sing with the poetess Garbriela Mistral.

I can only cry--cry about an infringement to life which perhaps would not have been necessary if someone had not been permitted to permit.

Radioactivity - the condition of our civilisation, yes, I am afraid of it. But then perhaps I have saved a child from the atomic catastrophe to come! And it continues to live on in me as the ombudsman of the unborn.

But never again will I be able to weave a womb!

Petra K. Kelly is founder and chairperson of the Grace P. Kelly Association for the Support of Cancer Research for Children. She has been active for the past 10 years in the European Ecological Movement, and is currently head of the Green Party - "Die Grunen" - in West Germany. She has been particularly active in the anti-nuclear movement. (Die Grunen, Bundesgeschaftsstelle, 53 Bonn 1, Friedrich-Elbert-Allee 120, Federal Republic of Germany).

There is ample evidence of the effects of radiation on human health:

- The Oxford Data, in England, contained evidence of increased infant leukemia and other cancer when the mother was exposed to pelvic x-ray at doses between 20 and 200 milliard to the fetus 1

- The Tri-State Leukemia Data, collected in New York Maryland and Minnesota, contained evidence of increased leukemia and other diseases at exposure between 40 and 2000 mrad skin dose, or 1 to 160 mrad bone dose.2 The Hanford Data contained evidence of increased cancer rates among workers at cumulative exposures averaging
about 1.0 rad whole body dose/year. 3

- In 1979, the Indian Health Service Hospital at Ship rock, New Mexico, reported that 25 out of 100 Navajo uranium miners have died, and 45 more now have radiation-induced lung cancer.4

Ina May Gaskin

In Practicing Midwife

Fall, 1979

Where the uranium slag has been dumped Children wade in the water, But break out in sores.

Navajo Haiku

Infant mortality increased after TMI accident

A tragic rise in infant deaths in the months immediately following the Three Mile Island accident has been reported by the Pittsburgh University radiological physicist Ernest Sternglass .

The infant death rate for Pennsylvania increased 32% after the accident, while the national rate declined 10%, Sternglass said. In the Harrisburg area, hospital records reportedly reveal an infant mortality rate of 280%above what it was before the accident.

The deaths may be attributable to radioactive iodine elements which collect in the thyroids of unborn babies, Sternglass observed.

Also, in Maryland the infant mortality rate for May 1979 was reportedly fifty percent higher than that of May 1978. Sternglass believes this may be due to pregnant mothers drinking water from the radioactively poisoned Susquehanna River.