Dear Mr. Romney,
As a graduate student, earning my Master’s degree in
English, I paid over twenty-thousand dollars (taking out private loans and “borrowing
from my parents”) to adopt my son domestically from Michigan because I wanted
to be a mother so badly. My degree was paid for with scholarships, grants, and
more loans. I was twenty-three years old.
At the time, my husband was successfully working for a major
corporation, making a good salary (though, of course, not enough to move us
anywhere near out of the 47%).
Then the recession hit, and my husband lost his job.
Terrifyingly, we also lost our health insurance.
My position as an adjunct professor at several community
colleges didn’t offer insurance. I’m what we call a “freeway flyer,” picking up
classes at sometimes three or four different colleges and universities within a
thirty mile radius in order to piece together a full course-load each semester
so that I can be paid half the amount of what “full-time” instructors who
are teaching the same number of classes earn. However, as a “freeway flyer,” I
am without critically imperative benefits, such as health insurance. This fact
is yet another effect of education budget cuts.
So I got Medi-Cal for my son. My beautiful domestically
adopted son. My sunshine. The boy his birthmother handed to me and trusted me
to care for. To provide a better life for. Because my husband and I were
educated and (at the time) well-employed.
I’m so thankful that people in California are willing to pay
a few extra dollars each month in taxes so that children without health
insurance can go to the doctor when they’re sick. That moms and dads in
California without the money to pay don’t have to worry about not taking their
sons or daughters to the hospital when they’re burning of fever that won’t
relent despite baths and cool washcloths and Tylenol because they’re scared of
the bill they could never afford—thousands and thousands of dollars for a
single emergency visit. I know that even a few hours in the ER is outrageously
expensive.
I know this because a few months after my son got Medi-Cal,
I got pregnant. Joyously. Miraculously. A previously infertile woman, I was
pregnant. I hadn’t tried to get pregnant. I hadn’t known I could get pregnant
until I was.
And then, one night eight weeks later… I wasn’t.
In between my first and second doctor visits, before I took
my Medi-Cal paperwork to my obstetrician (a wonderful doctor who accepts
Medi-Cal for pregnant women), I began bleeding. In line to obtain my free H1N1
flu vaccine from the county health department at the fairgrounds in Hacienda
Heights, the blood came.
Because my hormone levels were dropping so quickly, the
pregnancy test at my doctor’s office could no longer verify for my Medi-Cal
paperwork that I was pregnant (the stubborn blue line wouldn’t fully develop),
and thus, I did not qualify for health insurance.
That night, when the blood wouldn’t stop and my fever wouldn’t
break, my husband drove me to the emergency room, where, with unbearable grief,
I miscarried our baby.
Two weeks later, I received a bill for seven thousand
dollars. Seven thousand. I hadn’t even stayed overnight. Maybe for the other
53% this isn’t much, but for the rest of us, this is several months of wages
(at the time, for my family, six months’ worth).
My hands trembling, tears dripping on my shirt, I sat on a
bench at the park while my two-year-old son played on the jungle gym, and I
called the hospital to see if I could work something out. There was nothing
they could do, they said. I didn’t have insurance. But because I had credit
cards, they assumed I should be able to pay. Apparently, it didn’t matter that
those cards were maxed out—as they’d been used in the months before to buy
other important things, like groceries.
Three years later, my husband is a Registered Nurse working
two excellent jobs, and though I’m still working as an adjunct instructor
between several different colleges and universities in New Mexico where we now
live, my family has access to health insurance. For now. But tomorrow?
You, Mr. Romney, seem to believe that far too many
Americans are dependent on government support and this is not sustainable or
desirable. You’d like Americans to be industrious, hard-working,
self-supporting and contributing to the country’s growing economy. Well,
my family is on our way to our American dream, but getting started sometimes
means being in a position of needing government (as well as community and family)
assistance. Our story represents millions of young families struggling
financially to get started in successful careers. In many other facets of life
it is considered common sense to give beginners the extra help they need to get
started. It is a naive and arrogant insult for someone born with a silver
spoon in his mouth to criticize a beginning family for needing help getting
started.
We aren’t moochers, we are the young, the next generation
coming of age and continuing the American experience. We (especially mothers)
are the strength of this nation. Previous generations of Americans have helped
their young come into young adulthood (e.g., GI Bill, tuition free college in
California in the 1960s); why should we now be sacrificed to giant finance (privatizing
social security and our schools, vouchering Medicare)?
I’d rather live in a country where loss of job, loss of
health insurance, loss of baby does not equal immense debt—financial stress
atop heart ache. In a country where we needn’t miscarry our dreams amidst
painful obstacles but can emerge healed, triumphant, and ready to begin anew.
For Obama’s healthcare plan, for the access ALL women should
have to affordable healthcare, for the 47%, for my family, I am voting for
Obama.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Givhan
Jennifer Givhan was a 2010 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, a
2011 St. Lawrence Book Award finalist, and a 2012 National Latino Writers'
scholarship recipient. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in over forty
journals, including Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, and The Feminist Wire. She
teaches at several colleges, including The University of New Mexico, and is an
MFA student at Warren Wilson College, where she is the recipient of a grant.
She recently landed an agent for her first novel and is at work on her second
novel, as well as a second collection of poetry. She adopted her beautiful son
in 2007 and gave birth to her strong, healthy daughter in 2010.
