Happily Ever After

94: Run for the Cure

PS - Happy pride, friends!!! In a world filled with hate and bigotry, be unapologetically yourself, because self-love is the one thing that they cannot take away from us. Live your truth, and go shine your light, belli <3

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2039
Ages: Maya (51), Carina (55), Sarah (31), Lucia (24)

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The work being done at the Elena Bailey Memorial Clinic was one that made Carina endlessly proud. No matter where life seemed to take them, the Italian's work at the reproductive rights clinic at Grey-Sloan memorial was one that she was happy to do. There were hard days, and one of them was June 24, 2022.

In 1973... the Supreme Court overturned the ban on abortions and reproductive health care. It was deemed unconstitutional for states or the government to police women's bodies, for someone else to decide what a woman should choose to do with her own body.
Finally, they could breathe. Women were finally given the courtesy of making their own decisions about their own bodies. Them and them alone, no third party asshole who was so far removed from the situation, lacking basic compassion and understanding.

But, then in 2022... The nightmare had begun once more. Ever since the overturning of that decision which had been nearly fifty years to the day, the gynecologists at Grey-Sloan memorial wore black, like they were going to a funeral. 

What was once a field full of happiness and bringing new life into this world would forever be tainted by a third party, out of reach of reality, ignorant to the facts, making evil decisions that they knew would cost dozens of lives.

Carina had heard of the pro-lifers in America. Even in Italy, studying to be an OBGYN in medical school, they reviewed the Roe versus Wade case. She'd been horrified to learn of the price that ignorance could pay, how terrifying it must have been to be a woman back then.

A woman who was cornered, and had no options. A woman who's country and government had abandoned her.

A blanket ban of abortion in the U.S. would lead to a 21% increase of pregnancy-related deaths overall, Carina's textbook had said. In 1999, it was reported that 78,000 women die from unsafe abortions each year. Seventy eight thousand women... who had families, hopes, dreams, lives of their own... who were backed into a corner and forced to make a choice.

How because their country abandoned them, they would bever feel the sun on their skin again.

How their lives were seen as disposable, as nothing more than a number on a sheet, a statistic in a report.

Coming to the United States after her papa's latest outburst, with her brother's address in mind as well as a meeting with Chief Miranda Bailey, the one who Andrea admired so much... the Italian thought of those numbers as she fiddled with a loose string on her sweater.

Regardless, no matter how much negative attention she or the clinic got, Carina insisted on standing tall. She and her coworkers, the founders of the clinic; Miranda Bailey, Jo Wilson and Addison Montgomery, had a meeting after a particularly hard day, where a brick was thrown through the glass of the clinic, striking an intern. Miranda had found Addison crying, and once the coast was safe, the founders huddled together.

"What do we want to do?"
"How did they know Addison was here?"
"There are women here from all over the country,"
"We can't back down. If we back down, there will be no one to help them,"

So, once all four women agreed that they would stand tall and proud, their work continued. Because the likes of them, the professional, brave, kind, passionate doctors that they were, would not be deterred by uneducated, hateful and bigoted protesters that flocked outside.