After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, several states—including North Dakota, in which I lived—enacted abortion bans. Most contain exceptions for fatal birth defects and threats to maternal health, but exceptions are rarely granted in practice. Would I have chosen to get pregnant at age forty-one, shortly before the ruling, knowing I could lose bodily sovereignty? How many children exist because mothers knew they could conceive without imperiling themselves and their families?

Anemone Beaulier’s poetry has appeared in Cave Wall, Cumberland River Review, North American Review, The Pinch, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming, with her husband and children.