Rape and Abortion Survivors Unite

 

What happens when a Rape Survivor
collaborates with an Abortion Survivor
as they strive for healing and recovery?

Hi, I'm Miriam. I was raped and had an abortion in my teenage years.

Ms. Vulgar Buzz is an abortion survivor.

We have both had our share of trauma.

Our unlikely collaboration began when I discovered TheVulgarBuzz.com in 2023. I was intrigued because of my own experience. Read more about that here. 

My girlfriends and I developed "What Would Female Fetuses Say?" (WWFFS.net) in September of 2024 as a result of pondering Ms. Vulgar Buzz's work for several months.

The Vulgar Buzz site disappeared in fall of 2023 and though we had tried to reach out to the site creator many times, she had covered her tracks well. We never connected. Until...

In December of 2024 we realized that 'TheVulgarBuzz.com' domain was available and we immediately bought it and pointed it to one of our web pages (Who Wuzz Vulgar Buzz?).

BAM!

Within 24 hours we had received an email from Ms. Vulgar Buzz herself. Read more about that here.

After exchanging a few emails we realized we needed to chat on the phone. We both agreed that it would be a good idea to record it, transcribe it and post it here for all to see. Below see the entire conversation with very minor edits, mostly removing errrs and umms and the like.

Miriam and Ms. Vulgar Buzz Have a Chat on the Phone

(Recorded and transcribed December 17, 2024)

Buzz: Hello Miriam, Good morning to you I guess, it’s only around 8am there, right?

Miriam: Good morning! Yes and a little after 1pm in Dublin, 5 hours ahead of us I suppose?

Buzz: Right! Well it is good to finally hear your voice and for the sake of the recording, just refer to me as Buzz ok?

Miriam: Perfect. I’m happy to hear your voice as well… I just knew that email wasn’t going to cut it between the two of us and I must admit, I just love hearing your Dublin accent, so there is that too.

Buzz: <laughter> Well, I like talking to Americans as well, but you have an accent too, I’m guessing Middle Eastern?

Miriam: Yes, my husband’s family is from Cairo and my family is from Beirut. If you’re a praying woman, please put one up for my cousins that still live there, it is pretty tense in that area with all that is going on.

Buzz: Prayer going up! So I’ve been thinking about this conversation since we scheduled it a couple days ago and I’m not sure where to start. I guess I’d just like to thank you for your kind and gentle spirit which is so plain for the whole world to see on your website. You and your girlfriends seem to have an enormous amount of compassion in order to have developed it the way you have. By the way, just how much are your girlfriends involved in the site?

Miriam: Actually, I do most of the legwork and writing because I have some graphic design and writing experience. My girlfriends review what I’m doing and make suggestions almost daily it seems. I find it very helpful to work like that. And thanks for your kind words toward us… our approach has been to be curious rather than judgmental. We could sense there was some deep trauma that motivated you to put up the original images, perhaps you can start by telling us about that.

Buzz: Right… I’ll have a go at that I suppose. So you’ve gathered correctly that my mum attempted to abort me in Britain as it wasn’t allowed in Ireland at the time. And late term abortions weren’t really allowed even in Britain, but she obviously found a place to do it and I was delivered alive in spite of it all. I’m told that it was then that a certain group of Nuns who were in the area miraculously intervened and rescued me. I’m not even sure of the details in all that.

Miriam: That’s ok, but God bless those brave Nuns! I’ve encountered so many good Catholics in my journey and it sounds like you have as well.

Buzz: Indeed I have. Some broken ones too, but honestly, I’ve been spared much interaction with the broken ones. Thank God. But these nuns were Irish and they took me back to a little town north of Dublin and placed me in a loving Catholic home where I was raised. My family was devout but not overly so and I can’t say I ever remember anything remotely abusive from my parents. They are still my mum and dad and I have solid and good relationships with them and my siblings even now.

Miriam: Well, that is so good to hear. I’m happy for you growing up in a loving environment like that. So in the middle of all that goodness, how did you find out about the abortion attempt and your adoption?

Buzz: I was eighteen and preparing for my Leaving Certificate in my sixth year of secondary school… I think that is the same as your Senior Finals in the US, right?

Miriam: Yes, I think so.

Buzz: Well, I’d been doing some research on abortion on my own because this was right about the time the long standing anti-abortion laws were being changed in Ireland. My parents and other Catholics were not amused at this development and it isn’t like we talked about it all the time, but it was enough to make me start looking into it on my own.

Miriam: … and that was pretty easy to do with the Internet…

Buzz: Yes, and I found myself getting angry at the fallacious arguments being touted by the pro-choice folks. What they were saying was just so illogical and ridiculous to my way of thinking. I was angry enough to even bring it up in the presence of my parents and siblings. Well, that led to the talk…

Miriam: Oh my…

Buzz: Right, I mean, I knew I was adopted and really never dug into it. I wasn’t the only adopted kid in the family, my younger sister is adopted too. But I was just told that my Mom couldn’t take care of me so she worked with some Nuns to find me a home. I guess my parents realized that the opportune time had come and I can still see us sitting there just the three of us in the living room in one of those extremely rare large-family moments when no one else is around. Jeez… I can still see the color of the curtains and the pattern on the sofa, this is burned into my brain forever I guess…

Miriam: Completely understandable…

Buzz: right… so the whole story comes out and I learn that my birth mom was a victim of rape by a cousin and late in her pregnancy had decided that abortion was her only real option. Of course she lived in Dublin so she had to go elsewhere for any sort of legal abortion and I’m not really clear on it but it appears that someone in the London area agreed to do it. I learned that the good sisters found out about it somehow and they rescued me after the induced abortion attempt…. nothing short of heroic in my opinion because usually when aborted fetuses are delivered alive, well, they don’t usually live long or often are not allowed to live long. [Buzz is audibly shaken after saying this this and pauses…]

Miriam: [Choking up a bit…] ok Buzz, take your time here. This is hitting very close to my own trauma as well and what I did to my own child for much the same reasons as your mom. Let’s just breathe a minute here.

[half a minute’s pause]

Buzz: Miriam, [still struggling to speak] I want you to know I’ve worked through some of this now and I’m not the angry person I was during those years… the years leading up to when I created the Vulgar Buzz. I’m finding healing and I’m not angry with you. You need to know that. Can you believe I have nothing but love and respect for you?

Miriam: [audibly weeping but managing to say…] yes I believe you and I’m so sorry this happened to you.

Buzz: I know you are. Forgiveness is real. I’m sure your child will forgive you too when they meet you finally someday… was it a boy or girl?

Miriam: Girl. I named her Emma later… she is Emma.

Buzz: Emma will forgive you, probably already has. I mean, I know it took me some time, but I eventually forgave my mum too.

Miriam: Thanks Buzz, really, that helps to hear that from you.

Buzz: You’re welcome. [pause…] Whew!! This is harder than I thought it was going to be [chuckles].

Miriam: …but healing too, so let’s keep going. Ok?

Buzz: Yes, let’s [pause…] where were we… Oh yes, so, I was rescued and brought back to Ireland to this beautiful home and raised by this beautiful, flawed and loving family. I count myself very lucky indeed. But back to finding all this out in my parents living room… I’m not sure I can name all the emotions that welled up within me when I found this out. Shame, rage, sorrow, fear and more I suppose… and physically nauseous for sure, I nearly threw up… I do remember that clearly.

Miriam: Shame… why shame?

Buzz: I felt shame for my Mom,… not so much ashamed of her, but I felt her shame and trauma.

Miriam: That makes sense to me.

Buzz: … and the rage… well, it wasn’t so much at my mom but at the sophistry that had derailed her sound thinking. You use that word a lot… it is fitting…

Miriam: Yes, but precisely as you’ve used it. Sophistry implies using fallacious arguments deliberately. I’m not sure anyone in the pro-choice movement is deliberately trying to deceive anyone. However, I do believe there is a being called the Father of Lies that delights in inventing these fallacious arguments and is intent on getting us to buy into them. It is that being that is guilty of sophistry, not those being deceived. This is an important distinction I think.

Buzz: Exactly and that is what I had to finally come to terms with in processing the trauma of being aborted by my mother. She was deceived.

Miriam: And so was I. It isn’t the same as being completely innocent, but it is definitely not intentional homicide at that point. At worst it is mercy killing in some situations, but not malicious homicide on the part of those deceived.

Buzz: I agree with that now. I’m not sure I’d have agreed with it during my Vulgar Buzz years.

Miriam: Yes, let’s get back to that… you’re in your parent's living room in the middle of receiving these traumatic truths about your birth and your biological Mom.

Buzz: Yes, so I somehow made it through my final bit of secondary school with a truck full of emotional baggage. I went on to community college to study art and graphic design. At some point my Mum and Dad helped me find a therapist and that is when I started using my InDesign skills to craft the images that would give voice to the voiceless and help me process my trauma and rage. My therapist recommended it actually and you completely guessed it regarding the seed for that: I saw the Babylon Bee post with the little fetus holding up the protest sign and I was off to the races.

Miriam: My girlfriends are pretty up on all things related to “The Bee”, we get a good laugh from that crew on a weekly basis at least.

Buzz: Right, me too. And don’t forget the Derry Girls, you and your friends are uncanny in your telepathy here! I love the show and especially Michelle, she cracks me up!

Miriam: Us too! Which is probably why it seemed an obvious connection since you identified as Irish and we knew that show. But anyway, so you started a website sometime in 2023 I’m guessing.

Buzz: Yes, and I should tell you I wasn’t alone in this thing. I had girlfriends that were very sympathetic and supportive and they helped me slowly work through all the fallacious pro-choice arguments we could think of… everything we’d heard thrown out there, right? So we start crafting these images and putting them on the website… I’m good at graphic design and one of my girlfriends is good at web stuff so she got the domain and set it all up… I think it was just after Easter 2023 when we set up the site and I started publishing the images that summer.

Miriam: And that is exactly when I stumbled upon it and shared it with my girlfriends.

Buzz: I think it did help me to get it all out there… all the rage and bile that I’d been feeling. It was almost like an exorcism. And then my therapist helped me connect with other abortion survivors and hearing their stories really helped me a lot. It slowly moved me to comprehend the enormity of global deception that is going on and how traumatized both mother and aborted child are in this process.

Miriam: Yes, I’m glad they helped you with that. They are a courageous group, these survivors. I’m hoping their voices get heard more as a result of this. It is insane how many people don’t even consider that they might exist. As a historian, I know that the first ‘abortions’ were not medical interventions but rather full term delivery of the child and then leaving the child exposed to the elements out away from the village. I also learned that it was early Christians and other compassionate people who started rescuing these children and trying to provide homes for them. Of course there were others that rescued them with not so good intentions. So abortion/exposure survivors have a deep and long history going back thousands of years.

Buzz: I’ve heard of that, yes. Well anyway, by fall of 2023 I was starting to move on past my rage a bit and we took the site down. But not before you’d collected most of the images I’d made.

Miriam: Wait, there are more?

Buzz: For sure, I didn’t publish them all. I can share some of them if you’d like in the future.

Miriam: I’ll leave that up to your discretion of course. The thing is, my girlfriends and I were a bit conflicted on how to share your images with the world. I mean, to one simply glancing at them, they might not see the place of trauma that they are coming from. They might only see hate and venom.

Buzz: I know, that troubles me as well. But that is what trauma induced rage sometimes produces and I think the world needs to swallow that bitter pill and sit with the sour stomach it gives you for a bit. I’m not sure that anything less than a firm slap will even come close to snapping people out of their deception and fallacious thinking. But I could be wrong.

Miriam: We wrestled with the same thoughts. Yet we think we are doing the right thing here. My friend just posted an article that calls out what we’ve done with the site. He calls what you’re doing with Vulgar Buzz “yelling across the median” like in “Trains, Planes and Automobiles”. He calls what I’m doing with my WWFFS images “The Smiling Saboteur”. I’ll send you a link to it.

Buzz: I’d like that, seems like a perceptive friend you have there.

Miriam: Yeah, he reached out to me when the WWFFS site first went live and we’ve emailed back and forth a couple times. He seems like a decent sort. I think he’s Catholic, you’d probably sync with the whole vibe of his site for sure.

Buzz: I’ll definitely check it out.

Miriam: Well, is there anything else you’d like to discuss before I go?

Buzz: Yeah, maybe just this. I’ve come to realize that being deceived doesn’t mean you’re thoughtless. I use the term “thoughtful feminists” a lot in my work. I think the opposite of a thoughtful feminist is simply a misguided feminist. Ones who’ve gone down a road riddled with half truths and outright lies all the while believing they were doing the right and loving thing. I don’t hate them, I just want them to wake up and see the serious mess we are in here and get on the right side of humanity… truly fighting for the rights of ALL humans to live and flourish… even tiny humans in utero.

Miriam: I can’t improve on that for a last word… shall we do this again?

Buzz: For sure, let’s make it a more or less regular thing ok?

Miriam: Deal.