But I believe the deathbed holds a space to bring love into our lives in greater measure if we are brave enough to be vulnerable and open to the possibilities of its bittersweetness.

As a communication expert and Associate Professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center who has worked with dying patients and their families for over a decade, I see avoidance of the deathbed time and time again. My entire career has been devoted to helping people accept terminal diagnoses so that they can find meaning in their remaining days, weeks, and months of life.

And now, as my father-in-law is slowly dying of a progressive illness and nearing the end of his life, I am forced to apply my lessons learned to my own life.

Through my work, I’ve learned the natural reflex to death is avoidance. We run away from death ─of our spouses, our parents, our friends. We certainly run away from it for ourselves.

Understandably, I think we run away because the deathbed is full of grief and sorrow. But I also think we run away because we overlook the power of the deathbed to contain an overwhelming amount of love and grace.

When we meet the deathbed with vulnerability, it can be a powerful place of connection and meaning making. In short, approaching the deathbed of our loved ones, and of ourselves ultimately, with courage is a critical but overlooked part of what it means to live a life well.

To be clear, the deathbed is firmly rooted in sorrow and grief. As C.S. Lewis said, “The death of a beloved is an amputation.” A part of us is cut off, which leaves a space of grief and mourning in its wake. And certainly, not all relationships are worth mourning.

What I am talking about is the actual physical space of the deathbed for those who matter to us ─ the place where dying begins but life has not yet ended. That is the place that holds the power to transform us and our relationships forever. In that place, we can usher in a lifetime of love or reconcile a lifetime of pain through grace and forgiveness. But it requires the courage to be vulnerable. To be honest. To say how we really feel.

Brené Brown, an expert on vulnerability, put it so aptly in her book Daring Greatly: “Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you’re feeling. To have the hard conversations.”

There are no harder conversations to have in this world than being honest at the deathbed.

It is a profoundly challenging conversation to have where you say how you feel to someone who is dying in a way that acknowledges their approaching death. But so often, I see people avoid the deathbed so emphatically that they miss the opportunities it provides. On the deathbed, I have witnessed broken relationship reconciled, long-needed apologies and forgiveness and grace emerge. I have seen people express a lifetime of love and joy they feel towards someone, which creates this lasting unexplainable peace and connection with that person, even after they’re gone.

In both cases, the deathbed can provide a needed sense of closure.

While I have seen many benefits of the deathbed, I have also seen immense and overwhelming regret for failing to say goodbye. And so, I want everyone to know the transformative power of being vulnerable at the deathbed, for both the dying and those losing them.

I am currently facing my own struggle to be vulnerable. Each time I visit my father-in-law who is nearing the end of his life, I see less and less of who he was. And at the same time, my heart feels more and more compelled to whisper into his ear, “I love you. Thank you for loving me.” By being forced to face the reality that he is dying, I have the opportunity to express all the things he has meant to me in this lifetime.

But it isn’t easy. It’s heartbreaking. In some ways, his illness is forcing me to accept that reality. One I might push back on or ignore if he was better or seemed more physically well.

As we slipped into my father in law’s room during a recent visit, my children burst forth with exclamations of, “Grandpa, we love you!” My 2-year-old son hands him his treasured and newly acquired stuffy: “Here grandpa, here.” My father-in-law strokes it slowly; it brings a calmness to him. Although it’s getting harder to communicate with him these days, tiny tears well up in his eyes as my kids shout, “We love you!”

He hears them. He feels their love.

I sometimes think deathbeds are only needed for adults. Most children have such a lavish and unhindered expression of love, and I’m curious where that goes as we age. I think I know where it goes – life toughens us up and teaches us lessons that don’t really help us on the deathbed like “don’t ever be vulnerable” or “don’t share your true feelings.”

There is much to be learned from my children. What is so amazing is they’re too young to really understand fully that he’s dying, and yet they shower him with unhindered love and affection. We could all learn to do a lot more of that in our lives. But there is also so much to learn from my father-in-law. I think he knows he’s dying. And he seems to be choosing the path of vulnerability, which allows him to lap up every ounce of love spoken towards him. I admire his courage.

It’s as if a lifetime accumulation of love, struggle, joy, pain, and sorrow mount up on the deathbed. It’s all there to confront. But due to the impending finality of death, the deathbed offers up grace and love in a way I have yet to see elsewhere in life. It’s where we can come forward to say, “You mattered. You still matter. I love you.” Or even harder but perhaps more profound: “I forgive you” and “will you forgive me?”

This vulnerability both expands and breaks your heart, but I truly believe it’s worth it.

As I sit next to his bed, I see the wall of pictures of his children and grandchildren. And I am overcome, in a strange and unexpected way. Tears well up in my eyes, and I find they are bittersweet tears. In that moment, I am so immensely full of love and gratitude for his life but overwhelmed with grief that it may soon end.

I am amazed that he brought all these people into this world in some form or another. Not solely or alone, but certainly in part. I know he, like all of us, has made many mistakes in trying to love and yet, he did love. And I feel that love. And as I see him nearing his death, I see an opportunity to reflect on what love means in my own life and to express to him the love I have for him and will always carry with me.

Funnily enough, the more I express my love towards him, the more I’m compelled to share it with the many people I love in my life. The deathbed has a way of reminding us that time is short, so why not choose love?

I think this vulnerability – on his part as the one dying and ours of the loved ones having to say goodbye – is the only way to make the deathbed matter.

The historic moment that many across the U.S. either dreaded or cheered has happened: the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And now, there are some people cheering because they believe this turn of events will somehow end violence toward unborn children.

I wish they were right.

I grew up in Houston, Texas, where many good people hold the deep belief that overturning Roe v. Wade is the greatest win for ending violence toward children in America. And while I agree whole-heartedly that saving unborn children seems a noble cause, the problem is that banning abortions won’t match or meet this grand goal.

My job as a health equity researcher in Seattle, in addition to my research and work at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, forces me to focus on the clear evidence that banning abortions will not save lives. The reality is such bans will lead to more violence against women, children, and each other.

My work has examined the myriad inequities within our American healthcare system for more than a decade, and when it comes to access to abortion health services, the data makes this clear: The rage against the right to choose is very misplaced and creating a toxic division within our country.

The truth is that abortions are lowest among nations with legal access to abortion and birth control. But this is not surprising because anti-abortion laws aren’t meant to reduce the number of abortions. Rather, these laws are wielded by politicians and pundits seeking political power and financial gain while avoiding actually fixing our failing systems.

To be clear, the campaign to ban abortions does not aim to protect the unborn. Rather, it aims to further divide our polarized nation, to drive a wedge between a perceived “us” and a contrived “them” thus avoiding who should be the real target of our rage – our leaders who continually fail to represent and protect us.

And it’s working.

But instead of turning on each other, it’s time to direct our rage toward our political leaders who contrived this divide for their own gain. The truth is that fair and equal access to the right to live for all Americans is hard work, and so our leaders would rather continue to feed us false solutions rather than doing the hard work required.

The rhetoric around abortion is strategic and predominately housed within the Republican party’s platform, which has historically weaponized the politics of abortion. It plays on the fears of those who either genuinely want to protect unborn children or those who want to restrict women’s rights. Gallup polls indicate that one-in-four Americans consider abortion a key voting issue, highlighting its effectiveness.

But those living in these fears now represent a minority in America. With this decision, our leaders have utterly failed to represent the mass majority of Americans who support upholding the right to abortion. This minority platform is being used to create a culture in America that prevents us from helping more women avoid unplanned pregnancies by creating a proper health care infrastructure and social support network.

The Supreme Court’s decision to unravel decades of reproductive rights for women, and the states who ban abortion in its wake, will certainly harm low-income women who will now lose access to abortion services. This will inevitably force them to cross state borders to undergo unsafe, illegal abortions, but does nothing to stem the number of abortions themselves. And the ruling will further transform the map of the United States into “red” and “blue” silos, the former offering no access and the latter scraping up what services they can as long as they can with an increase in demand.

The “United” States of America can do better.

If the real goal is to end violence, there would be a move toward following the data on what actually reduces abortion. Data clearly show that the best way to reduce abortions is to provide adequate healthcare for women and children and to invest in social structures to support them.

It is no coincidence that the states rushing to force women to carry their unplanned pregnancies to term are also the very states where children are most likely to suffer poor outcomes like poverty, poor access to health insurance, and low availability of early childhood education.

So what needs to happen?

We need:

Increased access to healthcare, including women’s healthcare, prenatal care, and healthcare for children.

Improved affordability and quality of early childhood education.

Paid parental leave.

Affordable and safe housing.

We also need improved access to sexual health education and birth control services, which is of particular importance now with a coming wave of reduction of access to abortions.

This is the work that actually needs to be done to save lives. This is the work politicians are running away from. Unfortunately, this work also requires funding. This is why these changes have failed to come into existence in the U.S. and why the call for more infrastructure and support in the U.S. starts to sound like a broken record.

But we must keep screaming and working until things change.

Let’s keep in mind at all times why abortions exist in the first place. They exist because women are forced to have sex without contraception and face domestic abuse and economic vulnerabilities. They exist because our country lacks proper maternal healthcare, parental leave and access to affordable childcare and education.

In short, abortions exist in large part because we have created a society and social structures that fail women – and children – repeatedly.

As a health equity researcher, I see this theme on repeat. We create structures and systems that fail to support our most vulnerable citizens—women, people of color, and the poor. And then, when they engage in behaviors we do not approve of like abortions, we blame them. Instead of acknowledging that we created systems of institutionalized violence against them that puts them at high risk of these outcomes, we instead criminalize them.

What happens as abortions are banned but we don’t see any decrease in them? Where will all the rage of those supporting abortion bans go? If current trends continue, it will be us continuing to turn on each other. Rather than helping women in need, who will inevitably be more at risk in this post Roe v. Wade world, we will continue to blame and criminalize them. But who wins in this scenario? It’s our political leaders. Those who are using our rage against each other for their own gain. We, the citizens, never win in this equation.

To be sure, protecting the right to abortion is a complex challenge and includes many potential scenarios, from miscarriages to ectopic pregnancies to medical complications. Further reason why the right to access should remain because women will die due to this decision.

Ending abortion in America does not equate to a reduction in lives lost. But politicians using this belief to bolster themselves rather than serve the American people is coming at the cost of real lives. And that is the real violence.