Oct 20 2008
What to expect when you’re aborting pulled down her archives because of death threats a few weeks ago, but she’s back now! If you haven’t read through her archives, you should. As I’ve said before, she’s honest and funny and well worth reading.
Oct 07 2008
Last week, I wrote excitedly about What to Expect When You’re Aborting, a blog by a woman who has recently had an abortion and chronicled the process. Now, most of her blog is private:
i’ve received a few emails from girls who have livejournals and blogs who have been accused of being the author of this blog. one has been receiving death threats.
Death threats, huh? For people that claim to be promoting a culture of life, threatening to kill someone is just a bit counterintuitive.
Sep 26 2008
While 1/3 of women have had an abortion by the age of 45, there’s a tremendous stigma surrounding the issue, forcing most women to go through the process without community support or advice from women who’ve chosen to have an abortion or considered an abortion and didn’t get one. I’ve been reading What to Expect When You’re Aborting, a blog by a woman deciding on, preparing for, and getting an abortion. It’s an awesome blog. She’s honest and funny. This is the cartoon she posted about her post-abortion period:
Sep 16 2008
In light of the fact that John McCain thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned and it looks like many people are actually going to vote for him, I thought I’d remind you why overturning Roe v. Wade is a very very bad idea. I’ve written about it before, but this pre-Roe v. Wade doctor has an important perspective - he fixed the horrific damage caused by illegal abortions.
It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.
What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such. [via abortionclinicdays]
Aug 10 2008
Abortionclinicdays proposes that a special notice to patients be displayed in places where caregivers are allowed to refuse reproductive care to women if it interferes with their religious rights. It begins”I follow my own religious beliefs ahead of your medical needs. Therefore, I will not support, offer, or approve any of the following checked off below.”
Fears of skin cancer may be leading to vitamin D deficiencies. My grandmother is definitely on to something with her strategy of “everything in moderation.” Though this rule doesn’t seem to apply to chocolate.
Helen Boyd has a link to a leaked Bush administration memo that defines the pill as abortion.
The most damning political attack ad I’ve ever seen. Via The Edge of the American West.
Feb 09 2008
My school newspaper recently published an article on the debate surrounding Roe v. Wade. I wrote a letter to the editor in response. It was not published. This confused gem about “liberal politics” did make the cut, though. While I’ve discussed most of the things I bring up in the letter already on this blog, I think it’s a decent summary of a big problem in the abortion debate.
Anti-choice activists claim that they are trying to save lives by fighting to make abortion illegal. In fact, criminalizing abortion does not reduce abortions; it kills women. A study published last October in the Lancet found that abortion rates were not affected by its legality. Some may argue that criminalizing abortion is the right thing to do even if it does not actually affect abortion rates. This stance is inhumane. Almost 70,000 women a year die from unsafe illegal abortions. A year after Nicaragua placed a blanket ban on abortion Human Rights Watch published a report, “Over Their Dead Bodies,” documenting the results of the ban. This report found that women were dying because of the law. Many pregnant women with complications are afraid to seek treatment in case they are accused of attempting to induce an abortion and doctors are not giving abortions to women who will die without one. If anti-choice activists were truly “pro-life,” they would join hands with the pro-choice movement to promote policies that reduce unwanted pregnancy – comprehensive sex education in schools, forcing insurance companies to cover family planning services and providing public funds for this effort, and ensuring easy access to emergency contraception. Unfortunately, most anti-choice activists do not support these actions. Like many religious fundamentalists, they seem far more concerned with controlling women and punishing them for having sex than saving lives.
Sep 18 2007
As more and more healthcare workers refuse to provide women with medical care for “moral” reasons - from refusing to perform abortions to refusing to write prescriptions for EC to refusing to dispense contraceptives - it is reassuring to read this physician’s reasons for becoming an abortion provider.
There are very few of us willing to do these procedures. Most obstetrician-gynecologists do not offer them to their patients. With the history of anti-choice extremism we have witnessed in this country, it is easy to understand why a physician would decide not to offer abortion services in their office. They may be afraid of being protested or worse. What I do not understand is how someone could call refusing to provide abortion care, or at least provide a referral, a ‘moral choice’.
What is moral about telling a woman with a terminal illness that she has to continue her pregnancy? What is moral about telling a woman who can not afford to support the children in her home to have another one? What is moral about bringing a child into this world that will not receive the love, support and attention it needs because its mother has to work two jobs just to pay the rent and their father is long gone? Frankly, I do not see it.
Abortion is a moral choice. It is about a human being’s right to determine their own destiny and the destiny of the family surrounding them here on Earth. It is never an easy choice, but it is always moral.
Via AbortionClinicDays:
Aug 21 2007
While the price of birth control pills on college campuses in US has skyrocketed this year due to Bush’s Deficit Reduction Act, Brazil is looking to prevent unwanted pregnancy by subsidizing the pill. If our politicians really were interested in reducing abortions, they wouldn’t make it so difficult to prevent pregnancy.
Jul 01 2007
The left is often accused of slippery slopes when it comes to abortion: If you kill your “unborn child, ” what’s stopping you from killing your child after it’s born? But with the recent supreme court decision upholding the federal abortion ban, it seems we are heading down the other side of the hill.
If the government can choose to advance fetal interests over the pregnant woman’s health in the context of abortion, why can’t so-called “fetal rights” prevail in the context of birth?
Unlike the left, however, which never advocated for killing babies and children, pregnant women’s lives are now sometimes a secondary consideration.
In fact, this argument is already being used to justify court-ordered Cesarean sections in cases where physicians believe that a c-section will prove more beneficial to the fetus (this despite the fact that c-sections constitute major surgery and pose increased health risks to the pregnant woman and in some cases the fetus as well). True, most courts so far rule that such interventions unconstitutionally strip women of their civil and human rights, including bodily integrity, informed medical decision-making, liberty, and, in one case, life itself. In that case, later reversed by an appellate court, both the woman and her baby died after a forced c-section ordered to protect fetal life.
But at least one federal court has said that sending police to a woman’s home, taking her into custody while in active labor and near delivery, strapping her legs together and her body down to transport her against her will to a hospital, and then forcing her, without access to counsel or court review to undergo major surgery constituted no violation of her civil rights at all. The rationale? If the state can limit women’s access to abortions after viability, it can subject her to the lesser state intrusion of insisting on one method of delivery over another.
The Louisiana Senate recently passed a bill completely banning abortion in the state. There are no exceptions for a woman’s health, rape, or incest. And contraceptives like the morning after pill are also banned. This bill would not go into effect until after Roe v. Wade was overturned. But
[Senator] Nevers said he feels the likelihood of such a move is high after the appointment to the Court of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito.
Via Our Bodies Our Blog.
Jun 26 2007
According to this study on women in England, summarized by The F-Word,
1. because they do not realise they are pregnant.
2. because they were unsure about having an abortion.
3. change or breakdown in relationship
4. service delays including waiting for appointments
I imagine these reasons are very similar to why women here have second trimester abortions.
