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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI opened the bathroom door and found my roommate's girlfriend in a pool of blood
The importance of Roe v. Wade.
AGAIN.
For those who may not appreciate what it was like before.
People have forgotten or never experienced what it was like before Roe v. Wade. When I was in college, in the sixties, I opened the door to our bathroom, late one night, and found my roommate's girlfriend lying on the floor covered in a pool of blood. A brilliant, young, Chinese-American woman who had just returned from Mexico, where she had just undergone a panicked, spur-of-the moment, back-alley procedure that had tragically gone wrong. She survived but this was not unusual. For any race or class. It's an old horror story that over the years has been forgotten. To those who claim they are pro-life, it is easier to be morally opposed to abortion when that freedom has been taken for granted as established law for a generation, easier than to have gone through what it was like when it is denied. No one is in favor of abortion. It is not about abortion. It is about the RIGHT to live one's life. Banning abortion does not end abortion. It only makes it a punishable crime. It only makes it dangerous, to the point of death. So when one hears that Roe v. Wade legalizes "baby killing", ask them if they have ever lived through what it was like before.
Yonnie3
(17,376 posts)I just can't fathom that.
bigtree
(85,917 posts)...most I've heard end in the death of the woman.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)I had to go to Japan, where it was legal. I was one of the lucky ones. But I can tell you it was pretty damned terrifying to be 18 and alone in a foreign country looking for a medical procedure.
MuseRider
(34,058 posts)in a hotel room with a strange (in many ways) older man. He was disgusting the way he talked to me and commented on my anatomy. It worked, barely and left me with a lot of a mess and pain but it worked better than the baseball bat upside the head I would have gotten from my Father (I am deadly serious about this). I was not 18 so I could never have gone anywhere nor could I have ever afforded it but it sounds to me every bit as scary as what I did.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)I was treated with kindness and professionalism. The doctor was a graduate of Johns Hopkins. The scary part was finding him, but luckily, abortion clinics advertised in English speaking newspapers. This was 1967.
MuseRider
(34,058 posts)another country. I would have had to give up everything I was looking forward to doing with my life and run off to find a new place to live, likely alone until I gave birth. I would then have been one of those single mothers that were looked at like trash, on welfare as I tried to earn money back in those days to support the 2 of us. This was in 1971, the child would have had nothing, not even a mother most of it's life.
volstork
(5,394 posts)The "pro-lifers" want to push women back out of the workforce by forcing them to bear children that they don't want, only to be saddled with the care of those children in a state of poverty. This strips a woman of her voice and power, and puts her back "in her place" in the eyes of the fundies.
This is why we have to fight tooth-and-nail to keep this from happening again. I blame my generation (I'm 50) for the complacency that helped get us here. We thought this was all settled because we could go to the clinic and get our birth control without any issue. Well, we were wrong. We can't afford to be wrong again.
Thank you, Muse, for sharing your story.
Maraya1969
(22,441 posts)carry it to term or until it expelled itself because it was illegal to go in and take it out.
That sounds so weird to me and I wonder if that was part of the illegality of abortions.
I also remember seeing pictures on TV of dead women who had back alley abortions. I was a young kid and the pictures were really awful. I'm sure it was late night TV as I was an insomniac from a young age.
bhcodem
(231 posts)Same story I heard about my late husband's aunt. And she had to hear her friends ask her when she was going to have that baby that was already dead!
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)The doctor said she had time to wait before getting a D&C, but she insisted it be done immediately, which meant she had to wait until Monday. It freaked her out to no end that she had to go that long carrying a dead fetus.
After the D&C, she got pregnant about four months later instead of waiting for her body to reject the pregnancy.
Don't these idiot lawmakers know what "dead fetus" means?
kimmylavin
(2,284 posts)Secure facility, caring & kind staff, professional doctor, good aftercare.
They've been chipping away at even THAT for so long, and now... I have a 4-year-old daughter, and I am honestly terrified for her generation.
lostnfound
(16,138 posts)They are powerful pieces of reality.
HurricaneWarning
(220 posts)It traumatized the whole family.
The_REAL_Ecumenist
(713 posts)She was in high school & her best friend fell pregnant. There was NO WAY she could even begin to think about telling her family, let alone carrying it to term, giving birth to a child AND keeping it? HELL NAW!!! This was in a conservative African American middle class community in Tulsa & that JUST WAS NOT DONE! So, somehow, she found someone who would "help" her. So, one weekend, she bade her family goodbye in the morning, giving them a plausible explanation for why she would be out all day. She came back home and went to bed, after a bath & a bowl of soup due to the "menstrual cramps" she was having. She dealt with those cramps, while bleeding like a champ.
Somehow, she was able to get up that following Monday, get dressed, & set ut for school. Why am I telling you this story? Well, she went home after spending about 20 minutes, PICKING UP THE COUNTLESS BLOOD CLOTS SHE WAS PASSING!! She was driven to the local JIM CROW hospital, where her life AND her fecundity was saved, though she did have to have a little help when she was ready to conceive.
She was LUCKY because SO many others barely survived only to go onto childless lives, outside of adoption. Mama heard about but didn't personally know women who died after a back alley abortion. She worked in the medical field, first in Pathology & then as a top notch transcriptionist, (she typed over 140 wpm) for the rest of the time. She would always tell me how when abortion was illegal, the rich & connected, (read: WHITE!) could COUNT ON a SAFE, ANTISEPTIC MEDICAL THERAPEUTIC ABORTION in a hospital, after being admitted for "EXHAUSTION" or for "BEING RUN DOWN" or any of the myriad euphemisms the media and/or hospitals would use to give any other reason as far removed from "being an unwed mother" as possible.
If they were concerned about maintaining anonymity, they'd fly to the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, etc. If Abortion were EVER to return to being illegal, the average Suzi Q, Megan, Tracy, Alicia & Beata will be the ones putting their lives on the line, in their quest to terminate their pregnancies. The wealthy? They'll only be a WEE bit inconvenienced but they'll NEVER have to worry about dying of massive bleeding or infection. They want to take that away from middle & lower class access to safe abortion, period.
GeorgeGist
(25,294 posts)The Catholic hospital was OK with that.
cannabis_flower
(3,764 posts)D&Cs are not always abortions.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)But when abortion was punishable by loss of one's medial license, I would say rarely for abortion.
(Tissue left behind can cause hemorrhage, infection, sepsis, and death.)
womanofthehills
(8,579 posts)Catholic hospital in Greensboro, NC would not do a D&C.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)...to the Catholic hospital to have her baby, because if anything goes wrong they'll try to save the baby and not the mother. (See: novels of the time, passing references in)
I used to think this was rank prejudice, but thanks to the Evangelicals I now know better.
The problem in the 21st century is when there is only one hospital left in your town and it is run by Evangelicals or Catholics, you better just pray there are no complications. And that you can find transportation to a pharmacy where the pharmacist doesn't think it's against his conscience to fill your prescriptions.
benld74
(9,888 posts)Hospital was Catholic
Would not D&C
Had to drive further to one
Which did
At 3am
With wife besides herself with grief
Ill never forget
Sophia4
(3,515 posts)in a unit in which they did that procedure on a very young girl.
Later, just months after having had a very difficult, messy birth, the doctor did one on me in a mostly Catholic country. A Catholic priest came to my bed with a very disapproving look on his face and asked me where my baby was. What a dummy that priest was. I looked him straight in the eye and proudly and happily answered -- at home with my husband. He looked at me with a mixture disbelief and disapproval, sneered and continued to the next poor woman in the ward. I don't think much of people who moan and groan about abortions. I did not have one, but the over 50-year-old mother-to-be in that same hospital who had just finished her abortion had all my support.
People who disapprove of abortions are just disgusting in my book. On the other hand, if someone wants help taking care of a child because they need to work or or young, I'm available.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)On both our N/S borders, I'd bet that both our neighbors would help women out (not for free of course) by opening clinics just over both the borders. Doesn't help the very poor but it might alleviate the horror stories a bit.
I'ma be FURIOUS if it happens.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)It won't become illegal here. In fact, it was legal (although you had to jump through a lot of hoops) before Roe here.
luvtheGWN
(1,336 posts)I assume you would be furious if Roe v Wade were overturned, and not that border clinics would open?
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)EllieBC
(2,961 posts)I was born in 1973 so my entire adult life abortion has been legal. It was more taboo and hotly contested when I was a teen and young adult.
We have an entire generation of young people who don't even remember how hotly contested it was. And they don't think Roe will ever be overturned. They don't think it's that important.
It is more important than anything. More important than student loan forgiveness or free college promises. More important than TPP.
And to all my transwomen friends, I'm sorry if cis women bringing it up makes you feel excluded but it is one of the foundation stones of feminism.
We had no freedoms, no economic or educational, if we don't have control of our own bodies.
Snellius
(6,881 posts)This was my experience and I'm male and what was most horrifying to me, beyond the terror and the blood, was that this young woman, smart and upstanding in every way, through no fault of her own, through some rash but natural accident (especially in the days before the pill), an accident that was as much the fault of her partner, that she was put into the position of either frightfully risking her life or throwing away a brilliant career - she wanted to be a doctor - for which she had dreamed and worked hard all her life. No one should be forced to make that impossible choice.
BigmanPigman
(51,430 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 30, 2018, 04:04 PM - Edit history (1)
who would've thought?
shanny
(6,709 posts)If Roe is overturned that will kick it back to the individual states.
The blue states will fix it quickly and I'm willing to bet money that red state Rs will rue the day they caught this car they've been chasing.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)They won't push it all the way back in the opposite direction?
They've may put a slightly nicer 'States Rights' veneer on their arguments before, but if the opportunity arose where they might conceivably pull off an outright BAN? Don't think they wouldn't take it.
shanny
(6,709 posts)the situation reverts to the status quo ante.. And yes, I do think they won't push it farther than that in one fell swoop. But if they do, the backlash will hit even faster and harder. John Roberts, at least, is smart enough to know that.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)I would not be at ALL surprised to see them try to pull an outright federal ban, legislatively, shortly thereafter.
shanny
(6,709 posts)But I still think that will be too big a bite. Look how hard is it for them to get together on repealing the ACA, and that wouldn't affect everyone, everywhere--an outright ban would.
And I believe it would be a huge mistake. They have been making a lot of those of late; it is our job to capitalize on them.
calimary
(80,693 posts)Hating abortion has been the Holy Grail of WAY too many fundamentalists and anti -choicers. Its fired up umpteen bajillion CON campaigns for years now. A whole CONservative infrastructure has been built up in opposition to it. So what happens when they finally achieve their goal, at long last?
What Ill be watching for is - if the wind starts going out of their sails. Their Cause Celebre would finally be gone. Over. Done. Check it off the list. No longer such a HUGE thing to rabble rouse about. If this turns into their own personal Mission Accomplished, whats still there to get all that hot and bothered about anymore? I DO know of, and have read about, people whove said they might actually be a Democrat except for abortion, because they agree on almost everything else. But abortion was always the deal-breaker.
Those individuals DO exist, although Im not sure how many there are. But Ill tell ya - this new cruelty of jailing babies and yanking little kids away from Mommy or Daddy already has some of these folks back on our doorstep. I just saw a woman at the Portland rally today, as a matter of fact, who carried a hand-made sign announcing herself as a Republican who was now voting for Democrats. Shes not alone now, either.
So what might that mean?
Maybe the most forgiving among us would welcome those political immigrants with open arms. I found myself doing exactly as much with that recovering Republican woman at the rally today, and murmuring a thank-you into her ear. Positive reinforcement and rewarding good behavior and all those parenting things.
That said, I can EASILY understand and empathize with those who look such a gift horse very closely and coldly logically in the mouth. I get that there could easily be a hesitation, a temptation NOT to trust. Ive been there, too. Theres always the possibility of a fair-weather Democrat, whose awakening we cant afford to count on. Hey, once bitten, twice shy and all that.
Weve certainly been burned before, and the instinct to exercis caution is a VERY good thing.
But there is another factor to consider, IMO.
The abortion issue made lots of folks one-issue voters. Kinda did with me, but going the pro-choice direction. So what happens when your issue goes away? And that fire you had in your belly about them damn baby killers now allows you to think youve just slain the dragon. And what might a longtime warrior do after a battle they may have waged for decades? Rest, maybe? Set down the clubs and brickbats? Lose interest in any more fights that intense or unrelenting? Even nutcases can get tired. Or just sick of it. Or maybe since theyre not getting any younger, might it be time to hang up the gloves? And go get involved in something else? Or just chill, get off the merry-go-round?
There would of course be those who, having tasted a nice mouthful of blood, will only want MORE. But its the mushies in the middle who might becwinnable, or at least reachable. Many of them have gotten understandably sucked into the vortex of the horrifying current humanitarian crisis at the border. I bet everybody here has personally heard or heard/read about somebody having an epiphany like the woman I hugged at the rally today said shed had. I bet everyone here has heard some version of okay, THIS ONE goes too far or other versions of had enough or crosses the line. Seems to me THOSE folks can become an asset on and for our side.
Either that or perhaps some will finally decide theyre just simply DONE with politics, outta here, a pox on everybodys houses everywhere. In which case, some of those fiery GOP supporters might just feel like not bothering this November. Im guessing that at least some of the fire will start dying out if the big bugaboo of Roe v Wade goes away. The CONS might start losing a little momentum - which will only help OUR side.
Thoughts?
StevieM
(10,499 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,430 posts)calimary
(80,693 posts)enough
(13,237 posts)chaos and fear and shame, even when it did not end in injury and death. The stress of trying to find someone to do it safely, knowing that you were asking people to help you break the law, never knowing who might decide to report to the authorities. The stigma, so hard to break through that in your own mind, even when you knew you HAD to do it, and believed it was the right thing. Many people have no idea what it would mean to criminalize abortion again.
ariadne0614
(1,692 posts)uppityperson
(115,674 posts)defacto7
(13,485 posts)if you get pregnant out of wedlock it's because of your immoral sinful behavour and you have to take the consequences. If you are raped you probably asked for it by your behavour. If you become pregnant by rape it's God's permissive will that you got pregnant.
Damn I hate that arrogant bull shit.
sarge43
(28,939 posts)Late 60's one of the women living in the barracks tried to abort herself. Her friend who found her said the room looked like someone had thrown around a bucket of red paint. I don't know what happened to her. Them What Be In Charge put the lid on it.
For the record men weren't discharged if they were single fathers - death, separated, divorce. Married men, of course not. Nor was anyone automatically discharged for a temporary medical problem. They were placed on deferred duty until problem was solved.
Just another story from the fun filled days of pre-Roe v Wade. just in case.
Snellius
(6,881 posts)And like wars, the horrors so forgotten and repressed, they get repeated again.
sarge43
(28,939 posts)A wall can't be built high enough or long enough to contain the names of all the women who suffered that horror.
catbyte
(34,170 posts)are forced to give birth, try a do-it-yourself coat hanger or toxic herbal/pharmaceutical remedy, or go to a back alley butcher. And with Kennedy retiring, all I can say is that I'm glad I'm past menopause, but weep for young women--all except those who voted for Trump, that is.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Safe legal abortion is a matter of life or death for women.
So much more than a privacy issue. Corpses will have more protections than living womenand already do in some quarters.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)erased the rest
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Which is the legal argument I think. By I think the threat to our lives carries much more impact. I wish that we were louder about that. Womens suffering as a result of oppression is certainly as critical as the suffering of fetuses the anti-womens lives people like to wave on banners.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)Be prepared to explain things like uterine perforation
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)I remember a young evangelical commanding his young home schooled evangelical wife not to look at or ask what it meant.
demigoddess
(6,640 posts)God knows the child would be aborted and He forgives and understands. The child will get another chance. I do not believe that the pro-life idiots will get another chance if they cause a pregnant girl to die because she was raped and they refused to help her. God probably sends them to hell.
RandomAccess
(5,210 posts)The_REAL_Ecumenist
(713 posts)irisblue
(32,829 posts)Who self aborted in 1971. I can't forget that and them.
SaintLouisBlues
(1,244 posts)Millions of women are risking serious illness or injury every year as a result of clandestine and unsafe abortions, a report has warned.
Even in countries where termination of a pregnancy is legal, women are turning to underground providers, risking long-term health problems and, in the most severe cases, death.
A new report on womens access to abortion around the world by United States think tank the Guttmacher Institute estimates that up to 31,000 women die every year as a result of botched abortions and around seven million are injured or made ill.
Complications include incomplete abortion, when part of the fetal tissue is left in the uterus; infection; heavy bleeding; and damage to the genital tract and internal organs when a sharp object such as a stick, glass or knitting needle is inserted.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/20/millions-women-risk-backstreet-abortions
dawnie51
(959 posts)I watched my mother be carried unconscious from my grandmothers home, after nearly bleeding out from an abortion provided by a friend of hers who was in med school. She was driven by the young physician on call, who took one look at her and wouldn't wait for the ambulance to arrive. She was a breath from dying in my grandmothers upstairs bedroom. My grandmother had to fight with detectives who showed up at the Catholic hospital to interrogate my mom; they wanted a name, and she wouldn't give it. My grandmother pitched a fit until they left. Many years later, as a young married woman with her first pregnancy, I went to the gynecologist, and it was the very same doctor who had carried my mother to the hospital. He remembered her, after almost 20 years, and asked if she was well. A good man, and my family owed him a great debt.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)And that young medical student, who must have been frightened out if his mind. Everyone involved could have been prosecuted by the law.
Detectives in a hospital room! And who in that hospital reported it?
luvtheGWN
(1,336 posts)My sister was pregnant while living with hubby in Illinois. My mother travelled down on her due date to be with her and take care of her 2-year-old son. Five weeks later, and in agony because of the weight she carried around, she finally gave birth to a 10 1/2 lb baby girl. The Catholic obstetrician, who knew she was in dire straits, refused to consider a Caesarian (against God's will or something to that effect). Sis lived with severe back problems and constant headaches ever after.
When I got pregnant several years later, I had a Catholic doc in Toronto and hubby straight-out asked him "Who comes first, my wife or the baby?" The doc answered correctly. Unfortunately, I had a miscarriage and subsequent D&C (which of course cost me nothing because...universal healthcare).
samnsara
(17,570 posts)..we need to plan for an Under Ground Railroad and housing for those women who will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies..to get them to choice friendly states. Im in central wash state and can house one woman as long as shes not allergic to dogs. I can get her to clinics within 50 miles of me and theres a small airport 50 miles from here to bring them and take them. Ideally they should arrive in pairs so the pt can have a support person with her.
Also there are folk remedies for inducing labor.....but if used too early in the pregnancy that can cause a miscarriage (whoops!).
Those of you with nursing/medical skills brush up on your Doula training.
StevieM
(10,499 posts)and other women in her situation?
Sam McGee
(347 posts)I was born in 1949. My grandfather's youngest sister was born in 1905, died in 1985. She was a nurse back in the day when nurses wore starched white uniforms, white caps, white hose, white shoes.
She was head nurse at our little rural hospital for what seemed like forever.
A few years before she died, I was interviewing her for my family history records. She was delighted to talk and talk and talk. The conversation somehow got around to abortion. She was quiet for a minute then said, "Well, you know that was illegal for the longest time. But we did them. If a woman didn't want it at our clinic, we could refer her to a retired doctor in XXXXX. We just didn't talk about it. For the black folks, there was an old retired nurse over in XXXX County."
Hekate
(90,189 posts)...one clinic. Rural women are up shit creek without a paddle. It is that way in much of the so-called heartland of this geographically vast nation.
The heartland has no heart, imho.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Evangelicals rewrote *the Bible* on abortion in the 1970s for their political purposes.
Before evangelical Christian dominionists rewrote the Bible in the 1970s, a fetus was not seen as equal to an adult woman. They changed the Bible for their political purposes.
GOP Christians' whole story that life begins immediately after sex is a total lie. The whole abortion debate is a total religious charade.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/03/22/mischief-follows-in-partisan-bible-translations/
(Article from 2012, but applicable today.)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016206661
Hekate
(90,189 posts)...for what Randal Terry was doing with his "No Place to Hide" clinic harassments. She was not a scholar, she just knew her own religion and culture of origin.
I never forgot that conversation, and to this day when people here mistakenly say "all" religions or "all" religions that use the Bible are against abortion, I can tell you where to look for those that really are not. Because I looked it up. And because the Evangelicals or Fundamentalists are lying when they talk about abortion, birth control, and woman.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Amaryllis
(9,523 posts)the fetus becomes a "person". My spiritual teaching says not until the fetus is capable of surviving outside the body of the mother. There are many different opinions on when that is, hence it becomes a freedom of religion issue.
And regardless of that, no one has the right to decide for someone else what is right for them to do with their own body.
rzemanfl
(29,540 posts)aikoaiko
(34,127 posts)Even though I also support the idea that a fertilized egg is the first stage of a complete human organism, an individual, women should never be forced to be organic incubators even if it means terminating the developing organism.
struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)... Daniel did not want to marry Smith and began looking for a means to terminate her pregnancy ...
On Christmas Eve 1955, Daniel paid Pijuan, a hospital attendant, $50 to perform an illegal abortion ...
Before beginning the surgery on Smith with equipment he had stolen from the hospital, Pijuan created a crude operating area in the living room of Daniels apartment ...
... Mireles applied artificial respiration and injected a heart stimulant ... Just before midnight, he declared Smith dead and advised Daniel to call the police.
Daniel and Pijuan did not call the police. Instead, they began Christmas morning by transferring Smiths body into the bathtub, where they used a large kitchen knife to hack up her body ... Pijuan systematically cut up the body into even smaller segments, again wrapped up the parts in bright Christmas wrapping paper, and disposed of the remains in garbage receptacles across the Upper West Side ...
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/12/jacqueline_smith_s_1955_death_and_the_lessons_we_haven_t_yet_learned_from.html
Hekate
(90,189 posts)The punishments were both social and legal, and they were lifelong. Fun fact: in quite a few states, a girl who kept her illegitimate baby received a birth certificate prominently stamped "Illegitimate."
I was a good girl. What I saw with my own eyes made me deep-down frightened not to be.
struggle4progress
(118,039 posts)Bettye Porter , 24, Anchorage
(died June 17, 1953)
... After friends reported her missing, her body was found in a remote area near Gig Harbor. Norman Wade Austin was charged with manslaughter and two others as accessories. Police charged that Austin, 34, a mechanic by trade, had performed the abortion in the massage parlor he had recently opened in the Savoy Hotel ...
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/abortion_deaths.htm
jimlup
(7,968 posts)We will NEVER go back!
marehare
(40 posts)One of the reasons Roe/Wade passed was that so many women were dying from abortions. My best friend's mom died from one and she grew up without a mom.
I had an abortion before it was legal. What I did was tell my doctor I'd kill myself if I was forced
to have a baby I didn't want. He asked me if I'd say that to a head shrink and I said yes. So I had to see a head shrink, told him yes I'd off my self, and they approved me for a therapeutic abortion at Stanford. There were quite a few women there also getting therapeutic abortions. This was quite soon after the Thalidomide drug issue that caused so many birth defects and women were denied abortions after they took it and then they birthed babies with no legs, arms and many other horrible birth defects.
If anyone cares about women keeping their rights of choice, please come out and vote in Nov and in all elections. Women, we aren't just voting for our protections, but for future generations. Do you want a daughter, granddaughter etc. to be forced to carry a baby from rape, incest, birth defects etc. The only one who should decide is a woman, her doctor and not the Republican party. If you care, VOTE Blue!!!
Mountain Mule
(1,002 posts)I had the very same experience as you back in the early 70's. I cannot believe that young women may well have to suffer through the same things we did back in the bad old days. Yes, please VOTE, everybody!
happynewyear
(1,724 posts)I am glad you survived this ordeal safely.
I know of a few cases myself.
OldManTarHeel
(435 posts)That want to take away those freedoms.
bdamomma
(63,654 posts)for all those who shared their stories of horror and pain. There is no way in 2018 where we should go back due to sick religious maniacs. This is a woman's issue and not a man's issue.
Repigs say they care about the fetus forget about the child, they have proved that haven't they?
redstatebluegirl
(12,264 posts)My best friend in high school called me hysterical. When I got to her house she was in a pool of blood. I didn't know what to do so I took her to the emergency room. She almost died. That is what the conservatives want.
Mountain Mule
(1,002 posts)I believe it was Gloria Steinem who said this back in the pre Roe v. Wade era. Her words still ring true today - perhaps more so. Those evangelical male so-called Christians would be falling all over themselves to make sure abortions stayed legal and safe if the tables were turned.
bdamomma
(63,654 posts)men get their Viagra covered by health insurance but women can't have birth control covered.
hmmm...
..what is wrong with that picture.
AllaN01Bear
(17,372 posts)if r v w is annulled , this will happen again ppl.
Demovictory9
(32,323 posts)phylny
(8,353 posts)She would say, "They don't know what it was like, all the young women who died. All the butchers who would take their money and kill or maim them."
She was pro-choice.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)People who don't remember those days need to read it.
WinstonSmith4740
(3,048 posts)I was lucky. I wasn't a scared, broke kid who just got dumped by Prince Charming. I was an adult, married, and Roe v Wade was the law of the land. The facility was clean, the staff was supportive, and my husband was waiting for me when I got out. But I heard the horror stories from the women who walked that road ahead of me...and their heartbreak at being left unable to have children in the aftermath.
And that's part of the problem. Young women today don't know anyone who had to go through an illegal procedure. Those nightmare pictures of dead women in a pool of their own blood have long been put away. We've let the right wing, anti-choice loonies control the conversation for over 40 years on this. They've poisoned the minds of 3 generations of young women with their hateful rhetoric. I taught Health in a Title One high school. Most girls today never consider terminating a pregnancy, because it's "murder". They will, however, carry the pregnancy to term, and then throw the baby in the trash. And, of course, the dirty little secret of the anti-choice movement is how many of those women have been on that table themselves.
hunter
(38,264 posts)... a friend of my good "Christian" roommate who'd been told her entire life that her sexual preferences were sinful.
Anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, racism... it's all the same deadly stew.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Actually you know I'd be in favor of a compromise (as long as the other side will STFU going forward) wherein abortion is only legal in an unrestricted fashion for the first trimester. Every woman should know she's pregnant and have time to consider her options and take action ... within 90 days of conception. NOTE: PREDICATED on expanding services so nobody is way too far away from a place to GET one, open on Saturdays, and making it FREE for anyone who can't afford it!
During the 2nd, there must be demonstrable extenuating circumstances ... the details of which could be hashed out but would obviously include sudden serious health emergency for the mother, or evidence that fetus is either not viable or would be significantly deformed/disabled, that kind of thing. I don't know that Downs should qualify here, but there are many other much worse congenital defects that can be known only in the 2nd Tri.
And then ... other than an absolute emergency life/death situation ... a ban for the 3rd Tri.
If we as a society could just draft reasonable compromise (and honestly the above sounds reasonable to me), so that everyone was at LEAST SOMEWHAT mollified, and this damn issue could be put to rest, legally ... man would we all be better off.
Nonhlanhla
(2,074 posts)is that it seems to be based on a lack of knowledge about what can go wrong with pregnancies. Many defects cannot be detected until after 20 weeks, well into the second trimester. Who determines which defects are serious enough? You already mention the possibility of excluding Down Syndrome (T21). But T21 occurs on a spectrum, with some of the feti diagnosed in vitro because they also had very serious physical deformities. And even after birth the outcomes can vary quite a bit (and this cannot necessarily be predicted prior to birth), with multiple health issues that can range from mild to debilitating, and with mental disability that can range from mild to profound. What about Fragile X or similar genetic conditions that lead to mental disability or to psychiatric issues? Like T21, it can be a serious lifelong condition with multiple outcomes, and yet people are not constantly debating it - why is that? Or what about spina bifida, which can also vary quite a bit in level of seriousness, from so mild that it is hardly noticeable, to severe physical and mental disabilities? Not to mention the hundreds of other more rare diagnoses, which may in fact warrant similar exception status that you want to grant T21, but which are not well known or constantly debated? Who is going to decide which conditions are to be included in the ban and which not? Or are we going to rely on the court of public opinion, with the public making medical decisions that really should be in the hands of families and doctors?
These gray area diagnoses place families in very difficult positions, since they also have to think about things such as long-term care, especially in those cases where a worse outcome occurs. Indeed, these gray ares can be very complex to legislate, and it is difficult to see how the state can compel families to bring children with serious and complex health issues into the world as long as the state is not also willing to provide lifelong medical care, education, and long-term care facilities with well-trained, kind, and well-paid staff who will not abuse the vulnerable people in their case (as happens all too often). The "easy" one (in terms of seeing legitimate reason for abortion) is anencephaly, where the fetus has no brain. Or maybe the other two common trisomies, T13 and T19, which has almost no life expectancy and severe mental disability. But the grayer area ones get complex. Same with the mother's health. How close must she be to death before an abortion is warranted? Are we we going to have cops and lawyers in the doctor's office? Will ethics boards at hospitals be called in to make medical decisions for crisis pregnancies like they do in Catholic hospitals?
Abortion is complex, but Roe v Wade was already a compromise decision: privacy to the point of viability, state interest in the viable fetus after that. Viability is usually taken to be at around 24 weeks (which is really 22 weeks after conception). Enough time for the majority of unwanted healthy pregnancies to be decided on, and for most of the medical diagnoses to be made in the case of the unhealthy pregnancies. In some tragic cases it is discovered after 24 weeks that the fetus is not viable, and some states have interpreted RvW to include third trimester abortions in such cases. It works well enough without having to add some artificial "abortion for all first trimester, and a list of allowable abortions second trimester," which you suggest.
Hekate
(90,189 posts)They lie.
The restrictions placed in Roe were based largely on common societal attitudes of the time, oddly enough, in which there were no restrictions during the first trimester, then increasing restrictions as the second trimester advanced, and only for profound medical reasons in the third trimester.
Throughout history, the 4th month was considered the time of "quickening," when the fetus first makes itself felt in little flutterings. What happened before then was generally a private occurance.
Medical reasons that were part of Roe had to do with life and health of the mother, the viability of the fetus, rape, incest, and so on.
Never has there ever been a legal-abortion policy or law that allowed women to walk into a clinic and demand an abortion of a healthy fetus a week before her due date. Never.
Third trimester abortions are vanishingly rare, but have been demonized by anti-choice fanatics as "partial birth abortion" and infanticide. They are for when the mother will die if she is not delivered immediately; they are for when the fetus is already dead, or is so profoundly deformed that it will die in days. Anencephaly is one such condition. There literally is no brain: most die immediately, some live a whole week. They aren't "retarded" or "developmentally delayed" -- they have NO brain and soon forget to breathe.
mountain grammy
(26,568 posts)We cant go back there. Never.
Stuart G
(38,359 posts)calimary
(80,693 posts)He was an MD, an internal medicine specialist. He once recounted a shattering moment while he was out driving. He noticed a girl slumped in the gutter, alone and bleeding. He pulled over to see if he could help and saw she wasnt merely bleeding. She was hemorrhaging. From a botched back-alley abortion. And shed collapsed right there on the sidewalk. He evidently realized she needed more help than he could give, right there, so he gathered her into the back of his car and drove her to the hospital - which ended up saving her life.
He said that changed his mind about opposing abortion. He still didnt approve but he recognized that, whatever ones opinion about it might be, it was an inevitable fact of life, and that it needed to be safe and legal.
I always admired him for that. If anybody here remembers the old Marcus Welby TV drama series, he reminded me of the title character. Kindly old doctor. Quiet and wise. Compassionate. Worthy of the greatest respect. Still miss him.
Rhiannon12866
(202,970 posts)She had hers in Puerto Rico (she was from this area, NE New York) and she said she was blindfolded. Fortunately for her, she had the resources to travel and had a safe experience. Too many others were not as lucky. We need to do everything we can to prevent a return to the nightmare of the past - lives depend on it!
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,538 posts)All they have to do is fly to another country that permits the procedure. It's easy to want to make someone else do something that doesn't affect you.
Puzzler
(2,505 posts)-Puzzler