Safe. Legal. Rare. Nuf said, conversion over. nt

[flamin lib]

[dawg]

1. Lots of people, on both sides, will push back against that.

That's why it's such a contentious issue.

[Ninsianna]

44. Not really. It's not a contentious issue at all, it's a false wedge issue

that the Right wing uses to drum up their followers into a frenzy. When elected into office they conveniently do everything they can to increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies or ones in which fetal abnormalities are present (gutting the EPA, the FDA and denying access to medical care and food aid tends to do that), so that poor desperate women are forced to risk their lives to seek out illegal abortions just in time for the next election, rinse and repeat.

If they truly wanted to get rid of abortion, there is a ton of stuff they could do, that other countries have done successfully and which the medical community has told them, but that's not their goal, so this "both siderism" is just ridiculous.

The pro-choice side is very much about them being safe, legal and RARE. That's because we wish every pregnancy to be a wanted one, in which the fetus and the pregnant women are HEALTHY.

Why would anyone suggest that this would be a contentious point? Unless you're looking at the other side, which is about punishing women for having sex, and not having a perfect pregnancy each time, so that they can then abuse the woman for having too many children and then have a delightful time abusing those children in various ways?

[Freddie]

2. Safe, legal and rarely NEEDED

Thanks to contraception, education and support for families.

[Ninsianna]

45. And access to medical care, pre and post natal care, food aid,

regulations to keep teratogens out of the food, air and water, and ensure that every pregnancy is a WANTED one that progresses in a healthy manner so that mother and child both survive pregnancy.

[JenniferJuniper]

3. "Rare" implies there should be some roadblocks.

to obtaining a safe and legal abortion.

[BannonsLiver]

4. No, actually it doesn't.

[DURHAM D]

5. No it doesn't.

It means that contraceptives should be readily available.

gheez louise

[lapucelle]

43. This thread reads like a case study in sociolinguistics.

Apparently for some, the construct of the word "rare" in this context defaults to "exclusive", "limited", or "reserved for the privileged".

Why anyone would jump to these particular conclusions in this particular context might make a good research question for an analyst doing a study on projection.

Geez Louise, indeed.

[lapucelle]

6. I don't think it means that.

The "rare" speaks to the necessity for education and the availability of affordable and accessible contraceptive options.

[Voltaire2]

19. rare implies that there are abortions occurring that shouldn't happen.

That there are "good" abortions and "bad" abortions, and that if we could just educate the women getting these bad abortions, if we could just get them the right sort of contraception, they would stop having so many abortions.

[lapucelle]

23. That's a badly misinformed, idiosyncratic definition of the word "rare" in this context.

I was an adult woman in 1973. I'm a second waver. I fought this fight.

Why anyone would want to co-opt a word and twist its construction in order to peddle a narrative is beyond me.

[Girard442]

30. The key here is if you empower people to get to the outcomes THEY want for themselves...

...everybody wins.

(Except for the tight-ass control freaks, but forget them.)

[SweetieD]

20. Yeah I don't like that phrase either. It implies there is something

Inherently wrong about getting an abortion. If a woman wants to get an abortion 10 or 20 times I don't care. If the majority of women in any particular group want multiple abortions I don't care. A woman has a right to an abortion for any reason even a bad reason.

[JenniferJuniper]

24. Exactly. Why don't people get that other people's choices

about their bodies are absolutely none of their business?

Stop it with the "rare" shit, please.

[SHRED]

28. It means unfettered access to birth control

And health education.

[SethH]

7. that's a slogan

a pretty good one, imho, but the conversation isn't over.

[DefenseLawyer]

8. I don't care if it's rare or not.

That's an old Bill and Hillary Clinton line, but it doesn't reflect my feeling on the issue. If lots of women happen to need abortions then abortion shouldn't be rare. As to whether that is the situation or not, it's really none of my business. The whole "I really hate abortion and wish it didn't have to ever happen but when it does it should be legal" is a moral judgment that I'm certainly not making. If a woman needs an abortion she should have one. It's not some great tragedy for me. It certainly may be for her, or not. Either way, as I said, it's none of my concern.

[DURHAM D]

9. You should care if it is rare because

it is actually about readily available contraceptives for everyone.

[Voltaire2]

12. No it was a compromise to the anti-abortion people.

And it frames abortion as something that should be avoided, as result of poor choices or failure.

[DURHAM D]

13. No it wasn't.

I can't believe the stuff that is being posted on DU.

[Voltaire2]

17. Yes it was.

Here is a fine essay on why the "rare" part it harmful:

But "safe, legal and rare" is not a framework that supports women's health needs: it stigmatizes and endangers it.

In a 2010 research article, Dr Tracy Weitz, Director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote that "rare suggests that abortion is happening more than it should, and that there are some conditions for which abortions should and should not occur".

"It separates 'good' abortions from 'bad' abortions", she added.

Steph Herold, the deputy director of the Sea Change Program – an organization that seeks to create a culture change around abortion and other stigmatized reproductive experiences like miscarriage and adoption – agrees. "It implies that abortion is somehow different than other parts of healthcare," she told me. "We don't say that any other medical procedure should be rare."

"We don't say that we want heart bypasses to be rare. We say we want people to be healthy," Herold said.

Advertisement

The "rare" framework adds to the stigmatization around the procedure – and that has further-reaching complications for abortion care than just how women feel about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/09/hillary-clinton-abortion-legal-but-rare

[CrispyQ]

32. Bookmarking.

And like pregnancy, contraceptive-use, miscarriage or childbirth, abortion is often just one part of a normal woman's larger reproductive life. Sometimes, like my abortion, it will be for health reasons. Sometimes it will be because a woman is not ready to be a parent. One reason is not better than another, but saying the procedure needs to be rare creates a hierarchy of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" abortions that runs counter to the notion that abortion is a legal right, a personal decision and a matter of bodily integrity.

Thanks for posting.

[mythology]

35. Surgerical abortion should be avoided if possible as surgeries have risk

People should be given quality sex ed, including contraception, and access to cheap and effective birth control (especially long-lasting reversible birth control like IUDs that don't require repeated effort). That will naturally decrease the number of abortions.

Things like condoms and birth control pills require people to regularly do an action and do it correctly. The reason that condoms under test conditions work something like 99% of the time, but have a much higher failure rate in real life, as most people don't really know how to put them on properly, much less in the heat of the moment. That is realistically a failure of human nature. People screw up, especially when it comes to sex. Whether you want to call that failure or poor choices, or just human nature is kind of a semantic argument.

The fact is that for most women there are more health risks in getting an abortion than in preventing the pregnancy in the first place.

[JenniferJuniper]

38. Childbirth is more risky than abortion and

about half of abortions today are medication only.

Many women who have later abortions do so because it's been determined that their health will be compromised or the fetus's prognosis is very poor.

No one here is arguing against quality sex ed or cheap and effective birth control.

[lapucelle]

41. No it wasn't.

It was an acknowledgment that the economic and social realities of marginalized women (and girls) needed to be addressed through the availability of comprehensive education and contraceptive options in order to avoid unintended pregnancies.

It was about empowering women before abortion became their only option due to the conditions of their lives. There are no "poor choices" where women have no options to choose from; the "failure" is a failure on the part of the system, not the woman.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4000282/

http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/05/study-free-birth-control-significantly-cuts-abortion-rates/

https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/access-to-free-birth-control-reduces-abortion-rates/

https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2016/03/new-clarity-us-abortion-debate-steep-drop-unintended-pregnancy-driving-recent-abortion

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/09/contraception_abortion_and_planned_parenthood_debate_long_acting_birth_control.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reducing-abortion-rates-policy_us_589b8ea5e4b09bd304bfd920

[JenniferJuniper]

26. That's not why the word is used

Of course contraception should be readily available. But it doesn't always work and sometimes people forget or otherwise don't use it. Not my - or your -business why someone ended up pregnant.

"Rare" was added as a compromise to those who would restrict access to abortion. Please do your homework before you insist otherwise.

[lapucelle]

42. Sorry dear, but that's your reading of the word.

I am not the one construing the word as a pejorative in order judge women and girls. You are.

I'm starting to get the drift here. The Guardian article was written in 2014 and was based on one author's musings (dating back to 2010) on the construction and interpretation of a particular word. That "concern" concerns only one person.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/09/hillary-clinton-abortion-legal-but-rare

https://www.ansirh.org/_documents/library/weitz_jwh10-2010.pdf

Here's more recent history.

But on social issues, Ms. Clinton and her party aren’t even offering the fig leaf of her husband’s “safe, legal and rare” formulation. They’re for abortion rights without exception and for public funding of abortion, a maximalist stance that thrills pro-choice activists but is nowhere near the muddled middle on the issue. So any pro-lifer inclined to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton has no cover; to stop Mr. Trump, they have to cast a baldly pro-abortion vote.

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2016/08/01/Ross-Douthat-Clinton-and-liberalism-s-big-bet/stories/201608010031

Not that I agree with Mr. Douthart's characterization of the word in question. (I don't need a mansplaining hipster to interpret for me what we "really" meant.)

I don't need to do homework. I was there when we wrote the lesson.

Those who do need to catch up might want to start here. This is what Jennifer Valenti (author of the Guardian article and the founder of Feministing) had to say in 2016:

“While Hillary Clinton has centered her campaign on women’s rights, been vocal about overturning the Hyde Amendment, and has brought up Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in nearly every debate, [other candidates for the Democratic nomination have] been much less proactive.”

[DefenseLawyer]

29. Not every abortion it because of a lack of contraception

Certainly contraceptives should be readily available, but not every abortion is the result of a lack of contraceptives. Sometimes it's because of severe defects that become known, sometimes it's a health issue for the woman, sometimes a woman may just change her mind about having a baby, and obviously there are cases of rape. In any case, this notion that abortion should be "rare" because it's some terrible traumatic thing that we are all morally opposed to, that it is some "necessary evil" in our society, is not my point of view. It's a private matter for a pregnant woman. Period.

[Voltaire2]

10. Safe and legal.

Rare implies that there is something wrong with abortion. There isn't.

[DURHAM D]

11. No it doesn't.

It is not about abortion, it is about contraceptives.

[Voltaire2]

14. "It is not about abortion, " - um yes it is.

[DURHAM D]

15. Nope

[Voltaire2]

18. Really? So what exactly is supposed to be safe legal and "rare"?

[Caliman73]

36. Too ambiguous.

If people can read what they want into a phrase then they will. That abortion should be safe means that it should not endanger the life of the women. That is should be legal means that there shouldn't be any legal obstacles for a woman to get an abortion. That abortion should be rare implies that there should be few abortions. Whether through contraception, education and family planning, or other means is not specifically mentioned.

I think it should be left at safe and legal.

[LostOne4Ever]

25. +10000 nt

[loyalsister]

40. It opens one of the arguments I hate most

The word rare reinforces the idea that there are instances where women have abortions with great frequency. "I think it should be legal, but women shouldn't be able to use it for birth control" demonizes women by suggesting abortion is a bad thing that should never happen more than once.
The person who is bothered by an imagined epidemic would not dirty themselves by associating with such women in the first place, so why should they even care?
We all should care that our fellow citizens are safe when they have a surgical procedure they deem necessary. Be it abortion, or tooth extraction.

[Hugin]

16. You forgot: "Free"

[OriginalGeek]

21. Safe and legal is enough for me.

I shouldn't ever even know how rare or not it is as I'm not involved in the personal, private medical decisions a woman makes with her doctor.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

22. "Safe" and "legal" help women. "Rare" does not. While increased education and use is always helpful,

the majority of women who got abortions in the past year were on birth control. No form of birth control is 100%. "Rare" feeds into the narrative that an abortion is something to be undertaken with regret and reluctance, rather than a neutral healthcare procedure. You would never say "safe, legal and rare" about vasectomies -- after all, dude can always use a condom, right?

[LostOne4Ever]

27. I used to say rare too, but then I saw that used to shame women. Keep that word out. Nt

[radical noodle]

31. Safe. Legal. None of my business.

We will never win over the crazy anti-choice people who think a zygote should have constitutional rights, but this fits those who are pro-life for themselves but pro-choice for everyone else.

[demmiblue]

33. Safe and legal.

Free and available access to family planning services/contraceptives. Oh, and ditch abstinence education.

[uppityperson]

34. Tooth crowns? Indeed. Care for your teeth, keep them as long as you can

[Kentonio]

37. If 'rare' is because of adequate contraception provision and sexual education, then that works.

[Caliman73]

39. The numbers will be what the numbers will be.

Safe and Legal? Yes.

We should promote policies like education, economic opportunity, and full and free access to family planning and contraceptives that have been shown to decrease unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancies but the framing is important here.

Unplanned and Unwanted pregnancies should be rare to non existent. Abortion should be available as often as needed. Putting rare at the end of the sentence implies that abortion is a bad thing like war, that should be avoided at all costs except... and we do not want to go down that road because it empowers anti-choice people by signaling that there is something wrong with a medical procedure.

Every pregnancy should be a wanted pregnancy where the mother/partner are happy, planning, and expecting to give love to the child that may be born at the end of the hopefully, successful pregnancy.