Who gets to decide

Susan wrote:

ONLY the woman who is carrying the "child" can determine if it is a "gift" or not.

ONLY the woman whose life is at risk can determine if the risk is worth it for her (and to her family) to continue a pregnancy.

What right does anyone else have to judge her or to choose for her and force her to give birth like some breeding mare to live up to your utopian ideals?

Women are living, viable, fully developed, grown individuals capable of making our own decisions, and we would appreciate it if others who know nothing of our lives and what we face to stay out of our most personal healthcare decisions.

My life was saved by an emergency "D&E"(abortion) when I began to miscarry and almost bled to death. Thank goodness that was before all this nonsense that is going on now, or some zealot might have just let me die needlessly to satisfy their "faith" without any respect for my own. My husband and children are glad they saved the only life they could: mine.

As long as we're quoting holy words

Consider these wise precepts from Fallopians.

My scriptures are just as valid as yours.

Remembering Dr. George Tiller: "Losing Laura"

It is now three years since Dr. George Tiller was murdered by a Christian terrorist who was opposed to abortion in all cases.

Here is how one patient remembers Dr. Tiller:

In the wake of the horrific murder of Dr. George Tiller and the unjustified and vicious portrayal of him by some in the media as a monster who relished performing abortions, I just had to tell my own personal story about the kind and compassionate man who helped me several years ago.

Several years ago, I was happily anticipating the birth of my second child, who was very much planned and very much wanted....

I received devastating news. It seemed my baby was suffering from a very rare birth defect of the lungs. This defect resulted in the complete malformation of the left lung. The bubble that the earlier sonogram detected was actually one of the many cystic masses that made up my baby's malformed lungs. Since lungs are the last organ to develop, this could not be detected any earlier and had only just then become apparent. In addition, the right lung was not developing as expected either, although it wasn't affected to the degree of the other one.

The baby's heart was being severely compressed over to the opposite side of where it should have been because of the increasing size and pressure of the cystic masses. I was told that the situation was very grave. Without functioning lungs, there would be no way for the baby to survive post term. There was also a strong indication that the baby could succumb to heart failure prior to term because of the crushing pressure of the cystic masses.

...I was devastated to know that my precious baby was not going to make it and quite possibly suffer in the process, and I was helpless to do anything. I could not imagine continuing to carry a child possibly for several more months to term, all the while knowing that there was no hope for survival and just waiting for the inevitable to happen. I was already going through emotional hell, and it seemed pointless to put both myself and my baby through any more needless suffering....

I was referred to Dr. Tiller's clinic in Wichita. Since I was now past the 24 week cut-off for a termination in my state, I would have to travel there to seek the help that I needed now. Dr. Tiller and his staff were so wonderful to my husband and me. They were more compassionate than any of the doctors at home, who seemed more interested in documenting every aspect of my personal tragic situation for "an interesting case study" and took the attitude of "You can just try again when this is over."

Dr. Tiller let me talk and cry and he listened to my every word through my tears. He held my hand and hugged me when I needed it; and he really cared about the emotional pain I was going through. I kept telling him that my main concern was for my baby to go peacefully, as I was not concerned for my own comfort. He assured me that the process would be painless for the baby, and would very closely mimic a miscarriage.

There was another couple there the same week going through a similar experience and he encouraged us to talk to each other and support each other through our ordeal. His facility was literally lined with hundreds of framed letters from people from all over who had gone through the very same experiences thanking him and his staff for helping them when they needed it most.

I am grateful that there was a man like Dr. Tiller who was there for me when I needed him. I will always remember him as a dedicated physician who truly cared about his patients.

Feministe: "It's not about religious liberty"

From Feministe: "Shockingly, Catholic Bishops’ hostility to birth control is not about religious liberty."

...98% of Catholic women use hormonal birth control at some point in their lives. Nope! Because, wait, this is just about a handful of celibate men wanting to control women’s reproductive freedoms? And it’s not really about religious freedom at all? It’s just about hostility to women having the ability to prevent pregnancy? Oh. Who could have possibly seen that coming?

A commenter adds:

The law has been clear since late 2000 when the EEOC ruled that all employers who provided prescription drug coverage in their group health care plans were violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if they failed to include coverage for prescription contraceptives.

It’s telling that the Bush administration never challenged the EEOC ruling handed down in the last days of the Clinton administration and yet every Republican candidate for president in this election year is screaming bloody murder that the Obama administration’s mandate that all health care plans (with narrow religious exceptions) include contraceptive care tramples on “religious liberties.”

The Republican War on Contraception

From Mother Jones: The Republican War on Contraception.

The first sign of the new assault came last October, when Mississippi activists and congressional Republicans pushed legislation on the state and federal level, respectively, that would have treated zygotes—a.k.a. fertilized human eggs—as legal "persons." If the definition of legal personhood is changed so that it begins when sperm meets an egg, hormonal birth control or barrier devices that prevent zygotes from implanting in the uterine wall could become illegal, making using an IUD tantamount to murder. Yet some 40 percent of House Republicans and a quarter of their allies in the Senate back bills that would do just that.

I hate those busybodies.

Abortion is no mental health risk

Research shows that, even in women who have had psychiatric disorders, abortion does not increase the chance of future mental problems.

In women with a history of mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, getting an abortion does not increase their chances of landing in a psychiatric facility again, suggests a new study from Denmark.
Feelings of sadness and loss around the time of an abortion are "temporary and appropriate," said Dr. Anne Davis, an ob-gyn at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Women who had abortions were more likely to have been treated for psychiatric disorders, suggesting that they may feel less capable of raising a child. However, their rate of relapse was the same after an abortion than at any other time.

"All the things that make women think this is not the time to have a baby are risk factors for having mental health problems," said Dr. Nada Stotland, a psychiatrist at Rush Medical College in Chicago. "The best predictor of your mental health after an abortion is your mental health before an abortion," she told Reuters Health

In contrast,

Rates of readmission were higher after having a baby than before in women who gave birth, peaking in the first month after their babies were born. That's consistent with prior research.

U.S. politics: Santorum longs for Good Old Days of back-alley abortions

This is truly disgusting. U.S. Republican candidate for president, Rick Santorum, wants to bring back the good old days of women getting abortions in the shadows of back alleys.

Santorum’s nostalgia for a time before doctors could legally perform abortions was also a time when women regularly died or were seriously injured by illegal procedures. Roughly 50 percent of all maternal deaths in the first half of the 20th century were from illegal abortions, and an estimated 160 to 260 women died each year in the 1950s and 1960s from illegal abortions. But for Santorum, the fact that women no longer face those dangers is a sign of what harm can come from health care reform.

Virginia Senator: Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

Ha! A senator in Virginia attached a rectal exam amendment to a Virginia anti-abortion bill.

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication [e.g., Viagra].

"We need some gender equity here," she told HuffPost. "The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we're going to do that to women, why not do that to men?"

U.S. government official calls for public hanging of obstetricians and gynecologists

Oh, and he regrets hitting Reply All when he meant for his sentiment to go to a select few! From The Well-timed Period: Larry Pittman, U.S. Representative, calls for the execution of U.S. citizens engaged in legal activities.

Remember the good old days when politicians merely drafted legislation to make it legal to assassinate Ob/Gyns, and when even the domestic terrorists at Operation Rescue were trying to distance themselves from people who assassinate Ob/Gyns?

Well, I'm happy to report we've come a long way, baby! We now have government officials calling for the public hanging of Ob/Gyns.

Towards making abortion rare

Childbirth kills women. Pregnancy kills women. Illegal abortion kills women. Therefore, safe, sterile, legal abortion saves lives and contraception saves even more lives. From the Guttmacher Institute, and old piece on "Toward making abortion rare" by Susan A. Cohen.

Safe, legal and rare. President Clinton first used this phrase, as early as 1992, to capture the essence of a desired national policy on abortion. For the most part, even the most ardent abortion rights supporters have come to embrace this notion and to accept the validity of its two-fold underlying premise: Abortion in the United States must remain legal in order to be safe, and at the same time, even with abortion services legal and accessible to women who need them, abortion can be rare—or at least far less common than it is now.

Most on the prochoice side would agree that lessening the need for abortion is a worthy goal, one both that reflects the fact that most American women try to control their fertility by using birth control rather than abortion and that recognizes the reality that even many of those who support legal abortion also have moral qualms about it. The evidence is strong that abortion’s legal status, however closely related to the conditions under which it is performed, is not the central determinant of its prevalence (related articles, March 2003, page 8, and May 2003, page 3). Prochoice advocates, therefore, assert that the route to rare depends primarily on a societal commitment to helping women be more successful at preventing unintended pregnancy. And this is impossible, they say, without a central emphasis on increasing and improving the use of contraception. (Read more)

Remembering Dr. George Tiller

This is a long one, about the work of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered two years ago today. "My Kansas Story".

My son was my long awaited journey into motherhood. He was my lifeline the day my brother died and I thought the world was ending. He was the glimmer of hope that was offered to family members that horrible week that we had four family members die. He was my everything and then he was gone.....

Thirty minutes later our world crashed around us. The doctor and sonographer began by taking measurements and showing us all the baby's major parts, but they slowed down when they got to the spine. My son had his back up against the placenta and they couldn't get a very good view but what they could see was not good. The baby had spina bifida. There was definitely an opening from L1-L3 but they couldn't tell anymore than that. Then they proceeded to the baby's heart and showed us the echogenic foci that could be indicative of Down syndrome....

We decided at that point to continue the pregnancy because we had so many unanswered questions and were unwilling to end the pregnancy when the worst-case scenario appeared to be that the baby wouldn't be able to walk. ...I noticed a change in the baby's movement patterns. He began to move for shorter periods of time and not as often.

...This time we found that the baby's lesion was larger than they had originally thought, it now appeared to be from L1-L5. The most horrible part was that the baby had developed ventriculomegaly: fluid on the brain. At this point, it had had yet to affect the size of the baby's head. I laid on the table crying and knowing in my heart at that point my son was not going to make it.

When we got home my husband wanted to discuss termination but I was absolutely against it. I was in complete denial about his condition and his eventual outcomes. I tried really hard to start fights with my husband so that I wouldn't have to face reality. Luckily I have a wonderful husband who basically let me vent while softly continuing to press me to face what was happening.

We returned to the doctor 10 days later at 22 weeks 5 days and found that the baby's brain measurements were the same, which made everything so difficult. His fetal movements had continued to decrease and I was beginning to return to reality. We asked our doctor about options for termination and he explained that unfortunately we had passed the deadline in our state, so our only remaining option was to go to Wichita.....

...I thought I would lose my son, my marriage, and myself. I was also angry. I was angry with God that He "let this happen." I was angry with my husband that he couldn't fix it. Mostly I was angry with myself because I hadn't been able to save my son.

..I was unprepared for what I would see because during the two weeks since our final ultrasound the baby had developed severe hydrocephalus.

...I hate that my son is gone. I hate that I had to make the decision to end his life. I hate that my womb and my arms are empty. But I am strengthened in the fact that I made my decision by focusing on him and what was best for him. I am eternally grateful to the wonderful people that guided me through this horrible experience with compassion, love, and understanding. 

Teen pregnancy rate drops 37% in Canada

Improved sex education and access to contraceptives under universal health care contributed to a drop of 37% in teen pregnancies between 1996 and 2006. The birth rate has dropped and the abortion rate has dropped, which means that better contraception is working.

Better access to contraception, higher quality sex education and shifting social norms have contributed to a 36.9 per cent decline in Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate between 1996 and 2006, according to a report released today by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada.

Alexander McKay, Research Coordinator, Sex Information and Education Council of Canada, said:

“It’s important to look at teen pregnancy rates because they’re a basic fundamental indicator of young women’s sexual and reproductive health. While not all teen pregnancies are a bad thing, when we see [rates] dropping, it’s a fairly clear indicator that young women are doing increasingly well in terms of controlling and protecting their reproductive health,”

He went on:

“In comparison to the United States, we tend to have a more balanced, sensible approach to adolescent sexual health. Generally speaking what you find is that the more a society has an accepting attitude toward the reality of adolescent sexuality, the lower the teen pregnancy rate is. Canadians tend to have a more relaxed attitude towards adolescent sexuality than people in the United States.”

Mr. McKay said America’s emphasis on abstinence-only sex ed “tends to result in a higher percentage of teens becoming pregnant,” as does the country’s lack of universal health care. Poverty is another factor.

The report appears in the current issue of The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.

Utah politics

April, 2002:
You don't know whether to laugh or cry. From Paul Rolly's column in the Salt Lake Tribune:

"The Republican state convention delegate was discussing with a prominent Utah GOP elected officeholder the issue of immigration when the delegate whined that a fence should be constructed to span the entire USA-Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants.
"What happens when they climb the fence?" asked the politician.
"You electrify it," said the delegate. "Then they won't touch it."
"But what if they touch it? You would let them die?"
"It would be their choice," said the delegate.
"What about a mother with a baby strapped to her back? You would let the mother and the baby die?"
"It would be the mother's choice to kill that baby," said the delegate.
"Then you're in favor of abortion?" asked the officeholder. Dead silence. "

Do you regret your adoption?

Overheard:

Anti-abortionists like to say how women will always regret getting an abortion and they'll be depressed about it.

I know two women who have given up children for adoption (in both cases because they were young and naive and in denial too long and too far along to get abortions) and both of them were terribly, terribly depressed for years afterwards. One had an open adoption and the other had a closed one. Both are still pretty upset about their experiences. Both said they wished they had gotten abortions early so they wouldn't have to go through what they did.

Life and Liberty for Women: Letter to South Dakota Governor

Life & Liberty for women has some good points to make in an open letter to the Governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds.

Most important: banning abortion doesn't stop abortions. It just makes them more dangerous. Women will die.

When the anti-choice get a clue: "I was a pro-life Republican"

This is refreshing. The author explains how she was anti-choice until she fell in love and realized that wanting sex doesn't make you a slut. "I was a pro-life Republican--until I fell in love" tells the story in her own words.

After all, I was 16, 17, 18. I knew everything. And what I knew more than anything else was that anyone who got herself into the position of having an unwanted pregnancy was filthy in body and soul. And again, since I would absolutely never have premarital sex, I would absolutely never make the decision to murder my child. Because I was pure, and so were babies, and together, me and the babies and my perfect hymen, we were all going to be fine if we could just fight the ignorant sluts. So that’s what I did. I talked and argued and cajoled and pontificated. I ministered to the heathen nerdgirl sluts in Telnet chats and online bulletin boards. I stood up for what I believed in, which was: If you do not believe like me, you deserve whatever brand of God’s wrath comes your way.

Read the rest.

Congenital birth defects: Harlequin ichthyosis

This is not a reason for abortion: for one thing, it is not generally detected before birth. Until recently, harlequin ichthyosis was always fatal, generally in the womb, but now a few babies have been born live. A few have survived and even lead reasonably normal lives with a lot of care and skin-scrubbing with mild acid. You see, there's something wrong with their connective tissue. It's too strong, so their skin is tight: so tight that the inner linings of their eyes bulge out with the pressure. This is a painful disease with a dismal prognosis. If it were detected in the womb, a woman might well choose abortion if only to prevent a child from suffering.

Hungary may ban abortion

Victor Orban: "What do we care if women die, Your Holiness?"

Hungary may write a new constitution that bans abortion. Women will die. Ratzinger will applaud. Women will die.

Life must be protected from the moment of conception, Hungary’s ruling party said in a draft of the country’s new constitution that would effectively introduce a complete ban on abortion after several decades of liberal laws.

Pope Benedict XVI earlier in December told the Hungarian ambassador it was “desirable that the new constitution be inspired by Christian values, particularly in what concerns the position of marriage and the family in society and the protection of life.” The pontiff’s wishes are reflected well in the governing Fidesz party’s proposal, which — in additional to mirroring papal teaching on abortion — says marriage is “the most natural community of man and woman.”

Hungary’s new constitution — even though irritating for those who believe in women’s freedom of choice or fail to see any danger in gay marriage — could be interpreted as a response to the country’s population decline, which strains the pension system.

The article goes on:

On abortion and same-sex marriage, Hungary seems to be going the road Poland took in the 1990s. Poland’s constitution, adopted in 1997, mentions marriage as the opposite-sex union and states that life is protected from conception to natural death.... An illegal abortion market flourishes in Poland. When a private doctor isn’t an option in Poland, abortion tourism is — Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands are among the most popular destinations for the more affluent, while the Baltic States for those with scarce resources.

Reasons for late abortion: anencephaly

A baby born without a brain cannot live and will never become conscious. Sometimes a defect like this is not detected until late in a pregnancy.

When doctors detect that a fetus is developing without a brain, there's no reason to make the pregnant woman go childbirth or through the rest of pregnancy.

It's best to let the woman end the pregnancy and recover, keeping her bodily resources intact for the next pregnancy.

Abortion factoid

The eMedicine Health article on abortion says that 13% of women's deaths worldwide are caused by illegal abortion.

Unfortunately, I don't know where that number came from. I do know that whole hospital wards were closed when abortion became legal, because there wasn't the steady stream of severely ill, sometimes dying, women with septic shock, internal bleeding, and other charming side effects of illegal abortion.