men and abortion

note to all readers of this blog:  i apologize that we have neglected this blog and allowed it to be hijacked.  i promise to do more to try to fix it soon.  in the meantime, i have read about a new website for men whose partners are considering or have chosen abortion.  you can access it at www.menandabortion.com.  an article about it follows.

lou

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/national/article/0,1406,KNS_350_4655250,00.html

Comments

[Mike 18]

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[moiv]

Dear N,

You wrote:

"More people are willing to accept abortion, more people are trained to do them properly, early abortion is much simpler now than it was pre-Roe."

Although many people might share your opinion, none of them will be found among those who -- like Bon, Lou and me -- actually provide abortion care. There are actually fewer people trained to perform abortions today than there were 30+ years ago, for two reasons:

[1] "Back in the day," most OB/GYN residents quickly and routinely became proficient in abortion techniques by completing the badly managed illegal abortions of the women who presented in hospital ERs in droves, and

[2] Because of pervasive religiously-motivated political pressure resulting from a high level of church-connected hospital ownership, today's OB/GYN resdients face great obstacles in accessing training. Even those who could receive traning usually don't, because there is no incentive for any physician to offer abortion care -- which almost any doctor will tell you is nothing but a poorly compensated ticket to professional suicide.

Why? Because it's not true that more people are willing to accept abortion these days, either, any more than it's true that abortion techniques are simpler than they were pre-1973. The safest and simplest method for early abortion is still aspiration D&C using a Berkeley aspirator, as has been the case since 1967.

Though usually safe and effective, medication abortion with either mifepristone or methotrexate can be highly problematic in the best of circumstances, and is not an option after nine weeks, at the most. If abortion was illegal, many women would be unable to gain access to either a provider or the necessary medications before that much time had elapsed.

OB/GYNs on the staff of a major Dallas hospital have told me that they are already seeing women who present with acute hemorrhage after attempting to self-abort with misoprostol. What would happen to those women if hospital staffs were compelled by law to report the to the police? And if abortion were a crime, that is exactly what would take place.

A colleague in another southern state tells me that she has been approached (quietly and unofficially, of course) by her local university hospital, which wants her help in setting up an abortion ward just like the ones hospitals used to have in the bad old days. Maybe when women are once again streaming into hospitals suffering from hemostatic or endotoxic shock -- and in every place in the world where abortion is illegal, that is happening today -- OB/GYN residents will start getting abortion training again.

"There are plenty of doctors who will go on performing abortions at a reasonable rate and plenty of people who will see to it that women who can't afford them can get them."

Doctors will continue to provide abortion at a reasonable rate where abortion remains legal, but finding a doctor willing to go to jail for an act of charity will be another matter altogether, just as it was before Roe.

And in areas of the country where access to abortion care is already highly compromised, there aren't enough people to help the thousands of women who can't get an abortion right now -- today.

Please understand that I don't mean to seem antagonistic toward you in any way. I very much wish that I could agree with you. But this is just quite simply the way it is.

[N.]

You know, it's interesting, L...

I've been wondering if illegal abortion would really be as bad a thing as people think. More people are willing to accept abortion, more people are trained to do them properly, early abortion is much simpler now than it was pre-Roe. So it's illegal? And? The only difference will be that there won't be any public clinics to protest, no people to follow home and harrass, nothing left for the prolife whackos to get all worked up about, no more marches, no more rallies, no more trucks and posters with huge pictures of aborted fetuses plastered all over them...

Is this a bad thing? There are plenty of doctors who will go on performing abortions at a reasonable rate and plenty of people who will see to it that women who can't afford them can get them.

The prolife movement will no longer be if there is no more legalized abortion. Where will they go to protest? Who will they harrass? Whatever will they do with their time?

I don't think legal/illegal makes nearly the difference it did in 1973.

[L.]

I don`t understand why people born after Roe are all that different from those of us born before. My mother, or anyone`s mother, could have sought an illegal abortion -- and no one would have known.

[Carole]

Here is another cool new Pro-LIFE website for this generation – www.Deathroe.com
For everyone born after Jan 22,1973- this is your place in the pro-life movement. Read what others feel about abortion and connect with other like-minded pro-life people in your area. Really cool Gear there also, free art downloads, crazy pro-abort quotes, and plenty of research info for papers. Also located on My Space, make it a friend if you have a My Space page: http://www.myspace.com/deathroesurvivor
On Xanga - http://www.xanga.com/DeathRoeSurvivors
Join the Death Roe Survivors Blog Ring

To join, just follow this link:
http://www.xanga.com/groups/join.aspx?id=2236859

[Maura]

No worries. I definitely look forward to the return of the thought-provoking, sensitive, and compassionate stories of work in a clinic.

[trope]

Not to worry; everyone needs a break once in a while. Thanks for the link.