The 33d Roe v Wade anniversary seemed quiet this year, considering it may well be the last celebration of legal abortion. Among providers, there is a grim despair as all efforts to alarm, persuade, appeal, filibuster, and more have been lost. As a provider in Ohio said, "We can hear the clock ticking on legal abortion."
Interestingly, though, abortion beat reporters and many organizations fundraising for abortion rights are enjoying a resurgence. Fundraisers are well attended; people are paying attention to their disappearing rights. And after decades of trying to get reporters to cover something OTHER THAN the anti-abortion arguments are beginning to write the people involved in abortion experiences back into the stories.
Most amusing to me is the sniping between Wm Saletan, author of Bearing Right, How the Conservatives Won the Abortion War, and Katha Pollit of the Nation. Both are pro choice, both make a lot of sense to me, and yet they are screaming at each other about who is losing abortion rights for all of us.
Saletan, who has analyzed opinion polls about abortion and understands better than anyone how all kinds of Americans feel about abortion, and how that affects policy, says that we should just acknowledge that abortion is bad and focus on getting to zero abortions, better birth control etc etc.
Pollit strongly trumpets the need for legal abortion and the positive good it does for women in providing for their children, contributing to the economic and social well being of our society, and for basically saving women's lives.
It's so odd to live in the day to day world that is so talked about, screamed about, killed over, and agonized over. And of course, I think I have the answer, not only to reconcile Saletan and Pollit, but also our society, or most of it, about the divisive issue of abortion. You see, every single day, I talk to women who do not think abortion is a great thing-- they feel bad, they cry, but they face something that the opinionated public does not: a decision about how to have life, how to bring life into the world. Every single woman wants to make life better and their conclusion is that by ending the potential life inside them, they can better provide, or realize their dreams, or contribute, or just be healthier. They don't love that they have to make such a decision, they know that society looks down on them, that their family or partner or co worker might judge them, but they cannot avoid a choice so they look at their lives and make the best choice, the least bad choice, their choice. And if anyone can tell me how to put that on a bumper sticker or in a sound bite for middle America, please let me know. In the meantime, I will continue to post what I see and hear on the real Abortion Front--in the hearts and minds of women who are pregnant and don't want to be.
Thanks for listening.
--bon
L., another reason for me to be glad I'm chaste! No mess, no bother, and no pregnancy scares!
Posted by: Christina | Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 07:19 PM
It is indeed bizarre -- I had no idea, but then I read articles such as this: http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/ectopicpregnancy/a/ectpregtubpreg.htm
A diaphragm and condom consistently used together are more effective, with fewer chances of side effects.
Separate bedrooms work well, too!
Posted by: L. | Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 10:32 AM
L., that is so bizarre!
Posted by: Christina | Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 12:50 AM
Surprise, surprise -- I`ve discussed a tubal with my doc, who told me they`re not 100% effective because fallopian tissue can regenerate, and she has had several patients get "surprise" pregnancies 10 years after tubals. Multiple methods of barrier contraception, used together, are actually more effective, if used consistently. Abstinence is most effective of all.
Of course, my hub could get snipped, but he says that`s not an option.
Make no mistake -- I`m not gunning for an abortion. I`m actively trying to avoid a pregnancy. It has occurred to me that many women who abort are women like me, who are already mothers and know exactly what`s involved, and just don`t want to go through it all again.
Posted by: L. | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 04:50 PM
Good point Christina.
Posted by: Teri | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 03:52 PM
L., wouldn't a tubal ligation make more sense, physically, emotionally, and financially, than spending the rest of your reproductive life poised for an abortion?
Posted by: Christina | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 03:10 PM
L-
I get not wanting another baby. I don't get the threat of killing one hanging over your husband's head. If you're so serious about not wanting another child or c-section, why not get snipped? Abortion is surgery, and so is a tubal ligation, but a tubal ligation wouldn't kill anyone.
Posted by: Christine | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 03:09 PM
Yes, Christine, it is shitty. Yes, my husband is aware how I feel, and it has caused some arguments in our marriage. He originally wanted 2 children. We have 3 -- all born by c-section. I don`t want to do it all again.
Ironically, I`m Catholic. Guess what my church wants me to do in this particular situation. And guess what I`m not doing. I am done having babies.
Posted by: L. | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 02:10 PM
L-
Does your husband know you would kill his kid? That has to be some heavy emotional blackmail. Either choosing sex and intimacy (a necessary aspect of marriage) with the risk of creating a kid that his wife will kill, or foregoing sex and intimacy as not to create a child for his wife to kill. Since no birth control is fail-proof your husband is forced to pay Russian roulette with his child's life just to have sex with his wife.
That's shitty.
Posted by: Christine | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 01:52 PM
L,
And I do commend you very much for taking the steps to not become pregnant.
I am lucky enough to have a friend who has been there for me, even though I don't think I deserve her. She doesn't understand what would have made me believe that the abusive man who is my baby's father had changed and I don't even know myself. The one thing I do know is that killing this baby is not going to accomplish anything positive. It won't change the decisions that have already been made.
Babies are a gift no matter what circumstance creates them. They are innocent and they deserve the most basic human right, which is to live.
Posted by: Teri | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 01:44 PM
Teri, I would never consult a "sleazy abortionist" -- I would go to my private OB/GYN. I would consider it degrading to be forced to bear a baby I didn`t want, and actively tried to prevent in the first place. My situation is very different from yours.
But I think any person who tried to talk you into aborting, with your particular point of view, would be dead wrong. I am glad that you seem to be getting the support from somewhere to carry your pregnancy and have your babies. I would argue with any person who said, "That woman should abort." Clearly, you should not.
Posted by: L. | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 01:29 PM
Christina,
I do have my story posted on my own website, the address is www.abortionhurts.homestead.com
L,
I commend you on at least using some form of birth control. The things is that I am not married or even with the father of my children. If it were up to him, the 2 that I had and gave up would have been aborted and he would have me abort the baby I'm pregnant with now. I have a lot less than some people, yet I am not going to kill my baby. Killing babies when there are so many people who are waiting to adopt one is selfish and wrong, period. Once you're pregnant, you are already a mother. And paying some sleazy abortionist to kill our babies is degrading.
It will not be easy for me to have this baby, but it would be much harder for me to kill him or her just because I made a stupid decision. There are times when I wish I had someone to just give me a hug and tell me that its gonna be okay, but I don't have that. Killing my baby would not provide that. In fact, there is nothing that killing my baby would provide except for more heartache.
Posted by: Teri | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 01:06 PM
Teri, I have no idea what it`s like to be in your shoes, and I`m sorry your life has been so tough. I would never presume to tell you what you should have done in any of your past situations, but please don`t presume to tell ME what I should do in mine, if I am ever faced with an unwanted pregnancy. My husband wants another baby -- I do not. If I get pregnant, it will not be born. It is as simple as that. My situation is very different from your situation. I do NOT choose life -- I choose NO life. And I have made this choice even before the situation becomes a choice, so hopefully I will never have to face it in my future (unless my "baby pesticide" fails). I hope you find peace.
Posted by: L. | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 12:38 PM
Hugs and prayers, Teri. Have you been to the After Abortion blog?
http://afterabortion.blogspot.com
Do you have your story posted?
Posted by: Christina | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 09:33 AM
I am pregnant right now & I did not want to be pregnant. But, I can tell you this, I am not going to pay some sleazy wannabe doctor abortionist to kill him or her. Don't you get it? Just because you can rip a woman's baby out of her does not mean that you are "helping her". I have had abortions before and I've now had two children that I've put up for adoption. The abortions by far were much worse. Even though I cannot hold my babies that are now with their new families, I know that I gave them something that ONLY I could have given them, which is their life.
I am pregnant now & its hard. Because of my own actions, I have pretty much lost everyone who ever meant anything to me. The man who fathered my baby is abusive and I should have never gone to him again, but I did. I cannot explain why I did it other than I thought he had really changed. I know now that he never will. I cannot change the past & murdering my baby wouldn't change it either.
Posted by: Teri | Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 07:36 AM
DP, can you show of a single case in which a CPC knew that a woman had a high-risk pregnancy, convinced her to carry to term anyway, and she died as a result? I have plenty of examples of women who were convinced to abort (they did NOT get the idea on their own), and they died as a result.
Abortion facilities take direct action that leads to women's deaths. The prochoice movement is indifferent to these women's fates. Why is that? Why is it so much worse to be annoyed by prolifers than killed by prochoicers?
Posted by: Christina | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 04:35 PM
DP, they refer for medical care. If women were dying as a result of being talked out of the abortions that would have saved their lives, surely their families would have sued, gone public, or both. The cases would be shouted from the rooftops by people looking to discredit CPCs.
Also, the idea that you could calculate the number of women who've died because they went to CPCs by figuring what percent of pregnant woman go to CPC and carry to term, and taking that percent of maternal deaths, is based on false premises. CPCs give referrals to prenatal care, so any woman who is following through on the advice given by a CPC would be in a lower risk category in the first place. So even among women who are rejecting abortion, going to a CPC statistically reduces her mortality risk because she's getting steered into prenatal care rather than going through her pregnancy without care.
The highest risk category for pregnancy-related death is among women with high-risk pregnancies, and they also carry the highest risk of death form abortion. I don't know of any studies that have compared death rates from abortion among high-risk patients versus continuing the pregnancy among this same risk group. In fact, when I did a survey of high-risk pregnancy studies, even for patients such as multiple-organ transplant recipients and burn victims, the success was measured in terms of fetal survival and birth weight. None of the women in those studies died.
And none of this changes the fact that abortion facilities have a long history of fatal and near-fatal quackery, yet this doesn't stir any unease among the prochoice. Let me stress that: Abortion facilities take direct actions upon women that result in those women's deaths -- something CPCs don't so -- yet the outrage is aimed at the CPCs, not at the abortion mills that kill and maim women. Why is that? Why are the prochoice activists content to let women die of horrible malpractice, but all up in arms if a woman sees "The Silent Scream"? Again, why is it so much worse to be annoyed by prolifers than killed by prochoicers?
Posted by: Christina | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 04:32 PM
DP-
You say childbirth is safer than abortion. It's definitely not safe for the baby. But even then, your math is wrong. I'm a statistician, and it's not correct to compare deaths over a 9 month period with abortion deaths in the first 3 months. You're inflating the figure three times. You state 11 per 100,000 women die in childbirth, (it's more like 6 now, your figures are old). Now, we'd need numbers of deaths of pregnant women in the first 3 months and first trimester abortion deaths- then we can see which is safer. I would venture a guess to say that childbirth is 100% safer for the baby than an abortion.
Am I indifferent to the woman who die of pregnancy complications? I'm not responsible for childbirth deaths. I didn't create those natural complications. I don't intentionally or even by default want anyone to die. You beleive in *intentionally* killing unborn children. You have to do gymnastics to try to implicate me in anything, and even then you fail. My hands are absolutely clean. They freakin' sparkle.
More problems is logic: Last time I checked, only 1 in 4085 women in America die from a pregnancy complication. You suggest killing a child to prevent something that only happens 1/4085s of the time. Abortion kills a baby nearly 100% of the time. Is the goal is to save lives, we would definitely kill thousands of babies for each life that 'might' have died from childbirth. Yeah, that's logical.
Intentionally kill people to save lives that might never be in danger. What exactly are the values in that?
Posted by: Christine | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 02:18 PM
Christine: If your friend convinces you to drive to her house, even though she knows that her brother has a grudge against you and he stabs you when you get to her house does she bear some responsibility for your death? What if she convinces you to drive to her house in a blizard, even though she knows that you have no experience driving in icy weather and don't have snow tires and you die in a crash caused by skidding on ice? Or if she convinces you to drive to her house even though you told her that you'd just drank a six pack of beer and four shots? Is she really completely innocent of the drunk driving deaths that may result? No matter how you rationalize it, pregnancy is not safe and many more women die of pregnancy complications than die of abortion complications. If you encourage, coerce, or force women to remain pregnant against their will or better judgement then your actions will result in more women dying. No matter what your rationalization, no matter how you try to pretend that your hands are clean. Are you indifferent to the suffering of women who die or are mutilated by pregnancy related complications?
Posted by: DP | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 01:39 PM
DP-
I really don't get your definition of responsibility. If I don't want to drive to my friends' house but she convinces me to come over and during the trip some stranger stabs and murders me...It's my friend's fault for convincing me to come over? No! It's the murderers fault. My friend did not stab me.
So if CPC's convince women not to kill their kids and they choose life(and yes, they ultimately do- No one forces them to choose life) and they die from complications, it's the CPC's fault? CPC's do not cause health problems that kill women. Abortion clinics do.
Your logic says that everyone else is always responsible for other's actions. And you wonder why people quickly peg pro-aborts as irresponsible.
Posted by: Christine | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 12:01 PM
Christina: It is my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong) that CPCs aren't medical facilities. That is, that no medical procedures are performed there, except diagnosis of pregnancy and ultrasound. That being so, it would be seriously disturbing if women were dying in the CPCs. Of course, many women will die because they were convinced by the CPCs to continue their pregnancies to term and die from their pregnancies--about 10-11X as many as would have died if they had had abortions instead*. But I can't think of any way that CPCs could directly and immediately kill women unless they're shooting women who aren't convinced by their arguments and try to walk out or hitting them over the head with the U/S machines or something.
*Counting only the direct results of pregnancy. That doesn't include the women whose boyfriends, husbands, fathers, or brothers kill them because they are pregnant. Nor does it include those who kill themselves due to post-partum depression. Or those who die of subtler long term effects such as sepsis due to bladder infections they wouldn't have had without the effects of labor on the bladder or complications of broken femurs that might never have broken if they hadn't lost calcium during the pregnancy, etc.
Posted by: DP | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 11:09 AM
Ms. O'Connor:
Why are you dragging up the old CPC complaints? Anybody who can read the Yellow Pages can see which facilities sell abortions and which don't. And if a woman hell-bent on abortion goes to a CPC by mistake, what harm is done? She walks out the door and gets her abortion someplace else.
Women die in safe-n-legal abortion clinics from the kind of quackery that wouldn't be tolerated in a veterinary clinic, but I never see the prochoice movement get worked up over that.
Why is it that y'all consider being annoyed by prolifers so much worse than being killed by prochoicers? I've never been able to figure that out.
You can go here for a table comparing CPC victims with abortion facility victims:
http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa021406a.htm
Then decide which group of victims really needs somebody to speak out for them.
Posted by: Christina | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 09:31 AM
Kelly-
It's not a punishment. Babies are a blessing. Not everyone can have them.
But you expect the natural consequences of sex to be removed from the person who acted, at the expense of an innocent. The unborn baby didn't take any risks, and she shouldn't have to pay for the risks the mother took.
Responsibility! Damn, y'all. You have to accept natural consequences with actions, not kill the baby to cop-out.
Posted by: Christine | Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 08:03 AM
"Exactly how can the zygote obtain consent before being conceived?" It can't, and that's my point.
When 2 human life-forms with supposed "equal rights" are occupying the same body, one's rights automatically trump the other's; thus, a fetus canNOT have equal rights to the mother or her rights are infringed upon and vice versa. UNLESS SHE CONSENTS TO HAVING HER RIGHTS INFRINGED upon in order to carry to term, she has the right to remove any part of her body she deems fit, including another human life-form. We have to give rights to the person in existence and let her decide what to do with the other life-form inside of her.
Pregnancy is a consequence of sex, not a punishment.
Posted by: Kelly | Sunday, February 12, 2006 at 07:04 AM
Hi there
I am a reporter for Marie Claire magazine working on a lengthy feature about "crisis pregnancy centers" and I love your site. I am looking to talk with women who have been deceived by CPCs. I am wondering if you can help. Of course I wouldn't expect you to divulge their identity to me, but if you could pass along my information, I would greatly appreciate it.
Please feel free to call me any time day or night via email or cell phone at [email protected]
All the best
Siobhan O'Connor
Reporter, Marie Claire Magazine
Posted by: siobhan | Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 07:13 PM