Happy Pro-Choice Day!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

[QUOTE=Slypork]
Again, I refuse to judge the young women who either don’t know better because of their age or who get caught unawares or the victims of rape. I don’t feel quite the same way for the older woman who was knowledge, experience and access to birth control. And I feel disturbed that a woman would have more than one abortion. I remember reading somewhere (I’ll try to find it) that abortion was the primary form of birth control in Russia with some women having more than one.
We’re not talking about third world countries where access to condoms is limited. We are talking about Europe and America. Why would any woman want to do it more than once?
[/quote]

Sometimes birth control fails. More than once, even.

Again, I’m terribly sorry for your loss, but I see no need to confuse the two issues.

So?

42

[QUOTE=Slypork]

BTW, never forget that “Roe”, Norma McCorvey, has recanted her support for abortion. Your hero is against you.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think anyone regards her as a hero, and pro-lifers who put their beliefs on pause to get an abortion are not exactly rare. I was going to mention this in the OP, but Roe v. Wade is shorthand, mostly, and may even be harmful to abortion rights by placating people into believing that its existence = abortions for all when abortion access is shit throughout most of the country (unless you’ve got money and can take at least two days off of work to drive to a clinic across the state for an appointment, wait 24 hrs in a hotel or after driving back, get the abortion and go back home).

And as someone mentioned, miscarriage is tragic but has nothing to do with women who don’t want to have babies, unless you’re Margaret Atwood.

43

[QUOTE=Slypork]

BTW, the name Planned Parenthood is a crock. The only planning they endorse is for reducing the number of parents. I found nothing in that organization that pushed for help in getting pregnant.
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Most women don’t have any difficulty getting pregnant. PPH exists because of that fact.

When I was young, poor, and uninformed, I got nearly all of my reproductive information from PPH. The many nurse practitioners I saw there over the years were universally ‘pro-education’ and I can recall thinking they spent a lot of time patiently answering my questions.

Also, PPH is the largest provided of reproductive heathcare in the US with over 4 million visits, male and female, a year.

In Texas, in 2005, there were 3400 children adopted through the state, 5400 waiting to be adopted, and 32,000 in foster care. There were 85,000 abortions.

I doesn’t seem to me that there are enough people to willing to adopt all these kids.

44

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Because hormonal birth control methods have some horrendous side effects and they are not infallible, and the failure rate of a condom is frankly scary. For every condom user, as many as 18 out of 100 will get pregnant in a year. For every person having sex with no contraceptive method at all, not even withdrawal, only 85 out of 100 will get pregnant. Is a condom better than nothing? Sure. But it’s nowhere near infallible, and not as effective as most people think. It’s entirely possible that a woman using nothing but barrier methods could get pregnant more than once over 25 years of fertility.
[/quote]
Actually, the FDA says condom failure during typical use (breakage or not using it right) is 14% and for proper use is 3%. Strangely, withdrawal is only slightly better. IUDs are highly effective as are the hormonal ones. I never realized that Norplant was 99.91% effective. Wow!

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I also extend you my sympathies, as I did to the other Doper this morning. Miscarriages suck. I expect they suck as much as unplanned pregnancies.
[/quote]
Please tell me you didn’t say that. That is so insensitive to anyone who has ever had to deal with the loss of a child they desperately wanted. I can’t even begin to put into words how hurtful that is without getting slammed by the mods or else opening up a pit thread. I will ignore this comment, pretend you never said it because I respect you and your opinions on so many other levels, and move on.

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Well, that’s unusual. Planned Parenthood was where I first learned of Taking Charge of Your Fertility and that book helped me plan my conception to the T. All routine gynecologic care is available there. True, they are not infertility experts, but they’ve never claimed to be. Most people are not infertile. Therefore, for most people, “planning” your parenthood is about avoiding it until you choose it.
[/QUOTE]
When my wife and I started trying to get pregnant again (we had our son without any assistance) I contacted the local Planned Parenthood, hoping they could recommend fertility specialists or ideas of what to expect. They told me, and this was a direct quote, “We don’t handle that kind of thing.” The woman’s tone of voice was akin to her saying, “We don’t gargle with raw sewage.”

45

Mal- I never said 25% of women in any society had been imprisoned, merely that if abortion were to be criminalised 25% of women would be criminals, and potentially 25% of women would be imprisoned if the criminal penalty for an abortion was imprisonment.

Women in Nepal and El Salvador have been imprisoned for procuring or performing illegal abortions. While prosecution and imprisonment isn’t common even in countries which criminalise abortion, it is by no means unheard of.

Yes, it was hyperbole, but criminalising abortion would lead eventually to procesution, and prosecutions would lead to eventually to imprisonment, with up to 25% of all women as potential criminals.

Happier with that clarification?

46

When I was in my early 20s, and married, I got pregnant three times in two years. Once on the Pill, once using foam and condoms together, and once on the IUD. They didn’t have the patch back then (that I know of) and I don’t even know what this “ring” is. I had two miscarriages, which I was happy about and my husband mourned. While we do have effective birth control methods available, no method is 100% effective, other than abstinence.

I am sorry that people who want to conceive sometimes find it difficult to conceive, or miscarry. However, I’m sorrier that some people wish to deny women the right to control their own fertility.

By the way, while healthy infants might be in short supply in the US, I believe that there are plenty of older kids waiting for a home.

47

To **DianaG , Cat Fight, Ca3799, WhyNot ** and other people on this thread: I am sorry for hijacking this thread with my personal views and experiences regarding abortion and fertility. As you can see, my judgment is a little clouded when it comes to the subject and I can be offensive and take offense very easily. I tend to become snotty and nasty. Therefore, I will no longer post to this thread.

Again, my apologies for anything I might have posted that could have disturbed anyone.

48

Ignore it if you want, but I’ve been through both. I’m not making it up. They’re both tremendously painful and horrible, in different ways but about equivalent levels, if one can quantify suffering. When I suffered a miscarriage, I suffered the loss of the child I desperately wanted. When I was unexpectedly pregnant, I suffered the loss of the whole *life *I had foreseen for myself.

ETA: Apologies accepted, and no hard feelings. I can totally understand why you feel the way you do.

49

[QUOTE=irishgirl]
Mal- I never said 25% of women in any society had been imprisoned, merely that if abortion were to be criminalised 25% of women would be criminals, and potentially 25% of women would be imprisoned if the criminal penalty for an abortion was imprisonment.

Women in Nepal and El Salvador have been imprisoned for procuring or performing illegal abortions. While prosecution and imprisonment isn’t common even in countries which criminalise abortion, it is by no means unheard of.

Yes, it was hyperbole, but criminalising abortion would lead eventually to procesution, and prosecutions would lead to eventually to imprisonment, with up to 25% of all women as potential criminals.

Happier with that clarification?
[/QUOTE]

Oh, it’s a clarification? I took it for an admission that when you said 25% of women would be in jail, you didn’t actually mean that 25% of women would be in jail. I grant you the existence of repressive regimes; perhaps you know what a “Hasty Generalisation” is.

Nearly all of us exceed the speed limit from time to time. Exceeding the speed limit is an offence. I guess that’s why all of us are permanently in court.

While you’re here, would you please clear something up for me? As a doctor, I’d value your opinion on the question of whether women for whom hormonal contraception is inadvisable are, generally speaking, physically incompetent to carry a pregnancy to term. As to the notion that those who conceive unplanned pregnancies must lack the judgement to be good parents, I think Cat Fight must have been teasing us. Certainly my sister, who was a tad previous with nephew #1, proved to be a thoroughly adequate mother.

50

I would really like to see a cite for the statistic that 25% of all women will have an abortion in their lifetime, which seems to be what you are asserting, irishgirl.

51

From Guttmacher:

I’ve seen similar numbers from the CDC, I’ll try to dig those up as well.

52

[QUOTE=DianaG]
From Guttmacher:

I’ve seen similar numbers from the CDC, I’ll try to dig those up as well.
[/QUOTE]

Wow, those numbers completely blow my mind.

53

[QUOTE=Justin_Bailey]
Wow, those numbers completely blow my mind.
[/QUOTE]

Honestly? They blow my mind, too.

54

This was pretty eye-opening

55

That’s one of the frustrating things about people’s perception of women who have abortions. Pro-lifers seem to desperately cling to the idea that we’re all exploited children or 20somethings who don’t want to give up the bikini and/or the single, carefree lifestyle. They want to perceive us as either completely innocent or irredeemably wanton. In reality, many women who are having abortions already have children. And if that’s not the definition of “informed choice”, I don’t know what is.

56

[QUOTE=Cat Fight]
I don’t think anyone regards her as a hero, and pro-lifers who put their beliefs on pause to get an abortion are not exactly rare.
[/QUOTE]

The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion is pretty eye-opening in that regard.

57

[QUOTE=Slypork]
When my wife and I started trying to get pregnant again (we had our son without any assistance) I contacted the local Planned Parenthood, hoping they could recommend fertility specialists or ideas of what to expect. They told me, and this was a direct quote, “We don’t handle that kind of thing.” The woman’s tone of voice was akin to her saying, “We don’t gargle with raw sewage.”
[/QUOTE]

I had a very similar experience when I moved and was looking for a new OB/GYN to renew my birth control pill prescription. I misread my insurance company’s website and got the department that does fertility treatment instead of the regular OB/GYNs. They told me they don’t do birth control prescriptions. I didn’t notice anything in particular about their tone of voice (but then again, I never do notice tones of voice), but they didn’t tell me the right number to call for what I wanted.

I’m not terribly surprised that the same people don’t handle both birth control and fertility treatment. I’m also not surprised that the people who handle one can’t give a referral for the other off the top of their head- the patients at one probably don’t make many requests for the other.

58

Anti-abortionists always act like women don’t know about adoption. Any women who has an abortion doesn’t know that she could give birth and give the child up. She is totally unaware of that idea, having never heard about anything but abortion as a solution to an unwanted pregnancy.

They also tell horror stories about abortions, but never tell any of the horrors about adoption. Nope, every child who was ever adopted had a loving family and the woman who gave it up was happy with the choice.

Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

59

Sending my (belated) donation to Planned Parenthood…

60

Q.N. Jones- you are more than welcome to click on the links in my post for a cite. The RCOG, by the way, is the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. They carry out audits of abortion provision in the UK and produce guidelines for good practice in all areas of women’s health. The statistics aren’t pulled out of thin air.

Mal- yes, there are women who are advised not to use hormonal birth control who would be in real danger if they were to continue a pregnancy. Not always, but yes, it definitely occurs, and I have seen it in my own practice.

Women at high risk of clots who are advised not to use the combined contraceptive pill would be in very real danger of dying from a clot during pregnancy or childbirth and an early termination would lower that risk in comparison.

Women with certain cancers who are advised not to use hormonal contraception are at real risk of aggressive reoccurrence of the cancer, and at risk of death from delay in treatment if they continue a pregnancy to term.

Women who have had serious psychiatric illness triggered by pregnancy, such as puerperal psychosis, are at risk of further episodes if on hormonal contraception, and could put their own life and the lives of their children in real danger if they continue a pregnancy. Think Andrea Yates.

Women with Eisenmenger’s syndrome as a consequence of congenital heart disease, while not specifically unable to use hormonal contraception, face a 50% mortality rate if they continue a pregnancy beyond the first trimester.

Personally (and I know this is anectdotal), I saw a patient when I was a medical student in Dublin who was advised by her psychiatrist, neurologist, obstetrician and GP that if she continued a second pregnancy she could lose her eyesight, the use of her legs and her sanity because of issues that had arisen during her first pregnancy. She was also advised not to use hormonal contraception, and guess what, non-hormonal methods failed.

She was even told by her partner and social services that they was so scared of the consequences of a further episode of puerperal psychosis that he would be given sole custody of the first child and the second baby as soon as it was born.

Nevertheless, because her pregnancy did not threaten her life (merely her health, her family unity and her sanity) under Irish law at the time she had to travel to the UK to obtain a legal termination.

The authorities abandoned this particular woman. Her distress, not at the termination (which she accepted was necessary), but at being made to feel like a criminal for wanting to save her own health, has shaped my views about abortion, and I’m not ashamed to admit that.