Intellectual Honesty in Reproductive Rights

We must not lie, but we also don't have to buy their lies. Subjects addressed: abortion survivors, lies about Planned Parenthood propagated by abortion survivors profiting from them, maternal mortality, fetal anomalies, miscarriage management, personhood

[beardie-fella]

I’ll admit that pregnancy is a temporary suspension of the mother’s bodily autonomy if pro-choice people admit that abortion kills a human organism.

[protruth-prochoice]

I'll bite. Yes, actual abortion (terminating an implanted pregnancy in a way that is incompatible with life, not alleged "mini-abortions" because 4/5 blastocysts fail to implant even in women not on hormonal birth control) kills a human organism.

You might find me rather disappointing when it comes to debate, though. If pro-life and pro-choice people can come together on a Constitutional framework regarding acceptable methods and reasons to terminate potentially viable pregnancies, I'd support such efforts. To be Constitutional, serious mental and physical health concerns must be a reason to allow at least an attempt at early live delivery. If the health risk is so great that arrangements to attempt a live birth would be impossible without putting her life in grave imminent danger, then women should be allowed to choose to save herself regardless of the baby's viability potential.

I'd also prefer "fatal fetal abnormalities" be a reason as well vs using "my kid will die 12 hours after birth and that will drive me nuts to watch" as a "serious mental health condition". I'm not talking Down Syndrome or things that could be fixed -- I'm talking no kidneys, no brain, etc. Sadly I think there are enough people only wanting to adopt newborns that would be more willing to adopt disabled preemies than non-disabled older children.

For "serious mental health condition", I'm particularly thinking of bipolar women who have to change medication regimens for the benefit of the baby (ones previously on Depakote or Lithium) and end up in manic psychosis or psychotic depression. If they can't be brought out of it without medication damaging to the child, there at least has to be an allowance for them to give steroids and deliver as soon as lungs are mature. I don't know if that makes much sense, but I just can't countenance unwillingly locking up insane pregnant women until they pop vs until the baby could live.

I do think that looking at the very factual and (for some) graphic material regarding human embryology helps people see the truth of the process by which that "clump of cells" forms itself into the placenta, amniotic membrane, and the embryo/fetus. Using that information, they can decide at which point they themselves would have qualms about potential pain, etc. And also at which points they could say it was unlikely that the human organism could perceive pain. Personally, I think if someone is going to abort, the earlier the better because of that potential risk.

Also, it shows the extremely fast growth rate of that human organism and why even if they could scientifically prove no ability to feel pain in the early half of the second trimester, the longer a pregnancy continues the more risk is inherent in any abortion procedure. After viability, the risk is essentially the same as birth, and post-24 weeks the only options are the same as for birth -- labor induction or abdominal incision. Hence why I feel it perfectly rational to suggest if a woman must terminate so late and it's not because they're circling the drain right this second or will be before they can get the NICU team together, that they make an effort to save the child.

Aside from concerns of life and autonomy, I truly believe that it's impossible to effectively criminalize first trimester abortions, primarily because of enforcement difficulties. Do we investigate every miscarriage to make sure they didn't import drugs? If, God forbid, a woman miscarries whilst on the toilet (not that uncommon due to similar muscles used for straining if a spontaneous first-trimester miscarriage is nearly complete), should she be legally required to fish out any remains to avoid being investigated for a potential abortion?

I probably pissed off both pro-choice and pro-life people here, but that's my opinion. I don't think a fetus has the right to live inside its mother without her continued consent simply because she "spread her legs" -- nor do I think ones that can live outside the womb should simply die with no efforts made to save them because the mother revokes consent so late.

But hey. If we all agreed on everything, it'd be a boring world.

[poli-tick]

Pro-lifer: I’m here to blog about REAL. The only REAL love. REAL people and REAL truth! TRUE compassion!

Same pro-lifer: abortion is murder, and I hope someone murders those who had abortion.

[thatclassicalliberal]

I don’t know any pro-lifers who hold that stance. Except for the occasional wacko you see on tv, almost all pro-lifers are very compassionate toward the women who have abortions because we understand the awful position these women are in, what a terrible mistake they’re making, and the horrible impact (that studies have proven) the abortion will have on the woman’s life. It’s mostly the doctors who fully know what they’re doing that we don’t like. We’re also not big fans of the radical blue haired feminists who take actual joy in seeing women go through the painful experience of having an abortion. 

The vast majority of pro-lifers do not want to see women who have had an abortion murdered. That’s a gross character assassination.

[protruth-prochoice]

Fortunately you guys all called the same person out once the posts were brought to your attention – demonstrating that no, the hammering of Tumblr this morning with similar posts from them wasn’t representative of the pro-life community.

And given I was actually correct in which user poli-tick was calling out – I was relying solely on memory and deduction (seeing the posts disappeared with the only mutual block today) which was dangerously fallacious – it also makes me feel better about hopefully having some rational, polite, not-all caps discourse with people who don’t agree with me here. Had some lovely discussion today in another thread, for instance.

It’s extremely difficult to critically analyze your own views if you spend your time in an echo chamber, only talking with people who share your opinions. Preaching to the choir is easy. So is reading/listening only to find flaws in an argument vs listening to the intent behind it.

If we’re ever going to find some common ground, it will only be by listening to people who disagree and understanding why.

[falsedemigod]

^

i don’t track any political tags, so i just point out what ends up on my dash. i do that a lot to my mutuals’ annoyance making them question why they even follow me i’m sure lol

[protruth-prochoice]

Someone is tagging unmarked porn with "abortion", so even in safe mode that's probably not a tag you want to follow if you Tumbl at work. Figured you might appreciate the warning if you do decide to follow any tags... ;)

[poli-tick]

Pro-lifer: I’m here to blog about REAL. The only REAL love. REAL people and REAL truth! TRUE compassion!

Same pro-lifer: abortion is murder, and I hope someone murders those who had abortion.

[thatclassicalliberal]

I don’t know any pro-lifers who hold that stance. Except for the occasional wacko you see on tv, almost all pro-lifers are very compassionate toward the women who have abortions because we understand the awful position these women are in, what a terrible mistake they’re making, and the horrible impact (that studies have proven) the abortion will have on the woman’s life. It’s mostly the doctors who fully know what they’re doing that we don’t like. We’re also not big fans of the radical blue haired feminists who take actual joy in seeing women go through the painful experience of having an abortion. 

The vast majority of pro-lifers do not want to see women who have had an abortion murdered. That’s a gross character assassination.

[protruth-prochoice]

Fortunately you guys all called the same person out once the posts were brought to your attention -- demonstrating that no, the hammering of Tumblr this morning with similar posts from them wasn't representative of the pro-life community.

And given I was actually correct in which user poli-tick was calling out -- I was relying solely on memory and deduction (seeing the posts disappeared with the only mutual block today) which was dangerously fallacious -- it also makes me feel better about hopefully having some rational, polite, not-all caps discourse with people who don't agree with me here. Had some lovely discussion today in another thread, for instance.

It's extremely difficult to critically analyze your own views if you spend your time in an echo chamber, only talking with people who share your opinions. Preaching to the choir is easy. So is reading/listening only to find flaws in an argument vs listening to the intent behind it.

If we're ever going to find some common ground, it will only be by listening to people who disagree and understanding why.

[poli-tick]

Pro-lifer: I’m here to blog about REAL. The only REAL love. REAL people and REAL truth! TRUE compassion!

Same pro-lifer: abortion is murder, and I hope someone murders those who had abortion.

[protruth-prochoice]

I think I saw that one, she’s complaining so much about her 10-year-old that I probably ought to send the screenshots to Child Protective Services. Equating cooking meals for him at 10 years old with puking up every meal at 8 weeks pregnant for “personal bodily burden”.

And also found it horribly callous and sick of me to mention ways to try to prevent newborn abandonment.

I never accused them of being logical, though….

[falsedemigod]

is there such a thing as a ‘seen one, you’ve seen them all’ fallacy?

[protruth-prochoice]

Quite possibly, and that individual and I are mutually blocked at the moment. They were on a roll earlier today, too.

I do recall a post in the “recents” today with someone saying that they hoped anyone who had an abortion was murdered, though. Wasn’t showing up in “Recents” when I reblogged, and that’s the only person I blocked.

So, could be same person, it seems awfully familiar. But I can’t be certain. So yes, I could be falling victim to that fallacy. At least I admit it. ;)

[falsedemigod]

yeah, this is why i need to get off tumblr. i fall victim to it as well. the number of gross things i’ve seen pro-choicers say isn’t a good look for that side, but even the most insane leftist i’ve met in person apologized for them.

[protruth-prochoice]

Sadly, looking at Poli-Tick's screenshots, it *was* the same user. Damn.

Actually, though, that almost makes me feel better. I hope the people who feel similarly are few and far between, and today I had a lovely polite conversation with someone who shared a "feminists for life" post about helping make abortions less common through helping pregnant women. We discussed things very politely, but I'm sure the fact I started out by saying I appreciated that approach helped.

We can hope that people might be able to have respectful conversations to bridge the gap.

Might.

[poli-tick]

Pro-lifer: I’m here to blog about REAL. The only REAL love. REAL people and REAL truth! TRUE compassion!

Same pro-lifer: abortion is murder, and I hope someone murders those who had abortion.

[protruth-prochoice]

I think I saw that one, she’s complaining so much about her 10-year-old that I probably ought to send the screenshots to Child Protective Services. Equating cooking meals for him at 10 years old with puking up every meal at 8 weeks pregnant for “personal bodily burden”.

And also found it horribly callous and sick of me to mention ways to try to prevent newborn abandonment.

I never accused them of being logical, though….

[falsedemigod]

is there such a thing as a ‘seen one, you’ve seen them all’ fallacy?

[protruth-prochoice]

Quite possibly, and that individual and I are mutually blocked at the moment. They were on a roll earlier today, too.

I do recall a post in the "recents" today with someone saying that they hoped anyone who had an abortion was murdered, though. Wasn't showing up in "Recents" when I reblogged, and that's the only person I blocked.

So, could be same person, it seems awfully familiar. But I can't be certain. So yes, I could be falling victim to that fallacy. At least I admit it. ;)

[poli-tick]

Pro-lifer: I’m here to blog about REAL. The only REAL love. REAL people and REAL truth! TRUE compassion!

Same pro-lifer: abortion is murder, and I hope someone murders those who had abortion.

[protruth-prochoice]

I think I saw that one, she's complaining so much about her 10-year-old that I probably ought to send the screenshots to Child Protective Services. Equating cooking meals for him at 10 years old with puking up every meal at 8 weeks pregnant for "personal bodily burden".

And also found it horribly callous and sick of me to mention ways to try to prevent newborn abandonment.

I never accused them of being logical, though....

[avaxallen]

By feminist logic, I should be allowed to kill my ten-year-old son. I don’t consent to using my body to bring him food and clothing, or to open the door and let him in the house. “My Body My Choice”.

[protruth-prochoice]

God, you must really hate your born child to think the only way you could avoid having him using your body for those things is to murder him.

You could, like, teach him to get his own fresh laundry, fold it, and put it away. I don't know if you'd particularly want to eat a 10-year-old's first cooking attempt, but by the time I was 10 I could cook for myself and the kids I babysat for. My parents tolerated my earlier attempts and had me in the kitchen learning.

Truthfully, if you were at the end of your rope, you could call Social Services. You probably wouldn't see your kid again, but they'd find him a foster family. If you had sufficient reasons and you hadn't abused or neglected them yet, you probably wouldn't even face criminal charges, just have to deal with the dependency hearings.

A pregnant woman doesn't have those options.

I've gotten flack from fellow people who are pro-choice for my personal support of laws that would require attempting to terminate a potentially viable pregnancy in a way where the child could live through it. After 24 weeks, even Our Bodies, Ourselves says that the only procedures that can be used are labor induction or essentially a Cesarean (if there are such significant fetal abnormalities that the head is too big for vaginal delivery). If the safest, least intrusive way for a mother to end a late pregnancy is early delivery, why not try for live birth and adoption if the baby lives and survives NICU?

And if even 1/10th of pro-life billboards advertised that state's Infant Safe Haven Law and where a mother could anonymously take her newborn, it'd save lives that are lost daily from women abandoning newborns in unsafe ways.

But don't compare your difficulties in parenting an apparently extremely obnoxious 10-year-old, where you CAN leave the house for 5 minutes to pray for strength, with the options an 8-week pregnant woman has to get away from her child for even 5 minutes. She doesn't have any.

Seriously, do I need to call CPS? Is feeding your kid upsetting you that badly?

Edit to add, since this poster wanted the last word so badly:

1) If you'd ever taken a parenting class, you'd know parents of infants are ENCOURAGED to place them in their safe crib and step outside for five minutes if colic is making the parent lose their patience. Yes, you can walk away from a newborn for five minutes, if proper precautions are taken such as the safe crib. You SHOULD do so if the screaming is driving you crazy. Because it prevents frustrated parents from shaking their children.

2) Obviously this was sarcastic hyperbole, but the point remains that when a child is outside of the mother's body, there are options that don't involve killing. The eight-week pregnant woman who is in the hospital because she's suffering from hyperemesis gravidium so badly she's in ketoacidosis would LOVE just five minutes of being able to hold food down. And she can't get it. Unless she decides on abortion.

[doggie-girl-deactivated20230214]

[protruth-prochoice]

Medical advances, which improved women’s chances of surviving injuries and infections resulting from abortions, contributed to the change in enforcement patterns. The same developments that finally reduced the mortality associated with childbirth reduced the mortality due to abortion. Blood transfusions in the 1930s rescued women hemorrhaging after their abortions; sulfa drugs helped combat infections. Penicillin after World War II, and other antibiotics later, brought about a noticeable decline in overall maternal mortality, including mortality following abortion. State officials quickly adapted their investigative procedures to the new situation—in fact, they took advantage of it. At one trial in which a woman testified against her abortionist, the prosecutor attributed the fact that she was alive and able to appear in court to a recently discovered wonder drug. “Thank God for penicillin,” he declared to the jury, “or you might not have had the testimony of Marie L.”

But neither medical advances nor structural changes in abortion practice alone can explain the vigorous efforts to suppress abortion. The new repression of abortion was a reaction against the apparent changes in gender and growing female independence. During the Depression women had cut their fertility and appeared to be leaving the home and motherhood for the workplace. World War II accentuated these trends. Furthermore, women’s movement into war jobs seemed to contribute to a new “boom” in abortion during the war. Employers’ habit of immediately dismissing women upon discovering their pregnancies reinforced the need for abortion. Even though women wore overalls to work in war industries during World War II, Americans were ambivalent about these visible changes. Women’s industrial work and high wages might be tolerated “for the duration,” but few were prepared to accept these transformations in gender permanently. The renewed repression of abortion reveals a new turn in American society toward pronatalism and “traditional” gender roles often associated with the “feminine mystique” of the 1950s. My work confirms what historians Mary Ryan, Elaine Tyler May, Susan Hartmann, and Linda Gordon have also found: the assault on female independence and the promotion of maternity began in the 1940s, a full decade earlier than generally recognized.

The backlash against abortion reinforced the era’s pronatalism. During the 1940s women faced intense social and ideological pressure to bear children. At a 1942 conference on abortion, New York City judge Anna Kross observed, “Today, the pressure is going to be for more and more population.” The Ladies Home Journal urged women “to correct the mistakes of the 1920s and ’30s” by having numerous babies. In the mid-1940s, influential Freudian psychologists equated maternity with female sexual gratification. By the 1950s, the “domestic revival” was in full swing; American women married younger, and the birth rate actually rose for the first time in the twentieth century. Although the push for maternity and domesticity was primarily directed at white women, women of color also felt the pressure to subordinate themselves to men as wives and mothers.

The repression of abortion in this period was new, not normal, and should be incorporated into our understanding of the multifaceted and far-reaching effects of “McCarthyism.” The state’s surveillance of abortion in this period is another aspect of the political and cultural attack on critical thought and behavior. McCarthyism was devoted not only to eradicating the Communist Party, but to destroying the labor, peace, and interracial movements. As part of the fervent anticommunism of the postwar period, police and government agents investigated and harassed thousands of people for their political views and frightened many more, while the majority learned to conform and keep quiet. Deviation from standard gender and sexual behavior came under attack along with political deviance. State authorities labeled gays and lesbians “perverts and national security risks,” and police raided their bars. Abortion symbolized subversiveness, as did these other ideas and activities. In fact, abortion was linked to communism at this time, and red-baiting entered the medical abortion discourse. The attack on abortion and women who sought to control their own reproduction and lives was the dark side of the era’s pronatalist ideology.

---- When Abortion Was A Crime, "Raids and Rules"

[protruth-prochoice]

During the 1940s and 1950s, a nationwide crackdown ended the relative ease of obtaining abortions. The new repression destroyed the old system in which physicians referred patients to abortion specialists who practiced in private clinics and replaced it with new rules and regulations. Hospitals assisted the state by forming therapeutic abortion committees, which further restricted abortion practice. The state’s visible interest in stopping the skilled physician-abortionists who had the trust and respect of the medical community magnified the medical community’s sense that it needed to be more strict and that those who performed therapeutic abortions needed better legal protection.

Physicians and historians believe that hospitals gained authority over the decisions and practices of physicians only recently, during the 1970s and 1980s, because of new governmental regulation of health care, malpractice suits, and the entrance of corporations into the medical system. Yet therapeutic abortion committees show that hospitals gained control over physicians and medical practice at a much earlier date. Therapeutic abortion committees brought physicians’ practices under hospital scrutiny and control over thirty years earlier than generally assumed. These committees were forerunners of the oversight under which nearly all doctors work today. In the forties and fifties, formal committees reviewed and could overrule a physician’s medical judgment regarding therapeutic abortion. The committees represented a new intervention in the relationship between physicians and patients and an erosion of physicians’ freedom to make medical decisions.

The initial controls on doctors’ practices grew out of a politically charged, pronatalist atmosphere hostile to female autonomy. Hospital review of physicians’ decisions began with review of reproductive procedures. Review of obstetrical procedures was designed not only to protect women from unnecessary operations, but also to patrol women’s own decision making over reproduction. During the 1930s, hospital administrators became concerned about the need to regulate obstetrical operations, partly in response to public criticism of high maternal mortality rates. They were uniquely anxious about abortion, however. A 1935 study alerted hospital administrators of their “duty” to “prevent . . . illegal operations.” By 1940, national hospital standards required physicians to consult with other physicians before performing therapeutic abortions. By 1954, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH) issued standards that required consultation for only three operations—all of them concerning reproduction. First-time cesarean sections, curettages or any procedure in which a “pregnancy may be interrupted,” and sterilization required consultation. No other operations required review. The JCAH explained, “We are dealing here with not only prfessional [sic] but also moral and legal considerations.”

--- When Abortion Was A Crime, "Raids and Rules"

[protruth-prochoice]

This is the face of an 8-week Gestational Age embryo, six weeks after fertilization.

66% of abortions occur at or before this stage of embryonic development.

For more images of the stages of embryonic development, see this link. It’s really cool! This link is for this stage of development, Carnegie Stage 17.

https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Carnegie_stage_17

[tobeyisprochoice]

@protruth-prochoice I wouldn’t have supported the ban in any case.

I, as a pro-choicer, support pregnant people having the right to make their own reproductive decisions. At any point in their pregnancy, for any reason.

[protruth-prochoice]

The reason I would have supported it, had it been made Constitutional vs absolutely horrifically written, is that 22 weeks GA/LMP *is* the point at which medical science has been successful at keeping a fetus alive outside the womb.

And I can’t say a person should have the right to outright kill a life with potential to survive outside it right then unless it is a life-threatening physical emergency, or there is no reasonable hope of survival for the fetus, as determined by the treating physician. I do, however, think it perfectly rational to use health, including mental health, as a line for allowing an attempt to save both between viability and natural delivery, even if the mother isn’t planning to parent. It’s what the Roe/Doe decision set mandated throughout the entirety of pregnancy, even during the third trimester (which was altered to a viability standard in the Casey decision).

Essentially, with the correct Roe/Doe required interpretation of health and mental health, which because of memories of the Depression still fresh in 1973 made them require include a “totality of the circumstances” requirement, including social and financial circumstances, in determining health… which so many on the pro-life side hate, but IS both necessary and standing case law… if it was written right, all it’d be doing was mandating that a viable fetus be separated from the mother via induction and live delivery if at all possible. It’d not be interfering with a woman’s right to choose to not carry, but *would* place a heavy financial and institutional burden on those demanding such laws.

And if they want to pay for the cost of NICU, etc, for the less than 1% of total current abortions that occur so late… okay by me. Sadly that preemie has a better chance of getting adopted than the many already born children in foster care.

[tobeyisprochoice]

I happen to also advocate for pregnant people to have the right to decide which abortion procedure, if any, is to be performed. They should not only have a choice not to carry, but they should have a choice regarding how the pregnancy is to be terminated.

[protruth-prochoice]

Up to a point, yes. Certainly I’m not into forced cesarean delivery even when we’re talking overdue – I have significant concerns about the steps some hospitals have taken to operate against a person’s will. There would have had to be many modifications before what they attempted could be turned into a Constitutional or rational framework for how to handle the very few abortions the Supreme Court has ruled are within the state’s right to regulate beyond safety for the woman.

But most often induction of labor *is* the safest, least intrusive method of terminating a post-22 week pregnancy that wouldn’t clearly fall under “fatal fetal anomaly” (the several fatal anomalies justifying what they like to call “partial birth” abortion, for example, most making the fetal head being too big to deliver). And aside from a digoxin shot and not having NICU on stand-by, the procedure is little different in most cases. A truth is that the relative safety of abortion compared to childbirth is negligible after the 20th week – the closer they can get to emulating a “natural delivery” that late, the easier on the adult patient. When it’s not medically possible, it simply isn’t, and other procedures are used.

The other reason I can say I’d support a Constitutional version is that it’d demonstrate exactly how few cases would ever fall under that definition – women simply *don’t* go in for an abortion of a healthy fetus when they’re healthy too that late just for kicks. Sometimes we have to have a bad law temporarily to prove just how useless it is.

But I’d also be demanding a hell of a lot of investment in already needed programs in order to justify it, demanding raising the amount allocated to the SSI program for premature infants, etc. And the reason I can feel safe knowing nothing will change is the fact the people pushing these aren’t pro-life, they’re anti-choice. They will never pony up the money required to enforce such a bill and cover even the very few additional children in NICU on Medicaid funds. And without paying for it, they won’t get 60 in the Senate.

[tobeyisprochoice]

We’re not going to agree on this. I don’t support a ban - whether it’s to prove a point or because the fetus could be considered viable - and I don’t think I ever will. It would directly contradict my position as a pro-choicer. If I didn’t support pregnant people having a choice after so many weeks, I wouldn’t consider myself to be pro-choice.

I don’t see pregnant people as pawns or bargaining chips. I support them making their own reproductive decisions. At any point in their pregnancy, for any reason.

Thanks for sharing your POV. Have a good one.

[protruth-prochoice]

Thanks for tagging me and creating a whole reblog on the issue rather than replying in the thread that showed a nearly full term fetus and would explain why I was saying what I was. Very necessary I suppose to express your POV, and gratuitously attack someone on your side at the same time.

But have a good one, too!

[tobeyisprochoice]

@protruth-prochoice I wouldn’t have supported the ban in any case.

I, as a pro-choicer, support pregnant people having the right to make their own reproductive decisions. At any point in their pregnancy, for any reason.

[protruth-prochoice]

The reason I would have supported it, had it been made Constitutional vs absolutely horrifically written, is that 22 weeks GA/LMP *is* the point at which medical science has been successful at keeping a fetus alive outside the womb.

And I can’t say a person should have the right to outright kill a life with potential to survive outside it right then unless it is a life-threatening physical emergency, or there is no reasonable hope of survival for the fetus, as determined by the treating physician. I do, however, think it perfectly rational to use health, including mental health, as a line for allowing an attempt to save both between viability and natural delivery, even if the mother isn’t planning to parent. It’s what the Roe/Doe decision set mandated throughout the entirety of pregnancy, even during the third trimester (which was altered to a viability standard in the Casey decision).

Essentially, with the correct Roe/Doe required interpretation of health and mental health, which because of memories of the Depression still fresh in 1973 made them require include a “totality of the circumstances” requirement, including social and financial circumstances, in determining health… which so many on the pro-life side hate, but IS both necessary and standing case law… if it was written right, all it’d be doing was mandating that a viable fetus be separated from the mother via induction and live delivery if at all possible. It’d not be interfering with a woman’s right to choose to not carry, but *would* place a heavy financial and institutional burden on those demanding such laws.

And if they want to pay for the cost of NICU, etc, for the less than 1% of total current abortions that occur so late… okay by me. Sadly that preemie has a better chance of getting adopted than the many already born children in foster care.

[tobeyisprochoice]

I happen to also advocate for pregnant people to have the right to decide which abortion procedure, if any, is to be performed. They should not only have a choice not to carry, but they should have a choice regarding how the pregnancy is to be terminated.

[protruth-prochoice]

Up to a point, yes. Certainly I'm not into forced cesarean delivery even when we're talking overdue -- I have significant concerns about the steps some hospitals have taken to operate against a person's will. There would have had to be many modifications before what they attempted could be turned into a Constitutional or rational framework for how to handle the very few abortions the Supreme Court has ruled are within the state's right to regulate beyond safety for the woman.

But most often induction of labor *is* the safest, least intrusive method of terminating a post-22 week pregnancy that wouldn't clearly fall under "fatal fetal anomaly" (the several fatal anomalies justifying what they like to call "partial birth" abortion, for example, most making the fetal head being too big to deliver). And aside from a digoxin shot and not having NICU on stand-by, the procedure is little different in most cases. A truth is that the relative safety of abortion compared to childbirth is negligible after the 20th week -- the closer they can get to emulating a "natural delivery" that late, the easier on the adult patient. When it's not medically possible, it simply isn't, and other procedures are used.

The other reason I can say I'd support a Constitutional version is that it'd demonstrate exactly how few cases would ever fall under that definition -- women simply *don't* go in for an abortion of a healthy fetus when they're healthy too that late just for kicks. Sometimes we have to have a bad law temporarily to prove just how useless it is.

But I'd also be demanding a hell of a lot of investment in already needed programs in order to justify it, demanding raising the amount allocated to the SSI program for premature infants, etc. And the reason I can feel safe knowing nothing will change is the fact the people pushing these aren't pro-life, they're anti-choice. They will never pony up the money required to enforce such a bill and cover even the very few additional children in NICU on Medicaid funds. And without paying for it, they won't get 60 in the Senate.

[tobeyisprochoice]

@protruth-prochoice I wouldn’t have supported the ban in any case.

I, as a pro-choicer, support pregnant people having the right to make their own reproductive decisions. At any point in their pregnancy, for any reason.

[protruth-prochoice]

The reason I would have supported it, had it been made Constitutional vs absolutely horrifically written, is that 22 weeks GA/LMP *is* the point at which medical science has been successful at keeping a fetus alive outside the womb.

And I can't say a person should have the right to outright kill a life with potential to survive outside it right then unless it is a life-threatening physical emergency, or there is no reasonable hope of survival for the fetus, as determined by the treating physician. I do, however, think it perfectly rational to use health, including mental health, as a line for allowing an attempt to save both between viability and natural delivery, even if the mother isn't planning to parent. It's what the Roe/Doe decision set mandated throughout the entirety of pregnancy, even during the third trimester (which was altered to a viability standard in the Casey decision).

Essentially, with the correct Roe/Doe required interpretation of health and mental health, which because of memories of the Depression still fresh in 1973 made them require include a "totality of the circumstances" requirement, including social and financial circumstances, in determining health... which so many on the pro-life side hate, but IS both necessary and standing case law... if it was written right, all it'd be doing was mandating that a viable fetus be separated from the mother via induction and live delivery if at all possible. It'd not be interfering with a woman's right to choose to not carry, but *would* place a heavy financial and institutional burden on those demanding such laws.

And if they want to pay for the cost of NICU, etc, for the less than 1% of total current abortions that occur so late... okay by me. Sadly that preemie has a better chance of getting adopted than the many already born children in foster care.

[protruth-prochoice]

Reflections so far on "When Abortion Was a Crime" by Leslie J. Reagan

The lead-in chapters essentially discuss views of pregnancy in the minds of women before abortion was specifically made illegal, and early manifestations of illegal abortion. There was quite a bit of concern about all "patent medicines" being sold in the 19th century, and obviously many of the "remedies" being sold didn't work or were harmful. Still, women bought them in surprising numbers.

It discusses the way physicians, at that time, were very shocked at the common lack of emotional investment in, or even recognition of, the conceived child as a life of its own until "quickening". They attributed it to ignorance, but my personal opinion is it was likely more numbing due to the reality of having a uterus then. I have no idea how common miscarriage prior to "quickening" was then, but if it's anything like today, many are still superstitious enough/aware of the heightened risk in the first trimester that "pregnancy reveals" usually aren't done until the 2nd trimester. Plus, they didn't have tests to pee on, and given how even non-sexually active women sometimes miss a period, it's completely understandable that a woman then wouldn't think being a few days late meant something was necessarily growing inside them. Only after a few months, at which time one might feel the first flutters, could they be sure, and the flutters were the confirmation that there was a baby who'd survived that far.

It discusses how that in 1900-1910, the pricing structure from doctors who performed abortions was double what they charged for a delivery, and the same held true for midwives asked to perform abortions. It discusses the truly awful phenomenon of the "dying declaration" and doctors afraid to treat women who were having complications from abortion procedures until they named the abortionist. Only 4 in 10 women who admitted they hadn't done it by themselves were willing to give up a name even when told they'd receive no treatment unless they did. And at least according to one very upright and outraged physician who swears he refused to perform an abortion on a patient who later presented dying from one, when asked who was responsible, she named *him* in her dying declaration as the person responsible for her death.

Physicians started seeing more abortion complication cases as the Depression set in -- and started seeing that the harm from self-abortion in their hospitals compared to physician-induced abortions in a way that could no longer be ignored. The first male doctors officially and in their own names endorsed allowing doctors to perform "therapeutic abortions" in cases of extreme poverty instead of merely life-threatening conditions. While investigations of deaths continued, physicians rebelled from a moral sense of obligation against policies that didn't let them try to save patients once they had already aborted in an effort to get such "dying declarations".

Right now I'm at the portion where they're discussing one particular specialist that emerged and was active for a decade in Illinois, through most of the Depression (the author of this book focused on Chicago and its surrounding areas as an example of a city "in the heartland" for most of her historical research).

One notable thing is that after the association of midwifery with abortion and regulations of midwives, and the migration of birth from home to the hospital that had occurred between the turn of the 20th Century and the Depression, charges were still high for abortions but by the Depression abortions were cheaper than fees for a full-term delivery. Either pricing for deliveries went up without as much competition from midwives, or neither physicians or midwives could justify the "sin tax" on abortion in such different economic circumstances.

[protruth-prochoice]

Access to physician-induced abortions and reliance upon self-induced methods for abortion varied greatly by class and race. Most affluent white women went to physicians for abortions, while poor women and black women self-induced them. Physicians performed 84 percent of the abortions reported by the white, urban women to Kinsey researchers. Fewer than 10 percent of the affluent white women self-induced their abortions, though black women and poor white women, because of poverty or discrimination in access to medical care, often did so. According to the Kinsey study on abortion, 30 percent of the lower-income and black women reported self-inducing their abortions. Sara Brooks, a black Alabama midwife, recalled her own attempt at abortion in the 1930s. A friend told her to go visit “Annie” to get herself out of “trouble.” Annie gave Brooks a mixture of camphor gum and nutmeg. When Brooks took it, she recalled, “It made me so sick.” The doctor who was called gave her warm baking soda to force her to vomit. She believed she would have otherwise died, as her own mother had after taking turpentine to induce an abortion.

Low-income women’s and black women’s greater reliance upon self-induced methods of abortion meant that the safety of illegal abortion varied by race and class. Self-induced abortions caused more complications and hospitalization than did those induced by physicians or midwives. Since poor women and black women were more likely to try to self-induce abortions and less likely to go to doctors or midwives, they suffered more complications. Dr. Regine K. Stix learned from interviewing almost a thousand women in 1931 and 1932 that self-induced abortions, as compared to midwife- or physician-induced abortions, had the highest rates of infection and hemorrhage. Women reported having no complications after their abortions in 91 percent of the abortions performed by doctors and 86 percent of those performed by midwives. In contrast, only 24 percent of the self-induced abortions were without complications. Of the women who entered the county hospital in Portland, Oregon, after illegal abortions, more than two-thirds had induced their abortions themselves. It is worth noting that although the majority of complications occurred in self-induced abortions, physicians performed the majority of abortions.

As more women had abortions during the Depression, and perhaps more turned to self-induced measures because of their new poverty, growing numbers of women entered the nation’s hospitals for care following their illegal abortions. The Depression deepened an earlier trend toward the hospitalization of women who had abortion-related complications in public hospitals. As childbirth gradually moved into the hospital, so too did abortion. Hospitals separated their abortion cases from other obstetrical cases because of the danger of spreading infection and devoted entire wards to caring for emergency abortion cases. At Cook County Hospital, physicians sent all patients with septic abortions or other obstetrical infections to Ward 41. One intern at Cook County Hospital recalled that in 1928 she saw at least thirty or forty abortion cases in the month and a half she worked there; or, one woman a day and several hundred women a year entered the hospital because of postabortion complications. In 1934, the County Hospital admitted 1,159 abortion cases, and reported twenty-two abortion-related deaths that year. Both black and white patients entered the nation’s hospitals for care following illegal abortions.

----- When Abortion Was A Crime, "Expansion and Specialization"

[protruth-prochoice]

The Depression years make vivid the relationship between economics and reproduction. Women had abortions on a massive scale. Married women with children found it impossible to bear the expense of another, and unmarried women could not afford to marry. As young working-class women and men put off marriage during the Depression to support their families or to save money for a wedding, marriage rates fell drastically. Yet while they waited to wed, couples engaged in sexual relations, and women became pregnant. Many had abortions.

During the Depression, married women were routinely fired on the assumption that jobs belonged to men and that women had husbands who supported them. Discrimination against married women forced single women to delay marriage and have abortions in order to keep their jobs. One such woman was a young teacher whose fiance was unemployed. As her daughter recalled fifty years later, “She got pregnant. What were her choices? Marry, lose her job, and bring a child into a family with no means of support? Not marry, lose her job and reputation, and put the baby up for adoption or keep it?” As this scenario makes clear, she had no “choice.” Furthermore, it points to the limitations of the rhetoric of “choice” in reproduction; social forces condition women’s reproductive options. The teacher’s boyfriend found a local physician who helped her in his office; then she went to a hotel to miscarry. Two years later she married a different man, who had a job, and eventually bore seven children.

That almost a thousand New Jersey women purchased a type of abortion “insurance” in 1936 demonstrates that abortion was a recurring and common need for many. New Jersey police uncovered a “Birth Control Club” of eight hundred dues-paying and card-carrying members. Membership in the club “entitled them to regular examinations and to illegal operations, when they needed them, at a further fee of $75 and upward.” Most of the members were “girl clerks” who worked in Newark’s downtown offices. Just as working people made small regular payments for life insurance and funeral coverage, these working women bought a form of health insurance through dues paid to this “club.” These women expected to have abortions in the future. The club provided a means of blunting the expense of abortions and other gynecological care. When the New York Times covered this incident, birth control leaders immediately attacked the headline dubbing this a “birth control” club. The medical director of the American Birth Control League explained that the birth control movement “opposed” abortion and that the two were not the same.

----- When Abortion Was A Crime, "Expansion and Specialization"