babelfish

Just imagine for a moment if abortion were criminalized, the way pro-life groups want. In this frightening new world, whenever a woman had a miscarriage, she would be required to be tested to make sure it was a "natural" abortion, that she hadn't indulged in a few extra birth-control pills or the "morning-after pill" in the 72 hours following sex. Also she'd need to be tested for the presence of RU486 in her bloodstream. If tests revealed she had chemically caused her own abortion, she'd have to go on trial for murder.

Any woman who had a back-alley abortion and showed up at a hospital ER with a perforated uterus would have to be prosecuted for murder.

Why are doctors who provide abortions the ones who are persecuted by pro-life groups? They aren't kidnapping women and forcing them to have abortions. If a person hires someone to kill her husband, she is as culpable as the hit-man. Why not the woman who hires an abortionist?

You can bury your dead cat in the back-yard, but not a (dead) new-born infant. Dead babies are usually given a casket and are buried in the cemetery, because they are PEOPLE. I've personally never heard of a trend among even Christian pro-lifers to retrieve miscarried embryos and give them proper burials, as would befit a person.

If your teenaged daughter was raped and got pregnant, you would have to force her to continue her pregnancy and bear the rapist's child. There would be no difference under the law between her rights and the embryo's rights. Now, I too have heard of women who have chosen not to abort a pregnancy caused by rape, and have kept and raised such a child, and everything has turned out great. That was their CHOICE. But it's an insult to remove this choice from a young woman and her family.

(edited to add - I had posted this at the end of GeoTheo's What is a Person thread on this forum, where it was not getting sufficient attention. I do so hate being ignored! )

[ November 05, 2002: Message edited by: babelfish ]</p>

brighid

Babelfish,

If pro-lifers get their way all one needs to do is look back to earlier in the century and read some of the stories of women who obtained abortions illegally, their reasons for doing so and the outcome. It terrifies me that I might be interrogated because of a miscarriage and that all women, well … at least certain classes of women would be subject to search, seizure and potentially the forfeiture of their liberty and freedom because a pregnancy terminated itself naturally or otherwise. Every woman who has engaged in sex is likely to have one or multiple miscarriages in her lifetime. Often times a woman isn’t even aware she is pregnant before a pregnancy terminates naturally. I know I have had this happen twice in the very earliest stages of pregnancy and definitely NOT because I wanted it to. I know so many women, including my mother, grand mother, great grand mother, sister, and many friends who have had miscarriages both early and late in the pregnancy. I know of many women who have had the horrible misfortune of giving birth to a still born baby.

The rich women would be able to afford to get an abortion via a reputable doctor or perhaps vacation to a foreign country that performs such things and likely suffer no ill consequences because she could afford to take care of it properly. Middle class and poor woman would be those who would suffer, as was the case back in the day when abortion was illegal.

It horrifies me to imagine the idea that the zealot pro-lifers may someday get their way. I hope I am never in a position to be in the position between choosing an abortion, such as having my unborn child diagnosed (in the late stages of pregnancy) with one of the genetic defects that causes it’s head to be as large as a grown persons, thereby making it impossible to deliver vaginally and the danger of delivering via c-section is equally dangerous. Or if I was raped and became pregnant, or what if I found I had cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy that would damage and or kill the fetus …

Bablefish – let us vote and make sure to support candidates and organizations that support the right to choose, the dignity and autonomy of women and against those who seek to punish us for our gender, relegate us back farther into second-class citizen status and take away all that we have earned by making us slaves to our wombs, our husbands and the conservatives who hate the idea of women having minds and abilities of their own.

Brighid

babelfish

Hi Brighid!

I agree with everything you've said. Especially the part about voting. Hope all the Infidels are making their voices heard today!

As bad as things were before Roe v. Wade, I think they would be even worse if it was overturned in the near future. Medical technology has advanced, and the rhetoric of the social conservatives has increasingly focused on making people think that a "baby" is being killed during an abortion.

We've all heard the horror stories of women who were desperately seeking to end pregnancies before abortion was legal. But I don't recall any women being put on trial for murder for having obtained an illegal abortion. Usually it was the abortionist who was hunted down (and even is today, sometimes literally).

Even picketers at clinics have been known to treat these women with compassion, but one suspects this is because they don't believe women seeking abortions are in full possession of all their faculties. (Sometimes I suspect these people believe ALL women are borderline imbeciles who cannot be held accountable for their actions!)

[ November 05, 2002: Message edited by: babelfish ]</p>

daria

Have you ever talked to someone who was born back when abortions were illegal? It may not be the prevailing sentiment, but at least some of those people know that they weren't wanted. If you're born in a society where abortion is legal, you may get more of a feeling that you were wanted, at least. Don't get me wrong, I know there are tons of unwanted kids right now, while abortion is legal... but I have known people who knew they wouldn't be here had abortion been legal when they were conceived, and it has caused some grief.

[edited to add: and some people just wonder about whether or not they were wanted since their parents had no choice... also not good]

[ November 05, 2002: Message edited by: daria ]</p>

babelfish

Daria, your post reminds me of a talk show I saw a while ago featuring adoptees getting reunited with their birth mothers.

One of the stories was about a married white woman who had gotten pregnant after having been raped by a black man. She already had a few kids of her own. She couldn't find out until the baby was born whether it belonged to her husband or her rapist. Well when the baby was born, he was obviously not white, so they gave him up for adoption.

Had the baby been her husband's, or had the rapist been white, they would naturally have kept the baby and raised him.

I remember that the poor young man was so eager to meet his birth mom, having had a very difficult life up to that point (I believe he was aware of the circumstances of his birth), but she would have nothing to do with him. It really broke my heart.

Jagged

Going slightly off-topic to: How life already IS in strongly Pro-Life areas... Thot I'd share a couple personal experiences from when I lived in a town full of these people in South Dakota (escaped less than a year ago):

Not long ago, having made a transition from conservative Christian to agnostic, I decided to break from the values I had learned in my church about premarital sex. And to start having some. My extra-parochial social circle was still very limited so I was pretty much on my own learning how to go about this. There was nobody I felt comfortable talking to for advice, and I think as a result I made some poor choices. The first time I had sex, I was nervous, things happened fast and it hardly registered with me that we were actually doing it until it was, well, painfully obvious.

Anyway it was unprotected, and the next day I was utterly freaked out. Guy in question not available. So I go over to the "urgent care" weekend hospital clinic and ask to see a doctor. She comes in (actually she was an LNP), I tell her the story, about as scared and in need of comfort/guidance as possible, and at first she just kind of stares at me and doesn't offer anything. I'm sobbing, trembling, in PAIN, and no glimmer of compassion from her whatsoever. After awhile she manages a "there's always a first time for everybody." I ask about the chances of pregnancy, and then about the possibility of emergency birth control. And here's the kicker--She actually told me:

"I don't know what you're talking about."

She said she had not heard of anything like that, nothing that you could take after the fact to avoid a pregnancy. I was too flustered to realize she was lying, but did manage to ask if there was somewhere else that would know more about it. She responded "I don't know, but for sure not here."

End of story I was not pregnant, no diseases, but once I realized what happened I was SO FUCKING MAD that this woman had actually withheld medical information from me, presumably because of her own personal beliefs, when I was SERIOUSLY IN CRISIS. In fact probably the entire time she saw me only as a thing to be manipulated according to her own sense of morality. It still makes my blood boil thinking about how vulnerable I was, and how I went to her for HELP.

Can anyone tell me is it actually legal in this country for a medical practitioner to withhold that kind of info for their own personal beliefs? God, I still want to smash her face in.

Next story equally as endearing. This town had a population of about 100,000, one of the main roads went straight across from the central business district out to the shopping mall and retail places on the west side--about 2 miles long and of course everybody drove on it pretty much all the time. So one afternoon on my way across town I turn onto this street and an unbelievable sight is before me. Shoulder-to-shoulder along both sides of this 4-lane divided thoroughfare are pro-life protesters as far as the eye can see. Absolutely shoulder. to. shoulder. And almost all of them holding identical signs about 2x3ft wide. Can you guess what was printed on them? A full-color, graphic, bloody mess of a late-term aborted human fetus. These people were so thick along both sides of the road that there was literally nowhere to look where you could not see them. And what's more, someone had obviously told them to seek out the eyes of each driver coming by on their side--so you got the "weight" of 50 people's stares as you drove by. The protesters filled the distance of a full 2 miles of road. When I reached my destination I felt like I had just been through a war zone.

This was not free speech, this was psychological terrorism. I'm sure those protesters didn't give a damn that I got upset, in fact I'm sure in their minds this was a good thing. But the idea that HURTING other people was allowable in the pursuit of their cause... (steam coming out of my ears) Needless to say, their plan backfired, I was only less inclined to sympathize with the pro-life movement. But I still have flashbacks to all those bloody pictures I could not get away from. I mean it was positively evil!!

In answer to the question what if the pro-lifers get their way entirely I answer quite seriously I would try to emmigrate. I am scared to live in a country controlled by these people.

*end of rant for now*

Ab_Normal

There was a similar demonstration (even down to being on the main drag by the mall) in my previous place of residence in the mid-90's. We had to drive through it twice. The first time, my husband rolled down the window and flipped all of 'em the bird. We made it to our destination (a friend's house) where he borrowed a metal coat hanger and some red paint. He proceeded to untwist the coathanger and daub it with the paint; then he hung it out of the window for the return trip. We got lots of incredulous looks...

JerryM

I've always wondered how the political right can trumpet itself as being for smaller, less intrusive government, yet strongly support criminalizing abortion. What is more intrusive than using the police power of the state to interfere in what should be a private, medical decision between a woman and her doctor? Maybe I'm naive, but even if Roe is overturned in the Supreme Court, it will just throw the legality of abortion back to each individual state. There are hopefully some states where abortion will still be available. But if an extremely right wing Congress should somehow try to outlaw elective abortion nation-wide (short of a constitutional amendment, I actually don't believe it's legally possible) I frankly think there would be a revolution. The women of this country will not lie still and allow 30 years of reproductive rights to be taken away. My state of Missouri unfortunately just elected anti-choice Jim Talent to the Senate, and my wife and I are e-mailing him to let him know he's on very thin ice if he tries to restrict reproductive freedoms. Everyone needs to let their Congress people know where they stand. Next year will be the 30th anniversary of Roe. Wouldn't it be great to see a MULTI-million person march in Washington in support of reproductive choice? Put the Republican Congress on notice that if they make mischief with any personal or privacy rights, they risk disaster.

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: JerryM ]</p>

brighid

Jerry M,

Thank you for making some very good points! I would personally be one of those at a reproductive rights march if at all possible! I definately think many women would protest, but I am not sure about a revolution. I also know plenty of men who would support that is well.

I certainly hope Roe V. Wade does not get over-turned and all the other reproductive rights (such as birth control) don't go right out the window in those bass-akwards states.

Brighid

babelfish

Thanks for the sobering post, JLP, you've had some very eye-opening experiences in this arena.

It's true, in many states even though abortion may still be nominally legal, obtaining one is nearly impossible due to the activities of the anti-choice movement. Many doctors are afraid to perform abortions, literally fearing for their lives.

The hypocrisy of the social/economic conservatives can be just mind-numbing. At the same time that they seek to remove reproductive freedoms from women with one hand, with the other hand they are busy removing any economic safeguards that would actually benefit any women who would choose not to have abortions. It's like on the one hand they are so concerned about all these little babies being killed, but on the other hand, once you've been forced into continuing your pregnancy, hey, you're on your own, just give it up for adoption if you're single and can't afford to raise it on your own!

You occasionally hear stories about christian groups who do follow up on the women whom they have talked out of "killing their baby." But they are very rare.

You'd think that instead of criminalizing abortion, these so-called right-to-lifers would first get busy making pregnancy and child-rearing an economically feasible option for any woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock. Unfortunately in our society the job of raising a child is considered a life-style choice, not a life-altering experience. That's how anti-choicers can successfully portray women who seek abortions as cold, calculating, heartless creatures who have said to themselves, "hmm, I could go ahead and have a child, it would be no big deal really, but (sigh), it would just be so inconvenient for me right now, so, hmm, I think I'll just casually go get an abortion (yawn)..."

I mean really, if any of you have ever been around a friend who has unintentionally gotten pregnant, is this the emotional state that they are in?




[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: babelfish ]</p>