Informational only
Okay, I don't know exactly how I feel about this, but I do know that women will, as women always have, be forced to look out for their own (and society's) best interest in the end.
I know many of you on my friend's list are adamantly opposed to abortion and please be assured that even for me, this feels like crossing a line.
However, many of you on my friends list are vehement supporters of a woman's right to choose, and as I tend to come down more on this side of the argument... I have decided to post this link.
Please be aware that this post does not advocate or endorse the procedure described.
Enough with the disclaimers:
Found by misia (I am reposting here what she wrote for the benefit of those not on her f-list) No copyright infringment or general annoyance intended to her:
Via BoingBoing: a blogger has very courageously and helpfully posted a full and detailed set of directions for performing mechanical (as opposed to pharmaceutical or herbal) abortion.
Prior to Roe v. Wade, women in some places formed underground networks to provide this service to other women. It is possible -- although please note that I am not advocating it or recommending it, since it is illegal to practice medicine without a license and since it is not impossible for there to be complications to such a procedure -- for laypeople to safely and adequately perform procedures to terminate unwanted or unsafe early pregnancies.
It is my considered opinion that keeping this information available is very important. Aborting pregnancies is nothing new. It has been with us since the dawn of recorded medical history. You literally will not find a pre-modern gynecological text that does not in one way or another mention it; many have instructions for various methods of various effectiveness. The techniques described in this blog post, however, are known to be dramatically more uniformly effective, quicker, and less risky to the health of the woman undergoing the abortion than many other methods. Because of this, they are extremely valuable.
In a social and political climate in which legal access to medically-performed, above-board abortion is increasingly threatened in the USA, it is important that this information be disseminated and protected. One of the best ways to do that is to keep your own copy or copies.
I encourage you to click here, and save a copy. I also encourage you to go back to the blog in question (http://mollysavestheday.blogspot.com/), read the followup, and as this woman posts further practical information on abortion, save copies of that, too. PDFs, hard copies, copies on your hard drive, etc.
Women have always needed, at times, to be able to end pregnancies. Women will always need, at times, to be able to end pregnancies. The question is not, and has never been, whether some women would desire to end their pregnancies or in fact whether some women would or will do so. They have and do and will. It's a simple forthright historical fact, amply documented and amply witnessed by every historical measure you can name. No amount of waving laws or religions around has ever changed this. It has only made it relatively more or less difficult for women to do it or to do it safely.
The question is whether doing so will be made so difficult that women are forced to either bear babies against their wishes (and at times against their own medical self-interest) or take unacceptably high risks of injury and/or death to avoid doing so.
The information this woman is sharing is information that can help reduce the risk of these outcomes. If you share my opinion that this is information that is worth having, worth keeping, worth sharing, and most of all, worth preserving in case you ever need it, I encourage you to make PHYSICAL copies and salt them away somewhere safe. The Internet is great for disseminating information, but servers can be shut down; several hundred thousand file cabinets, safety deposit boxes, personal libraries, et cetera are a lot harder to remove from the picture even if things really go sour for reproductive rights legally speaking.
Comments enabled as long as people play nice...
I know many of you on my friend's list are adamantly opposed to abortion and please be assured that even for me, this feels like crossing a line.
However, many of you on my friends list are vehement supporters of a woman's right to choose, and as I tend to come down more on this side of the argument... I have decided to post this link.
Please be aware that this post does not advocate or endorse the procedure described.
Enough with the disclaimers:
Found by misia (I am reposting here what she wrote for the benefit of those not on her f-list) No copyright infringment or general annoyance intended to her:
Via BoingBoing: a blogger has very courageously and helpfully posted a full and detailed set of directions for performing mechanical (as opposed to pharmaceutical or herbal) abortion.
Prior to Roe v. Wade, women in some places formed underground networks to provide this service to other women. It is possible -- although please note that I am not advocating it or recommending it, since it is illegal to practice medicine without a license and since it is not impossible for there to be complications to such a procedure -- for laypeople to safely and adequately perform procedures to terminate unwanted or unsafe early pregnancies.
It is my considered opinion that keeping this information available is very important. Aborting pregnancies is nothing new. It has been with us since the dawn of recorded medical history. You literally will not find a pre-modern gynecological text that does not in one way or another mention it; many have instructions for various methods of various effectiveness. The techniques described in this blog post, however, are known to be dramatically more uniformly effective, quicker, and less risky to the health of the woman undergoing the abortion than many other methods. Because of this, they are extremely valuable.
In a social and political climate in which legal access to medically-performed, above-board abortion is increasingly threatened in the USA, it is important that this information be disseminated and protected. One of the best ways to do that is to keep your own copy or copies.
I encourage you to click here, and save a copy. I also encourage you to go back to the blog in question (http://mollysavestheday.blogspot.com/), read the followup, and as this woman posts further practical information on abortion, save copies of that, too. PDFs, hard copies, copies on your hard drive, etc.
Women have always needed, at times, to be able to end pregnancies. Women will always need, at times, to be able to end pregnancies. The question is not, and has never been, whether some women would desire to end their pregnancies or in fact whether some women would or will do so. They have and do and will. It's a simple forthright historical fact, amply documented and amply witnessed by every historical measure you can name. No amount of waving laws or religions around has ever changed this. It has only made it relatively more or less difficult for women to do it or to do it safely.
The question is whether doing so will be made so difficult that women are forced to either bear babies against their wishes (and at times against their own medical self-interest) or take unacceptably high risks of injury and/or death to avoid doing so.
The information this woman is sharing is information that can help reduce the risk of these outcomes. If you share my opinion that this is information that is worth having, worth keeping, worth sharing, and most of all, worth preserving in case you ever need it, I encourage you to make PHYSICAL copies and salt them away somewhere safe. The Internet is great for disseminating information, but servers can be shut down; several hundred thousand file cabinets, safety deposit boxes, personal libraries, et cetera are a lot harder to remove from the picture even if things really go sour for reproductive rights legally speaking.
Comments enabled as long as people play nice...