Congratulations: we are officially chattel.
Supreme Court upholds ban on "partial birth abortion" (a term invented by wingnuts, it's a dilation and extraction, or IDX/D&X). No exception for the health of the woman.
Maybe you're thinking you're not that keen on abortions after the first trimester anyway, so it's not so bad. That's how they've snowed people. Read this woman's personal story:
What the doctors knew was awful: the baby would be paralyzed and incontinent, its brain smushed against the base of the skull and the cranium full of fluid. What they didn't know was devastating: would the baby live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects? Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live, and none of them could repair the damage.
It sounds naive now, but I never considered pregnancy a gamble. Sitting in the doctor's windowless office, I tried to read between the lines of complicated medical jargon, searching for answers that weren't there. But I already knew what I had to do. Even if our baby had a remote chance of surviving, it was not a life we would choose for our child.
I asked over and over, "Are we doing the right thing?" Our family - even my Catholic father and Republican father-in-law, neither of whom was ever pro-choice - assured us that we were. Politics suddenly became personal - their daughter's heartbreak, their son's pain, their grandchild's suffering - and that changed everything.
If President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban had been in force on that day, my husband and I wouldn't have had this option.
Or this story, of a woman whose fetus was dead, but who couldn't get the best procedure to remove his corpse from her body for over a week, because most doctors couldn't do it or weren't willing to take the legal risk:
Legally, a doctor can still surgically take a dead body out of a pregnant woman. But in reality, the years of angry debate that led to the law’s passage, restrictive state laws and the violence targeting physicians have reduced the number of hospitals and doctors willing to do dilations and evacuations (D&Es) and dilations and extractions (intact D&Es), which involve removing a larger fetus, sometimes in pieces, from the womb.
At the same time, fewer medical schools are training doctors to do these procedures. After all, why spend time training for a surgery that’s likely to be made illegal? ...
I’d been through labor and delivery three times before, with great joy as well as pain, and the notion of going through that profound experience only to deliver a dead fetus (whose skin was already starting to slough off, whose skull might be collapsing) was horrifying.
I also did some research, spoke with friends who were obstetricians and gynecologists, and quickly learned this: Study after study shows D&Es are safer than labor and delivery. Women who had D&Es were far less likely to have bleeding requiring transfusion, infection requiring intravenous antibiotics, organ injuries requiring additional surgery or cervical laceration requiring repair and hospital readmission.
A review of 300 second- trimester abortions published in 2002 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that 29 percent of women who went through labor and delivery had complications, compared with just 4 percent of those who had D&Es. ...
I could feel my baby’s dead body inside of mine. This baby had thrilled me with kicks and flutters, those first soft tickles of life bringing a smile to my face and my hand to my rounding belly. Now this baby floated, limp and heavy, from one side to the other, as I rolled in my bed.
At this moment, I am... not glad, but relieved... that I never want to have children. If I hoped to become a mother someday, the possibility that I might be forced to carry to term a baby too damaged to ever know anything but excrutiating pain, or that I might be forced to give birth to something already dead, would absolutely terrify me. For those of you who do or might want to have children, my heart aches. I am furious, but more than that, my friends, I am so, so sorry.
ETA: You may be thinking of donating money to NARAL. It's a nice impulse, but as new_world_smurf (who runs I'm Not Sorry) tells us, NARAL hasn't been acting like a true champion of reproductive freedom for awhile now. She suggests The National Network of Abortion Funds instead. (Planned Parenthood, sadly, also endorsed voted-for-cloture-on-Alito-vote Lieberman, aka Rape Gurney Joe, so any donations to them might be better given to local chapters who are actually helping women.)
ETA2: Bitch Ph.D. explains the banned procedure in more detail. And Feministing highlights Ginsberg's dissent.
Maybe you're thinking you're not that keen on abortions after the first trimester anyway, so it's not so bad. That's how they've snowed people. Read this woman's personal story:
What the doctors knew was awful: the baby would be paralyzed and incontinent, its brain smushed against the base of the skull and the cranium full of fluid. What they didn't know was devastating: would the baby live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects? Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live, and none of them could repair the damage.
It sounds naive now, but I never considered pregnancy a gamble. Sitting in the doctor's windowless office, I tried to read between the lines of complicated medical jargon, searching for answers that weren't there. But I already knew what I had to do. Even if our baby had a remote chance of surviving, it was not a life we would choose for our child.
I asked over and over, "Are we doing the right thing?" Our family - even my Catholic father and Republican father-in-law, neither of whom was ever pro-choice - assured us that we were. Politics suddenly became personal - their daughter's heartbreak, their son's pain, their grandchild's suffering - and that changed everything.
If President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban had been in force on that day, my husband and I wouldn't have had this option.
Or this story, of a woman whose fetus was dead, but who couldn't get the best procedure to remove his corpse from her body for over a week, because most doctors couldn't do it or weren't willing to take the legal risk:
Legally, a doctor can still surgically take a dead body out of a pregnant woman. But in reality, the years of angry debate that led to the law’s passage, restrictive state laws and the violence targeting physicians have reduced the number of hospitals and doctors willing to do dilations and evacuations (D&Es) and dilations and extractions (intact D&Es), which involve removing a larger fetus, sometimes in pieces, from the womb.
At the same time, fewer medical schools are training doctors to do these procedures. After all, why spend time training for a surgery that’s likely to be made illegal? ...
I’d been through labor and delivery three times before, with great joy as well as pain, and the notion of going through that profound experience only to deliver a dead fetus (whose skin was already starting to slough off, whose skull might be collapsing) was horrifying.
I also did some research, spoke with friends who were obstetricians and gynecologists, and quickly learned this: Study after study shows D&Es are safer than labor and delivery. Women who had D&Es were far less likely to have bleeding requiring transfusion, infection requiring intravenous antibiotics, organ injuries requiring additional surgery or cervical laceration requiring repair and hospital readmission.
A review of 300 second- trimester abortions published in 2002 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that 29 percent of women who went through labor and delivery had complications, compared with just 4 percent of those who had D&Es. ...
I could feel my baby’s dead body inside of mine. This baby had thrilled me with kicks and flutters, those first soft tickles of life bringing a smile to my face and my hand to my rounding belly. Now this baby floated, limp and heavy, from one side to the other, as I rolled in my bed.
At this moment, I am... not glad, but relieved... that I never want to have children. If I hoped to become a mother someday, the possibility that I might be forced to carry to term a baby too damaged to ever know anything but excrutiating pain, or that I might be forced to give birth to something already dead, would absolutely terrify me. For those of you who do or might want to have children, my heart aches. I am furious, but more than that, my friends, I am so, so sorry.
ETA: You may be thinking of donating money to NARAL. It's a nice impulse, but as new_world_smurf (who runs I'm Not Sorry) tells us, NARAL hasn't been acting like a true champion of reproductive freedom for awhile now. She suggests The National Network of Abortion Funds instead. (Planned Parenthood, sadly, also endorsed voted-for-cloture-on-Alito-vote Lieberman, aka Rape Gurney Joe, so any donations to them might be better given to local chapters who are actually helping women.)
ETA2: Bitch Ph.D. explains the banned procedure in more detail. And Feministing highlights Ginsberg's dissent.