serious business

[miera_c]

Sorry to keep bringing up sad things, but Kate Harding has a feature story up at Salon about The next generation of abortion providers:

According to Medical Students for Choice, fewer than 50 institutions in the U.S., out of 130 accredited medical schools, offer abortion training as part of their residency programs -- and that, Creinin says, is

Comments

[sache8]

Hmmn. I consider myself, oh... 97% pro life with the willingness to have compassion in crisis situations. But part of my argument has always been how many choices are available for seeing a pregnancy to term (although the Fort Knox adoption system in this country takes half the wind out of those sails, alas) and also how many choices are available for birth control, particularly permanent birth control. I have zero moral problems with birth control, and so do a very healthy percentage of pro life people, including staunch, zero-tolerance anti-abortion advocates, such as these folks here.

So... I'm scratching my head on this one.

[reedfem]

I've never understood that myself. Of course, I also don't understand how insurance will pay for viagra but balk at birth control and/or abortions. I had to have a procedure done once because they were afraid I might have uterine cancer, but first I had to have a pregnancy test before they would even look at me.

Of course, on the flip side, DH had a consult about getting a vasectomy and he actually has to get my signed permission to do so.

[tidal_race]

She should be able to get her tubes tied if she wants. However, the fact that her husband isn't willing to get a vasectomy also bugs me. If the two of them want to spend their lives together and only have two children, why does it have to be her that gets sterilized?

[agentotter]

OMFG GRRRRR.

I read a very disturbing story awhile back about certain conservative religious organizations pushing their flocks' children into medicine so that they can take over the beast from the inside or some other nonsense. It made me want to weep.

Also, on the tubal ligation thing, that's fucking ridiculous, and it bothers me that women basically have to be past reproductive age (so like, they basically don't need it anymore) before they can get a procedure like that. I'd love to be medically sterilized, myself, because I'm never going to have kids. And I'm never going to change my mind. I'm not going to wake up one morning mysteriously liking children, and even if I did, I have very strong convictions about adoption. I do not now, nor will I ever, have any interest in having kids. Period. But I don't get to make that choice, either, because somebody thinks they know me better than I know myself.

[kathgrr]

geez, it's so nice that we, woman, specifically, don't have the right to decide what to do with our bodies; meanwhile laws are starting to recognize individual autonomy in terms of deciding when and how people want to die (one of the reasons is that we have the right to do what we want with our own bodies but because this issue is exclusively female we get fucked).