Wow, Ross is a sharp one.  He thinks that if a state where abortion is hard to get has a low rate of abortion, then that means making abortions hard to get will lower abortions.  Because those lines on the map are uncrossable to pregnant women, I suppose.

Anti-choicers don’t care whether outlawing abortion results in fewer abortions.  Remember, they don’t give a hoot about “babies.”  What they DO want is harsher consequences for women, and that most certainly would be the result of an abortion ban.

In the Bad Old Days, entire towns were supporting the “abortion tourist” industry.  Women and their daughters would take the waters, view the scenery and remove a fetus..with the tacit approval of the town fathers, who looked at the money pouring in for the overlooking of what the local hopital really did.  Town cops kept the religio-crazies away and subtle bribes made the lege compliant to the situation.

South Africa has become the circumspect capital of abortions for countries that have banned the procedure.  Hmm.  Didn’t one of the BushTwins ‘vacation’ here with Laura after the girls did a world tour of bars and parties?

I lived near one of these towns.  I always wondered what could have paid for the huge houses.

(Man this place needs an EDIT function: I’m positive Ms. Kate made a huge typo in her last sentence….)

The phrase/motto/catchphrase/rallying-cry “Contraception Prevents Abortions!!!” should be nourished and PUSHED out into the ....uhhhh…. common wisdom/accepted beliefs/what everybody believes (wow, coffee WILL make a difference).  It should be on bumper stickers, on blog .sigs, a popular tattoo, common graffiti, an everyday salutation and farewell.  OK, it should be a meme (I know, I know, but it’s MY meme) that is inescapable.  ‘Tickle-Me Elmo’ should say it.  It should be in raised, reversed letters on the bottoms of sneakers.  It should be everywhere.

The wingnutteria obviously has a mechanism for doing this kind of meme-generation/talking points.  What do WE have to do the same thing.

I thought a big part of their gripe about abortion is that slutty women just used it for birth control rather than for “legitimate” health reasons.  If women aren’t getting abortions for birth control, and they aren’t getting them for health reasons, why are they ahving them—entertainment?  On the other hand, if women are getting abortions for reasons fo birth control, why wouldn’t available contraception reduce the abortion rate?

Douthat, as usual, is completely incoherent.

While I am not an expert, I think that abortion would have been somewhat less common among poor women pre-Roe, if only because the risks were known to be so high.  I doubt that there would have been much difference among affluent women, who always had access to abortions, both from their own doctors or other doctors in the community in some cases and by going out of the country for legal abortions.  Lots of trips to Mexico during that period.

Do these people really think that making abortion illegal will bring an end to it?

I think there are (at least) two schools of “thought” about this. Some people probably are ignorant enough to think that abortions will no longer occur if it’s illegal. Some just want it to be illegal because as long as it’s “legitimized” by the state, the US will be punished for having it legal. *shrug*

“Well, state lines kind of are hard to cross for women without much in the way of resources. “

Oh, no doubt about it.

Punished by God, I should have said. I’m kind of out of it today.

On the other hand, if women are getting abortions for reasons of birth control, why wouldn’t available contraception reduce the abortion rate?

Excellent )

Because those lines on the map are uncrossable to pregnant women, I suppose.

They will be once the Right Wing SchutzStaffel gets up and running.

“Do these people really think that making abortion illegal will bring an end to it? “

They don’t even have the slightest idea HOW to keep it illegal.  Put abortion doctors in prison?  Fine women who seek an abortion?  Ask them and they’ll just shrug.  That’s how well-thought-out their position is.

Sex causes abortion. So: no sex for anti-choice Republicans.

I doubt that there would have been much difference among affluent women, who always had access to abortions,

I think the big difference would be at what income level that ‘affluent’ line gets drawn: in the upper middle class or the lower middle class. Rich women will never have any problem, and truly poor women will always have difficulty. 

Unfortunately, that line re-drawing would occur right in the most populous part of the demographic, meaning the maximum unwanted children.

Weird.  I followed a link in Douthat’s article and found this:

“Most women in need of contraceptive services and supplies use a contraceptive method.  The small proportion of women who do not use a method have nearly half of the 3 million unintended pregnancies annually.  Unintended pregnancies among women who do not use a method are almost as likely to end in abortion as in birth.”

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ib22.html

Am I missing something here, or does his own information undercut his point?

“Sex causes abortion. So: no sex for anti-choice Republicans.”

What about sex involving wetsuits and dildoes?

Speaking of contraception, here’s something you might find interesting:

http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm

I consider myself to be both pro-life and reasonable, at least most of the time. Of course I’m pro-legalized abortion as well. We really shouldn’t concede the propagandistic name game. Call them what they are - anti-legalized abortion.

While I am not an expert, I think that abortion would have been somewhat less common among poor women pre-Roe, if only because the risks were known to be so high.

Not as common because of less access and less money, but certainly not unheard of.  Not to mention the other way women would end an unwanted pregnancy:  suicide.

Several years ago I had a tech call (I’m an onsite computer tech) with an older gentleman who, in the 1950s and 60s, ran a sort of Underground Railroad for women needing abortions, with his wife. I thought that was amazingly cool.

I think some way to dilate the cervix that I’ve forgotten.

Probably laminaria.  It’s a kind of seaweed that is dried, inserted into the cervix (as many as will fit), and then left there for awhile to absorb moisture and expand, dilating your cervix slowly and safely.

And with a basic knowledge of how air pressure works, it shouldn’t be too hard to whip up some sort of device to perform vacuum aspiration abortions.  That must be why the forced birth crowd so neatly overlaps with the kill science education crowd.

A group of feminists in California actually figured out how to perform vacuum aspiration abortions with nothing but a jar, some tubing and I think some way to dilate the cervix that I’ve forgotten.  It took about 40 minutes, though, so it sucked

Amanda wins the Gold Medal for worst pun in the history of the Internet . . .

“if abortion were made ILLEGAL, I’d train to provide it”.

Aw, that’s a sweet idea. Makes me wish I were in any way qualified to offer to run a station on the underground abortion railroad.

What about sex involving wetsuits and dildoes?

Only at RNC meetings.  We have to draw the line somewhere; think of the children.

Interesting point about Japan. Now, Japan is hardly a bastion of feminism—quite the opposite, really—but it is fascinating that, as far as I’ve been able to glean in my stay here, there’s really no big stigma attached to having an abortion. I mean, people don’t go around bragging about it if they’ve had one, but it seems like it’s not even really on most people’s radar, one way or the other.

I think the most fundamental reason for this difference from so many other places is because Japan is such a secular country. It’s true that the Christians have done their part to try to change this—it seems like every third Japanese-fluent westerner I meet here was raised in the Japanese countryside by missionary parents—but I’ve seen absolutely zero signs that their efforts have impacted Japanese cultural standards one bit. (Except for in manga and in porn—yes, Japanese people indulge in racial exoticism, too!)

I watched a movie last night called Matrubhoomi about the gender imbalance in India due to sex selection/infanticide of girls.  It was a “what if” story that took those practices to the logical conclusion- no women- and the nightmare that ensues for one of the last women left in that society.  The movie starts with a blurb talking about the real motivating factor behind the sex selection- dowrys.  All the way through the show, as it depicted all of the hideous (and obvious) things that are the end result of such practices , I kept screaming at the screen, “Get rid of the fucking dowry system!  Give women equal rights! All of this goes away the minute you do that, idiots!”

Treat women like people, not things, and all of the sudden, the world just works a lot better…

The anti-abortion/ anti-contraception crap is the same thing. Logic dictates that women who have access to cheaper, easier, more socially accepted forms of birth control will probably use it more and abortion less. But just like the warped men of Matrubhoomi, the anti abortion/anti-contaception folks don’t really want things to be “better”.  They just want to control SOMEONE, damn it, and pregnant women are a two-fer- control the woman AND the fetus in one fell swoop!

To use one of my ex husband’s favorite sayings: “A monkey in a dress is still a monkey.”  Douthat needs to find a new disguise- his hypocricy is showing.

In her book This Common Secret, Susan Wicklund describes such a death that happened to her grandmother’s friend when her grandmother was a teenager and tried to help her friend abort.

I’d like to add a push for this book, as well.  I’ve worked in one of the clinics Dr. Wicklund worked in.  While abortion is legal in MN, it’s not all that accessible in the rural areas and the cost and notification period is prohibitive.  Women need to get 2 days off of work and find somewhere to stay overnight in town.  That’s prohibitively expensive and can be downright dangerous if you’re trying to avoid letting your abusive partner know what you’re up to.

We regularly saw women who had tried to self-abort before they came to the clinic.  We saw the ones who hadn’t severely injured themselves but who had tried herbs or some homemade recipe that they’d heard about.  While some of the stories were kind of funny (one woman jumped on and off the kitchen table repeatedly in an attempt to dislodge the fetus), the intent behind their actions wasn’t funny at all.  They were desperate and scared and lacking in resources.  That’s a bad combination and results in dead and injured women.

Since my experiences there, I wish more pro-life people could work in an abortion clinic for a week. It would change their opinions profoundly.

According to my mother, when she was attending Stony Brook (class of ‘65) women passed by word of mouth the names of Doctors Who Would in NYC. Wonder if there’s a book or a documentary in interviewing some of those MDs whose ethics compelled them to offer abortion services under the table. (Has it been done already?)

On the bright side, over the next four years and potentially a number of years to follow, the Supreme Court is unlikely to overturn Roe, so Douthat and other pro-lifers won’t exactly be able to enact their agenda. Hah!

Ms Kate, unfortunately, some think the solution to the shortage of women is to kidnap them from other countries.

And now the Vatican has issued that awful papal statement regarding the abortion pill, the pill in general, the morning after pill, embryonic stemcell research, and IVF.  Makes me embarrassed for all Catholics…

Amanda -

I think there may have been significant regional differences, particularly between urban and rural areas.  You are much less likely to find the kind of knowledge you mention in rural areas (there were no practicing midwives for instance in Oklahoma when I grew up in the 50s and 60s).  It would also have been more difficult (though not impossible) to find doctors who would perform the procedure.

The underground-railroad-for-abortion group in the midwest/Chicago was Jane. There are a number of histories of the group.

Breed!  Breed you rabble!  The BushTwins need servants and cheap labour for their investments.  Blast your eyes, don’t you know that smaller family size increases labour costs.  If you continue, you’ll be earning enough to buy, instead of rent, your house.  You might even go to college and take the well-earned place of a hard-working legacy.  What will the lad do then?

I have an uncle who is a retired surgeon who once treated a teenage girl in the ER for an ectopic pregnancy.  Knowing that the father was a very conservative military asshole who was beating his daughter, he and all the medical personnel involved told the family it was apendicitis.  The asshole father DEMANDED to see the removed appendix, because he wanted to make sure that…  that what, really? 

Who knows.  Nobody knows what sick controlling conservative motherfuckers want.  Do they really want to have less sex?  Do they want others to have less sex so they feel OK because they’re already not having it so much?  Do they really wish women would carry every pregnancy to term?  Do they ever stop to think their arguments through to their logical outcomes?

Well, the ‘reasonable pro-lifer’ is just another spin on ‘compassionate conservatism’—they still want a hideously regressive and punitive social structure, but they feel kinda bad about the people who will suffer until they are brought into line.  And unfortunately, this debate is about 95% emotional on both sides, instead of about the more pertinent questions of public interest/accountability and just plain minding one’s own damned business, so it’s easy for anti-choicers to soften their positions with a veneer of gentler feelings.  And they’re probably sincere, as far as it goes; they sure hate that so many people are recalcitrant and unmindful of their God-given roles in life, but it does often take some negative consequences to set people straight, after all.

WRT the Indian abortion situation, anti-choicers are usually so boneheaded that they use it as an example of abortion as antifeminism.  They honestly don’t see that the problem isn’t that women are allowed to abort, but that the culture makes abortion preferable because of the devaluation of females.  And it makes sense, because in a society that allocates resources so completely unfairly and assigns such low status to one gender, parents are perfectly sensible in wanting to minimize their risks & costs and maximize the future potential within their family by having boys instead of girls.  Anti-choice sentimentality is perversely tied to the equality their enemies fought for, because we can afford to have daughters and value them as something more than livestock.  America’s still rich enough and advanced enough to make children of either sex of roughly equal value… should we revert to the ‘traditionalism’ so many anti-choicers favor, that could change very quickly.

If women aren’t getting abortions for birth control, and they aren’t getting them for health reasons, why are they ahving them—entertainment?

(Ahem), I’ve been railing against recreation abortions for some time now.  The only reliable way to avoid abortion is to refrain completely from the sex, or if the spirit of the Lard isn’t with you and you are weak, there’s always Saran Wrap™ which creates an impermeable barrier against refrigerator odors.

Completely OT, but… How the hell do you pronounce “Douthat”?

Do That?
Doubt Hat?
Doth It?

<i>Completely OT, but… How the hell do you pronounce “Douthat”? <iI>

Douchebag.

ITA, pepito!

How dare the godless medical community provide a way for people with heart problems to keep on LIVING?  It is an outrage and against the plans of GOD!  If God gave you a heart attack, then He wanted you in heaven with him…  The heart doctors are thwarting His divine plans, just like baby-eating abortionists!  I say jail them all!

Most women in need of contraceptive services and supplies use a contraceptive method.  The small proportion of women who do not use a method have nearly half of the 3 million unintended pregnancies annually.  Unintended pregnancies among women who do not use a method are almost as likely to end in abortion as in birth.

I find this one of the most interesting and useful abortion statistics out there. The percentage of women who are sexually active and don’t want to be pregnant who use contraception is above 90 percent. So it’s something like 5 percent or 7 percent of all sexually active women (not counting those trying for a baby) account for half of all abortions and they are more likely to have an abortion than women who are using contraception. I suspect this is because access to contraception/ability to use it correctly strongly correlate with income, stability, decent relationships and health insurance, all of which would make it easier for many women to contemplate bringing an unplanned child into the world. Nonetheless, I don’t really know a clearer way to show that contraception prevents abortion.

FWIW, I suspect not all of this is actual lack of access to contraception, though certainly some large percentage of it is. Some of it surely is due to lack of power within their relationships with men. Either way, more feminism would surely lower the abortion rate further.

Douchebag.

Noted. Thanks!

The best example I can think of off the top of my head is the conversation between Lena and Ruth in Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun over whether the latter should get an abortion for financial reasons.

Incertus beat me to it. It’s interesting, too, how it plays out. Lena is upset when she finds out Ruth is considering an abortion and as a plot device, it’s meant to indicate Ruth’s desperation with their financial situation, but when she tells her son about his wife’s plans, she tells him that a woman will do anything in her power to protect her family, the one she already has.

Also interesting is that Lena finds out that Ruth went to visit the neighborhood abortionist, when she was supposed be at the doctor, when Ruth accidently refers to the doctor as “she.”

chuckling, that’s how I always read it.

Well said, latts.

pepito:

I do love that people who will never need an abortion get to campaign against them. I don’t have heart problems, but I think that pacemakers are MORALLY WRONG and should be BANNED.

Heh. I’ve been known to make the same argument about mayonnaise. That’s far more of a sin against nature than abortion or teh ghey.

My daughter and her friends have become very interested in feminism and egalitarian principles, and one direction this has taken is on women’s health and natural healing.  She learning to make herbal salves, chart her cycle, and other “I want to know about my body” things.  A big part of this is learning about midwifery and natural abortifacients. 

I don’t suppose this is a big movement among young people, but perhaps there will be some who can step in in places where abortion and women’s health options are limited.  On one hand, it’s a big step back to a more… uh, unenlightened time, but on the other, given the current state of health care, home providers might just be the future.

NobleE, there are lots of midwives out there, not necessarily doing it all herbally, these days often just being facilitators to get Plan B or to the closest clinic with a woman who needs them. Doulas, too. It’s not a new thing, anymore; midwifery began to revive in the 70s, but has always existed for the poorest and most disenfranchised in some form or another, along with herbal remedies of various usefulness. (not a big believer in those myself). And yes, many of those women had a lot to do with what abortion was available pre-Roe.

Some midwives are anti-choice, but a large number aren’t; attend enough births and the true risks of labor and birth are far too present for you to just blow it off as no big deal.

If we get the healthcare system we need, midwives can and should play a crucial role as helpers of women for reproductive issues, specifically, that is more personal and less clinical than OB/Gyns (while being better trained and accredited than currently). And also as partners to OB/Gyns, reducing their caseload.

I would say too that the very existence of Plan B changes what an abortion-illegal US would look like; instead of quite as many actual abortion procedures, you’d see a huge black market in that drug and other abortion-inducing drugs, that weren’t available 40 years ago. And that’s what we need, right, more drug prohibitions contributing to the power of cartels in Mexico and elsewhere.

What has prevented me from returning to my initial anti-choice position was pretty much this; the consequences of legalizing it are: fewer abortions, more healthy women. The consequences of making it illegal are more abortions, more dead or maimed women, increased crime, fewer civil liberties, more abused/poor children…etc. etc. Not too hard to figure out what is actually “pro-life”.

I think we do need to be a little cautious about promoting natural abortifacients as some sort of cure-all for illegal abortion. I served in the Peace Corps in Paraguay where abortion is illegal and women use herbal preparations to self-abort. Sometimes it works - basically it provokes a miscarriage, as in medical abortion. Other times, the miscarriage is incomplete and the woman bleeds and bleeds and bleeds and bleeds, sometimes even to death, scared to get medical care because she knows what she did. Other times, it doesn’t work and the woman gives birth to a premature child with serious birth defects caused by the herbal remedy she took.

I would say too that the very existence of Plan B changes what an abortion-illegal US would look like; instead of quite as many actual abortion procedures, you’d see a huge black market in that drug and other abortion-inducing drugs

Not to pounce on an otherwise good post, but Plan B isn’t an “abortion-inducing drug.” It’s also not illegal, so I’m not sure how a black market would spring up (unless you mean that if abortion were banned, obviously contraception would be as well).

I think emjaybee’s points stand if talking about RU-486.  Not Plan B, which is just emergency dosing of oral contraceptives.

You are much less likely to find the kind of knowledge you mention in rural areas (there were no practicing midwives for instance in Oklahoma when I grew up in the 50s and 60s).

I’m guessing that if you quiz your mother, grandmother, and other female relatives, you might be surprised to find out that there was a “midwife,” even if she was just a curandera who kept a couple of herbs on hand.  Midwifery was illegal for many years, but there was always a need for it (especially in rural areas where a doctor might not be close enough) so it never really died out.

James Dobson himself said, when asked about the fact that the partial birth abortion ban outlaws a procedure but not the actual practice of late-term abortion, that maybe women would be deterred because the risk of injury to the woman is higher in the other procedure (forget the technical name, but it’s the one where they have to dismember the fetus to get it out - more instruments in your uterus plus bone shards equals higher risk of injury).

I’m sure it’s the same sort of thinking. They think deaths from illegal abortion will scare women into carrying to term (and then giving their babies up for adoption, no doubt). Those deaths are a small price to pay to scare everyone straight, so to speak. They just ignore all the evidence that that isn’t how it will actually work.

ITA is I totally agree.

I would say too that the very existence of Plan B changes what an abortion-illegal US would look like; instead of quite as many actual abortion procedures, you’d see a huge black market in that drug and other abortion-inducing drugs, that weren’t available 40 years ago.

In regards to the other comments on this, personally I read that as something along the lines of “if the crazies take over and we lose Plan B as well as other, abortion inducing, medications a black market will pop up”, as opposed to a claim that Plan B is an abortifacient (I could be wrong in that, though). Either way, the resulting black market for drugs is a valid point.

And now the Vatican has issued that awful papal statement regarding the abortion pill, the pill in general, the morning after pill, embryonic stemcell research, and IVF.  Makes me embarrassed for all Catholics…

Well, most Catholics don’t grant any of the hierarchy much authority when it comes to sex.  “If you don’t play the game, you don’t get to make the rules.”

Personally, until Francis George resigns, Bernard Law is returned to Boston, and the Pope himself apologizes for the abuse of children and disciplines the bishops for protecting the brotherhood of priests over children, they’ve got no authority to discuss anything ethical at all.

Just a reminder. Pay attention to what your opponent says and forget about reducing the abortion rate and/or the pregnant patient’s morbidity and mortality. It’s not about that; the disastrous impact of banning a safe and effective medical procedure on women’s lives is irrelevant (emphasis mine):

But the pro-life cause is primarily about issues of law, morality and justice, and if pro-lifers treat the broader pursuit of socioeconomic progress as a substitute for, rather than a complement to, the pursuit of legal protections for the unborn, then they’ve given up on their movement’s raison d’etre to no good effect. Pro-lifers can and should be willing to compromise within the debate about how the law should treat unborn human life, by agreeing to legal regimes that stop short of their ultimate goal. But a “compromise” that involves giving up on that debate entirely in favor of arguments over which domestic-policy interventions will reduce the abortion rate on the demand side is no compromise at all: It would strip the pro-life movement of its purpose, drain it of its idealism, and transform it into an advocacy group for, well, good public policy....

I think countering those who want to legislate you out of society and who want to impose their twisted morality and justice on you with arguments about the suffering that’s sure to follow is weak and ineffective, and plays to our opponents’ advantage. They’ve already succeeded in making it acceptable public discourse and policy to require a substantial amount of suffering and risk of death before women are permitted access to proper medical care. Does anyone here really think that a few more cases (thousands, millions, who cares?) of maimed and dead women would really represent a persuasive argument against banning abortion?

My mother graduated from a private high school in 1963 and remembers that many of her female classmates would routinely go to have their uteruses scraped for one reason or another.  You know, if there was a problem with their period and it wasn’t coming correctly?

Yeah, abortion never happend before we made it legal (again) in this century.

It’s important to understand a couple things about the religious right.  One is that these people are taught that Roe invented abortion.  Before it was legal, the procedure simply never existed.

Two, deaths from illegal abortions is not an unintended consequence.  In fact, it’s a goal in itself.  After all, if you believe the woman is trying to murder her child, only to die herself from the abortion, then that was a form of divine justice.  The sinner was punished.

Contraception, of course, will never be allowed because sex outside of marriage, and sex outside of procreation, is a sin.  So any consequence from having sex beyond those domains will be on the woman’s head.

You see how this works.  You’re a terrible sinner, and Daddy hates you.  Step out of line, get what you deserve.  And if you die, serves you right, baby killer.

I do know that many pro-lifers are genuinely concerned about the morality of abortion, that they truly do believe in the sanctity of life from conception (whenever that is), and I’m perfectly fine with that.  If they could actually carry that pro-life concern to the living, then we’d be getting somewhere.  But the mantra seems to be (quoting Mudhoney), “I’m all for life, ‘till the bastard’s born.”

So much of this is wrapped up in fear, hatred and violence.  It must be disentangled before we as a society will get anywhere.  Maybe America just has to go through all of this again from the beginning to learn anything.  We’ll have to see what happens once Roe is overturned, I guess.

You know, if there was a problem with their period and it wasn’t coming correctly?

In Paraguay, an unwanted pregnancy was referred to euphemistically as “delayed menstruation.” As in, “I don’t know what’s going on. My menstruation just won’t come” or “I’m drinking this tea because my menstruation is delayed and I really need to menstruate now.”

My mother graduated from a private high school in 1963 and remembers that many of her female classmates would routinely go to have their uteruses scraped for one reason or another.

Not to say that some/all of these might not have been abortions (they could well have been), but I know from my grandmother’s stories that D&C;seemed to be a far more common procedure in the past for non-abortion related issues, too.  My family suffers from PCOS, and apparently the answer the medical establishment had for the erratic periods caused by that condition routinely included D&C;.

The asshole father DEMANDED to see the removed appendix, because he wanted to make sure that… that what, really?

Wow.  Wouldn’t that be a violation of doctor/patient priveledge anyway?

Notorious,
I don’t know.  Does that apply to teenagers?  One would hope so, but I was always too scared to share a gynecologist with my mom because I thought he’d tell her stuff.