For Roberts and Alito, women’s deaths during their pregnancies aren’t bugs, they’re features.

Features? Perhaps more apt had you said perks.

It is generational amnesia…. Who in the medical profession under the age of 55 remembers what life before legal and safe abortions?

At the ripe age of 20 in my third year of nursing school, I held the hand of a 14yr old child who bled to death following her illegal abortion. An event that I remember 35 years later, that has imprinted itself on my psyche and forever made me a PRIVACY advocate.

The idea that someone without any medical education are telling practicing physician’s how to practice is beyond any sane rational thought. But then we do know that wingnuts really do not think.

My mother’s pre-Roe horror stories are legion, but this one stayed with me:

A taxi pulled up to the hospital. The driver literally dumped his female passenger on the sidewalk before the emergency room and drove off. The staff rushed out to the woman because she was clearly unconscious and drenched in blood. One look at the source of the blood, and they knew what they had on their hands: A botched abortion.

They tried everything to save her, to no avail. She bled to death from a perforated uterus, my mother holding her hand even though she wasn’t conscious, as nurses have done for decades.

The woman had no identification on her. The only thing on her was the remnant of a plane ticket to Mexico for that day or the day before. So they knew where the procedure had been done.

But no one knew her name. No one claimed her. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

There is the tragic case of Gerri Santoro. The link is to an article I wrote about her. Gerri has been all but forgotten now. But she was all too familiar, for her fate was that of too many women during the pre-Roe years.

Some of the other nifty little facts of this era: Hospitals and regular doctors performed abortions pre-Roe, but only the rich could afford them. Doctors would say that a woman had “endometriosis” requiring a D&C. She’d get admitted to the hospital and get her surgery. The procedure cost in the thousands of dollars; my mother was in the operating room for one woman who paid $10K for her abortion. In the 60s.

When California legalized abortion in 1967 (Ronald Reagan was the Governor signing the legislation), Dallas’s airport at the time, Love Field, became a madhouse on weekends, with planes to L.A. and San Francisco packed with women seeking abortions.

These anti-abortion people do not understand that they will not make abortion go away. They won’t stop people from fucking, either.

I wish they’d grow the hell up.

Gravel: The war was lost the day GB invaded on a fraudulant basis

Good so far.

Who is Gravel?

HotFlash @ 40.

Control is the key, isn’t it?

Cuz even if they get to the Holy Grail, and Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortions don’t stop. They just get to punish the sluts that dare to have the sex by either forced pregnancy or what, a murder conviction if the terminate? Control.

I just don’t understand what is so freaking THREATENING about letting women have bodily autonomy?

You know what I want? Constitutional amendment, guaranteeing the right to privacy. Yeah, I know. They’ll respect it about as much as they do the 4th, 5th, and 8th, but I can dream that they treat it with the reverence they give the 2nd.

Until quite recently I’d have said the same thing. But, in light of statements like Ann coulter’s “There is no right to procreation.” I’ve rethought the issue and decided we have to either rely on the 9th Amendment as a receptacle (in the Constitution) of ALL of our unenunciated rights or we have to perhaps rewrite it to specify that the People embody ALL and ANY rights you can imagine and that they needn’t be specified in the Constitution to be recognized as existing and as being unalienable.

We must establish clearly that We the People have ALL the Rights and the Government has NONE. The Government is only assigned duties and powers — with most important the duty to protect America and it’s citizens’ lives (including pregnant women).

Once you’re there (and I know most of us already are) then it’s easier to discuss the freedom to keep and bear arms or the freedom of speech (even slander and libel) or the freedom of assembly and all the other well-known rights without being confused by Conservative pundits who say the Government decides which to support or how to balance one against the other (as in the life of a fetus vs. the life of a woman).

mrsmarks @ 252

“…That’s something the hedge funders aren’t anxious to see happen.”

i think you are exactly correct.

And that is part of what is behind the case up for review by SCOTUS about campaign finance reform.

The big money people want to game the system by making tons of cash via “hedge funds” (a form of market manipulation only available to a select few) that they then spend in political campaigns to elect political hacks that are “puppet string” friendly.

Same old game with a new covering.

“Proof depends on who you are. We’re looking for a preponderance of evidence, and some people need more of a preponderance than other people.” – John Kantner

tejanarusa @ 63

things come undone @ 52

We need to divide our enemies I’m pretty sure the Catholic Church is still ok with Abortion when the mothers life is in danger, or if its a choice between the mother and the child. We just need a gutsy Bishop or Pope’s opinion on this subject on record to throw back at the Supreme Court Justices who blame being Catholic for their decision. We need to point out that Scalia’s postion on this issue is harsher on women than the Catholic Church’s postion was preVatican2.

Huh? How old are you? You need to watch/read The Cardinal. That statement could not be more wrong. In this century (not in medieval times, or when “quickening” was still believed to be the time when the fetus became quick, or alive), the Church has NEVER favored an exception for the life of the mother.

For the Church, in the case of Mother v. Unborn Fetus, it’s foreordained, Mother ALWAYS loses, Fetus ALWAYS wins.

Didn’t the “quickening ” idea die only recently when they discovered the baby has a heartbeat seperate from the Mothers? Also my grandfather was told by Doctors that it was my grandmother’s life and or my father’s life and while the nuns did put presure it still was my grandfathers choice. I admit that I could be wrong I’ll ask my sister who went to Catholic School but I’m pretty sure the Catholic Church is not that heartless.

Ok the Catholic Church is heartless still Ireland and France two majority Catholic Countries do allow abortions when the mother’s life is threatened. We just change tactics use Ireland and France as examples of Catholics being sane and start attacking the Church.TV ads with priests forcing rape victims and mothers carring deformed fetuses to give birth should be played in protestant areas of the country. AntiCatholic bigotry can play to our advantage we can make the Fundementalist Protestant Preachers appear to be the stooges of Rome. This way we divide the fundementalist Protestant/Catholic alliance and also we divide the remaining proCatholic Protestants from their antiCatholic flocks. Only by threatening to take away the religous tolerence in this country that lets Catholics thrive can we get the Catholic Church to reconsider trying to force their religous beliefs on the rest of America.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the lion’s share of the questions are going to The Top Tier?

Not just you.

Biden: Dangerous writing is reason to deny civil rights!

this debate is making me depressed.

will that get me on a list?