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The abortion rights debate looks different for people old enough to remember the days of back alley abortions.
Case in point: the other day my my father brought up American politics, since he's knows it's my job to follow it (and since we don't much agree on Canadian politics.) He's a conservative guy, votes for the Conservative party routinely, likes to call himself "the last Victorian" though he really isn't. Still, he's no liberal and he's pushing 80.
I filled him in on Sarah Palin, in particular, and mentioned she was against all abortion except if the mother's life is at risk.
His voice turned incredulous and he said, "Don't people remember what it was like when abortion was illegal? Women with coathangers up their...." His voice trailed off.
After a few moments he continued again, now angry. "How can these people be so stupid? Don't they know what it was like? All the women who died?"
All I could really say was this: "People don't learn from other people's mistakes. Only their own. The generation that remembers what it was like, your generation, is mostly gone. The younger folks, they don't remember, they don't know. They don't understand how bad it was, how many women died, how horrible it was. They weren't there, and for some reason they won't listen to those few who were. Those who remember. Those who know."
The thing that saddens me the most about humanity, that worries me the most, is this shocking inability to understand anything unless they've experienced it themself. Wisdom is learning from other people's mistakes.
It seems like every good thing that was done by older generations is being undone, step by step, by fools who weren't there, don't remember, and can't learn. They stripped the protections meant to stop mass bank failures and a new depression and they keep trying to make sure that women will die in droves by getting rid of the right to safe, legal abortion.
So no, Dad, they don't remember. If people like Palin and McCain have their way, the horrors you remember from your youth will start happening again. The battles your generation fought, the victories you handed to us, your children and grandchildren, we will squander and have to earn yet again.
And if we do fail to hold onto what you gave us, a lot of women will die because of our stupidity.
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We remember. And we honor their lives.
Thanks, Ian. Well-said.
here’s where we miss the framing debate;
for the most part, pro choice ARE pro life, anti choice-ers are not pro life for the most part, they are pro birth and pro unwilling host, if they were “pro-life” they would be anti-war, anti-death penalty
those of us who are pro choice recognize, a womens life is at peril with every birth, if she does not want to be unwilling host for the fetus we cannot force her into it.
Rachel got Frank Rich to come on her show. Good on her!
Hi Ian…. unfortunately I remember…. so does my 87 yr old mother… I know I have written about this before ….. My mother’s bunk mate (WWII) while in the Navy committed suicide because she could not handle being a single mother….
In 1970 I was a 19 yr old nursing student in Kansas City MO…. in my OB rotation I was assigned to sit with a 14 yr old white blond middle class girl who was being treated for the complications of an illegal abortion…. as I held her hand while the life drained from her….. she repeated over and over again….”I promise I won’t do it again”…..
Just a few blocks in Kansas City Ks if she was a resident, she could of legally obtained an abortion….
No, I didn’t forget….. never will I forget…
anti choice-ers are not pro life for the most part, they are pro birth and pro unwilling host, if they were “pro-life” they would be anti-war, anti-death penalty
Exactly! Once that life is outside the womb the republics don’t give a rats ass about it. They fight for it’s right to live but not it’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Framing: it is possible to be, as I am, both pro-life and pro-choice. I honor all life and work to save lives. At the same time, when I went through pregnancy with a very wanted child, I realized how difficult it was and how completely horrible a process it would be for someone who despised the child’s existence, say, from rape or incest. It is difficult enough to bear a child that is very much wanted. Unthinkable otherwise, and unconscionable to force other women to submit to this for political points.
Well, Palin is ready to give control of the female body back to the State because she doesn’t think you can make a choice for yourself(Her daughter yes). I wonder where her empathy went when it came to the rape victims in her town. Sarah doesn’t like women.
There are no words.
The pages/ads were so effective when famous people going public and admitting having had an abortion. The going public, etc. in the name of saving lives. I have often been taken aback by friends talking about having had an abortion…some married, etc. We do not know who that is among us or the reason: and, it’s none of our business. But for them it was safe.
She likes Sarah Palin.
The Repugs will talk about it, but they need to have abortion stay legal so that they will always have something around which to rally the troops, but they also know it needs to stay legal somewhere for when their daughter or mistress gets inconveniently pregnant.
The religious right trying to force their beleifs on everyone else,but thats all right ,someones looking out for my soul!!
I’m sure choosing to end a pregnancy is one of the hardest decisions any woman would have to make.
These pro-life people really do believe they’re on a mission from God,don’t they
She likes Sarah Palin the movie, the TV show, the myth, the legend in her own mind…that’s what she likes.
Weren’t they so cute together?
No snark. Mean it.
Just one
The one in the mirror!
I read this diary back in July and it says it all from a Republican Mothers point of view….
My Republican Mother Schools Wingnut on Obama Inaccuracies
They truly, genuinely don’t care. In their world view any woman who wants an abortion is a murderer and a sinner. And in their world view sinners are to be punished, with death in many instances.
Last weekend the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Katherine Schori, was in Savannah. At an open and informal Q&A during a break after her address she was confronted by an angry individual. A friend of mine, who was there and right behind this person, sent a letter to several people in the diocese who hadn’t been there. This was his next-to-last (penultimate… I couldn’t help myself) paragraph:
There are times when I’m just flat out proud to be an Episcopalian.
Waldo Fielding is a retired gynecologist in his mid-80s, and he wrote a piece in the NYT last June entitled “Repairing the Damage, Before Roe.”
The title of the piece is his description of what his job was, pre-Roe: repairing the damage of such botched abortions.
His conclusion is spot-on:
Sadly, there are those who still reject the notion of treating women as first-class citizens.
3 girls who would have been in my high school class of 1962 died of clothes hanger abortions… Susan, Colleen and Pam. I went to grade school with two of them and junior high with the third. We all cried at the news. For each of them. I thought everyone learned forty some years ago, but NO!!!
It’s aPalin!!!
Pretty soon they’ll be burning women at the stake for bewitching men into “fertilizing” them….evil librul wenches…
You’re my same age, but I did not know anyone who had a coat hanger abortion. I grew up in Buffalo and there were rumors about how you could get a safe one in Canada. Luckily I never had the occassion to find out.
There are still a million abortions a year to put a number on it. Making them illegal means some combination of a million unwanted babies or back alley abortions.
Here is a question. What is the ethnic breakdown of who gets the most abortions?
Dugg it
It is a sad chapter of our past that most people (including progressives) would rather not remember. It was brutal and depressing. I remember and we should honor all of the women that died by not allowing this to be forgotten.
Remember, wingnuts are terrified about the prospect of not being the majority race in this country over time. Just saying….
When I was that age in NYC everyone who could afford it knew that Doctor’s Hospital would always do a D&C, or a “dusting and cleaning.” But that was the Upper East Side. What girls without resources did was, all too often, die.
Here’s some stats that help answer your Q. It seems to be an age thing, with 20-somethings the highest frequency but pretty high for teens. Black/other somewhat higher %s than white. Will look for other stats more to your point.
http://www.abortionfacts.com/s.....s_race.asp
Then they should have lots of babies and leave everyone else alone. I am so sick of them and their perverted ideas.
The other thing I learned while I was a nursing student is that women who had money were obtaining medically performed abortions by a physician in a hospital but they fudged the facts…… the same procedure was done for a so called incomplete spontaneous abortion (early miscarriage)… to make sure that all the fetal contents were gone to prevent complications….. it was whispered…. “we don’t talk about it but if you have the money…. Dr. X does them….” …..
1997-2001 - CDC Abortion Surveillance
The highest percentages of reported abortions were for women who were unmarried (82%), white (55%) and aged <25 years (52%). Of all abortions for which gestational age was reported, 59% were performed at <8 weeks' gestation and 88% at <13 weeks. From 1992 (when detailed data regarding early abortions were first collected) through 2001, steady increases have occurred in the percentage of abortions performed at <6 weeks' gestation.
teeny bit skewed on ethnicity as not all reporting sites (49) are consistent in ethnicity reporting
There is good medicine and bad medicine and if it gets them votes or makes them money then it is good.
From Think Progress - Bushies are trying to make money for their investors: Bush Administration Forcing HPV Vaccine On Immigrants
I don’t agree that people can’t learn from the mistakes of others. I do believe, with Edmund Burke, that people who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.
Republicans have mental need for enemies. They are the haters in our society. The rethug party focuses their hatred and contempt.
So. What do you all make of Kissinger’s over-population program…being that he is the Godfather of the Repubs. What do you think?:
http://www.usmutes.com/NSSM200.htm
I mentioned this in a Christie post. My dad was a general practitioner. He always said that when abortions were illegal, he was the one who had to “clean up the mess.” I read that article in the NY Times in June and it expressed exactly my dad’s sentiments. My dad died at 89 back in 2002. He was a Republican until they started the anti abortion movement and then became a libertarian….simply because of that issue.
Ah, but one must choose to learn.
All children happily do so, the human mlnd is programmed, primarily for such a purpose.
So, we must assume that somewhat older children deliberately choose NOT to learn, for it discomforts them and requires the exercise of gray matter.
Use it or lose it.
Perhaps ‘religion’ or ‘politics’ get in the way or use up to much ’storage space’?
New CHS
Well I have read in the past about the govt of Chile’s outlaw of abortion
the was quickly found on teh google
…http://www.hrw.org/photos/2005/argentina0605/html/chile.htm
So the idea of Ms. Palin is that you can have it if your life is at stake, but what person or group of persons decides if you have committed a crime or had an abortion to save your life. In my book the state should stay out of it. That is between you, your doctor and your god.
Our civil rights are too precious to leave the next two supreme court justice appointments to this woman and her sidekick.
We need women in power, but not if they are going to take our rights away.
oh the point was that lots of women die in Chile because they and their baby are going to die if they don’t get the abortion, but the state says they can’t have it. So they die.
I say if they overturn Roe, all women refuse to have sex until they change the law. That will show them!
I was so confused about this thinking, that all abortions except when the mother’s life is in jeopardy or incest or rape, are not good. Abortion on demand just isn’t right when there are so many contraceptive options. But after reading this post, I just can’t see going back to such horrors as illegal abortions. I just wish people would be more careful with contraceptives.
I don’t think we need to go back and ask the “elders” about this…people could simply look at the health care and womens’ status in the Third World countries that ban abortion.
Lack of access to abortion results in women facing devastating health consequences that can cripple them for life. They can be burdened with children that make it difficult to improve the whole families economic status…resulting in children who must drop out of school to work, forgo medicine, and are malnourished (as is true of the adults as well). Their communities are often impacted with more unsupervised children who lack hope and jobs…enticed by drugs or criminality.
Older women who cannot obtain a safe, legal abortion frequently die…leaving behind orphans that are either adopted by relatives (adding to their financial stress) or left homeless and to their own means (begging, prostitution, theft).
Impact of Banning Abortion in Latin America
http://www.guttmacher.org/medi.....index.html ">Mexico City Legalizes Abortion/Supreme Court Refuses to Disallow Safe Abortion
And most perversely…the very forces that have banned or prevented safe abortion procedures have also been the very ones to restrict women from obtaining access to contraception and family planning information. The GOP consistently prevents funding of any group that provides information about both. So they deny the very contraceptive knowledge that would actually reduce abortions.
What this proves is that it’s not about abortions in the Grand Scale of things…it’s about controlling womens bodies.
hychka @ 20: Kim, my 15-year-old classmate, 1969.
Palin would have been 5 then, 8 when Roe was decided. She has no idea.
Puttin lipstick on him would be an improvement but he is still a pig. That is meant as a compliment.
People should be allowed free birth control. Getting vasectomies and tube ties if they want might help.
Thank you, Ian. As a woman who’s been fighting the Bush regime policy of women as chattel, I’m glad to see this huge issue of a governent control of women’s bodies brought to the forefront again.
Maybe Sarah Palin is not completely horrid if she can bring this issue to American women’s attention. In a sick and twisted way she may wake up these women I’ve been trying to shake awake for the last 7 years……
Hello, I am a 46 year old women that does not believe in abortion. The women in the Roe vs Wade never had an abortion and is now fighting to have that law repealed. Why? Because Abortion is wrong. Pro Choice starts with contraceptives, or better yet keeping your legs closed in the first place. In this day and age there should be NO need for abortion as there are far to many contraceptive methods on the market. There is also the Day after Pill for that matter.
I could not believe it when I found out about Partial Birth Abortion or Late Term Abortion. Did you know that in order for this process to be done, they literally deliver the baby feet first, the baby’s full body is delivered up to its neck and then they take a needle and suck out the baby’s brain in order to collapse the skull causing the babies death. There are also many cases were aborted babies are delivered alive.
Do a google search on: Partial Birth Abortion, Late Term Abortion, Live Birth Abortion.
In my life I have met many women that have either had more then one abortion as they use it as birth control, have had forced abortions, have had abortions simply because they broke up with the boyfriend and didnt want to get fat for nothing, women that have had abortions because they were cheating and didn’t want to get caught. I have never once met a woman that had a medically neccessary abortion.
Personally I think Abortion should be outlawed and any woman or girl that choses to go into an alley to kill their baby should bleed to death along with the life they killed.
what happened to hate the sin and love the sinner? do you really think jesus would agree with your last sentence?
I don’t have a problem with hating the sin and loving the sinner. I do have a problem with Abortion as I do believe God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit do also.
I think the only one beside some people that think abortion is okay would be Satan.
then why are you here, if i may be so bold to ask, at a pro-choice site? do you think i am satan because i believe in choice?
I don’t want to be impolite, but let me expand, please.
The prohibition against sex education and birth control in this pre-historic country - is funded, loudly supported and politicized by… wait for it - Christians. Believers. Fundamentalists.
Please explain to them the error of their ways.
Let me explain two things.
First you cannot blame anyone for children not getting told about sex, contraceptives and disease except for their own parents. It is not the schools job to teach this stuff, it is not tax dollars or the goverments job to teach or pay for this stuff. It is the role of the parents. I was 15 years old when I got pregnate. I was taught sex ed in school. I knew about contraceptives. I chose to have sex without protection and I got pregnate on purpose. My daughter is now 30 years old and has three children of her own. I taught my daughter from the age of 7 she started her period at 8 at which time I told her as much as she should know about sex at the time and told her more as she grew older. I taught her about preditors, I taught her that staying a virgin was best, I taught her about birth control. It was my job as a parent. She had her first child at 19 and was married. I also taught her everything about abortion right down to the fact that they actually suck babies that have a heart beat from the womb and in many cases suck limbs off before they ever get to the rest of the baby. I gave her the hard cold facts. Face it Pro Choice is about killing the baby and Having the right to do it just because your a woman. That is bogus.
Next to the person that asked why I am here. Well I watched and interview last night on C-Span and got this blog addy from there. I was so upset with the blonde lady saying that most woman were for Pro Choice. Guess what MOST WOMAN ARE NOT!!!!! There are many that are confused about Pro Choice and what it really means. Many teens are told that they should have an abortion without ever being fully informed as to what that really means. To them it is just sucking some blood out that may become a baby at the end of 9 months. But the reality of it is they are sucking a human life from them. I have a neice that I do NOT speak to. She has on her body the death dates tatoo’d on her belly from three pregnacy’s that she aborted. I knew another girl that had 6 abortions. I know of many people that have had one or more abortion. NOT ONE WAS FOR MEDICAL REASONS. Not one Rape, Incest, or possibility of the Mother dying. It is killing a baby for selfish reasons. I stick to what I said earlier, lets go back to the day when stupid woman got what they deserved. Yes I believe in the Death penalty to and I believe that we shouldn’t give tea and cake to the terrorists or prisoners. Preditors of children should be tortured first and killed in an inhuman way after. I believe that I should have as many guns as the criminals have. Oh and I love McCain and Palin and I belive President Bush did a great Job with what he had to work with in his 8 years. One last thing before I go. I believe Bush made the right call with the war in IRAQ and I do have family and friends fighting in that war!
so you are here to educate us satanic pro-choice types?
Have you ever talked anyone out of having an abortion?
I’m pro-choice, and I have.
You won’t catch many flies with the kind of vinegar you offer.
Information concerning Roe vs Wade the court case that brought about legal abortion rights to women. Was started because a woman named Norma McCorvey claimed she was raped. She later admitted that she lied and in fact she has NEVER had an abortion herself. She is now a Pro-Life advocate after realizing that abortion is in fact the killing of a child. She wrote a book were she discribes when she first realized this.
She wrote in her book, Won by Love,
“I was sitting in O.R.’s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. “Norma,” I said to myself, “They’re right.” I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth–that’s a baby!”
I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about “products of conception.” It wasn’t about “missed periods.” It was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion–at any point–was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”
As I watched that woman in the interview last night on C-Span I was getting angrier by the second with no outlit until tonight. Maybe I came on to strongly. I cannot remember the womans name but it said she is the founder of this blog. Anyways one thing that she was saying last night made me understand how many people really have no clue what these abortion rights are really doing. One thing that was brought up was how Obama voted 4 times against giving live saving medical attention to an aborted baby that was born alive. It is called Live Birth Abortion. Obama stands firm on Parital Birth Abortion as he voted NO to ban this act of cruelity also. Here is the information that you need to see that what I am telling you now is true as the woman last night did not even believe that there was even such a thing as LIVE BIRTH ABORTION or INFANTCIDE. http://www.priestsforlife.org/.....timony.htm this website is the testimony of a Nurse that held an aborted baby in her arms until it died hours later. This is a practice that is done more often then you would think. Here is the link to one of the actual senate records of debate on the issue of Live Birth Abortion with Senator Obama’s own words on the matter of giving medical attention to a Baby that is still Alive and 100% outside of the womb and his concern that if you give such a child medical attention you will jepordise the Abortion Laws on the books. http://www.ilga.gov/senate/tra.....033001.pdf Starts on page 84.
This alone should make people question Obama and his heartlessness. I am sure that most women Pro Choice or other wise would agree that if that aborted baby is Born Alive, it should NOT be left in a closet, trash bucket or even in a medical tray until it dies alone. That is EXTREMELY INHUMAN….. Go ahead read the links. Google this stuff yourselves. Get informed outside of the mainstream media.
Here is another link with a lot more information on Obama’s stance on Live Birth Abortion with numerous factual records to see for yourself.
http://www.nrlc.org/obamaBAIPA/ObamaCoverup.html
Now you have been educated!
..First impression was WTF? What school taught sex education 30 years ago? The author was taught sex ed at school and choose not to use contraception. Then the author says that parents should teach sex ed. So if parents would have taught her, then she would have used it? Huh?
..Most of the world has banned the use of the death penalty.
..Torture and murder as a solution? Not in civilized society.
..stupid woman got what they deserved..And what might that be? The author should clarify both stupid and deserved.
..The author can believe in the death penalty, but not in abortion? In short, the death penalty is government sanctioned murder of a human being. And that is ok?
..Tea and cake to terrorists and prisoners are given when? To who?
..How many guns and which criminals?
..McCain Palin Bush great job..refraining from asking the author to clarify this.
..How wonderful it is that we can all have our own opinion. Mine would be that an illegal occupation of a country is never the right call.
I notice that in #52 your spelling and sentence structure is poor. Why is it that once you start criticizing Obama, all of that changes? Not an attack, just an honest question.
You went from anti-abortion to a critical evaluation of Obama. I assume that was your intent all along? I am sure that you know that many politicians in both parties are pro choice?
Why is it that you know how to send links, but not how to look up the blond woman’s name?
Great post! I have two points:
1. You are correct about people not seeing unless they, themselves, have experienced something. I have said this before — I was for single-payer healthcare way back in the 80s. Did any American care? No! They just loved their HMOs — who cares if others suffer? They have theirs — to hell with everyone else. Only now, as more and more suffer through sky-high HMO prices and not having the care they need, do Americans START to question the currect system.
2. The abortion debate is even weirder. I guess I am old. I am not nearly 80 (I am 55), but I remember pre-Roe days. Abortions were legalized when I was in college. And the horrors I saw, first hand, were terrible. I never had a friend die, but I had several get really messed up by back-alley abortions. Physically AND mentally. No, they were not traumatized by the abortion itself, but by what the abortionist did to them. No, it wasn’t like today, when your only worry is the nuts trying to blow up the medical facilities. These places, in 1970, were dirty, and those who did the abortions were NOT medical professionals. It was awful. One friend of mine even was rendered sterile, and has had 2 ovarian and uterine cancers, even though no one else in her family has had them. Was it because of the back alley abortion? I suspect so.
I look at my daughter now and realize she doesn’t GET it. She can get a safe and legal abortion if she needs one. She has no idea what it was like. And when abortion was illegal wasn’t in 1920 — it was yesterday.
(It helps that I live in California now, where I believe abortion was legal in 1970. But back then, I lived in Oklahoma. Just another reason why I fled that state.)
Our cable service cut off just as Frank Rich was coming on the air… Curses!!
There are also many examples of smaller horrors that occur when women have lost the power to choose. My mother tells a story of asking her longtime Ob/Gyn about getting her tubes tied, after a miscarriage, a life-threatening tubal pregnancy, and two healthy babies. Her doctor told her she would need to have had three babies and/or written permission from her husband in order to have that procedure performed. It is not clear what governing body made that particular proclamation. Perhaps it was just her doctor. Maybe it was the two or three Ob/Gyn’s in her small town. Maybe it was the one hospital she had easy access to. It was 1954, and the conversation was pleasant and crushing. She was shocked at being put in the position of a child, incredulous that she couldn’t decide for herself and saw no other avenue at the time. That is, she could have gotten “permission” from my dad, with whom she remained happily married for more than 50 years, but she was demoralized and angry, and would not submit to the insanity of asking one man to tell another man to give her the right to choose her method to protect herself from further pregnancy.
In Reply I have to say I am not sure why my sentence structure was so bad and then got better, guess it was my mood at the moment.
As for looking up links and information; well that is what I do best as I like to be informed through facts not media.
LOL ya the blonde lady, don’t care to know her name that is why I never took the time to find out. I lost any interest in her afraid I realize she runs her mouth on issues without knowing her facts. Like the Live Birth Abortion issue and the fact that Obama was against it. Now I have given everyone the information that they need on him and his view on killing babies inside or outside the womb.