I used to have a friend, a woman, with whom I kept in fairly regular contact years ago. We first met in a support group, where I found out she could be very supportive when I was having an emotional meltdown over some past traumas. We'd occasionally meet after work for supper at some fast food place or another - neither of us having large budgets - and chat for a couple hours. I watched her youngest child grow up, heard about her oldest's newest baby (such a cutie!) and how much she hated the baby's very old-fashioned name.
Several things happened over the years. I moved to Arizona. She changed her email address from the old msn.com one, and I didn't get the new one. Christmas cards tapered off. I'd invited her and her husband to the commitment ceremony Steve and I had, and was shocked to realize she had no clue my knees were so bad by then that we saw fit to celebrate with a 2-scooter ceremony, but she'd asked the question when I had three other things on my mind and demands for my attention, so I never quite got around to answering, and once I had the time, discovered they'd already left for their long drive home. The next day was a work day for both of them. I spent it getting ready for that honeymoon trip.
We did have a couple points of disagreement, and she was the first person I actually discussed these viewpoints with. She opposed capitol punishment in all circumstances. This was not so long after the Oklahoma City bombing that I still couldn't be bothered to mind that Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to die for killing 168 people by bombing, including small children in a day care. I did/do get the racial inequities in its application and generally believe it unnecessary, unfair, and expensive.
She also opposed abortion. Period. I was then and still am firmly in favor of it being legal, safe and available to all women, period. With proper sex education and available contraception, it should also be rare. I would never want to take that difficult choice away from any woman. Things happen, difficult choices must be made, and that decision should be between the woman and her medical provider. These days it's safe enough to have an early abortion by getting pills( in the mail), as has been done now since 1988 in other countries, more recently here. Note here that our difference of opinion is not something which ended the friendship, unless it did so on her part. We just drifted. But our discussions helped me form my own viewpoints.
Much misinformation - OK, call them outright lies! - has been distributed about abortions by those opposed and thinking they have a right to say what happens to other women. One of the latest and most reprehensible is that ectopic pregnancies, deadly if untreated by removing the cluster of growing cells which will never become a baby, can be removed from where they have lodged and then "planted" in the uterus. It simply never can be done. Period. Ever. But some states in their self righteous ignorance insist on laws requiring treatment for this deadly condition to be only reimplantation into a uterus no longer receptive of cells which are now incapable of forming placental attachments anyway. But they push "let's punish the doctors who actually know medicine and the women who are victims of this deadly event." Truth and science be damned.
Under the latest laws being put forth and passing in "red" states, placenta previa, another deadly emergency which absolutely requires an immediate - not just quick, but immediate! - removal of the fetus in order to save the woman before she bleeds out, if in fact it can be done in time at all, not a guarantee by any means, would mean the doctor would be preforming an "abortion" and thus liable for prosecution and imposed consequences. This is usually what these zealots often refer to as "abortion up until the time of birth." The doctor gets to "choose": try to save a life, maybe even two in rare lucky events, or just save themselves legally.
I have been reading a lot this last week of various accounts, both first person and by medical professionals, with their vast stores of experiences in the real world, of all the things which can go wrong during pregnancies, often resulting in maternal deaths. A large number of them include an already dead fetus, where there is nothing to "save." Others a threat to the life of the mother, for a whole cluster of different reasons, and all requiring removal of the fetus. By new legal definition, these life saving interventions would be illegal abortions, some categorized as murder, requiring punishment of the medical staff and the usually grieving mother. Even a "normal" miscarriage will be treated with suspicion, despite how common they in fact are, including my own first pregnancy. Under new laws, women could be required to "prove" they are natural, and how the hell does one do that? For that matter, could you "prove" a stillbirth, like at least one of my grandmothers had, was natural?
Take away the medical piece of a need for abortion. Many of the new laws, set to go into effect the second the leaked Supreme Court decision goes formally into effect, give no relief for incest or rape. Not even for children, and in case you haven't kept up, 9 year olds these days are capable of becoming pregnant. Their bodies are only prepared for fertilization, not for 9 months of the damages a pregnancy will cause. But these laws would require them to go through the pregnancy.
Unless they were born into a rich family of course, because the wealthy will always find a way to travel to a place where safe abortions are legal for their "precious." I guess poor girls and women, those getting raped by brothers, uncles, fathers, grandfathers, just aren't precious enough.
I'm also looking at women who for whatever reason decide to get an abortion. It doesn't have to be my reason or your reason. It's theirs. IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS! NOR YOURS! And certainly not the government's. It should be easy to do, in terms of the mechanics of it. I'm not suggesting it's an easy choice but that doesn't matter. I'll never need one, but that doesn't matter either. It should be a medical service that's available, and without all the nonsense requirements imposed upon it these last few years like an internal ultrasound, i.e., mechanical rape. That's not a medical requirement, just viciousness. There should be no requirement to read all kinds of propaganda first, get shamed, and then have to return for another visit. For many that means time off work, likely unpaid, travel expenses including for the oft required overnight stay, childcare expenses if there are existing children, and etc. There should be no requirement that the doctor performing the procedure have admittance rights at a local hospital because EVERY PATIENT who needs to has the right to enter a hospital for treatment if there are complications after an abortion, just like after an accident or for an illness or whatever brings them there. If I'm in a traffic accident, I'm not grilled about where my doctor practices, nor is my care held up until they can verify anything about my doctor(s).
As long as I'm ranting, does anybody reading this think the loss of women's rights will stop at abortion? The so-called argument being presented rests on privacy not being in the Constitution. Abortion is not the only privacy issue. How about birth control? Same sex marriage? Interracial marriage? Divorce? Where you choose to live? How you choose to dress, beyond decency norms. What you choose to read? To eat? Where and what you choose to tattoo on your own skin? These and more should be private decisions. But once that ball starts rolling, what else can be taken away on the new "precedent"?
All this is coming from an extremist religious part of our nation. They believe all abortion is a sin and insist on making it a crime. Where do they get the right to impose their religion on my body and those of every other woman in the country? Or is that right implicit in having justices who lie their way onto the court unchallenged, just for that purpose, the end result of a 40-year plan to take individual rights and give them away to the government? For that matter, is it even the end?
GOTV ! GOTV ! GOTV ! Get Out The fricking Vote!!!!!!! Because they're already working on taking that away too.
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