Letters to the Editor
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Start of the Backlash?
This sounds like it could be the stealth counterpart of the long-predicted pro-choice backlash if Roe is overturned.
The anti-choice whackjobs (yes, I know that's redundant) have been plotting for some time to KEEP Roe while whittling abortion rights down to a technically existent but practically extinct legal sliver.
That way they hoped to avoid the Democratic/Progressive/Liberal tidal wave that would drown them if they actually dared to overturn Roe.
That these courageous young doctors are fighting back and responding to abortion restrictions by increasing the availability of abortions is a stroke of genius.
It would be too, too perfectly poetic justice if the anti-choice whackjobs outsmarted themselves on this one.
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Yellow Dog
Well said.
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Nonsense
"That way they hoped to avoid the Democratic/Progressive/Liberal tidal wave that would drown them if they actually dared to overturn Roe."
Well this is the clearest example of wishful thinking I've seen in some time, not to mention overestimating your own importance.
Believe it or not, the general public is not nearly as militantly pro-abortion as Salon's readership.
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Believe it or not, the general public is not nearly as militantly pro-abortion as Salon's readership.
They will be once their wives and daughters start dying of hemorrages. Loops of bowels pulled through pierced uterine walls and hanging out of vaginas tend to change minds as well. Sepsis is another shitty way to watch a loved one go.
See, the choice isn't between "abortion" and "no abortion," its between "legal" and "illegal". And illegal can go really badly. Watching otherwise healthy women die or be mamed by grusome procedures is what made a lot of doctors pro-choice in the first place... its not that they LIKED ending pregnancies, its that they preferred it to the alternative.
It'll be a shame if we can't learn from history and are forced to repeat it.
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Hope
Good for these med students.
Let's just hope that Regent University doesn't start a medical school.
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practicing medicine without a license
The most important medical journals are chiming in on this subject. The New England Journal of Medicine has published some very powerful editorials on their website, ahead of print. Worth reading.
http://content.nejm.org/early_release/index.shtml#group1
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re: They will be once their wives and daughters start dying of hemorrages.
except that won't happen. Abortion will go back to the states and the states that value choice will remain legal - that that don't won't and the women in those states will come to legal ones.
Stop with the hysterics, already...
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Not hysterics, Reality
No, its not hysterical -- it is the ugly reality of illegal abortion.
People will get what they can afford. The well off can always travel somewhere safe. The poor in the "wrong" states (a lot of which are really big and aren't an afternoon jaunt to leave) will do whatever they can.
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Trudy
"They will be once their wives and daughters start dying of hemorrages."
...Except that's not going to happen for most people, because most women don't get abortions and even those who do generally don't announce it to their entire families. Stop with the histrionics, already.
"It'll be a shame if we can't learn from history and are forced to repeat it.
As I see it, the history behind legal abortion is the continuation of an ideology of eugenics and population control that began in the early 20th century and is still being pushed, albeit in more "user-friendly" parlance. Poor women are expected--nay, encouraged--to exterminate their gestating children so they can fulfill their economic obligations to society. No individual benefit or social progress is perceived to be derived from maternal bonds or adapting to an unplanned pregnancy, but rather "progress" is defined as job promotions, making an extra $2 an hour, getting a bigger cubicle, buying a new car, etc.
Brave new world. But I digress.
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Ah Cosmo
More women than you think get abortions. And whether they announce it or not you'll notice if they die.
Oh, and they always have - well before the 20th Century eugenics craze. As you see it happens to be completely innaccurate.
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"That these courageous young doctors are fighting back and responding to abortion restrictions by increasing the availability of abortions is a stroke of genius."
I wouldn't say that they are actually increasing the availability of abortions. It's more like they are slightly decreasing the unavailability of abortions. The fact is, no matter what the Supreme Court decided in Roe, or how pro-abortion activists feel, the medical community is clearly uncomfortable promoting the procedure.
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the next generation of gynecologists?
perhaps women should start sending the slides from their annual pap smears to the supreme court for review...i think we're entitled to have the best medical opinions bush's money can buy....
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Making abortionn illegal won't make it go away
As one of the a graying population, I lived through the days when abortion was illegal. Candidates seem to be wary today of supporting for Roe and brush it off as no big deal saying the states can decide. Roe v. Wade had support in 1970s because at that time it was up to the states to decide. It was legal in some states and illegal in most. Only women of means could travel to get a safe abortion. Others resorted to unsafe self induced abortions, the kitchen table, the shack in back, the apartment complex in Chicago, or a trip to Mexico. Graying doctors support Roe because they saw the results of illegal abortions in the emergency rooms of hospitals pre Roe. In the late 60s a Clergy Physicians network formed to counsel and help women get safer, but not legal abortions.
Why do we even call physicians "abortion" doctors. Physicians who perform abortions today are licensed medical professionals...They are OBGYNs. Most middle class and wealthy women don't go to the local Planned Parenthood, they get their abortions from their own OBGYN. It is the young, working class and poor who seek abortions from clinics or those who live in areas where women would be too embarassed to go to their own OBGYN. Late term abortions like those banned now are not performed at the local clinic. Now an OBGYN with a patient facing critical health issues late in pregnancy will be afraid to help women in crisis for fear of loosing their license. These women will have ther reprodcutive health compromised or possibly die. Exactly like pre- Roe.
Doctors have become less willing to volunteer to perform abortions at clinics since the 90s because of the risk to their lives and their families after Pro-lifers killed doctors and continue to harass their families.
The problem today is the younger generation has no idea what it will be like if Roe goes. They seem to be too wrapped up in their own lives to care to fight for their reproductive rights or the rights of other women. Poor and lower class women will suffer the most, as they often do not have the power to fight for their rights. The Eugenics argument is BULL!
Ask your grandmother or mother, if she ever had an abortion...you will be surprised.
Some of my friends wonder why I am no longer an activist. My answer is this....It is time for the younger generation to step up to the plate or loose thier reproductive rights. If the younger generation continue to be apathetic, maybe just maybe, they need loose their reproductive rights and fight the battle again.
Roe WILL GO if you do not speak up and get out to vote for a pro-choice candidates in 2008. Let the candidates know you will only vote pro-choice, or maybe just maybe you don't give a damn. Ask your OBGYN if they perform abortions for their patients or support ROE. If they don't get a new OBGYN.
Don't have time? DONATE, DONATE, DONATE $$$ to pro-choice orgs.
Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Physicians for Choice, Medical Students for Choice.
Reminds me got to go write another chick.