I haven't been to an abortion party per se but I have hosted and been to several "we don't have health insurance, give what you can" parties for ER bills. It isn't about paying a cover charge to party in a friend's basement you spend half your life in anyway, it's about generosity. How is a private fund raiser between any different from a gala sponsored by a big charity for, say, breast cancer?

Ultimately, the only really troubling thing about this is that this woman didn't the coverage to pay for a $400 procedure. That's a policy question, but in no way implicates her morally. Perhaps the party was in bad taste but, well, it's nice to see a college party isn't of the "cooperate hos and CEOs" stripe.

Not sure if this was a real party or something made up by anits.

Abortion is private, serious decision, and no one should be ashamed of having one or to discussing having an abortion. However having a pretty to celebrate it seems pretty tacky.

I question this is real but if it I see it as result of the 'tell- it-all realty based media and social networking.

As for fanatical ANTI presenting those who provide abortions or those who support abortions rights as baby, and men hating radicals is just so absurd. Most of my friends in the pro-choice movement live in loving family situations either with husbands, boyfriends, or significant others and most are parents and grand parents. My gay friends have a more stable lives than those fanatics running around protesting.

ON the other hand not all people I know who call themselves pro-life are uninformed nut jobs running around calling people who perform abortions baby killers.

After reading the essay, I am going to guess that this was creative fiction, a compilation of the author's experiences as a male attending various womyn's studies classes in college, maybe attending college party where the "womb" effect with the bedsheet was created but for an entirely different reason, and having a good male friend whose girlfriend's circle villified and excluded him after his girlfriend got pregnant and she got an abortion. That and the author probably smokes a lot of pot to make his creative juices gel in just such a way that this essay became possible.

Just my two cents. If this story is true, than the most horrifying part is that some dimwits took their three year old to a party in his pajamas that didn't even get started until 10 p.m., and apparently the boy was still awake and conversing with partygoers long after the author arrived at 11 p.m.

Three year olds, however precocious, need structure and a normal bedtime routine.

f you think there's something tacky about having a party to fund a procedure that many people think long and hard before having, ask yourself how you'd feel about a party to fund chemotherapy or a lumpectomy.

-- ChrisRevere

To that I would says. Why not include abortion in public health care then.

I have been to and performed at many fundraisers for medical proceedures. Welcome to America. The fact that this one may have been for an abortion is not any different to me.

One problem for the author of the article, if everyone is so anti-man, how did "Maggie" get pregnant in the first place? I doubt it was through invitro!

...I must inform you that a rich, distant relative has died, and left you $500,000 in an over seas bank account. I'd love to wire you the money, but first, I'll need your bank account number, your social security number, and a $1,500 transaction fee, and I'll get you the remaining half million by next Tuesday.

Thanks for catching that, I just made the correction.

This story just smacks of propagandist, inflammatory, anti-choice bullshit. If the girl didn't have the $400 for the abortion, then why did she throw a party with kegs, food and decorations? And if she got the party money from friends, then she wasted her friends' money on a party at which she got more money from more friends. Something is rotten in Denmark, and it is this story.

You can't prevent needing a tonsillectomy. You can't prevent getting ovarian cancer. You can't prevent needing a blood transfusion. You can prevent getting pregnant. Maybe she should have had a party BEFORE she had sex, where her friends gave her condoms and birth control pills, and explained how and why she should use them.

who thinks this is story is fiction.

The Broadsheet girls are in agreement !!! Diversity anyone ? I heard there is a "men are redundant" party going on at the secret lair of BS writers. Anyone care to speculate on that truthiness ?

this essay reeks of BS and baiting. I'm pretty surprised that Broad Sheet writers are chiming in on whether it's appropriate or not to hold a tacky fundraising party for abortion. Doesn't the "womb" decoration seem like just the sort of detail what would show up in some passed around the play ground story to you? And let this be a lesson children, partying and abortion don't mix!

This is a job for http://snopes.com

Sure, at first glance it seems tacky and innapropriate, but I suspect it's because of our conditioning to be uncomfortable with abortion. I applaud this savvy woman, who could decide to be down about the whole situation, but decided to make the best of what can only be at least financially if not emotionally, difficult time. And also, how great that she has friends who are willing to walk the walk about feminist solidarity, support and friendship? If one of my friends did this because she felt financially stuck, I'd be happy to donate, and even happier to come to a party to show her I was behind her and supporting her all the way. Because of our squeamishness about abortion, providers are hard to come by and cost more than a lot of women can afford. I almost said I don't know any 22 yr old women with insurance to pay for that, but it's not like ANYONE'S insurance would have covered it anyway. Financial hardship shouldn't force women into hard choices about whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy, and this is overwhelmingly a class divide. Ruth Ginsberg said recently that women of a certain level of means will never again be without access to abortion, but the people we need to protect are the lower income women who don't have the means to make those choices, pay those doctors, or travel to those clinics. Since we haven't made it that far as a society yet, I think it's great that this women and her friends came together to form their own supportive community