Yes, the Right is setting the stage at the moment. They don’t mind horror stories about women with sepsis struggling to get abortion care. These stories are what will allow them to redefine abortions/procedures for ill pregnant women as ‘maternal fetal separations' and allow them seem compassionate and ‘reasonable' - a compromise of sorts. And in turn, they will vilify those who choose abortion as an ‘intention’, or unnecessary.
They prefer the media talking about women dying… It distracts from the discussion about Republicans simply as ‘FORCED BIRTHERS’, who want women to suffer and be economically disadvantaged by raising a child for 18 years. They don’t want the public to be reminded that women simply want control over their bodies, lives and futures. FORCED BIRTH often means struggling with employment, medical bills and childcare, FORCING women to be poor, trapped, or dependent on men. Or FORCED to have rapists babies. Also, in addition to pregnancy/birth complications, FORCING women to endure LIFELONG health problems that might show up years later. I am enraged and terrified for our daughters….
It seems to me there should be a flood of lawsuits about forcing women to have babies they don’t want, can’t afford, or that cause irreparable bodily harm. Why aren’t there more? Can states file lawsuits on behalf of a whole gender?? Consider this… when a surrogate/gestational carrier is having a baby for hopeful parents, she requires a contract. This is because pregnancy and childbirth are risky. A host of problems can happen throughout the pregnancy (diabetes, preeclampsia, high blood pressure, DEATH)… during childbirth (hemorrhaging, tearing, ruptured uterus, muscle ripping from bone, extreme stretching and weakening the pelvic floor), or POSTPARTUM (permanent incontinence, disability, pelvic organ prolapse) – either immediately or down the road…
Examples of expenses contractually covered for a surrogate by the intended parents include: medical insurance, lost wages due to prenatal appointments or bedrest restrictions, travel allowances, attorney fees, childcare for her own children if unable to care for them, life insurance if the surrogate dies, etc… Hypothetical complications are also laid out in the contract, to be paid to the surrogate. They are entitled to reimbursement from the intended parents for things such as: invasive procedures, cesarean section, loss of uterus or other organs, mental health care, or disability pay after delivery if ongoing complications occur. Having a baby should never be considered easy, or ‘no big deal’.
My question about forcing women to give birth is this: If a woman doesn’t want to have a child, who are they having the baby FOR? Lawmakers??? Then perhaps women being forced to give birth should have a contract from the government, comparable to that of a surrogate. They should be entitled to similar compensation as given to gestational carriers, for the burden of childbirth as mandated by these anti-choice states. (Not to mention the resulting child that needs to be raised for 18 years). And don’t get me started on the nearly 50% of fathers who avoid paying child support…
It is infuriating to hear the forced-birthers side say ‘Just give the baby up for adoption!” It’s not that simple. In addition to not enough adoptive families, no woman should be forced to endure medical situations that might harm them either immediately or down the road - affecting their health, quality of life, and livelihoods. Pelvic organ prolapse (organs such as bladder, bowel, uterus, or intestines descending down - and sometimes out of the body!) is surprisingly common. It is estimated up to 50% of women suffer from some sort of pelvic floor disorder at some point. ONE IN TEN who deliver naturally will undergo surgery for prolapse repair - and there is a high failure rate - approx. 30%. Surgery can also cause more complications, or produce symptoms that weren’t there before. *There is no way MEN would stand for this.*
Politicians have no right to take a seat in our doctor’s offices, deciding what happens to our bodies, or making healthcare or life choices for us. Seems illegal. A human rights violation. Women are not second class citizens. Rant over.
So what happens after a fetus is delivered? If it is still alive would doctors be required to do everything possible to keep it alive? I’m wondering if that would increase its suffering in some cases.
Women's rights, or lack of them are now comparable with 'developing countries' . What does the UN have to say? Keep shining a light on their misogyny and lets see who cares.
Let’s try to pressure Biden: PASS THE ERA NOW! Contact President Biden and Congress and demand this now!
President Biden can stop Project 2025 from rolling back women's rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights by publishing the fully ratified Equal Rights Amendment in the US Constitution before he leaves office. Please reach out to President Biden and your Congresspersons daily, and ask your friends to do so as well.
Phone: 202-456-1111 (Tuesday through Thursdayonly)
Text: (302) 404-0880 (You will get a reply back that you need to enroll, then you can write whenever you want)
Social media: @ POTUS
You can simply say:
President Biden, please instruct the US Archivist to certify and publish the ERA in the Constitution before you leave office. It’s an easy way to protect women and LGBTQIA+ people from Project 2025 and the Trump agenda. Thanks.
Link to League of Women Voters:
You can also sign this petition saying more or less the same from the League of Women Voters.
So, abortion became less important because women (specifically) could split their votes in the recent election between voting for their state's abortion protection initiatives and then voting for the Orange Fuck. Women, in general are (not those in this forum) less concerned about abortion than the mythology that a president can lower the price of groceries. I think we all need to acknowledge this reality. And then there are the women who hate themselves and all other women enough to be strictly pro-life, anti-abortion, whatever we want to call it. Most women are not educated enough, aware enough, motivated enough (and I won't even begin to comment on most men) to realize the christian nationalist threat of a federal abortion ban. This is reality. I'm not saying that that cannot be changed enough to get women are care more, but it's gonna take an effort that starts today and is a constant drum beat on a national level - EVERYDAY.
Even though Arizona just passed a constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion, we have 40 laws on the books that make it harder to access an abortion. With a Republican legislature and an extremist state Supreme Court (the one that reinstated the 1864 ban), I could see them using these tactics. And it’s possible that Katie Hobbs could cave, as she tries to move right to get herself reelected.
Their cruelty is exhausting. I don't understand why. It is so awful and maddening. Thanks for what you do and keeping us up to date. I am doing all that I can to respond to my legislators and share with my people.
I am all for encouraging women to move from states where abortion is banned. In fact, because I suspect that the incoming administration will ban abortion across the USA, I am suggesting that women of child bearing years leave the US. That will be an outcome unaccounted for and a tactical move in the battle against women that the Republican party is waging. It is like striking, but with removal. According to this, that is about 66 million people. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/data?reg=99&top=14&stop=125&slev=1&obj=3
While I know many will not be able to leave, I suggest that those who can do. I talk about some ways to do this in my Substack. The US is going from having a world class medical system, which many still cannot afford to access, to having two-tiered health care system based on gender. That is not acceptable. I suspect if the women leave, the men will follow, and then where will the future be of this ignoble experiment on our democracy.
I’m not a lawyer or a member of Congress, but this appears to me to be a productive line of questioning of a medical expert (in a legislative hearing):
1)Please describe a Cesarian Section.
2)Please describe a D&C, vacuum aspiration, or any other procedure to retrieve an embryo or fetus through a woman’s vagina.
3) What anesthetics would need to be used in a Cesarian Section? What would the recovery time be, just from the anesthetic? How long a hospital stay is generally required after a Cesarian section? What is the recovery time after that? What are the long-term consequences for the woman?
4) What anesthetics would need to be used in a D&C type procedure? What would the recovery time be, just from the anesthetic, if any was used? What would the recovery time be from the procedure? What would the long-term effects be?
5) What would you say is the more invasive procedure?
6) Can you think of any other medical circumstance in which the more invasive procedure is the standard of care?
And not to mention asking them about the COSTS. Because let's not ignore that there is a lot more money to be made with a c-section. And medical debt you can send a patient into. So for all the crowing about lowering health care costs...keeping women impoverished is part of this too.
We could call it a D&C (and I realize there’s vacuum aspiration, and other methods, but when I worked in an abortion clinic in the 1970’s, they were all considered some version of a D&C
It’s how to separate guilty women from innocent women. I realized this many decades ago when republicans decided to talk about allowing exceptions in their rhetoric. I mean, what fills a man with righteous vengeance more than when someone has violated a virtuous woman? So of course they can justify abortion then.
There were already bellwethers to the birth control piece way back. Years of attacks against planned parenthood even though abortion was not their only healthcare service. Then the affordable care act with employer required coverage laid the hypocrisy bare.
After Rush Limbaugh said he shouldn’t have to pay for some slut’s birth control, I thought:
1. If this were about saving babies they would accept a lesser evil of promiscuous sex over baby murder and be giving out birth control like candy on every corner.
2. If it were actually about murdering babies then the reason for the pregnancies would be immaterial and exceptions wouldn’t give women a pass. A few of these assholes have even said that position out loud. At least they are honest.
All women must fulfill their role as sacrificial vessels. Women who fail to do so are all cast as shameful women. It’s the glorification of original sin for Christ’s sake. Childbirth pain, suffering, etc…This is punishment for all women because we have claimed sexual agency and bodily autonomy as self determining factors that are not for politicians to legislate.
I know it’s hard to see a win right now, but I have been fighting this fight since college in the early 90s.the way we talk about abortion has changed. As awful as this feels right now we are lifting the shame and more women are bravely sharing. Someone posted a story about Sally Field’s recent sharing of her abortion story. That would not have happened a few years ago.
I’m just young enough to have only watched Gidget and the Flying Nun on re-runs, but I’m old enough to get in a visceral way why she was forced to bury that pain. They sold an image of the innocent girl next door. It was an abortion or the end of her future as a promising young actress. My mother had my brother in 1964 unmarried. She was thrown out of her house for being seduced by a married man at the age of 24, but despite that it was her shame to carry.
This conversation is happening. Women are relieving their traumatic teen pregnancies where they were forced to maternity homes to give up their children. They are speaking out and it is making a difference. No matter what happens next, we won’t be going back. How we move forward may not be pleasant or without pain, but it will be forward.
Maybe you’ve covered this elsewhere but how are these absurd beings distinguishing between an abortion and an induction? What makes the difference? I understand your point that it is all about the intention, but sice induction has been one version of standard abortion care, how is induction and vaginal delivery somehow ok? I also understand that anti-abortionists have to do some real mental gymnastics to find a way to distinguish between “bad” abortions and all those pesky abortions that get in the way of us defining women who get them as bad, but I really don’t understand this idea that as long as you have to push the fetus out of your vagina, that’s not abortion.
They use intention to distinguish between an abortion and an induction. Doctors refused to treat Amber Nicole Thurman in Georgia when she did not completely expel fetal tissue BECAUSE she took abortion medication to end her pregnancy of nine weeks. She told those treating her she had done so to aid them in caring for her.
There seems to be a sense in this focus that somehow insuring that women who have to have an abortion be able to get one is all there is to defending abortion. But notice that the deranged medical regime suggested to avoid abortion in a woman who must have one is to "protect" the "unborn child", it is not to abuse the woman. And even where the "unborn child" is doomed, the deranged medical regime is to avoid presenting even the appearance of "violence" against the "unborn child".
And never forget that the vast majority of women who get abortions are getting elective abortions. They are pregnant and don't want to be pregnant. These are the women who need defending and the argument that there is an "unborn child" at risk needs to be exposed as superstitious hysteria. The right to abortion is best defended by defending elective abortions first. And these have already been threatened by the "fetal viability" statutes from the time of RvW. It remains that "fetal viability" is still the argument that advances these deranged medical regimes when a woman's health is threatened by her pregnancy.
All abortions must be elective abortions. And women should have unrestricted access to them at any stage of her pregnancy. The law has no place governing decisions as to whether a woman should carry a pregnancy to full term.
Does anyone think that Americans will submit to slave labor in the uterine field and vaginal rape (forced reproduction; not only forced sex)? Let's do a poll! Respond below. Did the late Justice Antonin Scalia write a Supreme Court opinion about the Second Amendment? The First and Thirteenth Amendments apply to women and girls, too; and not just to men and boys. Anti-constitutional Republican politicians disagree.
Why the fuck are these hacks allowed any say in medical matters? They should all be sued for malpractice!
Yes, the Right is setting the stage at the moment. They don’t mind horror stories about women with sepsis struggling to get abortion care. These stories are what will allow them to redefine abortions/procedures for ill pregnant women as ‘maternal fetal separations' and allow them seem compassionate and ‘reasonable' - a compromise of sorts. And in turn, they will vilify those who choose abortion as an ‘intention’, or unnecessary.
They prefer the media talking about women dying… It distracts from the discussion about Republicans simply as ‘FORCED BIRTHERS’, who want women to suffer and be economically disadvantaged by raising a child for 18 years. They don’t want the public to be reminded that women simply want control over their bodies, lives and futures. FORCED BIRTH often means struggling with employment, medical bills and childcare, FORCING women to be poor, trapped, or dependent on men. Or FORCED to have rapists babies. Also, in addition to pregnancy/birth complications, FORCING women to endure LIFELONG health problems that might show up years later. I am enraged and terrified for our daughters….
It seems to me there should be a flood of lawsuits about forcing women to have babies they don’t want, can’t afford, or that cause irreparable bodily harm. Why aren’t there more? Can states file lawsuits on behalf of a whole gender?? Consider this… when a surrogate/gestational carrier is having a baby for hopeful parents, she requires a contract. This is because pregnancy and childbirth are risky. A host of problems can happen throughout the pregnancy (diabetes, preeclampsia, high blood pressure, DEATH)… during childbirth (hemorrhaging, tearing, ruptured uterus, muscle ripping from bone, extreme stretching and weakening the pelvic floor), or POSTPARTUM (permanent incontinence, disability, pelvic organ prolapse) – either immediately or down the road…
Examples of expenses contractually covered for a surrogate by the intended parents include: medical insurance, lost wages due to prenatal appointments or bedrest restrictions, travel allowances, attorney fees, childcare for her own children if unable to care for them, life insurance if the surrogate dies, etc… Hypothetical complications are also laid out in the contract, to be paid to the surrogate. They are entitled to reimbursement from the intended parents for things such as: invasive procedures, cesarean section, loss of uterus or other organs, mental health care, or disability pay after delivery if ongoing complications occur. Having a baby should never be considered easy, or ‘no big deal’.
My question about forcing women to give birth is this: If a woman doesn’t want to have a child, who are they having the baby FOR? Lawmakers??? Then perhaps women being forced to give birth should have a contract from the government, comparable to that of a surrogate. They should be entitled to similar compensation as given to gestational carriers, for the burden of childbirth as mandated by these anti-choice states. (Not to mention the resulting child that needs to be raised for 18 years). And don’t get me started on the nearly 50% of fathers who avoid paying child support…
It is infuriating to hear the forced-birthers side say ‘Just give the baby up for adoption!” It’s not that simple. In addition to not enough adoptive families, no woman should be forced to endure medical situations that might harm them either immediately or down the road - affecting their health, quality of life, and livelihoods. Pelvic organ prolapse (organs such as bladder, bowel, uterus, or intestines descending down - and sometimes out of the body!) is surprisingly common. It is estimated up to 50% of women suffer from some sort of pelvic floor disorder at some point. ONE IN TEN who deliver naturally will undergo surgery for prolapse repair - and there is a high failure rate - approx. 30%. Surgery can also cause more complications, or produce symptoms that weren’t there before. *There is no way MEN would stand for this.*
Politicians have no right to take a seat in our doctor’s offices, deciding what happens to our bodies, or making healthcare or life choices for us. Seems illegal. A human rights violation. Women are not second class citizens. Rant over.
So what happens after a fetus is delivered? If it is still alive would doctors be required to do everything possible to keep it alive? I’m wondering if that would increase its suffering in some cases.
Women's rights, or lack of them are now comparable with 'developing countries' . What does the UN have to say? Keep shining a light on their misogyny and lets see who cares.
Let’s try to pressure Biden: PASS THE ERA NOW! Contact President Biden and Congress and demand this now!
President Biden can stop Project 2025 from rolling back women's rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights by publishing the fully ratified Equal Rights Amendment in the US Constitution before he leaves office. Please reach out to President Biden and your Congresspersons daily, and ask your friends to do so as well.
Email: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/share/
Phone: 202-456-1111 (Tuesday through Thursdayonly)
Text: (302) 404-0880 (You will get a reply back that you need to enroll, then you can write whenever you want)
Social media: @ POTUS
You can simply say:
President Biden, please instruct the US Archivist to certify and publish the ERA in the Constitution before you leave office. It’s an easy way to protect women and LGBTQIA+ people from Project 2025 and the Trump agenda. Thanks.
Link to League of Women Voters:
You can also sign this petition saying more or less the same from the League of Women Voters.
So, abortion became less important because women (specifically) could split their votes in the recent election between voting for their state's abortion protection initiatives and then voting for the Orange Fuck. Women, in general are (not those in this forum) less concerned about abortion than the mythology that a president can lower the price of groceries. I think we all need to acknowledge this reality. And then there are the women who hate themselves and all other women enough to be strictly pro-life, anti-abortion, whatever we want to call it. Most women are not educated enough, aware enough, motivated enough (and I won't even begin to comment on most men) to realize the christian nationalist threat of a federal abortion ban. This is reality. I'm not saying that that cannot be changed enough to get women are care more, but it's gonna take an effort that starts today and is a constant drum beat on a national level - EVERYDAY.
They are forced Birthers, never pro-life
Even though Arizona just passed a constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion, we have 40 laws on the books that make it harder to access an abortion. With a Republican legislature and an extremist state Supreme Court (the one that reinstated the 1864 ban), I could see them using these tactics. And it’s possible that Katie Hobbs could cave, as she tries to move right to get herself reelected.
Their cruelty is exhausting. I don't understand why. It is so awful and maddening. Thanks for what you do and keeping us up to date. I am doing all that I can to respond to my legislators and share with my people.
I am all for encouraging women to move from states where abortion is banned. In fact, because I suspect that the incoming administration will ban abortion across the USA, I am suggesting that women of child bearing years leave the US. That will be an outcome unaccounted for and a tactical move in the battle against women that the Republican party is waging. It is like striking, but with removal. According to this, that is about 66 million people. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/data?reg=99&top=14&stop=125&slev=1&obj=3
While I know many will not be able to leave, I suggest that those who can do. I talk about some ways to do this in my Substack. The US is going from having a world class medical system, which many still cannot afford to access, to having two-tiered health care system based on gender. That is not acceptable. I suspect if the women leave, the men will follow, and then where will the future be of this ignoble experiment on our democracy.
I’m not a lawyer or a member of Congress, but this appears to me to be a productive line of questioning of a medical expert (in a legislative hearing):
1)Please describe a Cesarian Section.
2)Please describe a D&C, vacuum aspiration, or any other procedure to retrieve an embryo or fetus through a woman’s vagina.
3) What anesthetics would need to be used in a Cesarian Section? What would the recovery time be, just from the anesthetic? How long a hospital stay is generally required after a Cesarian section? What is the recovery time after that? What are the long-term consequences for the woman?
4) What anesthetics would need to be used in a D&C type procedure? What would the recovery time be, just from the anesthetic, if any was used? What would the recovery time be from the procedure? What would the long-term effects be?
5) What would you say is the more invasive procedure?
6) Can you think of any other medical circumstance in which the more invasive procedure is the standard of care?
And not to mention asking them about the COSTS. Because let's not ignore that there is a lot more money to be made with a c-section. And medical debt you can send a patient into. So for all the crowing about lowering health care costs...keeping women impoverished is part of this too.
"Abortion is a medical intervention to end a pregnancy, for any reason."
So, isn't a c-section still an abortion? Accomplishing the same end, a pregnancy ended, but more damage to the mother, instead of the dead fetus?
We could call it a D&C (and I realize there’s vacuum aspiration, and other methods, but when I worked in an abortion clinic in the 1970’s, they were all considered some version of a D&C
Abortion/D+E/D+C are all healthcare.
Interaction with, and intervention by, a healthcare provider apply in all of the above.
I don’t see the confusion or the need for conflation.
But then I guess that’s the point for the anti abortion people.
It’s how to separate guilty women from innocent women. I realized this many decades ago when republicans decided to talk about allowing exceptions in their rhetoric. I mean, what fills a man with righteous vengeance more than when someone has violated a virtuous woman? So of course they can justify abortion then.
There were already bellwethers to the birth control piece way back. Years of attacks against planned parenthood even though abortion was not their only healthcare service. Then the affordable care act with employer required coverage laid the hypocrisy bare.
After Rush Limbaugh said he shouldn’t have to pay for some slut’s birth control, I thought:
1. If this were about saving babies they would accept a lesser evil of promiscuous sex over baby murder and be giving out birth control like candy on every corner.
2. If it were actually about murdering babies then the reason for the pregnancies would be immaterial and exceptions wouldn’t give women a pass. A few of these assholes have even said that position out loud. At least they are honest.
All women must fulfill their role as sacrificial vessels. Women who fail to do so are all cast as shameful women. It’s the glorification of original sin for Christ’s sake. Childbirth pain, suffering, etc…This is punishment for all women because we have claimed sexual agency and bodily autonomy as self determining factors that are not for politicians to legislate.
I know it’s hard to see a win right now, but I have been fighting this fight since college in the early 90s.the way we talk about abortion has changed. As awful as this feels right now we are lifting the shame and more women are bravely sharing. Someone posted a story about Sally Field’s recent sharing of her abortion story. That would not have happened a few years ago.
I’m just young enough to have only watched Gidget and the Flying Nun on re-runs, but I’m old enough to get in a visceral way why she was forced to bury that pain. They sold an image of the innocent girl next door. It was an abortion or the end of her future as a promising young actress. My mother had my brother in 1964 unmarried. She was thrown out of her house for being seduced by a married man at the age of 24, but despite that it was her shame to carry.
This conversation is happening. Women are relieving their traumatic teen pregnancies where they were forced to maternity homes to give up their children. They are speaking out and it is making a difference. No matter what happens next, we won’t be going back. How we move forward may not be pleasant or without pain, but it will be forward.
Maybe you’ve covered this elsewhere but how are these absurd beings distinguishing between an abortion and an induction? What makes the difference? I understand your point that it is all about the intention, but sice induction has been one version of standard abortion care, how is induction and vaginal delivery somehow ok? I also understand that anti-abortionists have to do some real mental gymnastics to find a way to distinguish between “bad” abortions and all those pesky abortions that get in the way of us defining women who get them as bad, but I really don’t understand this idea that as long as you have to push the fetus out of your vagina, that’s not abortion.
They use intention to distinguish between an abortion and an induction. Doctors refused to treat Amber Nicole Thurman in Georgia when she did not completely expel fetal tissue BECAUSE she took abortion medication to end her pregnancy of nine weeks. She told those treating her she had done so to aid them in caring for her.
There seems to be a sense in this focus that somehow insuring that women who have to have an abortion be able to get one is all there is to defending abortion. But notice that the deranged medical regime suggested to avoid abortion in a woman who must have one is to "protect" the "unborn child", it is not to abuse the woman. And even where the "unborn child" is doomed, the deranged medical regime is to avoid presenting even the appearance of "violence" against the "unborn child".
And never forget that the vast majority of women who get abortions are getting elective abortions. They are pregnant and don't want to be pregnant. These are the women who need defending and the argument that there is an "unborn child" at risk needs to be exposed as superstitious hysteria. The right to abortion is best defended by defending elective abortions first. And these have already been threatened by the "fetal viability" statutes from the time of RvW. It remains that "fetal viability" is still the argument that advances these deranged medical regimes when a woman's health is threatened by her pregnancy.
All abortions must be elective abortions. And women should have unrestricted access to them at any stage of her pregnancy. The law has no place governing decisions as to whether a woman should carry a pregnancy to full term.
👆👆👆👆🎯
Well said. It’s none of the government’s business. It’s not a matter for the police or for regulation. Get your church off our state!
Does anyone think that Americans will submit to slave labor in the uterine field and vaginal rape (forced reproduction; not only forced sex)? Let's do a poll! Respond below. Did the late Justice Antonin Scalia write a Supreme Court opinion about the Second Amendment? The First and Thirteenth Amendments apply to women and girls, too; and not just to men and boys. Anti-constitutional Republican politicians disagree.