BlogHer - The Supreme Court Abortion Decision - Comments

Isn't it fascinating...

The Anonymous Source — Sat, 12 May 2007 02:07:10 -0500

That a woman's ability to reproduce and nurture life are the abilities that truly differentiate us--and therefore, empower us--and yet that's the thing that mankind, and his enablers, fight so hard to take from us? (i.e. choice, breastfeeding in public, etc??)

Finally, why are there so many candidates wanting to take away this right who are completely uninterested in improving and overhauling our healthcare system?

Isn't the pro-life movement denying a pro-quality of life position?

I'm seeing this thread

Angela Chen Shui — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:17:06 -0500

I'm seeing this thread late.

Thank you, Ronni, for sharing your personal story. You could easily have argued on an intellectual level rather than with open, sharing heart and splitting gut.

Your account of what women were forced to go through before winning freedom to their own reproductive rights is a reminder of why it's so important to not lose sight of what's at stake.

Reproductive rights are central to the freedom of half of the population of humanity on Earth on a personal, life-long level. If even some women don't understand the importance of, and stand up for the right of all women to choose, irrespective of personal morals, how can men be expected to 'take care of us'?

Men and women bring different sensibilities and attitudes to many issues. I have always believed society benefits from including and weighing these gender differences in public debate. But abortion is where I get radical.

Until a man is capable of giving birth and/or every man is forced by law to both financially support and participate in the gestation and raising of every child he fathers, and such law is enforced without exception (a permanent ankle tracking device for those who run comes to mind) no man has a right to discuss abortion, let alone to vote on it.

No one can convince me that pregnancy, birth and the choice to abort or not are anything but womenâ€™s domain, exclusively.

If God/Life allows choice and it is choice that allows us to each create our reality, which man, or woman, dares to take my, or any other woman's, right to choose, away?

I don't aspire to 'find heaven' in the sky somewhere. We each create our individual and collective heaven/hell right where we are. In this process of creating heaven on Earth, I insist that every woman, and only the woman, has the final say in whether a child is born via her own body, or not. I'm sorry but I'm constantly amazed that there is even a debate on this issue.

My husband to this day 'jokes' that he should sue the doctor who tied my tubes after the birth of my second child since the doctor didn't first seek his 'consent'. And I never jokingly ask him what say he thinks he had in the matter.

Billions of women continue to live in poverty across the globe and one common denominator amongst them is their inability to exercise freedom in their reproductive right choices, be it under the guise of cultural, religious or other factors.

The simple matter is that a woman's economic freedom is intrinsically and inescapably bound up with her freedom to choose whether she will have children or not.

Taking away a woman's right to that basic choice is not some high-minded spiritual or moral issue, although that serves to cloak it very well. Keeping the majority of this planet's women firmly in their place economically and socially is the true intent.

Slavery is alive and well for the majority of women on this planet and will continue to be until every woman, everywhere, has access to free, effective, safe contraceptives and when chosen, free, effective safe abortion facilities. This is only one, but a very basic, important aspect of establishing women's freedom planetary-wide.

As the Maroons in my own country, led by Nanny, Jamaica's only female national hero to date, knew, and as all revolutionaries and freedom enablers around the world throughout history knew and know, freedom is either total or it is something else entirely.

Angela.

"Angela's Voice"
Spirituality Self Help

I don't know about anyone

Angela Chen Shui — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:37:27 -0500

I don't know about anyone else out there, but I was glad to no longer be the wife of the man who felt that was even a choice.

Amen to that.

"Angela's Voice"
Spirituality Self Help

I agree.....

Catherine Morgan — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:07:39 -0500

Choice is the most important thing!

Women are smart....they don't need to be told what to do.

Catherine Morgan
Women 4 Hope and Be The Change You Want To See In Yourself

Hi Kim, I find it strange

Dana J. Tuszke — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:41:53 -0500

Hi Kim,

I find it strange that you chose to say "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life".

So should I be using "pro-abortion" in my posts?

We as women have many choices instead of abortion, but the reasons for abortion seem to come down to these few most often:

1. Medical risks of carrying pregnancy to term.

2. Pregnancy due to rape/incest.

3. Not wanting to be a parent (either based on income, saving one's reputation, teen-pregnancies, unwed mothers or those not in a partnered relationship, as a method of birth control, etc).

It's the third reason that I most detest and I'm tired of the first two reasons being used as an excuse or defense.

Any woman who doesn't wish to have a baby can say they medically couldn't carry a baby to term or that they were raped. How many of these reasons are true? My opponents will say it doesn't matter because it's a woman's right to choose which brings us back to square one....

It will forever be a never-ending battle between the "anti-choice" and "pro-abortion" groups.

I understand and comprehend

Dana J. Tuszke — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:33:17 -0500

I understand and comprehend quite well shelleyp. Your venom for me is quite obvious and I can't change that, but I do not deserve your attack. I did not trivialize Ronni's story. I merely showed an opposing view point and I'm not going apologize that you don't agree with it.

Exactly...

Denise — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:32:12 -0500

There isn't one situation or one answer or one personality or one need or one want or one ANYTHING when it comes to pregnancy.

Choice is the only common denominator between us.

~Denise
Fast Times @ Homeschool High and Flamingo House Happenings

Lesson Learned

Mata H — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:28:06 -0500

I've been divorced for a long time. My exH remarried and quickly began a new family. His new wife had a very difficult pregnancy and right before giving birth had to be airlifted to a large hospital as both her and the baby-to-be's life were in peril. After a successful birth, my exH was heard to say how relieved he was as he "may have had to choose between" the life of his wife, and the life of his unborn child.

I don't know about anyone else out there, but I was glad to no longer be the wife of the man who felt that was even a choice.

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool

Ronni I was no lecturing you

Dana J. Tuszke — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:01:59 -0500

Ronni I was not lecturing you nor condemning you. I'm sad that you think so. And your assumption that I need to do more living has nothing to do with this post.

I was asking a legitimate question. If that's wrong, then yes, I'm guilty.

All of these opinions prove that Choice should be maintained

The Anonymous Source — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:51:15 -0500

Every woman in this discussion has a different set of circumstances and opinions related to this issue. There is no one set of reasons why women chose, or not chose, to carry out their pregnancies. Thus, why in the world should there be one pat answer???

Outstanding statistics Suzanne

The Anonymous Source — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:40:57 -0500

And just the kind of discussion that I was hoping for. Thank you.

Words fail

Kim Pearson — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:59:36 -0500

Grace, I am so sorry for what you experienced, and so impressed by your apparent resilience. Thank you for sharing your very powerful story.

BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|Contributing Writer, Online Journalism Review

This "women's movement" saved my life.

Grace Davis — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:08:17 -0500

Dana,

... if it were not for the Supreme Court decision in favor of Roe in January, 1973, I would have been forced to carry a pregnancy to term. I would have therefore been in real and grave danger of abuse and assault. The violence in my parents home was so profound, I might have been killed."

Grace Davis
BlogHer Contributing Editor
Member, BlogHer '07 Advisory Board
State of Grace

Kim, no, nothing to do at

shelleyp — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:11:29 -0500

Kim, no, nothing to do at all with what you said.

I enjoy having discussions with women, and my space tends to have more men because I write primarily on technology, and as we all know, there are more men than women in tech. It's nice to have online chats with others of my sex.

But there is an atmosphere here at Blogher, it's hard to explain, which leaves me uncomfortable. A sense that a person can rip another to shreds, as long as you do it in a ladylike manner.

My impression of this environment could be wrong, and not what others feel themselves. But that's what _I_ feel, and so best to just leave the site alone. Instead I'll just subscribe to the blogs of individuals.

But I wanted to say, no, what you said had nothing to do with it. Truly.

Ronni Bennett Time Goes

Ronni Bennett — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:04:19 -0500

Ronni Bennett
Time Goes By

Suzanne Reisman: Thank you for those statistics. I didn't know them; they shed new light for me on the overall issue of abortion.

Kim: Terrific link to the Miriam deFord history.

Valbee: Really important point. During the decades of the abortion debate in which the scar left on women who have aborted pregnancies has been a given, almost no one has been brave enough to say otherwise.

It is nearly 50 years since my abortion and not then nor at any time since have I suffered a twinge of guilt or regret. I was in an impossible situation and, given the times in which it occurred, I was lucky enough to find an almost reasonable solution.

[Hmmm. Interesting. Although I have thought it many times during abortion discussions in the half century since my abortion, this is the first time I have admitted my lack of regret. Years ago, I didn't do so because the social pressure to express one's loss (with accompanying tears) was great and when I was younger, I sometimes wondered if I was missing a morality gene. I know better now.

I don't think telling my little story in this public forum and admitting my sense of relief following the abortion is brave. Perhaps it is an advantage of getting old: coming to understand that one woman's abortion and her emotional response to it doesn't amount to a hill beans except, in this case, to warn of the life-threatening dangers to women of banning abortion.]

Some women who undergo abortions do experience guilt and regret, often emotionally crippling. But people are different, bring differing sensibilities to the same event and no responses are invalid.

It is almost safe to say that in a perfect world where no one ever makes mistakes, where everyone lives responsibly at all times every day, and every child is guaranteed a loving home with two parents who can afford the child, no one would choose abortion.

Until then, every woman must have the right to abortion for whatever her reasons and to not be ashamed of having done so.

The Supreme Court Abortion Decision

Ronni Bennett — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:43:41 -0500

A Supreme Court ruling on 18 April 2007, upheld a law banning late-term abortion with no provision for the health of the mother. In addition, the law is so broadly written that many legal experts believe it leaves the door wide open for individual states to further restrict abortion. Many already have by making life so dangerous for physicians who performed abortions that there is no clinic or hospital within hundreds of miles that will do it.

You may think, because old women are past child-bearing age, that this is not an elder issue. You would be wrong because:

1. Women who are elders now fought hard 40 years ago for Roe v. Wade
2. We lived in the days before Roe v. Wade and know the horror

Iâ€™m not here today to discuss the moral question of abortion. Whatever oneâ€™s belief in that regard and whatever the law, some women will seek to end some pregnancies. They always have. In ancient Rome, they left unwanted newborns on dung heaps to die of exposure. Today, women who cannot afford or do not have access to medical abortions, leave infants on doorsteps throughout the world. Now, if abortion is further restricted in the U.S., the coat hanger solution will return.

I remember it well in my teens and twenties. Not to be too graphic about it, imagine sticking a wire coat hanger up your vagina and poking around with it through excruciating pain and bloodletting risking failure and a mangled embryo or fetus, infection and hemorrhage. Some died.

Most communities in those days had one or more local abortionists whose names were furtively passed around when a woman was seeking to end a pregnancy. These were the kitchen table abortions, performed by people untrained in medicine or surgery, resulting in the same mangled fetuses, infections and hemorrhaging. Some died.

The third option was to find a brave physician who, because he (there were not a lot of women doctors in any medical field in those days) believed in womenâ€™s right to choose, performed secret abortions at high fees and subject to prosecution and jail if discovered. Because this kind of abortion was not performed in a hospital, when there were complications, some women died.

Let me tell you a story:

When I was 18 years old in 1959, I became pregnant. I worked as an office clerk taking home about $250 per month which covered my expenses, if I was careful, and no more. The father made it abundantly clear that he wanted no part of a child nor, any longer, me.

Another factor young women today cannot appreciate when high schools commonly have day-care centers, is the stigma that was attached to becoming an unwed mother in the 1950s. So powerful was the shame attached to it that many pregnant girls and women were sent by their families to visit â€œAunt Maryâ€ which was, in reality, a home for unwed mothers in another state where they stayed for the duration of their pregnancy hoping that no one back home would learn the truth.

In actuality, everyone did know what was up and when the girl returned, she was ostracized by everyone, including her previous girlfriends, and her name was passed around among the young men in the community as a girl who was â€œeasy.â€

For a number of reasons, a home for unwed mothers was not available to me. That left abortion. I knew I didnâ€™t have the guts to attempt the coat hanger solution and I didnâ€™t want to die on a strangerâ€™s kitchen table, so I approached a friend whose husband was a doctor.

A few days later, her husband met me on a corner in the business section of the city and had me write down the telephone number of a man in Seattle he said was a physician who performed secret abortions in an office unassociated with his practice.

A week later, I arrived at the Seattle office at the appointed hour. It was dark, dingy and not very clean. The linoleum floor was cracked. The paint was peeling. There was dust in the corners. As I lay naked from the waist down on a cold, metal table, the doctor, using surgical instruments of dubious sterility, poked and scraped inside me. There was no anesthetic. I screamed. The nurse (well, she was dressed in white and wore a cap) slapped my face and told me to shut up.

I screamed again. She slapped again. She told me the doctor would not complete the abortion unless I was quiet. I screamed no more, but I shed every tear my body was capable of producing and bit through my lip.

In under an hour, wobbly-kneed, I made my way to the airport and returned home.

I was lucky. There was no infection, no hemorrhaging and within a week or two, I had fully recovered. Many women in those days did not.

Do we really want to return to those bad old days? In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg â€“ the only woman on the Supreme Court - called the Courtâ€™s decision â€œalarmingâ€ and â€œirrational.â€ She also said it

â€œ...cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

Men and women bring different sensibilities and attitudes to many issues. I have always believed society benefits from including and weighing these gender differences in public debate. But abortion is where I get radical.

Until a man is capable of giving birth and/or every man is forced by law to both financially support and participate in the gestation and raising of every child he fathers, and such law is enforced without exception (a permanent ankle tracking device for those who run comes to mind) no man has a right to discuss abortion, let alone to vote on it.

No one can convince me that pregnancy, birth and the choice to abort or not are anything but womenâ€™s domain, exclusively.

* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What itâ€™s really like to get older.,