Bless you.

This. It is a huge problem in a lot of states, especially because a lot of these legislators have absolutely no idea how to word these bills. In several states they have been written in a way that it would criminalize miscarriage and birth control, but I don't think any state can outdo the ridiculousness of Ohio when the had a fetus "testify" in front of congress.

It's definitely not easy to go to another state to have an abortion, especially in a conservative region, if you don't have the money to get it done. If someone wanted to go to Alabama for an abortion they would have to pay for transportation the day before to get mandatory counseling, get a hotel that night because of the 24 hour waiting period, pay anywhere between $500-900 for the abortion, and then find transportation home. What is going to happen is people are going to be going to be risking their lives by getting unsafe procedures by unlicensed doctors or they are going to self-abort. The only thing these anti-abortion laws are going to do is cause more women to die.

"I don't think any state can outdo the ridiculousness of Ohio when the had a fetus "testify" in front of congress."

I have to say, the fact that the fetus then failed to do what it was supposed to do (have a discernible heartbeat) felt like some deliciously divine justice to me.

Exactly, many women do not have transportation, money, access etc and will resort to self abortions. Women will start dying in great numbers again, or losing their uteruses to infection, bleeding and damage done by self abortion.

This is horrible. Even though I've never had an abortion, I have used Plan B Morning After Pill, (NOT the "abortion pill" Plan B simply prevents you from ovulating that cycle that you had a BC accident and makes the uterus hostile to implantation) and I would NEVER live in a state that tried to control MY access to control of my own body.

I know in this economy many people don't have the ability to move right now, but if you're renting, I'd get the hell OUT! As more once thinking Republicans are living in fear of the Tea Party, more of this personal freedom will be taken from us. Hell, you can buy a gun for a 13 year old, but you can't control your own fertility? What kind of "freedom" is that?

This just makes me sick.

We'll be back to the back alleys in no time.

Sometimes there is no alternative.

Please tell me what the alternative for a 10 year old girl who was raped by her father and became pregnant would be? Pregnancy is very damaging to a child's body. Girls who become pregnant before 15 or so stop growing, often lose high levels of calcium from their bones, suffer from serious pregnancy complications and have a higher death rate if they carry the pregnancy to term.

Also the emotional and psychological damage done by carrying the pregnancy from rape and incest is MUCH MORE STRESSFUL than any unproven "post abortion trauma."

What, please tell me, should a young girl (or anyone) pregnant with a rape or incest induced pregnancy do? I'm a nurse and I know of NO "alternatives" to abortion. Except RU 496....

Honey, despite what some people with anti-woman agendea want you to think there are no "artificial uteruses" nor any way to transplant a pregnancy from one woman to an other.

PLEASE tell me what "alternatives" you are thinking of.

Would you carry the pregnancy of your father, or uncle or friend of the family if he was a child molester? I know what happened to ME when I was 9 and G*d help that man if I had become pregnant.

If you have NEVER walked in an other woman's shoes, you can't "suggest alternatives."

This is wrong in so many ways.

I hope to god that this amendment doesn't pass. I know it shouldn't, but it's hard to tell around here sometimes. I saw a bunch of people in town yesterday waving around VoteYes26 signs, and the implications of what they were trying to force on people reallllly got to me, leading me to make this post.
I'm deeply sorry for what happened to you when you were a child.
I haven't gotten around to renewing my voter registration since I moved, but I am going to renew it TODAY so that I can vote THE HELL NO against this abomination of an "amendment" come November.

Good luck, I Hope it doesn't pass. Make sure you register in time for the election. Sometimes there's a period between registering and being able to vote.

My past is over. I have healed, forgiven and moved on and am living quite well and happily.

Thank you for your kind words.

Meant to add - when I met my birthmom - a friend of mine (who is also adopted) asked if abortion was ever discussed....especiall y given her young age and the circumstance.

She said it never was discussed - she just went to live with an older sister for a while to have me.

Oh - and her father went to jail. His exwife (her mom) said "He has to pay for this..".

I'm sorry that happened to her. That's horrible. However, it was her choice to have a baby.

If for any reason my own mother had chosen not to have me (and her pregnancy was planned) it would have been no one's decision but her's.

I'm no more important than any other person on this planet, and my being born was not a phenomenal event or even all that important. If my mother had chosen abortion (and women were getting abortions as far back as 5,000 years ago, probably earlier) it would have been what was best for HER, the one with the pregnancy.

Your birth mother must have gone through absolute hell. She's probably still suffering. I hope no girl ever has to be forced suffer like that against her will ever again.

As I was trying to work out a response to TexasMama, I read your reply and decided that it says everything I would have said, almost verbatim.....


So instead of risking saying the exact same thing with different, less eloquent words, I'll just agree with you.

You said:
Your birth mother must have gone through absolute hell. She's probably still suffering. I hope no girl ever has to be forced suffer like that against her will ever again.

Actually - my birthmom is the most incredible person I've met considering all she went through. She's been happily married for 40-something years to the love of her life. They raised two great kids (boy and girl) and both my birthmom, her husband and her kids all seem to have healthy views about sex.

When we talked more later on about abortion,etc. - she stated that it was never mentioned or discussed as an option and if I remember right it seemed like she felt that would have been more traumatic than going to live with her older sister and having her family's support and assurance through this time that it was not her fault.

Anyway - from her experience, she has sometimes observed signs in girls that they might be being abused and pointed them out to their mothers (usually by a boyfriend or stepmom) and has been able to help some abuse be stopped.

I have very mixed feelings about abortion - I don't believe in it and think it should be banned - BUT - I also understand that you can't legislate morality.

I think part of my mom's lack of "absolute hell" was because for her to have an abortion would have not been as accepted back then as it would be now - and she had support (emotional, etc.) from all those around her.

Never having been molested or raped by a family member I can't say I'd have been in the right state of mind to do something as getting the morning after pill but when I was raped by two total strangers when I was a teenager I chose to keep them because I was against abortion and I couldn't afford the morning after pill. I hadn't considered the option of going to the hospital to possibly get the pill there, because I was worried that they would bill insurance and my parents would find out (for whatever reason I was too afraid to tell them, for a very long time).

Yes, it was stressful and yes it did put a lot of pressure on me, but I'm glad I did it, and it wasn't that difficult to find an alternative. Adoption was an easy one for me. Also, in other countries (which I mentioned here in the States they do not use medical technology to our advantage) because they are able to incubate and care for preemies, they've been able to successfully early birth babies both vaginally and via C-section and incubate for adoption for those who didn't want to go to full term. I'll have to find the article on it. I believe (but don't quote me) that it is in Germany?

Agreed. I don't believe in protesting in that way. "Protesting" and telling people that they are wrong isn't going to change minds (as mentioned in another post). The best you can do is educate for those who just may not know, and stop forcing views on others because you aren't actually changing their minds by forcing them to listen. That last sign you mentioned is amusing

Yes, living in the south, I am very familiar with abstinence only programs.....I know this isn't the most recent data, but look! Mississippi's winning!.....Because good ol' southern Christian parents would rather their kids get pregnant or diseased than recognize that telling kids not to have sex DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEIR KIDS WILL NOT HAVE SEX.

Even if you feel this way, the entire issue is far, far larger than that. Abortion services are a tiny, tiny part of Planned Parenthood. The assault on Planned Parenthood takes away birth control and other reproductive services from women as a political move. More women will die from cervical cancer, especially the poor. More women will become pregnant. Self-abortions will rise, with their corresponding death rate.

Also, abortion is not just the termination of a live fetus, it also refers to the removal of an already-dead fetus. Women who get abortions to remove an already-dead fetus that failed to miscarry get harassed and blocked by anti-abortion political agendas, risking their lives for the sake of something that is already dead. Women who genuinely miscarry can also face criminal proceedings.

Being pro-life as in "women shouldn't get abortions" is not a stance I agree with, but politically it is far more than just that and causes a great deal of death and misery. The current pro-life political agenda is battling not just to remove the right to choose (remember, the right to choose still includes the right to choose to carry the pregnancy, so religious institutions can always work on that angle of convincing if they wish) but also against birth control in general, against gynecological exams and pap smears, against sex education, against medical assistance in cases of miscarriage, against during-pregnancy health check-ups, against rape victims getting access to legal resources, and many other things of that nature.

The "Absolute Hell" I was talking about was having to have been raped by her own father and carrying a child of incest.

No one knows if they will suffer "post abortion trauma." You don't know what will be traumatic until you've been through it, often the things you think will be awful turn out to be much more tolerable than expected and things one thought might be easy turn out to be difficult. Most well done, non-agenda related studies have shown "post abortion trauma" to be very rare. The most common emotion after an abortion is releif, followed by some sadness and then getting on with life.

Women who had abortions from incest caused pregnancies have, in most healthy families and tolerant societies and communities always been supported and accepted. Always. In fact, even before abortion was "legal" having one due to incest and rape was allowed in most states.

I'm sorry you were raped, I didn't know you became pregnant from it. That's awful

I am a nurse and have worked in Maternal Infant care and KNOW what is the limit for preterm babies. The survival age is about 23 weeks of gestation. I worked with ONE baby who was born at 21 weeks. He spent 6 months in an Isolette (they are not called incubators anymore) and his parent's hospital bill (which someone HAS to pay) was approx $5 million dollars. More than his lifetime cap on Insurance payments, as he was born before the new health care laws were put in action. That isn't counting all the neurological, physical therapy, nutritional therapy and life long care he will need for the rest of his life.

It is not the same as "embryo transfer" (because there is no such thing) nor are Isolattes "artificial wombs." Not by a long shot. The majority of babies born at this age end up with lifelong developmental disorders and the death rate is still high.

Also, the USA has the MOST advanced preterm infant care in the world and Loyola University Teaching Hospital in Chicago (actually in Maywood) has the most advanced care of virtually any hospital in the United States, I can assure you, they are NOT doing anything in Germany that Loyola isn't already doing. I know, I've worked there. I've worked with early pre-term babies, and what is done to them is fairly awful a good portion of the time, those babies suffer for months and years. Some survive, some don't. Being a Catholic Hospital, Loyola has a stake in keeping earlier and earlier babies alive, despite the long term risks to their health, development and the high rate of bankruptcy of their parents, trying to pay for these obscenely expensive "advancements."


Also, no doctor nor hospital will take a baby out prematurely because a woman can't carry the pregnancy, unless it's a medical reason. Preterm birth is not and never was "an alternative" to early abortion. The vast majority of abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and there is NO alternative to that.

Eucaly said:
Also, abortion is not just the termination of a live fetus, it also refers to the removal of an already-dead fetus. Women who get abortions to remove an already-dead fetus that failed to miscarry get harassed and blocked by anti-abortion political agendas, risking their lives for the sake of something that is already dead. Women who genuinely miscarry can also face criminal proceedings.

You're absolutely right. I had to have a D&C for a miscarriage I suffered. We made sure there was no life in the fetus and the procedure was performed, because I was bleeding profusely as the entire pregnancy had not been emptied from my uterus.

In the recovery room, I was crying, and saying I wanted the fetus put back in, because I was sad and coming out of anesthetic, (and not making sense) and the nurse was trying to comfort me. She said, "Honey, you know that's impossible. You've just experienced an incomplete abortion and the procedure was necessary." What she meant, and even in my drugged state, was the truth I KNEW she meant "a miscarriage."

Sadly, there was a nun in the recovery room (it was an outpatient center and the majority of people in post surg were elderly people recovering from cataract surgery) This woman gave me the stink eye, and then starting whispering to the other women with her. As I was leaving with my husband, several of these women blocked my way and gave me dirty looks and acted absolutely like assholes. I had a freaking MISCARRIAGE, but their judgmental attitudes caused them to knee jerk and treat me like shit.

Nice Christians they were. Caring more about a non-viable pregnancy, and not knowing the medical terms being used than for a suffering young mother.

@ P-Gell: I'm sorry to hear that, hun. A friend of mine had to go through the same thing as you last year. Her own mother (she happened to be a pastor's wife) pretty much ostracized her for getting an abortion because her miscarriage.

Seconded, it's just not so black and white. Plus, you didn't explain what these "alternatives" truly are.