Happy New Year!

It may be slightly arbitrary, this idea of a new year and a chance to start fresh, but I think it gives us all a chance to reflect and how we can set goals and make improvements.

It's been a year of ups and downs in the abortion field (as pretty much every year is).

Health care reform was finally passed and signed by the president (yay!) but an abortion exclusion was included (boo!). As always states were active in restricting access to abortion. To name only a couple - Nebraska passed a law banning abortion after 20 weeks, the Oklahoma legislature passed a law requiring an ultrasound "that provides the best image. If a woman is early in her pregnancy, when most abortions are performed, that likely means a transvaginal procedure, said Oklahoma City ob-gyn Dana Stone, MD. Physicians also must display and describe the ultrasound image or be subject to significant penalties." (http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/05/10/gvl20510.htm). In addition to the president's restriction of abortion coverage in the new government funded health care programs, many states added restrictions, so that women can't use their own privately funded health insurance plans if they are sold through the health care reform program. In November we saw a more conservative, anti-choice U.S. House of Representatives elected.

Don't lose heart abortioneers! We did see some positive news in 2010. In Phoenix, an administrator (a nun) of St. Joseph's Hospital allowed a critically ill woman to have an abortion. She faces penalties for this (apparently including excommunication), but she did what was right for this woman regardless of how it affected her. Scott Roeder was given a life sentence for the murder of Dr. Tiller as he ushered parishoners into church in May of 2009. Charlie Crist (soon to be former Governor of Florida) vetoed a bill that would have required women seeking a first trimester abortion to get an ultrasound.

In this new year, let's all think of how we can improve our lives and those of others. My resolution is to be healthier and happier in 2011, and I'm adding something to that - to help others be healthier and happier. One way we can all do that is to help small abortion funds (www.nnaf.org), become clinic escorts at our local abortion clinic, and get involved in campaigns to improve access and to avoid these heinous laws that hurt women.

On behalf of all of the abortioneers, I wish everyone a wonderful new year filled with good health and happiness.

What are you doing here? Go read this Nation article!

In the past year-and-a-half-ish, there's been a lot of noise (well, relative to the usual silence, at least) about women self-medicating with misoprostol to induce an abortion. The first piece, the New York Times article "For Privacy’s Sake, Taking Risks to End Pregnancy," was short on data (which is unfortunately bound to be the case with reports of activity that is both rare and hidden) and long on extrapolation (which is unfortunately bound to be the case with NYT trend pieces). It implied that lots of Dominican women in New York are endangering themselves via illegal abortion despite easy access to cheap legal procedures. (Lots of broad brushstrokes in there, don't you think? Technically a self-induced abortion isn't even "illegal" in NYC!) The letters to the editor included some thoughtful additional information (most of it anecdotal), by the way. More to the point, there were substantive critiques (like "Side Effects: Complications at The New York Times from DIY Abortions" at RH Reality Check) of how the paper was written and that extrapolation I mentioned, including objections from the researchers involved in the study cited.

This summer, Nicholas Kristof wrote a surprisingly nice column ("Another Pill That Could Cause A Revolution") about misoprostol's revolutionary power to save women's lives in multiple ways. Considering that he's been reluctant in the past to even mention abortion, even when writing about pregnancy-related mortality, and considering that his writing tends toward simplistic reduction of complicated problems and even toward cavalier moralizing about the decision-making of the poor, well, that was a pretty nice column, considering.

And this week, Laura Tillman at the Nation brings us "Crossing the Line," which explores in a bit more depth the reasons that in many situations -- even among US residents, even among speakers of English, even among US-born women -- it might be entirely logical to obtain medication under the table and induce an abortion at home. I'll just post an excerpt here to give you an idea, but you should read the whole piece.

A single mother of two boys, Diana was unemployed and in the hospital when she began to suspect she was pregnant. It was December 2006, and she had missed her period for two months. Her doctor conducted a urine test, which came back negative, but when Diana still hadn't gotten her period in January, she started to panic. She knew it wasn't the right time for another baby. She wasn't working and had been suffering severe symptoms of brittle diabetes, a rare form of diabetes that requires frequent hospital visits and brings bouts of depression. She felt unstable and wasn't able to afford her medications. "I thought, If I am pregnant, I want to take something to not be pregnant," she says.

For most women in the United States, this would mean a trip to a doctor or abortion clinic. But where Diana lives, in Brownsville, Texas, just north of the border, Mexican pharmacies are only a few miles away. Items said to be abortifacients—including pills, teas and shots—are well-known to be cheap and accessible just across the bridge. Misoprostol, a pill that makes up half of the two-drug combination prescribed for medical abortions in the United States, is easy to purchase over the counter in Mexico because of its effectiveness in treating ulcers. When used alone and taken correctly, it will produce a miscarriage between 80 and 85 percent of the time. ...

Go read the rest! And have a good week!


PS: Lots of very interesting research has been done on misoprostol (and mifepristone too) in the past year or few -- on both clinical and psychosocial aspects of medication abortion -- and I hope to talk more about all that in a few upcoming posts. Hope that sounds good to you :)

"Every child is valuable, and children aren't a punishment"

Sorry you haven't gotten your regular Monday-morning post. Work and/or school are swallowing a couple of us whole, but come back and chill with us tomorrow!

In the meantime, we don't want to leave you totally bereft. Check out the words of a man who's pious enough to give us his honest take on the worth of disabled kids and what Christians "suggest" for sinners:

Legislator Says Disabled Kids May Be God's Punishment
By Kelsey Radcliffe
Sunday, February 21, 2010

RICHMOND, VA – State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican. "In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

and check this out:

"Looking at it from a cultural, historical perspective, this organization should be called 'Planned Barrenhood'" [Marshall said].

[Dean Nelson, executive director of the Network of Politically Active Christians] suggested that the organization be called "Klan Parenthood".

Oooh, zinga-zing-zing! They got you good, Planned Parenthood! Maybe next time you won't choose such a DUMB RYHMABLE NAME. (I actually think it's a fantastic name and a fantastic goal. Poor PP.)

Oh, on that note, can I tell you how many of my clients through the years have mistakenly called it Plant Parenthood, Planet Parenthood [a place where you don't want to go!], Parent Planethood, Paired Planning? A lot! It sort of rolls off the tongue and people don't always remember the specific words, I think.

There's so many other funny name mix-ups I've heard for clinics and funds -- one by the acronym of EMA which a client kept referring to as "she" and I eventually realized she meant "Emma." Abortioneers and friends! Any similar misnomers you're able to share?