My heart needs a break from breaking

Have you been reading the news lately? I have, unfortunately. It feels as though current events have just been an unrelenting stream of examples of the horrors and cruelty that human beings are capable of inflicting on other human beings. Thanks, murderers and abusers and rapists and torturers, but we don't need more examples. We get it. You can stop now.

And in the last several hours I've done only two things: read about the latest awful case of kidnapping and almost-unspeakable abuse, the one in Cleveland, or stewed over it while unsuccessfully attempting to focus on other things.

But I'm here trying to write something because there's a part of me that's sure someone will ask. Or assume. How many hours or days til the half-witted comments hit, ones about how this is all because of the "culture of death" that abortion perpetuates? OR the ones asking why I "care" about this but "don't care" about the trial of Kermit Gosnell, a man who stands accused of killing babies and calling it abortion?

I ask because because it's so, so, so routine; these words have likely been uttered on several prominent anti-abortion blogs today. But I don't want to go find out.

Sometimes, despite being a super-famous internet celebrity (humble joke), and despite bearing the weighty mantle of spokesperson for ALL abortioneers and being asked for comments on ALL bad things that happen to babies or fetuses or embryos (angry joke), a person's got to have some time to themselves to deal with pain.

We often have stuff to say about things that show up in the news, but I'm not interested in being a ripped-from-the-headlines current events commentator. I just wanted to tell my truth, particularly in times when it wasn't represented elsewhere. But you're probably sickened and saddened too, and that's the truth for all of us.

Some days I can't bear to look

I know I haven't been around much. Frankly, keeping up with the insane and nonstop political assaults on abortion and related care has been nearly too much to bear. You'd think I'd be writing nonstop, because SO MANY FEELINGS, but at times the feelings kinda drain my emotional energy. I know some of my co-bloggers have been feeling that same drain, lately, in various ways -- and I bet fellow abortioneers in the field have, too.

So it seems almost futile to single out one law and one group of politicians. But if any law has earned that, I guess it'd be the latest restriction out of the magnolia state. Mississippi, come on down!

Maybe you've heard? The lawmakers who passed Mississippi's House Bill 1390, while claiming to be motivated by a desire to protect women from dangerous abortion providers, are also cheering the fact that the bill will have the effect of shutting down the only existing legal abortion provider in the state.

Sen. Kenny Wayne Jones (D-Canton) asked Sen. Dean Kirby (R-Pearl), who chairs the Senate Public Health Committee*, whether ending abortions in the state would force women to resort to dangerous, back-alley abortions.

"That's what we're trying to stop here, the coat-hanger abortions," Kirby replied, in reference to the abortions provided at the clinic in Jackson. "The purpose of this bill is to stop back-room abortions."

*I would also like to call your attention to the fact that Sen. Dean Kirby chairs the Senate Public Health Committee. Presumably, that is a Senate committee on public health. But maybe it's...a Senate committee against public health? I guess the title isn't super specific.

Oh, speaking of the Legislative Brotherhood Against Public Health, see also the breathtakingly cavalier Rep. Bubba Carpenter announcing afterward:

"We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital.

"It's going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all -- but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to-- Roe vs. Wade. So we've done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.' That's what we've heard over and over and over.

But hey, you have to have moral values."

Wow. Was that a sneer I just heard? And then...a shrug?

He has a point, right? Sure there might be some poor pitiful women who can't afford to go out of state for their medical care and end up injured or dead using coat hangers and home remedies -- but aren't we pro-choice people (the other side) just talking about those women to score political points? I mean, why else would you bother talking about them? We say it over and over and over because we don't have better talking points, I guess. But hey! Those deaths are so trivial we can mock them and the people who talk about them.

(Later, Rep. Carpenter also shrugged off his coat hanger 'quote' as "just some language that some of the African-Americans used.")

(You thought I made up that last bit, didn't you? But no. He really did. I mean, it sounds like he's saying that therefore those accounts amount to nothing worth examining? But hey! That's okay, because African-American women (and other black women, and other women of color) definitely don't have even more experience with unsafe abortion than white women.)

Gosh, wonder why I feel so tired?

Las evidencias hablan por sí solas!

I attended a health conference yesterday and stopped by one of my favorite orgs, Ipas, to score some swag and some abortion news. I saw a small booklet entitled "Ten Facts About Abortion." Hooray! Now, I already knew those facts, could predict exactly what they would say and how they would be described, so I decided to challenge myself. I put it down and picked up "Diez Datos Sobre Aborto." Same info, but in Spanish! So I thought I'd share it with The Abortioneers, and also with our Spanish-speaking audience. It hadn't occurred to me just how much misinformation is out there to confuse and horrify non-English speakers that we simply aren't catching. So I present to any Spanish-speakers out there who are looking for information and not finding it:

Mito: El aborto ocasiona el “síndrome postaborto”.

Dato: El síndrome postaborto no es un diagnóstico psiquiátrico válido.

Mito: El aborto causa cáncer de mama.

Dato: No existe ninguna relación causal entre el aborto (ya sea espontáneo o inducido) y un aumento en el riesgo de que la mujer desarrolle cáncer de mama.

Mito: La anticoncepción de emergencia causa aborto.

Dato: La anticoncepción de emergencia evita el embarazo. Si la mujer ya está embarazada,

la anticoncepción de emergencia no tendrá ningún efecto en el embarazo y no causará un aborto.

Mito: El embarazo es más seguro que el aborto.

Dato: Los procedimientos

de aborto

efectuados por profesionales de la

salud capacitados, en condiciones

higiénicas, son mucho más seguros

que el embarazo y el parto.

Mito: La legalización del aborto no lo hace seguro.

Dato: Cuando las mujeres tienen acceso a servicios de aborto seguro, legal y a precios asequibles, se reducen drásticamente las tasas de muertes y lesiones maternas atribuibles al aborto inseguro.

Mito: Restringir el acceso a los servicios de aborto es la mejor manera de disminuir el índice

de abortos.

Dato: La mejor manera de disminuir el índice de abortos es reducir el número de embarazos no intencionales por medio de educación sexual integral, prevención de la violencia basada en género y acceso a métodos anticonceptivos eficaces centrados en la mujer.

Mito: El aborto con medicamentos es peligroso y puede causar la muerte de las mujeres.

Dato: El aborto con medicamentos

es una opción segura y eficaz para

la interrupción del embarazo en el

primer trimestre.

Mito: Si el aborto es legal, las mujeres lo utilizarán para el control de la natalidad.

Dato: Las mujeres que no tienen información y acceso a métodos anticonceptivos confiables se enfrentan con tasas más altas de embarazo no planeado y posiblemente recurran al aborto para interrumpir el embarazo, sin importar la legalidad del aborto.

Mito: El aborto es exportado por el Occidente imperialista a los países en desarrollo.

Dato: Desde el inicio de la historia documentada, las mujeres en todo el mundo han interrumpido embarazos no deseados. Esta práctica está bien documentada.

Mito: El aborto nunca es necesario para salvar la vida de una mujer.

Dato: El aborto para salvar la vida de una mujer o una niña es médicamente necesario en ciertas circunstancias y es muy aceptado por profesionales e instituciones como la Organización Mundial de la Salud.

The best thing about this resource is that it actually provides SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE (DING DING DING!) to support these FACTS ABOUT ABORTION. Great empowerment for non-English speakers who may feel disenfranchised and under-informed in this country. Clinic workers/counselors/direct service Abortioneers, I encourage you to share this and other Ipas materials. Check their website!

Even sadder times: Bad doctors, system failures, lost lives

Terrible news. Kermit Gosnell has made the news again. You might remember, we wrote about him in March when his medical office was discovered to be practicing abortion in improper ways and under unsafe conditions.

Now he has been charged with multiple counts of murder. I'm warning you, the story is long, sad and gross; also, both the article and the grand jury report have some unsourced descriptions and apparent speculation. But ignore those and the allegations are still clear. Investigators say that some of the wrongdoings are too old to press charges or too many files have been destroyed to amass sufficient evidence; nevertheless, from the evidence they did gather, they're charging Gosnell and several other people with the deaths of seven prematurely-delivered infants and one woman who sought his services. In fact, because of how much the piece (and all the headlines and abbreviated news pieces going around) lingers on the dead newborns, it's easy to miss the few lines mentioning that he and his staff caused the deaths of at least two women and injuries for many others.

Gosnell's lawyer, while maintaining that everyone's innocent until proven guilty and the case must have its day in court etc, also apparently attempted to mitigate Gosnell's actions by saying he "served patients in a low-income city neighborhood for decades." Would he really have us believe this is what serving the underserved looks like? It's not even like this happened in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming. It's west Philly. It's devastating that society, our insurance system and Medicaid laws, state regulators and medical services have abandoned some women to a situation where they can't obtain the safe, legal and ethical care available a few miles from them. The other side of the tracks may as well be the other side of the world.

Another stupid thing to say:

State regulators ignored complaints about Gosnell and the 46 lawsuits filed against him, and made just five annual inspections, most satisfactory, since the clinic opened in 1979. The inspections stopped completely in 1993 because of what prosecutors said was the pro-abortion rights attitude that set in after Democratic Gov. Robert Casey, an abortion foe, left office.

It strikes me as fucked up and crazy that someone would blame this disaster on a "pro-abortion rights attitude." No pro-choice person wants women to be injured and killed because they sought abortions! In fact, many people are pro-choice because they're aware that women risking injury and death is part of the status quo for most times and places in which abortion is illegal. If there were actually a pro-abortion-rights attitude in Pennsylvania government, they'd have been collaborating with experts who actually care about improving the quality of abortion care.

In fact, if more states did exactly that, then we wouldn't have situations like this in Pennsylvania on the one hand, and state agencies like Louisiana's shutting down clinics for no cause simply to prevent abortions on the other hand. (As Robin Rothrock -- RIP -- said at that time, "No one in their right mind would think the state of Louisiana is interested in quality abortion care. It is interesting that the state sees itself as an expert on these issues when it does not provide any such care, and when it prohibits use of any public dollars for abortion care, including training.")

The most frustrating, haunting thing in all of this is summed up by an excerpt from the March article:

More than a decade ago, CHOICE, a Philadelphia abortion referral service, contacted the state medical board about Gosnell because some of his patients had called CHOICE with appalling stories, said Brenda Green, the organization's executive director. "We were told that we could not file a complaint. It had to be a patient. It could not be a third party," Green said.

Reproductive health activists and Gilbert Abramson, a lawyer who filed the 2008 case that was later dropped, said they urged Gosnell's patients to file complaints with the state. But when the women learned that they would have to provide medical records and other forms, plus attend a hearing in Harrisburg, they changed their minds.

As Rob wrote at Abortion Gang yesterday, states keep getting the oversight wrong. Many states harass providers baselessly. Yet Gosnell was a concern of pro-choice advocates and case managers for years, but the medical board said only an actual patient could file a complaint. Apparently, the state can pursue an abortion clinic relentlessly and routinely without a particular basis, but review of a doctor in private practice (any doctor, not just an abortion provider) must be prompted by a patient. If this is true (confirm, anyone?), I just don't understand it.

"Schooling Chris Smith" on abortion's role in the UN's Millennium Development Goals

Good evening! Just wanted to let you know that Kelly, the brilliant and gracious creator of Schooling Chris Smith, is hosting a cross-post of sorts by yours truly.

Before I get ahead of myself-- do you know who Rep. Chris Smith is? Well, number one, he's a douchebag, and number two under-informed and number three not very good at rhetoric; let's just say all that up-front before you read his op-eds and injure yourself trying to understand what the fuck he's going on about.

Number four, he's also a member of Congress (R-NJ4), and among other things he's the ranking member (second only to the chair) of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs's Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. What does all that mean? Well, as Schooling Chris Smith puts it, it means he gets "to be seen as a strong proponent of human rights despite his complete opposition to full human rights for women." To continue quoting Kelly:

Back in September, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Chris Smith urging activists not to sidetrack the U.N. summit on global poverty by talking about abortion (which is kind of hilarious, considering this is one of the guys who sidetracks women veterans' health care into abortion politics). His op-ed obviously speaks for itself by claiming all abortions cause psychological damage for women and implying that human trafficking and child soldiering are caused by abortion (I have to admit, that's a new one for me).

Some letters were published in response to this piece, but one wasn't. [That's mine! -PS]

So, yeah, being ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs's Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health (takeanotherbreath) also means he gets to say things about global health and international development policy and have them published in newspapers. Even though he hasn't done his research, doesn't know his facts, and can't string together a logical argument. (Am I bitter that I do ALL these things but don't get published in the paper? Not at all!) The Post published a couple responses that (rightly) pointed out Smith [a] was dragging abortion into the conversation from out of nowhere and [b] had glaringly omitted mention of the life-saving importance of contraception. But those responses themselves completely omitted mention of the many errors and false claims Smith made about the role of abortion in saving lives.

Even though it's well past September now, the inauguration of Schooling Chris Smith got me thinking that I shouldn't let a good letter die unread. (If I do say so myself.) Without further chitchat, here it is:

Re: "Abortion does not further children's health," Chris Smith, op-ed 9/19

Rep. Chris Smith's op-ed was long on claims, but short on facts. Having engaged in research, education and service provision in the field of reproductive health, I am left wondering on what evidence Rep. Smith based his assertion that abortion harms children's and women's health (the focuses of the UN's Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5). His attempt to exclude abortion from MDG efforts, discarding established medical evidence in the process, is the real threat to the health of women and the children they already have.

The statement that abortion is "by definition, infant mortality" is silly, as all abortions are, "by definition," performed before birth, which precedes infancy. Terminology aside, Smith's concern for embryo survival leads him to overlook the actual women who die when safe abortion care is out of reach: some develop severe pregnancy complications; some have ectopic pregnancies; others drink bleach, insert sharp objects, or jump from tall heights in an attempt to end pregnancy themselves. Each year an estimated 50 million women worldwide obtain abortions, half under unsafe conditions; worse, the vast majority (95%) of those unsafe abortions take place in the developing world where treatment for complications is harder to obtain. As a result, around 70,000 women die each year due to unsafe abortion, and millions more suffer nonfatal injury and illness. Yet abortion performed by a trained provider in a sanitary setting is one of the safest medical procedures in existence -- much safer than carrying a pregnancy to full-term delivery, as a matter of fact! Contrary to Smith's insinuation, repeated and rigorous cohort studies demonstrate the error in claiming that properly-performed abortion causes physical or psychological complications.

Disregard for the value of human life, as Smith calls it, is made manifest in the poverty, illness, and avoidable death experienced by families who cannot afford another mouth to feed or who lose a caretaker to eclampsia, hemorrhage or sepsis. If safe abortion is struck from the agenda, then unsafe abortion will simply continue to kill women and orphan their children.


placenta sandwich, A.D.D., I.B.S.
Vice-President of Irritated Blogging and Letter-Writing
The Abortioneers
Credentials Out The Ass

(Actually, I gave them my real name and my real credentials-out-the-ass.)

There was so much more I had wanted to say, but brevity is the soul of getting published, I was told. (Am I bitter that I chopped a bunch out but didn't get published? Not at all!) Like I also wanted to say that there's empirical evidence at the family level that maternal morbidity and mortality (for example from unsafe abortion) results in greater child mortality. Not a shocker. And also that anyone who knows anything about health infrastructure can tell you that women in Chile and Ireland survive (mostly survive) their countries' abortion bans because they have access to doctors trained to treat complications of illegal/DIY abortion, not because they've stopped having abortions! Anyone who thinks an abortion ban would not increase mortality in a country with poor health infrastructure and lots of remote rural area -- like, say, Ethiopia or Zambia -- would surely not qualify to be on anyone's Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, right?   Oh... wait. (Still not bitter!!)

I'll leave it there and ask you to head over to Schooling Chris Smith to discuss Kelly's question: What would your letter in response look like? What else has been left out?

Media Monday! "Abortion Democracy," the documentary

A few weeks ago I met a German woman named Sarah Diehl, who's in the US doing a screening tour for her documentary, "Abortion Democracy: Poland / South Africa." I saw a short preview of the film and have been looking forward to seeing it ever since.

Poland is one of the few countries in Europe that has criminalized abortion in almost all cases -- and this isn't an ancient law, either, but one passed in 1994. I remember a few years ago reading about a Polish woman who sued the government in the European Court of Human Rights after being denied an abortion that would have saved her deteriorating eyesight. Alicja Tysiac is functionally blind as a result of this denial; the court found that the Polish law did not even uphold the narrow exceptions it claimed to make for cases where a woman's health was endangered by pregnancy, the government had failed by the standards of its own law and  Tysiac's human rights had been violated. The court awarded her compensation, but of course that won't restore her sight. The story both outraged and terrified me: abortion policies aren't an abstraction limited to proving ideological points -- they are terribly, viscerally real for the women whose decision-making they vitiate.

South Africa, on the other hand, is one of the few countries in Africa that has legalized elective abortion. The law was changed in 1996 to allow abortion "on demand" in the first trimester and abortion on certain legal, medical or socioeconomic grounds in weeks 13-20. (Quick fact: "on demand" means that women are not required to stand before a judge, panel of doctors, or other jury who will approve or reject their 'case' for an abortion.) Yet legally-qualifying abortions are still quite difficult to obtain for many South African women, especially in the second trimester. In fact, "Abortion Democracy" suggests that it may be "easier to obtain an illegal abortion in Poland than it is to obtain a legal abortion in South Africa." In this sense, national policies are not the only thing that determines the nature of on-the-ground access, not by a long shot.

I'll be watching the movie tonight, so I'll be back with an update on how it was. In the meantime, I hope this trailer gets you as intrigued as I am.

Labor Day

For those of us in the medical world, labor is synonymous with child birth. Why? Because if you have ever been in a delivery room, you know that pushing a baby out of you is a HELL of a lot of work!

I personally have never done this sort of labor myself, but I can only imagine the energy it requires.

However, the labor doesn’t stop in the delivery room. Raising a child is, by far, the hardest job in the world. It takes time, patience, money, and unconditional love. And for some women, they are not quite ready for this type of job-they are not financially stable, they are with the wrong partner, they are not emotionally ready, they are taking care of their children.* For whatever reason, it’s not the right time for them to begin this type of labor.

Choosing to terminate a pregnancy is difficult, as is raising a child. We must learn as a society to trust women and their choices. Women know what is right for them and their lives, and it will be our job as physicians and members of the community to support a woman in whatever she decides to do with her body.

On this Labor Day, I honor the women who dedicate their lives to their children and who make difficult decisions as to whether to be a mother. I remember all the women who died unnecessarily during delivery and who died from botched, unsafe abortions.

Today, let's not forget the power of choice and how it can affect all women, everywhere!


*Most women who choose abortion are mothers already.

Abortion in the Developing World

I'll be honest, I don't know a lot about global health, particularly that of the "developing world". I do know that diseases and conditions easily treated in the western world, are death sentences for many in developing countries. We have access to drugs and medical services that medical personnel in those countries probably dream of. So why is it that we would block life saving medical services? Let me rephrase that. Why would politicians of "developed nations" purposefully block funding to programs that can and do save lives? This is a question we should ask those participating in the G-8 Summit that is currently happening in Ontario, Canada.

The G-8 Summit is an annual gathering of world leaders from traditionally developed nations that have long held power over worldwide policies and initiatives. The countries represented in the G-8 are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union (which isn't a country but a coalition of most European countries). According to the website for the G-8 Summit 2010 the summit "addresses a wide range of issues in areas such as international development, health and peace and security." So, what exactly is happening in this year's G-8 Summit?

Some of the items that are on the agenda this year are security - nuclear non-proliferation and the peaceful and safe use of nuclear energy (is that possible?), political and economic support in Africa, and something I'm kind of surprised to see -- maternal and child health. It's nice to see women's health presented as urgent. Let's look more at what the G-8 wants to do to improve women's and children's health care throughout the developing world.

Maternal health truly is and should be a worldwide concern. Hundreds of thousands of women die giving birth each year. Women are expected to give so much of themselves for the sake of reproduction (that's a woman's purpose, right?). Many (most?) of the people living in the developing world live in conditions we would consider deplorable. The spread of diseases like HIV, TB, and malaria cause incredibly difficult conditions for women and their children who can be particularly vulnerable. So the focus on maternal and child health sounds great, right? As we all know, nothing is perfect.

The problem with this plan is that they don't want to provide funding for family planning, contraception, or abortion (and by they I mean Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper). Not only that, he wants to withhold money from any organizations that provide abortions. We know that you can't really have maternal health without including family planning services. The UNFPA estimates that about 74,000 women worldwide die every year from unsafe abortions. These unsafe abortions occur because of laws restricting access, health workers with little or no training, no access to a health worker, etc. I think you get it. There's a reason why complications for abortions in the US and the rest of the developed world are so low. Stephen Harper is a conservative, but abortion is legal in Canada and funded by their public health care! What is going on here? Why do his political views get to interfere with the health of women? Why is this coming from Canada?! Even the US representative spoke out against this policy. “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions,” U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says. (FINALLY!)

Wake up Stephen Harper. Women will have abortions. Women need access to safe abortion care. They need access to all facets of family planning and contraception. The only thing these restrictions do is put women in unsafe conditions. If she can't get a safe abortion, she'll go somewhere to get an abortion that will likely be unsafe, could make her very sick, and could possibly kill her. But I guess Stephen Harper won't think about that.

The Case of the Minor

I would like to piggy back off of Revolutionary Vagina's last post about the young girl who self-induced an abortion using a lead pencil. An article about this was posted on lifenews.com, and contains several false and just plain ridiculous claims.

I am sure this story probably has most people wanting to vomit and cry at the same time as their hearts break for this little girl. I would also guess however that many of those same people would not even bat an eye if her method of killing her child had been a RU 486 prescription from the local Planned Parenthood. -Bryan Kemper, head of Stand True, a pro-life group

First of all, you cannot get the pill from Planned Parenthood to induce abortion after about 9 weeks. From the article, it sounds as if she was much much further along, but who really knows. If she was "delivering a baby," I would guess she had to been late second trimester. If she was that far along, wouldn't her parents have noticed? If she was in her first trimester, she wouldn't have delievered a "baby." She would have bled a lot. Kemper makes it sound like you can just take the pill at 25 weeks and boom you're done. Totally not the case.

Secondly, if this young woman would have been able to go to Planned Parenthood to get her abortion pill prescription, she would have had an interview with a counselor. Obviously, we cannot know if she would have told the truth to the counselor or not, but it would definitely have been in her best interest to talk to an adult about having an abortion before trying to perform one on herself. Thus it probably would have been GOOD for her to go to Planned Parenthood.

It is also a very different thing to perform an abortion on yourself and then have your creepy older boyfriend bury the fetus in a ditch. That is just not normal. That is very sad, scary, and bizarre. Having an abortion in an abortion clinic is normal. It is safe. It is not dangerous. The risk of even minor complications is very, very low when an abortion is performed in a safe, sterile environment with trained medical professionals, like at a Planned Parenthood. So, yes, I would not bat an eye at that. If that makes me a monster, then you have a fucked up definition of what it means to be a monster.

Kemper also said, "I can also hear the spin now, 'this is why we need safe and legal abortion,' -- even though abortions are already legal and are supposed to prevent such self-induced abortions." This goes back to precisely what Revolutionary Vagina was talking about. Pennsylvania has parental consent laws. She obviously did not want to tell her parents. How come none of the anti-choicers want to talk about that? If she was able to go to a clinic she wouldn't have been in this situation. THAT is the problem. Further, she is thirteen years old. She is child. I can say at thirteen I was in no shape to be having sex, and definitely not sex with someone SEVENTEEN years older than me. Can we take a step back and ask, why was this thirteen year old doing this? Her boyfriend/partner/creeper said he had sex with her "hundreds" of times. How did this happen? It troubles me this happened so many times yet nobody seemed to be aware. Of course, teens can be very sneaky and do a good job hiding things from their parents, but she is thirteen! I find it hard to believe a thirteen year old could sucessfully pull that off unless she is some sort of smooth talking magical pixie with a unicorn.

My favorite quote of the article is "'If the girl had gone to Planned Parenthood he would probably still be raping her as I doubt they would have turned him in," Kemper explained."

It is true there are cases where Planned Parenthood staffers did not appropriately follow state rules and turn in a man who was engaging in an inappropriate relationship a minor. I think that is terrible. It is beyond messed up. I would prefer if everyone followed the rules about that. I do think that each staffer was trying to act in the best interest of the minor, even if the staffer might not have been in reality. Either way, it is ridiculous to assume that all Planned Parenthoods everywhere just let minors get raped all the time like it's no big deal, because that is definitely NOT the case. I have worked with plenty of clinics that have bent over backwards to get guys arrested who were doing that kind of stuff. Planned Parenthoods and clinics, for the vast majority of cases, DO follow the rules. And rapists get caught. Which is a good thing because they might otherwise have not.

How come anti-choicers don't want to talk about how clinics often get bad guys in trouble. Or that this girl, who could have died, and just went through something terribly traumatic, didn't have to go through that. She could have just had a regular, safe abortion. It wouldn't have been the horrifying experience of shoving a pencil into your own uterus and then becoming violently ill and having to have your boyfriend who is not a doctor deliver your dead baby for you and then take it and bury it in a ditch. The fact she had to go through that is so fucked up. If she had access to a clinic, she would have been able to have an abortion with a doctor who knows what he/she is doing and with counselors who are trained to talk to her about her decision. A fucking sad state of affairs. Perfect example of what parental consent laws are dangerous.

Also -- if anyone stumbled upon this page by googling the story of the girl who used the pencil, and is thinking of using a pencil or anything to self abort. PLEASE DO NOT DO IT. Self aborting is very dangerous and often leads to at minimum serious complications and even death. If you have questions about where to go please see the National Abortion Federation's list of clinics or contact your local Planned Parenthood for a place in your area.

Restricting Abortion

I am so tired of the many abortion restrictions happening throughout the country right now. New ultrasound laws, parental notification/consent laws - all these do is hurt women who have already experienced a lot of pain. They don't stop someone who really wants an abortion from getting one. They just cause her to go through more trauma.

By now you all may have already heard the story of a 13-year old from Pennsylvania who tried to self abort with a pencil. This girl, impregnated by her 30-year old boyfriend chose to risk her life in order to end her pregnancy. Why did she do this to herself? Pennsylvania has a parental consent law. In order for this girl to have had a safe abortion, she would have had to get the consent of one of her legal guardians. Why wouldn't she talk to her parents? Well, she's 13 and was having a relationship with a 30-year old. Now, of course I don't condone the relationship those two had, and who knows what kind of control this man had this girl under. The fact is, she was afraid of being found out, so she inserted a pencil into her vagina, hoping to give herself an abortion, and ended up miscarrying. Why are these laws continuing to be created? Why do people think these laws are a good idea? This story shows that if someone wants an abortion, they will find a way do it and possibly hurt or kill themselves in the process. It makes me angry.

Some light in this bleak scene can come from unlikely sources. In Florida, Governor Crist appears likely to veto a law that would require all women seeking an abortion in the state of Florida to get an ultrasound. He made the following statement to the Pensacola News Journal.

"I have concerns about it," he said. "The notion that there would be a forced ultrasound, if you will, that would have to be paid for by the woman involved — you know, those are the things that seem to be pretty difficult for a woman already in a difficult situation."

Wow. I am amazed to hear a politician say this, and a Republican at that. Could there be hope?

Abortion Abroad: Part 2

I visited a semi-rural reproductive health clinic in Kenya. Impressive! My org has done a great job recruiting talented clinic staff and outreach counselors to give women accurate information (save for one glaring translation typo!) and quality services that I myself have utilized. They even have a system for providing affordable services to women who would otherwise not be able to afford prenatal care or birth control. I donated anyway; do you know how far a measly few dollars goes??

I sat and discussed patient issues with the provider at one clinic: how many IUD insertions he completes in one month (a lot); how many women have them removed (none); how many women/babies had been lost during delivery (only one woman, due to a surprise post-partum hemmorhage). Naturally, I asked - knowing the answer in advance - if he had ever performed an abortion. He had not. But he had seen a handful of women who had sustained injuries or illnesses from clandestine abortions. Every village has its man or woman who has abortion secrets and serves dozens of women in the community. Injuries happen frequently, he explained, though few women present for treatment because they are a) afraid of being punished, or b) dead already. These village practitioners use herbs, potions, sharp objects, the usual. Of course, we in the "developed world" know how dangerous these methods are (right?), but by the time a woman actually presents for treatment from such complications her condition is more dire than this comprehensive, yet limited, clinic can accommodate. The provider sends those cases to the area hospital, many kilometers away from his clinic, down a dirt road with a heavily worn surface that makes for a very uncomfortable, perhaps deadly, ride. The provider was excited, though, about the advent of MVA in the developing world. He had never performed an abortion, nor had he been trained in the technique, but he was optimistic that rural women would be able to receive safe abortion care (where permitted) in low-tech environments without issue. However, he lamented, MVA can only do so much for botched procedures and life-endangering cases. Alas.

Kenya passed its new constitution within the last week, including some controversial language about abortion. This was the subject of debate for months, rife with anti-abortion rhetoric and TV infomercials akin to clinic-protesting signs (yuck). And I just hope that clinic providers like my guy above can band together to, at the very least, uphold the life endangerment clause. I have my doubts however; a female doctor in one of those anti commercials described, in her "medical opinion", that abortion is a "senseless death". I guess having a new perspective helps me appreciate the way things are in the Nifty Fifty.

It's a long road ahead, for all of us.

Ways To Not Understand "Choice," or Patriots don't get pregnant

A 'C'? A 'C'? I got a 'C' on my coathanger sculpture? How could anyone get a 'C' in coathanger sculpture?


(who doesn't like a little humorous misapplication of a classic cartoon line?)


I can never tell if it's more frustrating or funny to realize I'm talking to someone who thinks pro-choicers support coerced abortion. It happens about as often as I venture into anti world -- which means, depending on how patient/masochistic I'm feeling. The thing that seems obvious to me is, "chosen" is like the opposite of "coerced," so you'd think pro-choice might suggest...anti-coercion.

The questions (they are usually questions, though I'm not sure if they're earnest or intended as a-ha! traps) are things like "What about that woman whose husband tricked her into taking the abortion pill" or "What about the woman whose parents threw her in the trunk of the car and drove her to an abortion clinic" or "What about the woman who was told by an evil genie that she had to either get an abortion or be sold into a harem on the lost island empire of Atlantis". #1 and #2 are specific examples of questions I've been asked, and they refer to actual events that have occurred. #1 and #2 are also called 'assault' and are punishable by prison time.

The other main twisting of "choice" that I hear a lot always feels like a punch in the gut, and I do hear this one a lot because our culture is full of slut-shaming, not just in anti world. People who think they're cute pipe up with this semantic tour-de-force that goes something like, "I believe in a woman's right to choose -- she could've CHOSEN not to spread her legs!" Ah, clever. The idea being, if you're dumb enough to CHOOSE to have sex, and then get pregnant from it, you fucked up and deserve to stay pregnant. I mean, we don't let speeding drivers seek treatment for their broken limbs, do we? Fifty-five means fifty-five! So if a woman finds herself pregnant in a situation where she can't stay pregnant, even though she knew from the get-go that getting pregnant would really suck, then she's an idiot and pretty much earned what she gets, which is to take her life into her hands, nearly kick the bucket, be refused emergency care from her own doctor, be told she's crazy by another doctor and also lose her job.

Say what? Well, you should read this: Military Abortion Ban: Female Soldiers Not Protected by Constitution They Defend.

“You hear these legends of coat-hanger abortions,” a 26-year-old former Marine sergeant told me recently, “but there are no coat hangers in Iraq. I looked.”

Synopsis, though I hope you'll just go read the article: active-duty military who become pregnant are discriminated against and those who seek abortions get it even worse. So they're trapped, and might do the next logical thing: the Russian roulette of DIY. (You can also see this sergeant interviewed in the documentary The Coat Hanger Project.)

And right on the heels of that article comes word of a recent policy on the ground in northern Iraq that pretty much codifies what's been going on all along: forced unsafe abortion for female servicemembers. U.S. personnel in Iraq could face court-martial for getting pregnant:

The policy, which went into effect Nov. 4, makes it possible to face punishment, including a court-martial and jail time, for becoming pregnant or impregnating a servicemember, according to the wording of the policy and confirmations from Army officials. ... The policy also applies to married couples who are at war together.

To recap, your beloved Department of Defense:
(1) forbids medical personnel to provide abortion care except in cases of rape or life endangerment;
(2) refuses to cover the cost of abortion care except in cases of life endangerment only;
(3) by its very nature stations its personnel in places it has utterly ravaged so that, if they ever did have safe specialty health services, well they don't anymore.
...so far so good, right? The DoD is doing an awesome job preventing abortion -- hell, they've made it practically impossible!

(4) engages in under-the-table discrimination against pregnant soldiers and, now, outright criminalizes pregnancy.

So now what? Well, like I said, now you take your life into your hands, nearly kick the bucket, get refused emergency care from your own doctor, get told you're crazy by another doctor and also lose your job. It's that or jail (or maybe both). You don't have much choice.


This blog is primarily for us to share from our perspective in the field, so you might wonder if now I've accidentally digressed into extrapolation or punditry. But I could tell you a surprising (to me) number of stories from work involving women in the military, or married into the military, needing an abortion as a result of their connection to the military and then having a hard time obtaining one as a result of their connection to the military. They're not all the same situation as that of "Amy" in the RD interview -- there's a lot of different ways to get screwed over for serving one's country while uterused. Maybe this will be a two-part post, so next time (around the new year) I can share some of those with you. But you don't need to hear them all to see there's an unjust price for being a woman in uniform.