This is why choice matters.

[kuangning]

This is the future, folks. This is where we're headed. We've been there before, of course. So what makes anyone want to go back?

Tell me. Because I don't understand.

You are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a (insert religion here). A good person. A moral person. You have a daughter. A beautiful, vibrant girl. A young lady.  A woman.  And you raise her the best way you can, scraped knees and missing teeth. Puberty hits. Dating. You wonder, and worry, but she's a normal kid, and growing up well, and you have to turn loose sometime.

And then, one day, she tells you she's pregnant. And you can see she's looking to you to guide her, to help her fix this, to find a solution she can live with.  Are you disappointed in her? Yeah. Are you scared? Of course you are. All your hopes and dreams for her, your ideas of how her life would be better than yours... they're threatened. She's scared, too. She doesn't want to be pregnant. Maybe it was even rape. Maybe the boy she went out with twice didn't take no for an answer. Or maybe she forgot her pill, or the condom broke, and she can see her own plans, her own future, on the line. All of those ways and reasons to decide I don't want this.

I don't want to give my hopes and dreams up. I don't want to give my body over to this pregnancy. I don't want to be pregnant. I want this to stop now.

How do you look your daughter in the eye and tell her she doesn't have a choice?

How do you force her to harbor the fetus growing inside her? Tell her she has to play incubator for the next nine months of her life, whatever she does with the child after that? That all the doors out are barred to her? No-one's going to help her end her pregnancy safely? No-one's going to make sure she doesn't bleed to death when the desperation gets to be too much and she tries all the other ways she knows of, to make it stop?

The girl in that story could have sustained damage to her internal organs from those blows. She could have broken ribs. She could have had complications that killed her. Or simply ones that would affect her health for the rest of her natural life. Think about it. She was desperate enough, determined enough, that she let him hit her in the stomach with a baseball bat. Every. Day. For. Weeks.

Think about it, and think about it hard. Because no matter how much you may believe that forcing people to stop performing abortions legally means that all those women won't abort their babies and "every child will be welcomed into life"? It's not true. Even if those fetuses make it to birth, that's no guarantee that now everything's okay and they'll have happy homes because their mothers didn't abort.

All that banning abortion really accomplishes? Is telling that girl, and all those other girls like her, and even your own daughter, that that fetus means more than her own life. And while that may deter some girls? There are plenty more who'll risk their own lives to try to make that pregnancy stop. And in a lot of those cases? You'll lose them both. Because more than 75,000 women die annually, even now, from complications of unsafe abortion. And so you lose fetus and mother at once. The possibility and the reality of the child you raised and watched grow... both gone. Needlessly. Just because somebody else closed off the avenues that might have saved at least one of the two.

And how do all your "pro-life" arguments hold up then?

Comments

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Coathangers in back alleys.

Sometimes I hate people.

[kuangning]

*nods.*

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

While I agree with you regarding the legality of the abortion, I don't think its fair to tie the baseball case to it. That's not political, its just stupid. Desperate and determined? Sure. But also really, really stupid. Had she sustained injury herself, I'd be of the opinion that it served her right. There's no excuse for that in the US today, since there are charities who will pay for abortions if you can't afford them, and even in states where parental consent is required, you can get around it with a court order. Hell, a simple google search will reveal dozens of safer home remedies, such as Vitamin C and Don Quoi.

Will banning abortion put cases like this on the rise? Yes. However, is anti-abortion legislation responsible for this? No.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

A baseball bat is overkill. But because of abortion laws, women would get abortions in unsafe situations, sometimes with coathangers, and complications were common. That was because of anti-abortion legislation, and it will start to become more prevalent. And these are desperate teenagers. If desperate teenagers were all intelligent, we wouldn't have desperate teenager as a category.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

Will banning abortion put cases like this on the rise? Yes.

You'll notice that I'd already conceeded your point - just that I was questioning the direct tie between this particular case and the current political environment.

[kuangning]

Current law in Michigan states that one of your parents has to give consent for an abortion if you are under 18. You will note that the story states neither set of parents knew about the pregnancy until the miscarriage. I would imagine that's why.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

However, she did have the option of going before a judge and demonstrating that she is mature and competent enough to make the decision to abort. There are options, even for minors, in states that (in my opinion rightly so - but that is a whole other debate) require parental consent.

And, regardless, this does not negate the stupidity factor.

[kuangning]

Can you go before a judge without money? Or without your parents knowing, for that matter? If she was too afraid to tell them to get consent, then why would she want them to find out because she's going to court to get it without their consent?

[laura.livejournal.com]

If she's going to make adult decisions, then she should be mature enough to face the adult consequences, including talking to her parents if that's what the law requires.

[salinn.livejournal.com]

I agree with that. I think that she should face the consequence of having to tell her parents, go before a judge, what have you. But I feel like abortion is a consequence, as aio and I were just talking about in an IRC conversation, not many people volunteer to get those more than once. I wonder if her parents were pro-life or not...and whether, if they were, if having their own daughter have to make the choice change their minds.

[kuangning]

Yes, she should have been. But while you debate the should, the fact is, legislating the safe and legal choice away isn't going to change the is. It's still going to happen. And as a result, a lot of the mothers will die from sepsis, from perforations, from organ injuries, from blood loss. And when they die, the fetuses die right along with them. And that's two lives lost, when if you made the choice available, you might at least have saved one. For me, it boils down to, are you going to act from the position of love and forgiveness, and save the life you can save? Or are you going to dictate punishment for the sins even though it means the girls might die?

[laura.livejournal.com]

Or maybe, since you're arguing on what MAY happen, people will become more responsible with the use of birth control or abstinence. We can't say with certainty that the results would be the same as previous eras where abortion was illegal. Too many things have changed in society. Birth control is readily available. Abstinence is free. Pregnancy is 100% predictable.

[kuangning]

I really wish that were true. But the push is for abstinence-only sex education, which means we have a new generation growing up without hearing about the options for birth control. There's a slow but steady trend towards doctors and pharmacists refusing to write or fill prescriptions for birth control. Abstinence is still free, but the failure rate is high, because sex is a strong and natural drive, and abstinence is not. And pregnancy is not 100% predictable.

I'm one of the three women in a thousand who got pregnant while on the Depo Provera shot, and that was without being late for the shot. For women who are late taking the shot by a few days, the failure rate is three in a hundred. Less dramatic failures... with typical use, 5% of the women on the Pill will get pregnant. Cervical cap? 16% if you've never had a child. It doubles if you have. IUD? 8 in a thousand, every year. 15 in a thousand vasectomies still result in a pregnancy. 5 in a thousand tubal ligations. Spermicides? 29% failure rate. So even if you do everything right, you're careful every time, you can still not predict pregnancy 100%.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

This also brings up the idea that the only time people should have sex is when they want to have a child, because every time you have sex you might get pregnant. I'm sorry, but I enjoy being able to have sex with my boyfriend for non-procreative purposes, and if I become pregnant despite the protections I'm taking--the Pill and condoms in conjunction--I want abortion to be an option, because I'm going to a school that costs $37k per year, and I'm not going to drop those costs and the cost of raising another child on my parents. And I want to finish my education. If I don't take chemistry courses part of me dies inside.

Abstinence might be free, but having tried it for a number of years and sex for two, I'll keep the sex.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

If she's too scared to talk to her parents or a judge, what makes you think she can deal with the after-effects of an abortion? After working with PP, I can tell you first hand why consent laws exist. They're for the minor's protection. Sure, this was a casultly. But what about the children who don't tell thier parents and deal with the psychological after-effects alone? I've seen it first hand, and its not pretty. For every kid who resorts to stupid stuff like this, there are several others who tell thier parents, who wouldn't if the law didn't exist, and who find the support and love they need to get through this with minimal scarring.

Minors don't have rights. They have protection laws. Abortion has some nasty side effects that those in the pro-choice community never like to admit to, and those effects, while I'll admit often not the motivation, are a good reason for consent laws.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

*sighs* My my, my spelling certainly dies a nasty death when I try to type as fast as I think....

[kuangning]

I'm not saying she should be dealing with any of it. Abortion's not a pleasant experience, it's not painless. But then, neither is labor and delivery. But the fact is, it happens. And it's going to happen more. And it shouldn't have to.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Minors don't have rights.

This statement bothers me for many reasons that have almost nothing to do with the current debate. Please reconsider.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

I meant in a strictly political sense. Minors don't have rights to free speech, to bear arms, to privacy, to religion (not that anyone can control belief, but your parents can drag your butt to church), to vote, etc, etc, etc. Rights, in this sense, belong to citizens, which are over the age of majority, unless otherwise afforded to minors by law.

They do, however, have the same basic human rights as everyone else, such as the rights to food, shelter, safe enviornments and so forth. Basically human rights vs. civil rights.

[laura.livejournal.com]

Minors don't have rights. They have protection laws.

I agree completely with this! Furthermore, if a doctor can't give my kid a flu shot without my permission, if she can't get pierced or tattooed, why the hell should someone be allowed to perform a medical procedure as risky (and abortions are risky in the same way that ANY medical procedure is) without my permission?!

[kuangning]

First: abortion is safer than pregnancy and childbirth in America right now. So the "protecting my child from potential danger" route is actually to terminate the pregnancy early.

But beyond that, the laws isn't to protect the child from a good home with loving parents who want to be involved. Those girls would probably choose live birth anyway, because they have the safety net they need to make bringing up a child a less-impossible task.

The point is to protect the girls who don't have that safety net, who've already been brutalized once. My father abused me, my mother doesn't believe me, they'd kill me if they knew I was pregnant, and you want to tell me I have to get one of them (or sometimes BOTH of them!) to give their permission? And then I have to stand up in front of a judge and convince him I'm not just doing this for fun? And after that, what happens to my family? My father's going to be arrested? My mother will hate me!

Those are the girls that need to have the option open. One in every four girls is sexually assaulted before the age of 18. In the vast majority of those cases, the abuser is a family member. And there's evidence that, although experts are quick to point out that abuse occurs among all social, ethnic, and income groups, reported cases usually involve poor families with little education. Young mothers, single-parent families, and parental alcohol or drug abuse are also common offenders. Which raises the question of how much good you're doing the unaborted child when you prevent the termination.

More than 90% of abusing parents have neither psychotic nor criminal personalities. They tend to be lonely, unhappy, angry, young, and single parents who do not plan their pregnancies, have little or no knowledge of child development, and have unrealistic expectations for child behavior. About 10%, or perhaps as many as 40%, of abusive parents were themselves physically abused as children. Great tradition to pass down, don't you think?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Once anti-abortion legislation gets to the point where those charities will not be permitted to pay for the procedure, and those states with the ability of court-ordering it will no longer have that option, then yes, anti-abortion legislation will be responsible for things such as that happening.

There's no excuse for making things like that the only option available to people - well, that or other similarly-crude options that have the same end result with a similar level of personal risk. That doesn't mean the government isn't trying to move things in that direction.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

My lord people!

I make one point questioning the logic of connecting this one particular case to anti-abortion legislation, and I'm getting jumped on and beaten to death by fellow pro-choice people!

Let me quote myself, again - Will banning abortion put cases like this on the rise? Yes.

However, I was not talking about future cases, I was not talking about prior cases - I was talking about this case and how it had more to do with stupidity than politics.

I was NOT saying that I'm not concerned about anti-abortion legislation. I'm not saying that things like this won't become common if anti-abortion laws becomes a reality. In fact, I even said I agreeded with Cairsten regarding legislatio and its effects - but that it wasn't fair or correct to link this particular case of a stupid teenager to current trends in anti-abortion movements.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

First off, feel free to point out where any "getting jumped on and beaten to death" happened. I totally fail to understand this mindset where disagreement or correction is suddenly a vicious personal attack. It isn't, and on this ground you're overreacting.

Second, Cairsten didn't directly connect this particular case to anti-abortion legislation in some wide-reaching misinterpretation of cause and effect. She said that the increased occurrence of stuff like this in general is a result of this movement to outlaw abortion. It's called an example, and this is one.

That "particular case of a stupid teenager" is nowhere near as isolated as you seem to think or imply. It, and cases like it, are more or less directly connected to the laws and political/public pressures on the issue which are starting to come out. If you view things in complete isolation from the rest of the world, then of course they're not going to be linked with anything else. That's not how the world works, though.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

I never said it was a vicious personal attack. I was, however, pointing out, albeit in a rather tougne-in-cheek manner, that you seemed to equate my disagreement about this one event as my being "pro-life". Perhaps if you could have seen the funny face and waving arms of surrender that went with the comment, this particular misunderstanding would have been avoided.

And cases like this - which are cases of extreme overkill - are related to stupidity, not politics. Home abortions in general, are related to legislation, and, truthfully, none of them are safe. But this particular article seems to promote a certain shock value, an "OH MY GOD! We can't have children beating themselves with bats!" response, that's not really an issue. Most women who conduct home abortions have the sense to do a little research and to find some of the safer, more rational ways to go about this. These are the women at risk. These women could be the future. And these are the one we need to worry about. Not silly kids with bats.

[tanesmuti.livejournal.com]

That "particular case of a stupid teenager" is nowhere near as isolated as you seem to think or imply.

I can name two similar cases in my own home-town when I was in school. One of which was a close friend.

One went so far as to enlist a group of "friends" to jump her and beat the crap out of her.

The incident really isn't uncommon at all. The only thing different about the case in question is that it recieved press.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

A slightly more rational response: I feel that if you truly believe, as I do not, that life begins at conception, it's a better thing to make laws that protect young pregnant women, make adoptions an easier and safer process, and change society's views on pregnancy to make it less of a curse. Because right now it's a twisted world to bring a child into, and that fear and sickness is what makes abortions seem necessary to a lot of people.

Safe, legal, and rare.

[laura.livejournal.com]

I still disagree.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

By the way, just a note to your 78000 statistic quote - that is mortality world-wide. The incididence of these deaths in the US is so negligible the WHO doesn't even report them in thier statistics page.

Most of the deaths occur in Asia and Africa, where medical care in general is often sub-standard.

Link is below.

http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/MSM_97_16/MSM_97_16_table_of_contents_en.html

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

By the way, I'm not puting this here to be *nyahnyah* at you...

But you weren't clear about it in your post, and I wasn't sure if you were aware of the regional layout. Clarifying and researching statistics is a bad habit I got from my dad. ;)

[kuangning]

Yeah, I did know. Thanks for stating it, though. I should have done so.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

*hugs* By the way - I know I can be pretty... um... confrontational... in debates. And since it seems that, that's all we've been doing as far as communication lately, I wanted you to know that I think you're wonderful and uber nifty. :)

[kuangning]

*grins.* Thanks. :) I don't mind arguments, though. If my views can't take a little opposition and come out unshaken, then I'm not doing much thinking for myself, and I deserve to be called on it. Besides, I already know you're Good People, or you wouldn't be on my friends list.

[midnightfae.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm going to start paying pennance for every time I've written "thier" tonight... For I am the destroyer of English! *hangs her head in shame and finally goes to bed*

[avahgdu.livejournal.com]

See, this is difficult for me.

I am not a christian. I can even argue why the christian idea of fighting abortion cause it kills a soul is hogwash. The bible says flat out that the soul does not enter the body till it takes it's first breath outside of the mother.

So, howcome it freaks me out? Cause I do believe that life is there from the beginning. I do believe that abortion is killing...just one step from murder.

Children are the greatest gift of life. I have raised 12 kids. 12 of them. The two I currently have are like my own flesh and blood. Cairsten has seen photos of my lil boy and me. She knows what he is to me, even tho I am not his bio father.

So, howcome I am prochoice, and will fight till my last breathe for a woman's right to choose?

A close, personal friend. A woman I loved, and loved dearly. She and her fiance, a man I also loved like a brother, were going to have a baby together. It was a miracle. She had been pregnant before, during her abusive marriage. And her husband beat her till she miscarried, cause he didn't want kids.

Her getting pregnant was a miracle for everyone who loved her. Until something went wrong with the pregnancy. There was no chance of the baby making it, there was little chance of her making it. She had to abort a baby that she wanted more than anything in the world. A baby that everyone who loved her, already loved.

She had to schedule an abortion, they were not done at the hospital but at a clinic. I don't know, the docs explained what was up, it was over my head. But we, her fiance and I and several friends, took her to have what the doctors kept calling 'the procedure.' Do you know how maddening that was?

I have heard it called the green mile. I have heard it called the walk of shame. Other stupid shit. But I held her in my arms, her fiance and her both crying, as we walked thru the parking lot. This was 1986, and I am crying as write this.

And there was a group there, quietly handing out literature. Not bothering anyone. I understood their point, and their feelings.

Until one of them yelled at her, and called her a murderer. That moment is burned into my memory for life.

That is not the side I will be on. If a woman is raped, should she be allowed to abort? Fuck yes. If a woman is a victim of incest? Yes. If there is something wrong with the baby, or her life is threatened? Yes.

Now, they want to say they will allow those abortions, some of them. We just outlaw all the others.

Well, if my sister, or my daughter, or my best friend was raped...I don't think she should be 'raped' again by the system, having to tell 20 tribunals why she deserves to be helped.

If, for a woman in this situation to be safe and healthy, there will also be women who use abortion as birth control... then I am sorry, that is how it has to be.

And how do I know that God forgives every woman who has an abortion, for whatever reason she does it? Cause I know God is not an asshole. He just isn't, no matter what some people try to tell us about Him.

[kuangning]

*nods.* If you take the legal choice away, you also cut down on the number of people who will opt to even learn how to perform the procedures, too. Why should they learn something it's not legal to perform? And when the knowledge dies, what then? When, even in the cases where it is legal and necessary (baby dies in the third trimester and isn't expelled, to name a recentish example) -- what then? It can't stay in, or it will poison the mother. My own mother went through that, with what would have been my fourth younger sibling. A controlled abortion is safer in that case than allowing the woman to go through induced labor, the so-called "therapeutic abortion" -- to put her body through that stress and increased danger, only to give birth to a dead child.

Here's why.

[inflection.livejournal.com]

So what makes anyone want to go back?

Tell me. Because I don't understand.

I don't wish to kill, I wish to prevent killing, and my gut tells me an abortion is a killing. I'm not asking you to agree, just understand: can my readers acknowledge that, yes, you can see how a reasonable person could look at a fetus and think "this is a person, it is wrong to harm them, I feel an urge to protect this person"? Because I can understand the impulse of a woman to say, "this is my body, I don't wish to relinquish any control of it," even though I think they are asking for the right to kill.

How do you look your daughter in the eye and tell her she doesn't have a choice?

A good start is "I love you and always will." After that, "We're your parents and will be there for you." If she is honestly asking me for the reason why, I'll take my parental responsibility of raising my child with the best morals I can: "It's a person, not something you can just throw away." "This is your baby too." "Even an unaborted pregnancy will still end, as safely as labor ever is." "If you're not ready, that's what adoption is for."

If she seeks an abortion anyway? Even if it's criminal then? Despite the "coathangers in back alleys" image that gets waved in this debate, something like eighty percent of illegal abortions before Roe were performed by physicians. [1] That's not to say pro-life legislation would have no effect -- many people follow the law simply because it is the law, and most others due to deterrence.

that fetus means more than her own life.

No. All human life, equally protected. Please reject this notion that a pro-life position devalues women. Maybe saying abortion should be illegal regardless of whether the mother's life is in danger does, but I don't know anyone that advocates such an extreme. Any honest evaluation of the movement as a whole will, I hope, lead you to forbear repeating this slander.

closed off the avenues that might have saved at least one of the two.

And how do all your "pro-life" arguments hold up then?

In two ways, depending on how the question is being asked. If you speak in aggregate terms, the question is whether lives are saved, that is, whether abortions decrease by a number greater than half the number of mother-child pairs lost due to increase in deaths from unsafe abortions. Estimating that, as is the case with other laws, 60% of the affected population will obey the law simply due to its passage (even discounting deterrence), and with about 1.5mil abortions per year last few years (declining, woo!), we see at least 900k kids born that would otherwise have been aborted(less natural miscarriages). This far outstrips the 150k deaths from botched abortions you cite, a frequency that would have to increase by greater than the number of remaining mothers in the affected population to match lives saved. If you speak on a personal level... I mourn, like I would when an air bag caused one of its much-publicized fatalities. Individual variation will always outstrip any general principle; what else can you do other than try to create what you think is the best, most principled environment?

When you talk about happy homes and welcomed children... 900k is absorbable. If you think not, then pro-lifers need to see that the consequences of our positions are faced, financially and socially. I'm willing to do that.

[1] John Kaplan, "Abortion as a Vice Crime", Law and Contemporary Problems 51, no. 1 (1988): 151-180, p. 164, cited by "Making Rights Real" (Google HTML of pdf; missing orig.)

Lastly, the second article you link: you see what that law did, right? It said a pro-life doctor who refuses to perform an abortion is protected from state and local laws to the contrary. It's much like Good Samaritan protection written into many legal codes: the doctor is given room to exercise their conscience without fear of legal reprisal except in egregious cases. If I were a doctor, I certainly wouldn't want to have to choose between providing an abortion and losing my license.

Re: Here's why.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

A point about the law: It also says that hospitals can refuse to give women information about abortions if they ask for it. Meaning, if a woman asks for an abortion, they can refuse to tell her where she can get one.

That's sketchtastic. Or, in other words, bad.

I think laws against abortions are the wrong way to go about preventing abortions. I think in the main it only increases human suffering. I have yet to see an argument that convinces me otherwise.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't understand, either, and I don't want to understand. I cannot fathom being so utterly heartless.

My attitude is like it or not, abortion is legal, so suck it up and deal and get on with your lives. If you don't believe in abortion, don't get one. As for the rest of us, leave us the hell alone.

[serendipity.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you Cairsten, for being brave enough to broach this subject and being fair, logical, and compassionate in your arguments.

It probably goes without saying that I'm completely pro-choice and that I believe that "pro-life" is a dangerous misnomer. I - a 48-year-old woman who has never had an abortion, has had a single pregnancy and one child - say Keep your laws off my body.

It's a very emotional argument on both sides, and I pretty much gave up on debating it over 30 years ago when one of my teenage friends (who was adopted as an infant) said that if abortion had been legal when she was born she probably wouldn't be alive at all. Hey, for all I know, neither would I, but then we wouldn't be there to argue about it, would we? I never understood that or most of the other arguments opposing a woman's right to choose.