Thank you for sharing these stories, Fran!
I am a clinic escort and it never ceases to amaze me how much reproductive-age women and their partners take it for granted that the clinics will always be there. One young man walked over to me one day and, asking about my identifier, said, âWhat does âpro-choiceâ mean?â
The people who are fighting for the right to impose their decision to live in the dark ages on everyone else must be stopped.
But⌠they perform their activism on behalf of imaginary and theoretical beings. This is the most noble of all motives.
Thank you for doing what you do.
Stories from survivors of the bad old days are such a necessary part of this conversation. The horrifying photos Iâve seen of back-alley butchery gone wrong- stark in black & white- haunt me, and remind me of how crucial the the fight to protect abortion access is, which includes the fight to make sure people CAN access it- that itâs not just technically legal, but that itâs financially within reach, logistically plausible (not a 500km drive & 3-day âwaiting periodâ away), and that there are people trained and able to do it safely. People who see it as a fight between âprotecting babiesâ and a âright to chooseâ are living in a world of deliberate moral obfuscation. It is and always has been a fight between safe access to abortion, versus extraordinary suffering and a high likelihood of maternal death in the process of an unsafe one. And, like every fight under capitalism, itâs a fight that will always disproportionately affect those less privileged, while those with money will, as usual, be able to buy their way to some form of safety.
Agreed. they donât care about the mothers and they certainly donât care about the child after itâs born. If a woman wants an abortion, she should be able to do so in a safe environment.
I always point out to the pro life types that no matter what they do, restrictions on abortion only affect the poor. I have had 2 people close to me have abortions. Both had the means to take a short âvacationâ, one of them to Europe as she had a completely crazy fundie family that would have acted unpredictably with the knowledge that their little girl was pregnant.
The misguided war on the poor continues.
For a second I thought this meant that she was the fetus that survived the illegal abortion. That would put an interesting spin on the conversation.
With all due respect to this woman, we now have a little thing called birth control which negates the whole âYou need an abortionâ argument totally if someone is RESPONSIBLE and gets their little butt on it.
Abortion = murder and 100 years ago, it might have been a nasty necessity. Today? Hell no, with the MULTIPLE 100% EFFECTIVE forms of birth control on the market as well as Plan B high and low dose?
Just not necessary anymore.
To the people who are going to say âBirth control is not 100% effective!â Yes, it is. The 99.9% of the pill and patch especially is meant to take into account people who do not take the medication in question as directed and/or are on another medication known to interfere with birth control, of which there are several.
- Some women have negative medical reactions to the hormones in the pill and patch;
- Some women have negative medical reactions to other birth control options such as spermicides;
- Some women have negative medical reactions to the usual materials in condoms and cannot find and/or afford the non-reaction option;
- Some women donât have control over every single time a penis enters or comes near their vagina;
- Some women very much want to have a baby but then a terrible genetic defect is discovered during the pregnancy which threatens her life and/or the life of the fetus inside her;
- Some women are so uneducated and/or traumatized by their religious upbringing that they cannot use birth control in a functional way.
Thatâs not an exhaustive listâŚIâm just exhausted at this point from typing out so many well-known examples that you are somehow unaware of.
Another great representative of the âLaziness is the Root of all Evilâ think tank speaks! I donât know, but i think youâve been in the tank too long, your ephemeral quarry is starting to rub off on the quality of your thinking.
From the article (the first sentence in fact):
Fran Moreland Johnson sought an abortion in 1956 following a workplace rape.
Learn to read.
No, there are not multiple one hundred percent effective methods of birth control. Even tubal ligation and vasectomies have had multiple recorded instances of failure. The birth control pill is a bit over ninenty-nine percent reliable with perfect use. As actually used by people who make mistakes, itâs only ninety one percent effective. Also keep in mind that failure rates are per year of use; if you multiply the failure rate by twenty years of non-baby-wanting sex the odds go way up.
And Plan B is much, much less effective. It only reduces the chance of pregnancy by a bit over fifty percent relative to not using any birth control
Thanks for all those comments. Re the 100% effective contraception argument, the saddest stories I hear are of/from young girls abused by relatives or family friends, pregnant through absolutely no fault of their own and without support from anywhere. I am also sad for the isolated, poor and powerless women who canât afford birth control or whose birth control failed. Their need not to complete a pregnancy or to bring an unwanted child into the world is a complex and very private matter. So although I honor the people whose religion (or whatever) teaches that abortion is always wrong, I respectfully disagree.
âŚand if all sex is consensual. Sheesh.
Only 264 years? Seems to lenient a ban, IMO⌠
Iâd just like to take a moment to thank you for contributing this article. More people need to speak louder about just how terrible the Bad Old Days were. For everyone.
I got pregnant while on the Pill and using it perfectly, thanks to my physician failing to inform me that a medication he prescribed me might interfere with its effectiveness. Thank goodness for safe, legal abortion.
