You may have already read this over the weekend. Read it again! Perhaps print out several copies of it and staple it to the inside of the jacket of the men in your life. Laminate it on your heart, whatever.
Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.
Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.
How does this play out? Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.
Here are a few places you can donate to in order to support abortion access in the United States. If you know of any others that you think merit attention, feel free to post links in the comments. If you can’t afford to make a donation, consider becoming a clinic escort.
Also, screaming into a pillow sometimes help, when all else fails.
I can’t get over that first story. That judge is a murderer. He murdered her. She is dead because of him. Fucking. Terrifying.
I’m certain he sleeps the sleep of the righteous, as well.
Terrifying indeed.
That was the 1987 Carder case. But yes, still terrible. And no one was ever punished for it.
I came here to say this: FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING PIECES OF POOP!
This is bullshit. You’ve taken a goddamned wrong turn somewhere if you think that any of this is a good idea. Guess what? This isn’t doing anyone any favours since most people have miscarriages at some point or another. Most that have them WANTED that goop to turn into a baby.
Maybe if you start legislating childcare and maternity leave and making sure each kid is cared for and fed appropriately I will take your nonsensical arguments about person hood seriously but until that day. Fuck. You.
A few weeks ago, I emailed one of the organizations behind the anti-abortion amendment in Tennessee to ask them rather pointedly if they intended to advocate for things like increased support for families if the amendment passed.
They did not intend to. They also didn’t see the connection between these things.
Fuck them all.
Bravo for you for doing that. My mom’s (Catholic!) best friend in Tennessee took to asking people who supported that amendment where they would be when the baby was born – would they be paying for childcare, supporting single moms who needed job training and education, buying diapers and clothes and, and, and …? She said nobody ever had a response.
Don’t be silly, those single moms should’ve just not had sex! That would’ve solved everything! Also, all those poor people should’ve thought about how poor they were before they had kids! Because it’s completely realistic that people living in a state that can’t bring in better employment opportunities should just refrain from having kids altogether!
It really upset me. If you aren’t going to step up and also advocate for solutions to the unintended consequences of the laws you’re trying to pass, you have no business advocating for those laws in the first place.
Pretty sure women losing their jobs and staying home with unwanted children isn’t an *unintended* consequence of these laws.
(Shhhh, I’m trying not to completely give up hope here.)
I mean, even the lake of fire zealots who protest at the Planned Parenthood where I volunteer offer pregnancy assistance and adoption to anyone willing to listen to them. There’s no love lost between us, but at least they demonstrate an attempt at empathy.
Those babies gotta bootstrap it just like everyone else in America!
Good on you for asking them straight out about it. I’m not so surprised that they gave you the shoulder shrug answer though. Even though it’s deplorable! I have zero understanding of how one can advocate so strictly and even dangerously for the life of an unborn “person” and yet not give one actual fuck about the very same “person” once it becomes an actual PERSON.
Because BABIES.
I don’t get it either, really. I guess it’s easier to save hypothetical babies than to support actual babies with actual needs. Because actual people need things and heaven forbid we help anybody else.
My mother – VERY (very. VERY. ve-he-he-herry.) anti-abortion – was listening to me rant and rave about the bizarre dichotomy of “NO ABORTIONS!”/”WELFARE to help raise your LEGALLY-REQUIRED BABY? FUCK YOU!!” and to her credit, she didn’t have any response beyond “I am so glad you are so intelligent and passionate!”
She may not agree with the means or the ends, but she can’t deny that the point is valid.
*muffled screaming through layers of cotton and down* IT’S NOT HELPING I JUST FALL ASLEEP AND HAVE NIGHTMARES THAT FRED PHELPS TOOK UP GYNECOLOGY
Write and call your elected representatives, tell them these fetus personhood laws violate the Personhood of Women and this BS needs to stop. We need a Personhood Bill for women . Having an X chromosome does not negate our civil rights as Human Beings.
It says so much about society that fetal personhood bills can make more traction than the ERA.
You’re right, it’s having a second X chromosome that negates them. (But it shouldn’t! This makes me absolutely sick, and I’ll actually turn my rage into action this time.)
The case referred to was a 1987 case which was overturned, which should more firmly establish the right of pregnant people to determine their own health care. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_A.C.
That said: as an example of exactly how far some people will let their beliefs carry them, it’s still outrageous.
Look, if that woman in Louisiana didn’t want to go to jail for a year on charges of second-degree murder, she shouldn’t have gone to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding.
Please consider giving to the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, and their Trust Black Women giving campaign.
ETA: Just for some context: WOC bear the brunt of this and other reproductive injustices, and I’d like to highlight one of the original WOC-founded and -led organizations to tackle reproductive justice head on. Like in so many other political spaces, POC-run organizations are marginalized when it comes to fundraising even though its the same orgs that often have better cultural and/or linguistic competency to work with other POC. (Also, those kinds of dynamics just tend to reinforce a white savior complex, which… gross.)
No knock to the other orgs listed, just wanted to throw SisterSong in the ring for consideration and explain why I think it’s so important to include them.
Thank you thank you thank you. I came here to point out that the op-ed omits the fact that the authors study found that 52% of the pregnant “criminals” were black, and 71% were low income.
It matters. It matters so much.
p.s. I just donated to SisterSong. Thank you for that link.
You’re very welcome, and you are awesome for donating!
Thank you! I didn’t know either organization, so I just made a donation to SisterSong.
Awesome! I am going to wait until my paycheck on Friday and then I will be joining you!
I only donate to feminist organizations that actively support abortion access until women have access to abortion. I am really happy to hear about these orgs bc I have no desire to be a white savior.
After I read A Handmaid’s Tale for the first time as a wee thing in the 90’s, I had a nightmare about being prosecuted for murder for having a miscarriage. I just kinda laughed at my brain because it was so farfetched. Welp.
I can’t. I just can’t anymore. I’ve been protesting and leading movements and picketing and emailing people representatives’ numbers and posting copies of bills for 20 years and I still live in a state where, if my miscarriage had happened now instead of 12 years ago, I could be arrested. Because it wasn’t traumatic enough almost dying or anything.
And wait….the second miscarriage, I had to go to an abortion clinic for a D&C to prevent what happened the first time (bleeding out and nearly dying) from happening. Not only did I almost die from THAT, too (undiagnosed infection), (only 6 years ago), now I could face a 3 day waiting period beforehand, assuming they let the one in the nearby county stay open, during which I could bleed out (see miscarriage #1).
I keep trying. I had the conversation with my 11 year old daughter in the car last week about why mom probably wouldn’t go live in places that “don’t make laws that support women”…and then discussed the laws Kasich passed in Ohio (where I am stuck living)…and then explained to her that although mom and mom’s friends and most of the people at *our* (UU) church would understand, she probably shouldn’t discuss abortion rights around her public school classmates, or she’d get in trouble like I did in 5th grade.
And I keep making phone calls and screaming obscenities into the pillow.
Thank you for trying. That’s all we can do.
Yes – thank you for trying, and thank you for teaching your daughter about how wrong it all is. Her voice might someday be louder than ours.
Since the Handmaid’s Tale is now becoming reality instead of fiction, I’m starting to think I will re-read all of Margaret Atwood’s novels to see what other nightmare scenarios will come to pass (sure not looking forward to the pigoons and the CorpSeCorps). That Times piece was a series of intrusive thoughts come to life and made into law.
And to think that the patriarchs continue to debate the existence of rape culture while women are legally strapped down and cut open.
Time to learn to talk to bees.
But think of all the cuddly rakunks!
The Washington, DC, case involving the mandatory caesarian was indeed horrible but it is not recent. It happened in 1987. In 1990 the D.C. Court of Appeals overturned the judge’s decision. Too late for the woman and her baby, but it clearly established, in DC at least, the right to choose. https://www.nymc.edu/Clubs/quill_and_scope/volume…
I think this issue is that that case is an example of what can (and did) happen in a situation where there was a legal framework that allowed it. That means there is nothing to prevent it from happening in other places, particularly those where “personhood” statutes/amendments exist.
Thank you very much for posting the link to the case – I had been searching for it to no avail!
This makes me feel so infuriated, and so helpless too. Is there something like the Lilith fund in other states with these awful laws?
Many states/regions have abortion funds; try googling “[your location] abortion fund” to see what turns up. Keep in mind that even without restrictive laws, abortions can be expensive. Not as expensive as a baby, obviously, but the lump sum is often more than many women have on hand. So feel free to donate to your local abortion fund, even if access is slightly less restricted there!
biased note from a volunteer:
another org that could use some donations: access women’s health justice, an abortion fund with a volunteer network that offers housing, transportation, and (obviously) financial support.
Every single story in that article deserves its own horror movie. I would like that, a pro-choice horror series.
I am so glad that I live within a 5 minute walk of two abortion clinics. It does mean that sometimes I have to walk past horrible protesters with their fear-mongering dead baby posters, but it’s just nice to know what doors to knock on if I ever did get knocked up. (Which, these days is so unlikely as to be laughable.)
Thank you for posting a link to NOW-NYC for clinic escorting! I just started working there and they are all fabulous. Also, if anyone is looking for a fundraising/development internship, check us out here http://nownyc.org/internships/#development.
I am scared for you guys. I had a number of early miscarriages before having my daughter and stories like these make me want to cry. Even after months of tests and seeing specialists, they basically said, “Well, we don’t really know what’s wrong with you but we can take a stab in the dark.” There is almost no way you can diagnose an early miscarriage. The female system is extremely complicated. They will never pinpoint a cause in some of these stories. Plus it’s psychological torture to tell a grieving woman that she must have done something to have caused it- she’s already telling herself that.
Toasties, I am currently trying to get pregnant for the first time and stories like this one and the awful birth story that was linked last week really scare me. I live in Illinois, so no “personhood” (lol) laws, but I feel like by getting pregnant I’ll be opening my body up to all kinds of invasive creeps. How do you stay calm in the face of this? My main coping mechanism right now is looking up doulas on yelp and fantasizing about what nice ladies they all seem to be.
Doulas are good! Their job is to tell you your range of options, which is really nice when you’re not sure if you’re being told something has to happen for good reasons or because someone wants to go on break in 10 minutes or whatever. Also finding an OB you like. If you have a specific way you’d prefer to give birth – no meds, epidural instantly, whatever – say so in your first appointment and pay attention to their response. (Hint: It should be supportive and not the tiniest bit condescending!)
That this shit *ever* happens is horrifying and beyond the pale, but I tell myself that it is still rare. Also, in last Friday’s open thread, some of us were swapping non-traumatic birth stories, which are the majority of birth stories in the real world if not online. Ctl-F “Scandyhoovian” and you should be able to find it – I think it was Page 2.
Thank you, I will definitely go back and read those! Of course the stories you read online are going to be disproportionately bad, but it’s hard to keep that in perspective.
I do not know I am now terrified to have children. Except I got to hold a 7-month-old at church yesterday and it was so sweet and snuggly and babies are really cute.
I’m late to this party, but I was soooooo upset by the article that I had to come read the comments. I also read that birth story, and I’m sorry that I missed the birth stories in the open thread last week, because I loooove birth stories! I won’t go into my own story in long detail here, but the bottom line is that I really wanted a “natural hospital birth.” Then shit got a little crazy and I ended up on a month of bedrest that ended with an induction. Although there is of course the fear of “cascading interventions,” the reality is that most of these interventions tend to work, not to proceed to the next one. Turns out my body couldn’t care less about your nonsense cervical ripening agents, and nonetheless, my induction was shockingly “successful,” at least in terms of what I wanted, which was vaginal birth / healthy baby / no needles in the back if avoidable. Most doctors who go into OB have a very nuanced understanding of the politics, and they want you and the baby to be healthy and you to get what you want. If you get the sense that you’re not in such a practice, move right the hell along. There are amazing docs and nurses out there!
*Curls up into a ball*
It’s always darkest before the dawn. It’s always darkest before the dawn. It’s always darkest before the dawn . . .
Almost gleefully imagining my in-laws’ reactions if instead of birthday gifts, I asked for donations to be sent to either NARAL or PP. But I think I’ll cry instead.
Read this article on the train to work this morning sans any pillow to scream into, which was clearly silly of me.
Just when you think you’ve hit peak cynicism a NYT op-ed leaves you silently angry-crying on the metro.
Thanks for the links, always appreciate that when The Toast says “this thing is fucked” it always adds “and you should go do something about it and here is what you should do.”
For any Wisconsinites, the Women’s Medical Fund is a great organization that could absolutely use your support: http://wmfwisconsin.org/
Thanks! When Walker was reelected, I think I terrified my poor conservative father by sobbing about abortion access and women’s rights and it’s good to know there is a place here fighting the good fight.
Yes! Here’s a really great article about Anne Nicol Gaylor, who founded it and is still running things at 87 years old, and also co-founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013…
Man, it feels like the entire world’s gone to shit recently. I really just want something good to happen for a change. Just a little bit of good news. Please.
If you go to the authors’ study, they found that 52% of the pregnant “criminals” were black, and 71% were low income.
I don’t know why that’s not mentioned. Perhaps because they feared that it would diminish white, middle-to-upper-class women’s fear and anger and make them less likely to mobilize against it? But it matters. Intersectionality in a nutshell. Patriarchy and white supremacy and classism all tied together with an umbilical cord.
I very recently lost a very wanted 2nd trimester pregnancy (what a horrible phrase) and then had some unpleasant and mildly dangerous complications afterwards, and this just hits so horribly close to home. Thank the powers that be that on top of the devastating grief, and difficult physical recovery, I don’t have to face this bullshit, too. It’s just criminal that anyone, anywhere does have to face it. Next time someone wants to make a donation in my daughter’s name, I’ll ask them to consider a reproductive rights organization.
I’m so sorry for your loss. :'(
Thank you very much for your kind words. It’s so horrible, and such a horribly common experience, it’s filling me with a sort of feral rage against anyone who wants to make it MORE horrible. I mean, I still don’t have an answer as to why I went into early labor, and the idea of being INVESTIGATED let alone prosecuted for that is so monstrous and inhumane and lacking in basic empathy I can’t even stand it. I do want to revise my thanks to the powers that be, because I’m a married middle class white lady with health insurance and the powers that be aren’t even looking my way at all. So like, fuck the powers that be, actually
“…and the idea of being INVESTIGATED let alone prosecuted for that is so monstrous and inhumane and lacking in basic empathy I can’t even stand it.”
+1
I’m sorry for your loss, and I think I can sympathize with how you feel about this article. I’ve had two second trimester pregnancy losses in the last two years (both missed miscarriages between 16 and 20 weeks) that doctors haven’t been able to explain. I can’t even imagine what it would’ve been like if I’d had to deal with any kind of legal ramifications – or even just questioning – on top of how bad it already was. “Feral rage” sums it up pretty well for me, too.
I’m so sorry for your losses, as well. It’s really fresh for me now – not even a month, and the idea of experiencing this again – well, you must be a very strong person. And I would totally wolverine out on anyone who would dare question me about the circumstances of my loss, and it is so unjust that we live in a world where anyone would.
sending both of you hugs. Pregnancy is such a liminal time, fuck EVERYBODY who wants to put parameters on it and then police those parameters, as though the women who go through these things are bad actors. Seriously. <3 to y’all.
As an American living in England, reading about this from afar is scary and so, so saddening and just beyond what I thought (naively) what our country would do to its citizens (ok, REALLY naive, I realize now). In thinking about this, I almost forgot about the dangers Irish and Northern Irish women face, because they are barred from having an abortion under almost all circumstances (recall the preventable death of Savita Halappanavar two years ago in Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Hala…. So, for any UK Toasties or, obvs, ANY Toasties who are feeling particularly charitable, please consider also donating to the Abortion Support Network, which helps Irish and N. Irish women fund trips and accommodations to GB to have safe and legal abortions.
Also,thank you for posting this article, Mallory! I hadn’t seen it, but it’s put some fire under me.
The situation in Ireland and Northern Ireland is terrifying. I’ve donated to the ASN in the past, and hope to again when I have more money.
I know what you mean. I’m American and live in Canada and all of this make me wish my application to extend my visa would hurry up and get processed because Mr. Floridagal wants to have a baby and omg I would never want to be pregnant in the US!
It’s awful! I can’t help but wonder what restrictions lie next. No access to tubal ligation? In the UK there’s talk of criminalization of women who drink while pregnant, so how is that going to be enforced? Will women who fit a certain profile, literally and physically, be barred from buying alcohol?
This drives me so nuts because a UK study showed that women who drank moderately actually had BETTER developing children than totally abstinent people. Not that booze does a fetus good, but that women who were well educated and had agency were more likely to both make informed drinking-while-pregnant decisions and also have enough wealth to raise children who were well educated and had agency themselves. Basically, small amounts of booze while pregnant is fine, and classism everywhere. (And it doesn’t need to be said that POC suffer the effects of lower class more than whities.)
And even better/worse, any evidence that light drinking is bad shows that it’s mostly bad in the first trimester, when NO ONE CAN TELL YOU’RE PREGNANT. So…no drinking at all for women of childbearing age, just in case? Flames.
If you live in North Carolina, the Carolina Abortion Fund does great work. And if you live in the RDU area and are interested in escorting, also let me know!
Me. I am. Drop me a note when you have time, hthwatson@gmail
Please also consider donating to Fund Texas Choice (http://fundtexaschoice.org/), which is the only organization in the state that funds abortion-related travel and hotel expenses, a major barrier to access for poor folks in need of abortions. There are no longer any clinics open west of San Antonio, which means that many of the state’s poorest residents live more than a five-hour drive from the nearest abortion provider, and more clinics may still be closed in the coming year.
Another organization that is doing some much needed work to reduce/eliminate/transform the stigma surrounding abortion and other reproductive health services and issues: http://seachangeprogram.org/ They’re pretty fantastic. (I happen to know one of the founding ladies from college but 1. I was never close friends with her (sadly) and 2. They are objectively awesome.)
The DC Abortion Fund can always use your help! < ;http://dcabortionfund.org/> We do a LOT of major funding because we’re close to the very few clinics that can do medically complicated or very late-term procedures. We get patients from as far as Colorado, Florida, and Maine; the policy is if your abortion’s in DC/MD/VA or you live in one of those states, we’ll help. It’s been a domino effect of women in Texas going to southern clinics, and spiraling outward from there. For serious, Dr. Carhart should be regarded as one of the most important feminists of this era- the man works day and night, discounting procedures as much as possible for indigent, ill, and suffering women. I say “we” because I volunteered for two years and even in my one volunteer shift every 2-4 weeks, I got nearly 35 patients. I was one of 2-3 volunteers on call each week. We’ll work with any other fund as long as the patient is coming to or residing in our tri-state area.
I’ll never forget helping a patient who’d just escaped from an abusive marriage with several small children. She was several states away, but since she was a Maryland resident, we were able to fund her abortion. Cheers for the Toast keeping women’s rights, aka human rights to autonomy, at the forefront.
"…and the idea of being INVESTIGATED let alone prosecuted for that is so monstrous and inhumane and lacking in basic empathy I can't even stand it."
+1
The fuck, the fuck, the actual fuck, where is the basic human decency
Thanks for sharing your story!
Obligatory link to Amanda Ching’s horrifying, terrifying, and amazing sci-fi short story about personhood laws and resistance: http://amandaching.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/67/
Obligatory link to Amanda Ching's horrifying, terrifying, and amazing sci-fi short story about personhood laws and resistance: http://amandaching.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/67/