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Abortion
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Leftovers
roe vs. world
Court Rules In Favor Of Calling Fetuses "Living Human Beings"
Back in 2005, South Dakota passed an abortion law that required doctors to give patients wanting to terminate pregnancies a written statement that said the following: "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," and that they have "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that is constitutionally protected. Slate's Emily Bazelon reports, "In addition, doctors are ordered to describe 'all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors,' including 'depression and related psychological distress" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.'" The whole designation of the fetus as a "living human being" seems unconstitutional in light of Roe vs. Wade, doesn't it? But apparently the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals doesn't think so, because just last week, it ruled that the law will soon go into effect after a three-year-long injunction. So how does South Dakota get around those pesky constitutional edicts that say that a fetus is not a person in the legal sense of the word? Easy! By employing circular logic! More »
roe vs. world
Portland Builder Drops Planned Parenthood For Fear Of Pro-Life Protesters
A Portland construction company has dropped out of its contract to build a local Planned Parenthood, the Oregonian reported on Monday. Bob Walsh, the owner of Walsh Construction, broke the contract after hearing about how aggressive and inappropriate anti-choice protesters had been towards other contractors building Planned Parenthoods across the country. And even though Walsh had no moral objections, according the Oregonian he said, "It's disruptive and very threatening. I just didn't want to put my family through that." And honestly? He has a point. If you'll recall, back in December Colorado anti-choicers picketed outside the homes of the contractors who were building a Denver Planned Parenthood. In fact, on Christmas morning the yahoos showed up at the contractor's home with signs depicting dead babies. More »
It's sort of weird to be celebrating an abortion, but um, we're really happy that the 11-year-old girl who was knocked up by her 19-year-old uncle in Romania will be allowed to have an abortion in her own country. A government committee has decided that "the girl's mental health would be severely affected if she had a baby," according to the Mail on Sunday. Originally the girl was planning to travel to the UK, where a wealthy Romanian expat had agreed to pay for her travel expenses and for the procedure. In a letter read at the committee yesterday, the girl said, "I want to go to school and to play. If I can't do this, my life will be a nightmare." [Mail On Sunday]
roe vs. world
Romanian Girl Impregnated By Relative May Will Not Be Denied An Abortion
Last week it was Polish 14-year-old who was caught in a choice battlefield, and now, news of a pregnant by rape 11-year-old Romanian girl has hit the international news wires. The legal time limit for abortions in Romania is 14 weeks, and because this girl is, you know, eleven, she didn't realize she was pregnant until her parents took her to the doctor because she was feeling sick, the Guardian reports. (At least that's better than Romania under Communist rule — as the drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days made disturbingly clear — abortion was completely illegal back then.) Oh, and if this story couldn't get any sadder, the man who raped this tween is her 19-year-old uncle, who has subsequently disappeared. Now 20 weeks pregnant, the girl's parents want her to travel to Britain, where the abortion limit is 24 weeks, and a wealthy Romanian living in England has volunteered to pay for her plane fare. So what's the problem? Romanian government committees disagree about what the girl should be allowed to do.
More »
Teen Mama Drama
Time's Nancy Gibbs Thinks "Pregnancy Pact" Teens Are Responsible
Everyone's got an opinion about the "pregnancy pact" teens from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Time, which originally publicized the teens alleged agreement to get knocked up together, has an opinion piece from Editor-at-Large Nancy Gibbs about how she thinks everyone is being too judgmental about these beleaguered teens. Her evidence? A couple of mean old blogs referring to the pregnant under-16-year-olds as "marauding narcissistic sluts." (Sorry, that made me laugh). Gibbs suggests that these teens are actually doing the mature thing by having these babies because they're "trying to do the right thing in a difficult situation." This conclusion is based on the one pregnant girl from Gloucester who went on Good Morning America to deny the existence of the pact. More »
Mike Erickson is a Republican running for Congress on a pro-life platform so it probably won't surprise you that he's paid for an abortion in his day. Or that she didn't really want to do it but he sort of made her, or that he didn't go to the clinic and left her bawling in the parking lot, or that he lied about it all later… etc., etc. The one interesting detail is that the Oregon Right To Life committee, which investigated the rumors back in 2006, called him out on changing his story. Read executive director Gayle Atteberry's letter denouncing Erickson by clicking douchebag's face. Note how she manages to muster a sense of shock at a pro-life politician's hypocrisy that somehow eludes us! [Oregonian]
suburban planning
How Pretty, Profitable Should Planned Parenthood Be?
"I'd like to think of Planned Parenthood as the LensCrafters of family planning," says Planned Parenthood executive Steve Trombley in a fascinating Wall Street Journal piece on how the 92-year-old nonprofit, long beset by attacks and threats by antiabortion wingnuts, is coming under fire for Starbucksification. (I guess it's worthwhile to mention here that October will mark ten years since the last American abortionist murder. Yay?) So now come the First World Problems: PP clocked in a billion dollars of revenue last year — that's somewhere between Wet Seal and J. Crew — and generated a surplus of $114 million, all this as the abortion rate has gone down! How'd they do it? A savvy combination of tactics pioneered by the specialty retail industry! First off, the organization has targeted the more affluent teen market with special "Must Have" limited edition condoms and nicer, more bulletproof facilities in suburban locations "in shopping centers and malls, places where women are already doing their grocery shopping, picking up their Starbucks, living their daily lives," according to another PP exec. They've added more high-margin products to their offerings: the Morning After pill, but also "jewelry, candles, books and T-shirts." More »
roe vs. world
14-Year-Old Polish Rape Victim Now Caught In Abortion Rights Battle
A girl known only as "Agata" in the press has been caught in the mire of a choice controversy in Poland. 14-year-old Agata was raped by a schoolmate, and she became pregnant from the single encounter. The Irish Times reports that Agata was "covered in bruises" when she came home from the assault, and after a gynecologist's visit her mother applied for permission for Agata to get an abortion. You see, abortion laws in Poland are extremely restrictive, and though under Polish law, rape victims are allowed abortions, when Agata and her mother showed up at a local hospital in Lublin to go through with the procedure, instead of finding the doctor in her hospital room, she found right-to-life priest Father Krzysztof Podstawka, who heads an organization called "Protection of Life." Agata's gynecologist returned later to say she would not perform the abortion. But Agata's saga doesn't end there. More »
your government and you
What Is The Definition Of Birth?
There has been a legislative trend sweeping through states which would offer parents whose children are stillborn the option of a quasi-birth certificate along with the standard death certificate. It seems likely to become the law in New York fairly soon, which would make it the 24th state to offer grieving parents some option of state recognition other than a death certificate. It's all so soft and fuzzy and the right thing to do, it's enough to make you wonder why it hasn't passed all 50 states yet. Yeah, well, there are issues. There are always issues. The problem is that state legislators are often incredibly imprecise in the language they choose, so while abortion-rights organizations like the bills in theory, the practice is often thornier. Roger Evans with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America told the New York Times last year: More »
womb raiders
Woman Sentenced To Year In Prison For Forging Son's Knocked-Up Girlfriend's "Parental Notification" Forms
Well here is a fucking mess. Girl, 16, gets pregnant. Girl tells boyfriend, boyfriend's mom finds out by snooping through his text messages, mom has big plans for her son, mom pressures girl to get an abortion, tells her not to tell her parents, forges the required parental notification letter and pays for everythign; girl gets abortion, girl for whatever reason notifies actual parents, girl and/or girl's parents get upset and go to authorities; mom is sentenced to a year in the DeKalb County Prison, the maximum sentence for a misdemeanor crime; I think I have counted like twenty different levels on which this is fucking depressing. I mean, from the girl's perspective, probably the only thing worse than thinking your mother's boyfriend doesn't think you're good enough for him — and I'm assuming that's what she thought — is entertaining the possibility that on top of all the general misery of teenage relationships you might have just killed someone, which also, this being Georgia, is probably what she thought. And then you're her parents. Maybe they're just litigious Evangelicals. More »
roe vs. world
The Coat Hanger "May Be The Symbol, But Is In No Way A Myth," Says Pre-Roe OB-GYN
Coat hangers seem almost delicate when you hear retired gynecologist Dr. Waldo Fielding talk about what he saw in a New York City ER sixty years ago. "Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off," he says in an essay in the New York Times today reminding people of what life was really like before doctors could safely give women surgical abortions. Several of Fielding's patients arrived at the ER "with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it." The worst case Dr. Fielding ever saw is after the jump, and it's not for the faint of heart or stomach. More »
Love the sinner, hate the sin? Not if you're Catholic you don't. In 2004, the now-Pope barred pro-choice politicians from accepting Communion, though most of them (like all other pro-choice Catholics) basically ignored him. Now there's a hubbub because some whiny guy from Lancaster saw a priest give Communion to Senator Edward Kennedy at the Pope's big mass in Washington last month. The spokeswoman from the Washington archdiocese told reporters that such a thing "wouldn't be possible," but Kennedy's office confirmed it. Notably, although the Catholic Church is supposedly equally opposed to the death penalty, Catholic politicians that refuse to use the power of their office to eliminate the death penalty or prevent executions have never faced similar public repudiations from Church leaders. Ahh, sweet double standards: Keeping the Catholic Church hierarchy in power for 2,000 years. [Washington Times]
pot psychology
More »
"How Do I Tell My Boyfriend About My Yeast Infection?"
It's time for another installment of Pot Psychology, the advice column in which everyone's problems are solved with an "herbal" remedy. (Remember, kids: Don't do drugs. Really.) In this episode, my friend till the end, Rich, helps me dole out advice on stuff like abortion scams, diabetic drinkers, and rim jobs. Got a burning question? Send it to tips@jezebel.com with "Pot Psychology" in the subject line. (Please keep them short; they're verrrry hard to read when stoned.)More »
roe vs. world
Conservative British MP Calls America "The Abortion Capital Of The World"
To quell the rising rate of abortion in Great Britain, Tory MP Nadine Dorries has begun a campaign to reduce the limit for late-term abortions from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. Dorries' snappy marketing campaign to push this piece of legislation is called "20 Reasons for 20 Weeks." The right-wing Daily Mail published all 20, and most of Dorries' tactics include the display of the sad-teeny-feet of babies born before 24 weeks. Zoe Williams of the Guardian pokes holes in these 20 Reasons, calling them "so flawed, often so illogical, so savagely misogynistic and so repetitive." Here's just one example of Dorries' and the DM's tenuous handle on the truth: they say that "two-thirds of GPs support a reduction in the time limit," but Williams points out that 77% of the British Medical Association voted to keep the limit as is. Dorries argues that "If we don't [lower the time limit for abortion] there is no question that we will overtake America in the next couple of years, making us the abortion capital of the world." But is America really the abortion capital of the world? More »
Avant Garde Assholes
Excellent essayist and Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum weighs in on the Aliza Shvarts controversy and decides that our favorite art agitator isn't actually all that original, especially when compared to a batty Brit named Mary Toft. "Many artists, including photographer Cindy Sherman and multimedia artist Judy Chicago, have incorporated menstrual blood into their work. As for those maybe-miscarriages and their role in performance art, hoax or some combination thereof, Shvarts has nothing on 18th century Englishwoman Mary Toft. In 1726, Toft became a sensation when she managed to convince the public and much of the medical community that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits." [LAT]
Some troubling news on the pro-choice front: according to the AFP, almost 70% of Italian gynecologists refuse to perform abortions, up from under 60% in 2003. "Italy legalized abortion in 1978 but pressure from the Vatican enabled doctors to claim a 'conscientious objection' and refuse to carry out the procedure," the NY Times reports. A large percentage of Italian anesthetists are also refusing to participate in abortions — nearly 50% these days. In Sicily, a whopping 84% of gynos will not perform the procedures. [Agence France-Presse via New York Times]
hate male
