DIY Abortions On The Rise As Conservatives Make Access Harder

By Megan Carpentier | March 19, 2009 | 9:40pm

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Women have been using alternative methods to end unwanted pregnancies for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Some high school girls in rural Wisconsin have been using veterinary medicines, and the right blames medical abortion.

The drugs [intended to abort livestock], kept on farms for management of livestock under the names Prostaglandins, Cystorelin, Factrel, Gonadorelin or Lutalyse, were being ingested orally in large quantities, even though animals are treated by injection, the alert said.

The school nurse and the American Animal Hospital Association verified that this was going on. But rather than blaming this on a lack of access to or education about contraception or safe and legal abortions, it’s all about how the pro-choice movement has suddenly convinced women that this is safe (as though women weren’t unsafely ending their pregnancies 40 years ago).

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“What kind of world have we created for these girls that they’re drinking poison and risking death in these modern-day back-alley abortions, rather than bear their child in love,” asked Judie Brown, president of the American Life League.

Um, maybe one in which girls aren’t given the access and education they need to prevent pregnancy in the first place or options to allow them to live their lives in the manner of their choosing if they do choose to remain pregnant? That would be my answer, but Judie’s got a different one:

“We are currently in a meltdown situation with regard to the kinds of communication parents are having with their children,” she said. “The parents no longer are truly in charge of their children. They have surrendered control to the public school system.”

Well, if they’d turned all control over to the public school system and that system wasn’t being interfered with its education duties by a bunch of Krispy Kreme-hating fundamentalists, maybe their daughters would know how to prevent pregnancy.

But it’s not just the schools! It’s all Planned Parenthood’s fault, too:

ALL had only days earlier issued a report revealing that in the last two years, 61 additional Planned Parenthood facilities have started offering “medical,” as distinguished from surgical, abortions.

Quoting Celebrate Life editor Stephanie Hopping, Brown noted veterinary medication abortions “illustrate that decriminalized abortion does not stop highly dangerous abortion methods like this. In fact, it probably encourages the use of them mightily, because this is hardly different from an RU-486 abortion, except that it isn’t done under medical supervision.”

Um, yes. Women have never, ever done this before. And, like the Dominican women who are doing it (albeit without livestock drugs) in New York City, there’s just no way that the fundies’ efforts to reduce access, raise costs and drive reproductive health clinics out of rural areas in this country — thereby limiting women’s access to the safe and legal methods that Judie is now all concerned about — have anything to do with why women would choose to risk their own lives and health to end an unwanted pregnancy as women have done for hundreds of years. Nope, it’s the fault of medical abortion and Planned Parenthood, definitely.

Look, women need access to safe, legal and confidential methods of medically-supervised abortion. If the fundies really gave a shit about what women want — or would do in the absence of safe, legal access to reproductive health services — they’d be all about contraception and education. Instead, they just think that you can tell girls to keep their legs closed until marriage, eliminate their access to safe and legal abortion (because, really, every horny teenager is totally thinking about the potential consequences) and everything will be just fine. Nice plan. This is how it works.

Teens’ Abortion Technique: Drink Poisonous Mixture [World Net Daily]

Earlier: NYC Women Ride The Underground Abortion Railroad
The Religious Right Comes Down On Krispy Kreme