More: The Way It Was

By Eleanor Cooney

The Beatles ruled. The mini was in. I was seventeen, and pregnant. What happened next is what could happen again.

In 1959, when I was a precocious smarty-pants still in grade school, I wrote a fake letter to Doris Blake, the New York Daily News advice columnist. I pretended to be a teenage girl “in trouble.” I spun a tale of a liquor-soaked prom night and passing out in the back of a car. I included a cast of entirely fictional characters—a worthless boyfriend, a mentally unstable mother, a strict, brutal father. I ended my letter with: “Now I think I am pregnant. Please help me. I am desperate.”

I’m not sure what I expected, but my letter was not printed, and no advice was forthcoming. The silence was utter. Possibly Miss Blake, like Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, had a drawer where such letters were tossed. If so, the other letters in that drawer were no doubt a lot like mine—except that they were not written by wiseass children. They were real. And for the writers of those letters, the silence was real. And I remember thinking: Gee, what if I really were that girl I made up? What would I do?

One summer night some years later, when I was not quite 18, I got knocked up. There was nothing exciting or memorable or even interestingly sordid about the sex. I wasn’t raped or coerced, nor was I madly in love or drunk or high. The guy was another kid, actually younger than I, just a friend, and it pretty much happened by default. We were horny teenagers with nothing else to do.

Nature, the ultimate unsentimental pragmatist, has its own notions about what constitutes a quality liaison. What nature wants is for sperm and egg to meet, as often as possible, whenever and wherever possible. Whatever it takes to expedite that meeting is fine with nature. If it’s two people with a bassinet and a nursery all decorated and waiting and a shelf full of baby books, fine. If it’s a 12-year-old girl who’s been married off to a 70-year-old Afghan chieftain, fine. And if it’s a couple of healthy young oafs like my friend and me, who knew perfectly well where babies come from but just got stupid for about 15 minutes, that’s fine, too.

In the movies, newly pregnant women trip, fall down the stairs, and “lose the baby.” Ah. If only it were that easy. In real life, once that egg is fertilized and has glided on down the fallopian tube, selected its nesting place, and settled in, it’s notoriously secure, behaves like visiting royalty. Nature doesn’t give a fig about the hostess’s feelings of hospitality or lack of them. If the zygote’s not defective, and the woman is in good health, almost nothing will shake it loose. Anyone who’s been pregnant and didn’t want to be knows this is so.

Read more at Motherjones.

Warning: There is a graphic photo of a woman who died after a failed abortion, about 3 screens down.

It was probably only a matter of time before Mississippi got on board with the newest GOP trend. A fetal heartbeat bill introduced earlier this month contains almost identical language to a similar measure put forth in Arkansas last year.

A person who intends to perform an abortion on a
pregnant woman shall determine if there is the presence of a fetal
heartbeat of the unborn human individual that the pregnant woman
is carrying according to standard medical practice. A person
shall comply with this paragraph (b) regardless of whether or not
the State Board of Health has promulgated rules under paragraph
(c) of this subsection (3).

(c) The State Board of Health may promulgate rules for
the appropriate methods of performing an examination for the
presence of a fetal heartbeat of an unborn human individual based
on standard medical practice.

As was mentioned in the earlier LGF article, “standard medical practice” means that, this early in a pregnancy (1st trimester) the only way to detect a fetal heartbeat is by transvaginal ultrasound.

Here’s the full text of the bill. I encourage you to read the whole thing, they use a number of questionable “facts” as rationale for this measure.

In summary, the bill opens by spouting statistics indicating that the majority of pregnancies in which a fetal heartbeat can be detected have a good chance of making it to term. Therefore, fetal heartbeat, according to the bill, is an excellent measure of the viability of a pregnancy.

There’s little more I can say on this that hasn’t been said already, but suffice to say I still find myself double checking my calendar to make sure it really is 2013.

JACKSON — Supporters and opponents demonstrated Tuesday outside Mississippi’s only abortion clinic to mark 40 years since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling established a nationwide right to abortion.

Opponents also held two events at the state Capitol, including one where people carried a small white coffin up the outside steps and prayed for an end to abortion. The Rev. Philip “Flip” Benham of Concord, N.C., national director of Operation Save America, said the coffin contained an aborted fetus he calls baby Daniel.

“God, we just want to say for little Daniel that we’re sorry,” Benham said.

The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, stood near the open coffin and encouraged people to take photographs and touch the fetus.

The clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is in the city’s Fondren neighborhood, an area with trendy clothing stores and restaurants. Lawn sprinklers ran steadily at the clinic and at an unrelated business across the street, keeping anti-abortion demonstrators at a distance in the chilly weather. The clinic sits on a small hill, and the abortion-rights demonstrators stood near the building and above the sprinklers.

Read the whole thing here

Look I get it. I know the pro-life movement is very passionate about their cause. I myself do not believe abortion should be used recklessly and measures should be taken to prevent unintended pregnancies and births.

But there have to be limits. A child size coffin WITHOUT an actual deceased child in it would have made the exact same point. Why the need to turn a deceased baby into a political tool?

At what point do we say this has gone too far?

Are we there yet?

Have we passed it maybe?

I just don’t know.

This article from the Mother Jones archives (September/October 2004) is painful to read in many ways, but for someone like myself who (mostly) grew up in the post-Roe v. Wade world, I think it’s a must.

It’s a long piece and the author doesn’t pull any punches, so steel yourself for some unpleasant truths. If you’re a woman, or someone who has ever loved a woman or girl, you owe it to yourself to read it all the way through.

WARNING: Towards the end of the first page there’s a very graphic police photo from 1964 of a young mother of two who didn’t survive a motel room abortion. Keep in mind that this is the era the GOP would like to send women back to.

In 1959, when I was a precocious smarty-pants still in grade school, I wrote a fake letter to Doris Blake, the New York Daily News advice columnist. I pretended to be a teenage girl “in trouble.” I spun a tale of a liquor-soaked prom night and passing out in the back of a car. I included a cast of entirely fictional characters—a worthless boyfriend, a mentally unstable mother, a strict, brutal father. I ended my letter with: “Now I think I am pregnant. Please help me. I am desperate.”

I’m not sure what I expected, but my letter was not printed, and no advice was forthcoming. The silence was utter. Possibly Miss Blake, like Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, had a drawer where such letters were tossed. If so, the other letters in that drawer were no doubt a lot like mine—except that they were not written by wiseass children. They were real. And for the writers of those letters, the silence was real. And I remember thinking: Gee, what if I really were that girl I made up? What would I do?

One summer night some years later, when I was not quite 18, I got knocked up. There was nothing exciting or memorable or even interestingly sordid about the sex. I wasn’t raped or coerced, nor was I madly in love or drunk or high. The guy was another kid, actually younger than I, just a friend, and it pretty much happened by default. We were horny teenagers with nothing else to do.

[…]

Like some ugly old wall-to-wall carpeting they’ve been yearning to get rid of, they finally, finally loosened a little corner of Roe. Now they can start to rip the whole thing up, roll it back completely, and toss it in the Dumpster.

On November 5, 2003, three decades after Roe v. Wade established a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, President George W. Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban bill into law. We’ve all seen the photograph: The president sits at a table with a modest little smile on his lips. Nine guys—senators and congressme—stand behind him, watching that signature go onto the paper, giddy grins on their faces. They look almost goofy with joy.

Two of these happy fellows are actually Democrats: Jim Oberstar and Bart Stupak. The rest are Republicans to their marrow: the bill’s sponsor, Rick Santorum, as well as Steve Chabot, Orrin Hatch, Henry Hyde, Tom DeLay, Mike DeWine, and Dennis Hastert.

Be assured that it’s not just “partial-birth” abortion they’re so happy about passing a law against. It’s all the law heralds. Like some ugly old wall-to-wall carpeting they’ve been yearning to get rid of, they finally, finally loosened a little corner of Roe. Now they can start to rip the whole thing up, roll it back completely, and toss it in the Dumpster.

[…]

A doctor friend there said he couldn’t help her himself, but sent her to a local prostitute who did abortions. The prostitute had her own speculum. The procedure was done on the prostitute’s bed: The catheter was inserted through the cervix and left there.

Since lurid descriptions of partial-birth abortion have been so effective in rallying support for the bill, perhaps some balance is needed. I’ve read and heard hundreds of accounts of pre-Roe abortion, and there was a wide range of danger, squalor, sanitary conditions, provider skill, follow-up care. The well-heeled and well-connected often flew to Puerto Rico or Sweden and checked into clinics. Of the ones who couldn’t do that, some were lucky enough to find competent, compassionate doctors. Some were treated kindly and recovered without incident. The other extreme was pain, terror, and death worthy of the Inquisition. A typical picture emerges, though, and it matches up just about perfectly with a story told to me by a woman I know.

After a date rape (by a “poet”) during a trip to Paris in 1967 when she was 23, she found herself pregnant. She tried the usual “remedies”—scalding hot baths, violent jumping, having someone walk on her belly. When she got home to Minnesota, she was two months along. A doctor friend there said he couldn’t help her himself, but sent her to a local prostitute who did abortions.

The prostitute had her own speculum. The procedure was done on the prostitute’s bed: The catheter was inserted through the cervix and left there. After four days of high fever, chills, bleeding, and passing big chunks of tissue, she landed in the hospital. They said her uterus was perforated, that she had acute peritonitis and an “incomplete” abortion. She was given a huge dose of penicillin and treated as if she were some sort of contemptible lower life form. The emergency-room doctor snarled, “What have you done to yourself?” Later, she realized that the first doctor—her friend—had known all along that she’d probably get desperately ill. Only then could a hospital legally give her a D&C.

She recovered—sterile, violently allergic to penicillin, and so “paralyzed and ashamed” by the experience that she stayed away from men for four years. Who says deterrence doesn’t work?

[…]

More at Mother Jones…

This November, Mississippi will serve as a test case on a life-at-fertilization initiative that its backers are hoping will launch the next wave of court challenges to Roe v. Wade.

A national effort to put abortion bans into state constitutions is looking for its first victory next month in Mississippi, where voters are being asked to approve an amendment declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Supporters hope the so-called personhood initiative will succeed in a Bible Belt state that already has some of the nation’s toughest abortion regulations and only a single clinic where the procedures are performed.

The initiative is endorsed by both candidates in a governor’s race that’s being decided the same day. While Mississippi is the only state with such an amendment on the ballot this fall, efforts are under way to put the question to voters in at least four other states in 2012.