I’m going to relate a personal story because, why the hell not? It took place quite a long time ago, during the second term of the Clinton administration, probably well before some of you crazy kids were even born.
The mister and I found out we were going to have a baby, and damn, we were so excited! We had an ultrasound at one point and found out we were having a girl, and we (well, at least I) rejoiced at dodging the circumcision debate bullet.
Everything was going along fine until sometime well into the second trimester, when I started getting these weird headaches and crippling nausea and swollen, balloon-like feet. Because we had decent healthcare coverage, we were able to quickly learn that I had preeclampsia.
No one knows why. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. You don’t get it from drinking or pot or slut-pills or laziness. It’s just one of those random-ass things that can happen when you undertake the complex process of assembling a separate human being inside your hoo-hah.
Anyhoo, the little parasite that was causing all this trouble was already dear to the mister and me, but the doctor explained to us all the ways that this thing could go south. Preeclampsia poses a risk to the fetus but can also cause the mother to stroke out and die. Seriously, that shit happens.
So the doctor ordered bed rest, which wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounds since this was in the pre-tablet, smartphone and streaming TV era, so I had nothing but daytime television and books to while away the dreary hours.
I had to have my blood pressure taken a lot and go to the hospital for high-res ultrasounds weekly to monitor the fetus and make sure things weren’t getting worse. The high-res ultrasounds were pretty cool, because we could see details such as that our future child had lots of hair. She took after her dad on that score; I was bald as an egg as a baby.
Anyhoo, this all has a happy ending: The little parasite who tried to kill her host is now a senior in high school and is finding alternative ways to suck the life out of me, such as driving a car and requiring astonishing sums of money for various necessities.
But I was reminded of our first ordeal together last night when we were watching the GOP debate and Scott Walker proudly affirmed that he’s in favor of abolishing abortion altogether with no exceptions, not even to save the life of the mother.
My husband, doctor and I white-knuckled our way through a high-risk pregnancy where death — of myself or the fetus — was a remote but ever-present possibility. It was about as fraught and emotional a situation as you’d guess.
But you want to know what would have made it a thousand times worse? If a vile, officious, ignorant, beady-eyed little worm like Scott Walker had inserted himself into our intensely private business and restricted our choices.
The nerve. The temerity. The unmitigated fucking gall of these motherfuckers. And so-called moderate Jeb Bush is no better. Just ask Mr. Schiavo. So yeah, fuck those fucking pricks, with every rusty implement in the tool shed. The end.
PS: Open thread!
trollhattan
Preach it, sister Betty. And by the way, my best wishes to the li’l parasite!
“These People” are the inverse of what they claim to be. They’re immoral to the core.
ETA Am waiting for The Donald to pledge to “Buy up all the abortions.”
Baud
But tax cuts!
Doug R
every Democratic candidate this term should run the tape of the GOP contenders saying no exceptions even for the life of the mother.
Baud
Maybe every pregnant woman should be given a photo of Scott Walker to carry around.
Bobby Thomson
Seriously, fuck that guy.
Baud
@Doug R:
Worked for Udall!
Patricia Kayden
“Scott Walker proudly affirmed that he’s in favor of abolishing abortion altogether with no exceptions, not even to save the life of the mother.”
That’s all you need to know about Walker then if he’s the Republican nominee. He cares nothing about women. Nothing. He “cares” only about fetuses. Women can die. As long as they’re forced to give birth, he’s alright.
The story of Savita Halappanavar sums up how anti-choicers feel about women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Sure but that was a midterm, it’ll be different this time. Honest.
JPL
What irks me is that my son and others in their thirties, don’t believe the fuckers would pass restrictive bills.
It’s difficult for thirty somethings to believe that woman had to carry non viable babies to term, because it’s so barbaric.
agorabum
Preach. I know folks who had real bad pregnancies and lots of bed rest etc – afterwards the doc said the next one will kill you, no ifs ands or buts about it.
Fuck those guys
Calouste
Between this and his “war with Iran on day 1” statement, Walker is toast in the general. Democratic SuperPACs can just run those two statements (and probably another one he will make at one point) in a 30 second ad and label him the candidate of death.
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: They are already passing restrictive bills in red states.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/12/anti-abortion-bills-_n_6671346.html
srv
It’s howdy dowdy time:
Just wow.
Baud
@srv:
So Lerner is a Juicer?
shell
He doesnt even care about that. Just look at that smug bored face of his at the debate. He s just saying what he tinks will get him the approval from the base. In this election cycle, the more extreme you are the better.
And remember, once you get the nomination, theres always the Etch-A-Sketch
BillinGlendaleCA
@Patricia Kayden: That really doesn’t resonate to 30 somethings in blue or purple states.
rikyrah
Amen
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I was going to go with, “you must be new here”.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
They’re too busy being cynical about Democrats.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Most of the bills still have restrictions for health of the mother and viability.
Citizen Alan
I have an unusual theory explain the anti-choice movement. Obviously, it has nothing to do with babies, because once it’s born, they don’t care if it starves to death in a ditch. For a long time, I just thought it was misogyny, but even hatred for women doesn’t explain it because there’s such a large percentage of rabidly anti-choice women out there, and they can’t all be deranged self-hating women who despise themselves for their gender.
So I’ve come around to the following theory: I think anti-choicers are horrible people. All of them. And I think they /know/ they’re horrible people. And as a consequence, the idea of easy access to abortion fills them with existential dread because they know that the world would be a demonstrably better place if they’d never been born.
JPL
I’m shocked that the pro life people spared Holmes the death penalty. IMO, the trial should not have happened.
scav
@shell: There’s perhaps also a little mental cover to be gained by telling yourself “I failed to get nominated because I strenuously upheld the rights of the sweet little innocent little baaaaayyyyyyybbbbiiiiiieeeeeessss agains the ravening hordes of so-called dying mothers!” rather then “I was so generic and little memorable in a crowded field that I interested the margin of error.”
Mike in NC
Here’s hoping both Walker and Rubio see half of their hair fall out in the next year. Assholes.
rikyrah
@JPL:
See..folks like this make me wanna take a frying pan to them.
Maya Angelou told us already…
When someone shows you who they are…BELIEVE THEM.
what da phuq does your son believe has been happening in those states where the GOP has taken over?
How many Personhood amendments do they have to put on ballots BEFORE PEOPLE GET A GODDAMN CLUE?!?!?!?
Betty Cracker
@srv: All the wingnut frothing about Lerner persecuting teaturds must be a lie, then. She’s clearly one of them. She’s probably a deep-cover teaturd mole who tried and failed to set Bams up. Poor teaturds. They even fail at failure.
normal liberal
Even Megyn seemed shocked. Apparently Lil’ Scotty is unfamiliar with basic facts about human gestation and the many ways it can go south.
My aunt (now deceased) had an ectopic pregnancy shortly after she and my uncle were married. Fortunately the doctor in Godforsaken, Indiana stopped dithering before it killed her, but the surgery basically rendered her infertile. They spent literal decades trying to adopt, and it clouded the rest of their lives.
Because a completely non-viable embryo was more important than her health and almost her life.
Betty, I’m so glad for you that you had the best outcome.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
Fixed.
JPL
@rikyrah: Most of the thirty something my son knows and I know would not vote for a Republican. So at least there is that.
Patricia Kayden
But isn’t the point of all these anti-abortion bills to effectively make getting an abortion impossible? Having only one abortion clinic in an entire state pretty much makes abortions impossible to get for poorer women.
http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/abortion-and-the-decline-of-clinics
TaMara (BHF)
@JPL: You and me both. Two years ago, he pleaded guilty and would accept life in prison without parole, but the DA and the DA alone, wanted the death penalty. Many of the family members were against it.
So millions wasted, families traumatized, and for what? Good on the jury for doing the most difficult job one could face and deciding on compassion for a mentally ill man.
RSA
Thanks for sharing your story, Betty.
SiubhanDuinne
One or two days ago on this site, I was one of at least a couple (perhaps a few, or even several) female commenters to acknowledge that I had voluntarily had an abortion. (In my case, it was after Roe v. Wade, so it was legal — although I daresay I would have sought out another state, or country, if it had been earlier than 1973.) Valued commenter Omnes Omnibus posted congratulations for our “courage,” which was very nice of him, although in my view not courageous at all.
But I started thinking back to the early ’70s. I remember that Ms. Magazine, in the earliest months of its publication, ran a feature listing women, famous or not, who had had abortions, legal or not. Somewhere in those archives of thousands of women is my own name. Back then, at a time when abortion was widely considered shameful, it was indeed a “courageous” step to come forward.
Betty, I applaud you, your husband, and your doctor! Your fabulous daughter is the best possible argument for choice.
And I also applaud me, who would have been an impoverished, resentful single mother, for choosing as I did. My fabulous non-parenthood is also the best possible argument for choice.
That’s what “choice” means. Right?
TaMara (BHF)
So Rubio doesn’t give a fuck if a mother dies? Then I will feel no guilt wishing death on him. I knew a mother, she had a two year old little girl and was pregnant with her much wanted son when her placenta broke through and attached to her bladder causing her to almost bleed to death. The only option was to terminate a perfectly healthy fetus…because if not they would both die.
And what did her church do? Blame her for having an abortion (Catholic, was there a doubt?). Better a young girl grow up without a mother than terminate a fetus that wasn’t going to survive, OBVIOUSLY, if the mother bled to death.
Bex
@Mike in NC: Walker already has a good start on that. He has a classic bald spot on the top of his head.
Bex
@Baud: You got there first!
Thoughtful David
@scav:
So Raven has hordes?
bemused
They are just evil, sadistic assholes. That’s all there is to it. However, if abortion was forbidden to save life of the mother on the books, I would bet any one of those creeps would quickly break that law if it affected one of their dear ones. Ok, Santorum might be an exception.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s EXACTLY what choice means, and thank FSM we both got to make ours without some busy-body god-botherer dictating our options.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Exactly. Choice means that it’s up to women to decide what to do with their own bodies and their own lives. If they’re willing to risk their lives for the baby, that should be their call. If they aren’t, that should be their call, too. The rest of us should butt the hell out.
Hal
The whole ban abortions no matter what is just fodder for the primary voters who love that shit. There is no way you can reasonably argue a woman should die rather than terminate a pregnancy. Even with this supreme court I can’t imagine this type of law being upheld as constitutional.
Cacti
My wife had gestational diabetes with both of her pregnancies. For you non-breeders, that’s diabetes that only happens during the duration of pregnancy.
And she was perfectly healthy, with no family history of diabetes. Just dumb, random, chance.
After the birth of our second, my wife nearly died following dehiscence of her caesarian section incision, when a rope of her intestines popped out from the wound. The baby factory closed permanently after that one.
Pregnancy and child birth can be very risky, even for people who aren’t considered high risk. That the GOP regards pregnant women as little more than an incubator for the almighty fetus is completely barbaric.
Gimlet
I think part of the reasoning for “no exceptions” is the belief by Republicans that the mother and doctor will conspire to get whatever exception they allow.
max
If a vile, officious, ignorant, beady-eyed little worm like Scott Walker had inserted himself into our intensely private business and restricted our choices. The nerve. The temerity. The unmitigated fucking gall of these motherfuckers. And so-called moderate Jeb Bush is no better. Just ask Mr. Schiavo. So yeah, fuck those fucking pricks, with every rusty implement in the tool shed. The end.
And those assholes are hitting the fainting couches over Trump.
max
[‘They’ll fly their daughters to Bermuda or Canada if it comes to it. Lousy fucks.’]
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
THIS THIS THIS.
Walker is utter scum. He would substitute his very small dick judgement for that of the people most affected by any decision. It’s really easy for him to make a call that he does not have to live with the consequences of. He would, for example, deprive children of their mother and a man of his wife in some scenarios because his warped values dictate that a potential human being is more important than an actual one.
Scum like Walker should NEVER be allowed anywhere near the levers of power, and I can’t figure out why the majority of people in Wisconsin cannot figure this out. Perhaps Omnes can explain. Then again, people in Florida, in Maine, and in Kansas can’t figure it out either.
bemused
@JPL:
Years ago, probably during “compassionate conservative “GW first term, I was telling a young new nurse that there were pharmacists that were pushing hard for law to allow them to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and she didn’t believe me.
shell
I saw that. He looks like he just joined a medieval monastery.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
@Roger Moore:
Yup. Yup.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden: The sluts must MUST be punished for their sexytimes. THEY MUST!
That’s always been what this shit has been about. How dare women assert their own agency over their own bodies in any way, shape or form.
Punish the sluts. Punish them.
gogol's wife
@Doug R:
I agree. I can’t even watch it. What animals. No, animals are so much better.
Bex
@bemused: Santorum’s wife had an abortion although nobody called it that. Of course. IOKIYAR.
BBA
@Hal: Hobby Lobby set the stage for making Catholicism the established church. I wouldn’t put anything past this court.
Riggsveda
Betty, in the mid 70s, for a lot of reasons I don’t want to go into, I had 3 abortions in 2 years. It was a terrible time. In 1979, when I found myself pregnant while on birth control pills, by the man who was going to be my husband, we knew we were going to go for a birth, no matter what. Our beautiful girl turned 35 this year. But I am so grateful to this day that the choice was there for me when I needed it because of Roe, and I have no regrets. I’m old enough to have had friends who had to travel to New York and DC to get abortions, and they were horrible, scary, traumatic experiences, not because of the procedure but because of the creepy logistics surrounding the trips themselves. Most people don’t realize how Dickensian it could be then, and how much shame was heaped on the women who were outed. It’s still hard to admit, even now, because of family and employers who are less than enlightened. But we need to claim our pasts, even so, for the futures of the girls who can’t possibly understand what the world of illegal abortion is really like.
wasabi gasp
Life begins at jello shots.
scav
@Thoughtful David: One never knows in my particular alternate universe.
bemused
@Bex:
omg, I had forgotten that! Hypocritical freaks.
Schlemazel
There have been a couple of court cases where women were forced to carry dead fetuses to term because . . . PROLIF!!
But I agree with those upthread that may of the 20 & 30 something males & too many females never see that happening to them & are incapable of feeling pain not their own. I do not think it is THE winning argument but I think it needs to be used. I was in Colorado during the last campaign & Udall ran a crappy campaign, every ad I saw had only that one note drone, he gave people nothing that I saw as a reason to vote for him except that. That is not a winner anywhere but certainly should be in every arsonal just not the only bullet.
PurpleGirl
First: I’m sorry you experienced that. A friend also experienced pre-eclampsia but not so bad as to require bedrest (Not that she would have done it, thick-headed stubborn person that she was).
Second: People like to think pregnancy is the most natural condition in the world — safe and easy, problem-less. And they are so wrong.
Third: Glad your daughter turned out fine and healthy.
PurpleGirl
@Patricia Kayden: I think that if the mother dies, the fetus probably dies with her… unless the doctors can C-section the fetus, if it’s viable. They really don’t feel anything for the fetus, they just want to control women.
Schlemazel
Our first was a total surprise . . . mrs. had an IUD! The doctors discussed termination because they couldn’t be sure where the IUD was & it could have been engulfed and caused no end of pain & suffering. Ultrasound was not available at the time so we discussed abortion (not planned, some chance of a really poor outcome) and mrs decided the odds were not that bad. Now never let a parent say they NEVER regretted that decision ;) but I will say the regrets were few & far between
22over7
What I heard last night was a very disturbing moving of the goalposts. Rubio, Bush, and Walker all said NO EXCEPTIONS (did I miss anybody?). But Huckabee said he’d create Constitutional “protections” for fetuses. And Jindal threatened to send gov’t agencies to shut down Planned Parenthoods and, presumably, any other abortion clinics.
This sounds like actual war, because something has to be done about the hosts of these newly-christened citizens. What do you suppose they have in mind?
JaneE
Back in the 50’s, my aunt started having all kinds of weird physical problems. It took them well over a month to figure out what was wrong. She was pregnant (menopause baby, no periods so she thought she couldn’t get pregnant), and a fibroid had been starved of blood supply by the developing fetus and had turned necrotic and was dumping toxins into her system. She had an emergency hysterectomy, and had a touch-and-go recovery for the first few days. It was literally, get rid of the uterus, the fibroid, and the baby, or die. There was zero chance that she would survive long enough to have a viable fetus. Even now, it probably would not be viable, back then it was totally out of the question. She and my uncle had two children under 10. Both of them agreed that she needed to live, and if that meant losing a baby, she still needed to live and take care of the children she already had. Walker and all the other “no exceptions” pols would rather kill two people than just one. And they call themselves pro-life.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Calouste:
Did he really say he was going to go to war with Iran? I mean, is that what he said, but not in so many words, or did he say it right flat out? It was loud in the bar, and I couldn’t hear everything.
Davis X. Machina
@Calouste: Depends on turnout. There’s a large and active pro-death constituency.
SiubhanDuinne
@Riggsveda:
I accompanied two different friends at two different times from Florida (where abortion was not legal) to New York (where it was). Moral support and hand-holding. It was a fucking scary time, and “Dickensian” is exactly the word. I am decades beyond child-bearing years, but I don’t want any woman to have to traverse those Byzantine paths ever again.
Benw
I guess what would happen in the (insane) world where President Walker passes his “no exemptions” bill is that a lot of doctors would do the abortion anyway to save the mothers’ life and then the doctor and mother would go to jail. Fun!
g
These bastards make me furious. They pretty much declared non-personhood on pregnant women.
Another Holocene Human
@TaMara (BHF): That’s gross. Why are so many DAs life-ruining scum? Rhetorical question.
Chris
Since I am not a woman, I can’t say I relate to pregnancy, but I can only say this: I can barely stand a few days of even the most ordinary stomach problems (cramps, diarrhea, food poisoning).
Pregnancy, I understand, is that, cranked up to eleven, lasting nine months, and culminating in hours of excruciating pain.
Viewed in that light, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who at any point in the pregnancy decides that they’re just tired and don’t want to put up with nine months of that misery should be allowed to put themselves out of it, no questions asked.
Gimlet
In less than 24 hours since Schumer’s announcement, 17,636 members of MoveOn have committed to withhold $8.3 million they would have contributed to Schumer and other Democrats who oppose the Iran deal
MBunge
Just a little rhetorical note. That story loses all power to persuade anyone who doesn’t already agree with you when you throw the word “parasite” around because, obviously, you wouldn’t have risked your life over a parasite.
Mike
OzarkHillbilly
Heh. I almost killed my mother too, tho it was a post partem thing. And I had colic and almost caused my old man to kill himself while my mother was stuck in the hospital for “weeks on end” (as told to me) Thank dog my old man had lots of sisters, 2 of whom could not have children..
Gimlet
@22over7:
Send them all copies of “Rosemary’s Baby (1968)”
Roger Moore
@Gimlet:
I think the core anti-abortion wackos genuinely believe that a fertilized egg is a person and that an exception that allows abortion under any circumstances is allowing innocent babies to be murdered. They may use the line about doctors using health and rape exceptions to justify any abortion when trying to convince people less extreme than them, but it isn’t their core objection.
Iowa Old Lady
I’ve stomped around mad all day today over Walker’s monstrous position. His claim seemed to be that a pregnancy would never really endanger a woman’s life because modern medicine. Honest to god, you’d think he’d never heard of things like ectopic pregnancies.
But beyond that, these “small government” conservatives need to get out of the decisions people make about their own lives.
Re young people not believing what could happen, you don’t have to be very young to have come to awareness in a world where birth control, abortion, and good obstetrical care were available. They have no idea what it was like and could be like again.
OzarkHillbilly
@MBunge: Obviously, you don’t have children. ;-)
Random Dude
@Riggsveda: Writing this under a different nym.
Long, long time ago, when my girlfriend and I were young and stupid and horny, she got pregnant. We were both in college (different colleges.) We were of an ethnic group and socioeconomic class where that would have meant really only one option. As luck would have it, she lived and went to school in New York State. We pooled our meager resources and she got an abortion, telling nobody.
Time passed. We each finished college and got further degrees. We were still in love. We got married. We went on to have three wonderful children at a time of our choosing, when we could provide a good home. They’re grown now, all finished with college and more. If the choice we made way back then hadn’t been available, we’d have had to one or both abandon college, raise a child that had come when we didn’t want it, likely not stay married for 35+ years. To think that politicians today want to take my children back to a legal time and place well before they were born makes my blood boil. The choice we had has literally enabled our life.
Calouste
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/20/scott_walkers_deranged_hawkishness_hes_ready_to_bomb_iran_during_his_inauguration_speech/
Tree With Water
Lest We Forget: their reprehensibly sick and twisted attitudes towards women’s health care issues aside, Walker, Bush (et.al.) also plot war, and kill/slay/murder people for mammon’s sake. The republican party of the United States is, above all, a refuge for war criminals.
PurpleGirl
Two or three years some group had an ad campaign that featured some text about using hangers… but they they used PLASTIC hangers in the photo. I made a comment on it at the time that ‘No, not plastic hangers, wire hangers.” (Shaking head over what people don’t remember about the past.)
Betty Cracker
@MBunge: In my experience, most people who utterly lack a sense of humor are already wingnuts, so I’m not too worried about it.
RaflW
These horrible people, Walker yes but all the GOP candidates and pretty much the entire party — there is no room for pro-choice Republicans from what I can tell unless they are deeply closeted (and that is highly problematic) — are of course idiots about science and medicine. Because no abortions, even to save the mother, doesn’t always save the danged baby either.
These sanctity-of-the-family liars would rather any already born kids not have a mom. And quite possibly not have a sibling either. One starts to suspect that these superstitious a-holes would like to pass laws criminalizing miscarriages.
I hope the vast middle (if it exists, and the Village sure claims it does), most of which is “uncomfortably pro-choice” f*ing wakes up and hears exactly what the GOP is saying: No choice, ever, let your mom/sister/wife/girlfriend/cousin/whoever die.
Culture of life my ass.
RSA
@Roger Moore:
But has any IFV clinic in the U.S. been picketed, ever? There’s that who-would-you-save-in-a-fire thought experiment, but this is a pretty obvious inconsistency in the real world.
Bostondreams
@srv:
All those lovely people flying the flag of slavery would agree. What’s the big deal?
Mandalay
Anderson Cooper on CNN this evening:
The media’s search for a horse race becomes ever more desperate.
Benw
@RaflW: they’re pro-life in favor of the death penalty. Every life is sacred my ass.
trollhattan
@Bex:
Repressed memory, but wasn’t that…procedure followed by the parents taking the little corpse home to pass amongst the other Santorum spawn?
That guy is deeply sick.
Roger Moore
@JaneE:
It’s also important to remember that the no abortion even to protect the mother’s life is not even a universal religious belief. In Orthodox Judaism, abortion is actually mandatory if it is necessary to protect the life of the mother. Remember that the next time they talk about how much they respect Judaism.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
She and The Donald could have a layoff-off.
“I fire you and you and you and you and you…”
“I TOTALLY fire you and you and you and you and you…”
CarolDuhart2
I think that the real opposition to abortion has more to do with demographics than anything else. When white women were having 8-9 kids, (and sometimes even illegal abortions), there was no antni-abortion movement. When the career ladder for every woman was short (brown and black women had only a stepstool)
Griwold and Roe changed everything just about immediately-and that’s when my Catholic school started having the right-to-life movement.
JPL
Frances Oldham Kelsey died. She was the doctor who exposed the dangers of Thalidomide. link
Even though I was not quite a teenager during those years, that is when I realized that the wealthy have more resources.
Another Holocene Human
@PurpleGirl:
You’re right, and what a sick joke that one is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: a pre-existing pet peeve of mine in politics is the phony familiarity (No, I do not want to sign “Barack’s birthday card”, but I may think about responding to President Obama’s fund-raising appeal on behalf of the DNC– No, I do not want to help your Mom/Dad fight for your future), and I despise Fiorina, which autocorrect really wants to make Florin, but this is pretty bad
Donald, congratulations on…
Rick, nice job yesterday…
Jeb, I wanted to ask you…
Ben, congratulations…
Nope, not hearing it. I’ve even heard reporters refer to “Mr Trump” in the third person to preserve that access.
Another Holocene Human
@MBunge: Dude, biologically, the fetus is a parasite. Go ahead, bone up. Plenty of books on barnesandnobles.com.
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
I think it’s willful ignorance in both cases. Walker and anti-abortion extremists refuse to learn about the actual health issues surrounding pregnancy because they don’t want to learn anything that would force them to reconsider their positions. And young people who don’t believe the Republicans could really go after abortion and birth control are closing their eyes and plugging their ears when the Republicans trumpet their beliefs. It takes really effort to remain that ignorant as an adult.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore:
Au contraire, I know plenty of people* who believe exactly that and will also claim that if the life of the mother was truly in question, which it of course almost never is (according to them), that an abortion would still be available.
It’s the “everybody else is a shifty, selfish liar but me” model of the world. (Is it projection? Why, it’s always projection!)
*these people are, by definition, “the rubes”, “the base”, and also the creeps protesting in front of clinics
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oy. I was gonna set my DVR for Bill Maher to listen to him rag on Republicans, but I see he has not only Steve Schmidt but Mary Fucking Matalin, for whom there is no justification. Ever.
Another Holocene Human
Roger, I would not discount the impact of the anti-life movement lying over and over and over again over the years. (“Pro-life” my ass. They stand for horrible, preventable deaths.)
There are millions of Americans convinced that:
3rd term abortions are routine
Late abortion techniques are “overused” and exclusively used in elective abortions
And elective abortions = done on a whim
That 2nd term abortions happen too often, are a holocaust, kill viable fetuses
That’s before we get into the fallacious equating of zygote, embryo, fetus, and infant, as if an embryo smaller than Ike’s head on a dime is a Babby that you can hold and touch and love and kiss and … you get the picture. Or the blaming of women for miscarrying. Or getting pregnant in the first place. Or making their own choices.
There is just so much smelly bullshit out there about what abortion looks like in the United States and a lot the mushy middle is not very discerning. The believe the lies. That’s why the “chip around the edges” strategy was so successful.
Another Holocene Human
@RaflW:
They already have.
If you’re a poor woman of color, you could be the next jailed for having an insufficiently immaculate pregnancy.
Morzer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I suppose one could argue that Mary Matalin keeps James Carville away from our TV screens at least some of the time.
It is, admittedly, a very limited justification for her own loathsome existence.
Another Holocene Human
@RSA: The Bishops are agin’ it, but only really rich people can afford it, and they love money, so there’s the dilemma right there.
And the rubes don’t know where to find it to picket.
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay:
In a sane world, “Day one, I call up my good friend BiBi Netanyahu,” would be a gaffe.
Fucking clown sauce with a bright red maraschino cherry on top.
Tree With Water
@Mandalay: It amazes me that any thinking adult can watch, listen, and ingest the everyday swill of cable “news”, but I know they do. I just don’t understand why they do that to themselves exactly. It’s not like they’re learning anything, is it?
Another Holocene Human
@trollhattan: Idk, people grieve differently. When my mother miscarried at home, we paid our last respects. I still get emotional thinking of it now.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Matalin can get under my skin like a bout of chiggers. She’s a mean girl without MoDo’s “charm.”
Renie
Betty, I had pre-eclampsia with my first pregnancy and never thought of this. It is disgusting that these men want to make these decisions for women.
Mandalay
Don Lemon interviewed Donald Trump on CNN just now. Trump said this about Megyn Kelly going after him during the debate:
WTF???
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Do the unusual ads for the new Meryl Streep movie, featuring the lady herself telling us what a fun movie it is, indicate that the producers, and Meryl, think that the movie looks as embarrassingly bad as I do?
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay: I wanna see Don’s squicked face. Blood coming out of her wherever is one of those things he tries hard not to know about.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
I think a lot of people are susceptible to those lies because they are very squeamish about abortion. They don’t want to delve too deeply into something squicky, so they listen to people who sound authoritative, especially when what those people are telling them reinforces their existing opinion.
Drunkenhausfrau
Fuck yeah, Betty!!
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That movie looks appallingly bad.
ms_canadada
@srv: Really? Who cares? Ancient history. Let’s get on with electing a Democratic President. (says the Canadian)
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Hal: It’s important for a woman who is pregnant to avoid Catholic hospitals because some of them will refuse to help the mother if it’s a choice between her and the baby.
And good luck finding a hospital that isn’t Catholic-owned these days. They’ve been buying up hospitals all over the place here in Washington, and I’ve heard in other states as well.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Riggsveda: A surprising source of information about how terrible illegal abortions were, and it made a great case for legalization, was an article in Reader’s Digest in 1967 or 68. I was about17 and read about the girls being told to wear a pastel party dress and to wait on a certain corner to be picked up and taken to the “doctor”. The abortion described by the writer was performed in a not-too-clean room with carpet on the floor and dirty blinds on the windows. The girls were dropped off hours later, the same day.
It was shocking and terrifying, and I mentioned the article to a friend, a boy who was very smart, and he started ranting about this being the reason it should be legal, and he had no trouble convincing me.
Fast forward to 1982. Three months pregnant with my third child but not my third pregnancy, my doctor heard a murmur when he listened to my heart. I didn’t know I had a heart murmur before then, and I made the rounds of tests and specialists, and nearly a month later they called me in and had an intern sit down in the room with me and the three doctors. They had the intern there because his wife was in the same boat and they thought his presence would be reassuring. The conclusion was that they didn’t know what to tell me about continuing the pregnancy, they didn’t know if I was in danger, but that they thought it was just a strange thing that happens during pregnancy (described as my blood being more diluted than normal? not sure of the exact terminology) and that I was probably in no danger if I continued the pregnancy.
Meanwhile, I’d spent a month being alternately confident and terrified dependent on how I felt when I got up in the morning: I feel great therefore nothing is wrong vs. I feel lousy, I must be dying! In the end the docs decided with me that we would continue the pregnancy but keep a very close watch on the pregnancy and instructed me in what to watch for. It turns out I was fine and the baby is now 32, but I feel the same inchoate rage that Betty Cracker described when I think about Scott Walker and anyone else who would choose the baby over the mother, and their interference in my life, because I had that choice offered to me.
I was in California at the time, abortion was legal and Kaiser performed it in their hospitals, and they told me I should not turn it down if things went wrong.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It got a rave review on NPR today. Still don’t want to watch it. The mother of our granddaughter had pre-eclampsia with her second child, complete with full bed rest. At that time, she was already a single mom of one – we were going insane trying to figure out how to support her, let her live … she finally opted to move back to Florida to live with her parents. It was a terrible time … but if one of these mooks were to actually become President, it could be so much worse for so many women.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Riggsveda: Girls in Los Angeles went to Tijuana. I knew at least one. Another girl’s father was a doctor, and he did the procedure for her.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Schlemazel: A friend of mine’s daughter carried a dead fetus to term. She’s a Catholic but she lives in California so the choice must have been hers. It was tragic, everyone who knew about it was very sad, and I suspect her doctor kept a careful eye on her during the last few months.
I think she was nuts and it worried me terribly.
ruemara
@srv: so it’s accurate besides Lincoln. k.
JaneE
@Roger Moore: My aunt was in a hospital run by 7th Day Adventists – and there was no question as to what needed to be done from anyone. The chaplain came by to offer comfort, not condemnation.
Zinsky
Great rant, Betty! I am a man, but I have always supported a woman’s right to choose, simply because I have no ‘standing ‘, as they say in law. I will never become pregnant, carry around another human inside me, etc. so I really don’t have any “skin in the game”. You are correct, Betty, how dare these motherfuckers?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Citizen Alan: Nearly dead thread, but …
Heh.
I think the reasons why many people are anti-choice have morphed over the years.
In the mid-’70s I had an interesting history (?) teacher in high school. He was very earnest and always tried to get his students to think about various issues. He talked as if he was convinced that abortion and euthanasia and … were horrible because they would always have an element of the powerful harming the helpless. How could someone ever know if they really were in horrible pain and had no future, and weren’t simply being pressured by their ungrateful children who wanted their inheritance? How could the state permit the killing of an innocent tiny baby who might have the potential to change the world for the better? Etc. It was always phrased in terms of protecting the innocent, the powerless, the people who cannot protect themselves.
The Operation Rescue folks took that concern for innocents and twisted it to justify violence against people to prevent ‘violence’ against a fetus , up to and including talking about murdering physicians.
These days, it’s not about protecting innocents, or justifying violence, it’s about punishment of women. Too poor to afford birth control? Tough – get a job. Have medical conditions that make pregnancy dangerous? Tough – it’s God’s will if you die. You get pregnant even when you’re on birth control? Tough. That’s the way it goes – it must be God’s will. And besides, you should be a mother anyway (even if you have other plans for your life, even if you can’t afford it, even if you don’t want to be an unpaid incubator for someone to adopt it 9 months later).
The argument shifted. It seems mostly about punishing people now – you’re doing it wrong, therefore you will be punished. If you’re well off enough that you can pay your own way for an abortion, well, we’ll look the other way as you fly to Canada or Europe. Sure, if questioned, they’ll talk about the ‘sanctity of life’ or how God informs their decision, or whatever. But look at the laws they pass. They’re not about the sanctity of life. They’re about removing funding from agencies and medical facilities that save lives of people who cannot pay the costs on their own.
It’s heartless.
Just to be clear, I listened intently to that teacher’s arguments, but I never fully bought into them. It seemed too abstract to me: too much worrying about the ‘slippery slope’; too much thinking that there were no circumstances when someone might need to make a decision that he found personally distasteful. I strongly support abortion rights and abortion access. Every Sperm is (not) Sacred (4:16), and neither is every egg. Politicians have no business forcing women to carry a pregnancy just because she gets pregnant. The right to control our reproduction is something that we must not let be taken away, especially not for bogus ‘religious’ reasons.
So, I don’t think that ‘right-to-lifers’ are necessarily horrible people. Too many politicians who push abortion (and contraception! now for crying out loud) restrictions are either cynical or psychopathic. The topic is something to rile up people to turn out to vote for him (and they’re nearly all men, of course). Many people who follow them do so out of tribalism – not as a result of clearly thinking about the issue in a dispassionate way. With the right kind of leadership, their attitudes can be changed, but it’s likely a very slow process.
My (too long) $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
Righteous rant, Betty!
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@MomSense: It was.
rmirth
I also fault the medical establishment for not correcting the misrepresentations about third trimester abortions, elective abortions etc. They should have been speaking up all these years but got cowed by the anti-choicers. What Hippocratic oath…
Jordan Rules
Major props Betty
Kerry Reid
Had an abortion at 21. Wasn’t an “easy” decision — but even if it were, so the fuck what? You know what I’ve NEVER done?
1) Hit a child.
2) Starved a child.
3) Voted to deny a child healthcare or other essential benefits.
4) Screamed “I wish you’d never been born!” to a child.
So overall, I feel pretty okay about my choices.
slag
You go, Betty!
The people’s job in these scenarios is to provide assistance—not complications.
SectionH
@rmirth: Thank you. Too late in this thread to discuss male doctors’ lack of actual attention to their female patients. From my mother’s hbp due to a hypoplastic kidney, which nearly killed her, attributed to menopause through actual stories of actual friends. The lack of giving a shit is amazing.
ranchandsyrup
Yikes Betty! Completely agree.
Wife and I went through same in 2010. 1st ob gyn told us to prepare for worst and it didn’t work with us so we went with a different doc that clicked with my wife. We still white knuckled it though. We had benefit of increased resources for high risk pregnancies. It all worked out, daughter will be five soon and thus I must obtain a bouncy house tomorrow.
Cheers.
HumboldtBlue
A-yup.
debbie
I’m so glad things worked out well. What’s frightening is that Walker et al. want to stop even the health care services PP provides. How many would die for lack of neighborhood facilities?
Uncle Cosmo
@Roger Moore:
It’s one of the very few successful applications of Heinlein’s “best way to lie”: Tell the truth & tell all of it but tell it in a fashion that your audience is sure you’re lying.
(FTR the most famous application of that technique in history is reputed to be Mein Kampf–supposedly the text set forth most of the eventual evils of the Third Reich, but the general reaction pre-1933 was Ach, it’s just posturing for the masses–this is Germany after all…)