Want a reality check on the implications of the Supreme Court verdict in Gonzales v. Carhart? Throwing out thirty years of legal precedent, the court declared that Congress has an interest in preserving fetal life over and above any implications for women’s health. (No wonder Katha Pollitt’s “upset.” Her latest column Regrets Only is dead-right.) Which women will feel the impact? All women who ever become pregnant and want to make decisions for themselves. As Lynn Paltrow, of National Pregnant Women’s Advocates told RadioNation 4/21/07, this is a decision that has potential to affect every woman who chooses to give birth at home, employ a midwife, have — or not have — a c-section. The implications for women’s rights are devastating, not only for women who choose to abort but also for those who want to have choices as they carry their pregnancies to term.
Then there is the doctor’s perspective. During the radio program, one ob-gyn called in from Seattle. She dared not use her name. Here’s the transcript of that call:
RadioNation: How will this decision affect you?
Ob-gyn: The decision to perform 2nd term abortions was not easy for me. It’s not an easy procedure to do, but I do it out of compassion for fellow human beings. How this will affect me is I will have to watch women who are in dire need of this procedure go without or go with much riskier procedures which include inducing labor in someone their 2nd trimester, or actual abdominal surgery.
RN: Who is your typical patient for this kind of procedure?
Ob-gyn: Many of the women I’ve treated in the past with this sort of surgery are women who are of limited means, or limited understanding and that most often causes delays. Those are most of the kind of women who need these kind of procedures and they are the very same [kind of] women who cannot afford to raise a child or to carry a fetus to term. [In addition,] many are women who have very severe disabilities…
RN: Is there one client who sticks in your mind tonight, who, if she came to tonight you’d have to turn away or would you take the risk of prosecution?
Ob-gyn: I would not. Unfortunately, I’m not that brave. As to who stands out in my mind, there was a 14 year-old girl who was born with a severe physical handicap. She was born with very brittle bones and had suffered many fractures (in utero and throughout her life.) She was in a wheel chair. Her body was very malformed and the pregnancy itself was a risk for her having fractures. Also, hers was a disease that was very easily inherited by her child — the fetus was already diagnosed with it. It makes for a very difficult life with many, many, many medical complications. Being a 14 year old girl who was very, very physically handicapped. It makes you wonder how she got pregnant in the first place – whether it was in fact consensual.
RN: That’s the kind of person Justice Kennedy claims to be protecting from self-harm, by banning access to a legal abortion?
Ob-gyn: When I heard the decision, my head almost exploded.
LF: Thanks for calling.
Ob-gyn: Thanks for talking about it. No body else seems to be talking about it.
LF: The decision is huge and we’ll keep talking about it.
For more on Paltrow’s work and analysis of activism in the states to defend abortion rights, check out Laura Flanders’s new book, Blue Grit:True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians (The Penguin Press, April, 2007.)
© 2007 The Nation
Possibly because she demonstrates an ability to think critically, to use reason, and to shed light on things the troglodytes want kept in the dark. That is in contrast to you, DeGetmon, whose entire intellectual arsenal, as displayed here, seems to consist of calling people names and spewing unfounded opinions that have little content beyond the vomitus of your ego.
Funny, no one ever talks about the father. Apparently, his feelings are not part of the equation once a woman gets pregnant. It’s about a “woman’s choice.” A “doctor’s conundrum.” The father? Just a sperm donor, until the bills come in…
Frank,
I’ve never yet heard of a father dying in labour….until that happens he has no say whatsoever.
Does a dandilion have any say to where its seeds land?
He should have kept it in his pants.
Once again we will suffer a prohibition created by the self-righteous few to control the lives of the free spirited many.
Laura Flanders has been doing an excellent job for many years. She is one of the best and brightest female journalists on the planet. I would much prefer hearing her 5 days a week on Air America as opposed to the partisan democrat Randi Rhodes.
“Sluts”? There is no such thing as “sluts”. The word is usually employed when the speaker hates the freedom of women to be sexually active or independent politically or generally when the speaker wishes to hurl contempt on women in leadership, such as Senator Clinton and journalist Flanders. Why is Flanders given a soap box? Perhaps because she writes rational, analytical, and modern pieces, none of which describes the weapon “sluts”. Sorry sort.
I despise abortion of any kind at any time. That being said, I believe we need to stop pointing fingers and shouting at each other. Girls and boys need to be taught at an early age to have respect for themselves and each other. Sex education that teaches responsibility as well as giving clear information about birth control needs to be present in our schools. We need to address the issues of racism, sexism, poverty, a living wage, our overall violent modes of entertainment, and lack of resources for women who have unplanned (or even planned, for that matter) pregnancies. I do not condemn the individual woman who walks into an abortion clinic, nor do I condemn the clinic workers and doctors, I condemn a society that puts a women in the position of choosing between her own life and the life of her child. Let’s come together for the benefit of both mother and child.
Men and woman both make mistakes, especially when in their teen years. This is why we should have sex education in our schools rather than the abstinance B.S. But no, those who are against abortion also refuse to educate young people about sex and all its consequences.
The argument about the man having rights that are being ignored is a red herring. It is most often the man who takes advantage of the woman, rather than a man taken advantage of by a woman. And as was written above, “no man ever died because of an abortion.” In those cases where there is still a man around when talk of abortion comes up, both man and woman discuss the issue and I’m sure that the man is behind his woman in making such a difficult decision. Most often, the man who got the woman pregnant to begin with is long gone.
And as the excerpt from the program revealed, this decision has wide ranging effects - all negative. If a girl “lifts up her dress” inviting sex, the man has a choice to make. He doesn’t have to engage in sex. I’ve never heard of a man being raped by a woman.
Any man knows the truth, we think of sex a lot and jump at the opportunity, the majority of men anyway. No, this is solely an issue for women and a decision for a woman to make.
And finally, why do these people who are so set against abortion do nothing to promote a healthy lifestyle or education for these babies born without being planned? Why aren’t they helping the already living children? TV also - our society - promotes sex in dozens of subtle ways. Magazines, movies, commercials and more all send a message of SEX. Just watch any beer commercial. What are they using to sell their product? Sex.
If the “Right to Life” folks would show as much concern and political pressure for the children (already born) that are being killed daily in Iraq, I would be able to believe that what they are concerned about is Life and not the ego rush of being able to control someone elses life.
Geo, I think you pegged the RTL crowd. They’re all about saving the poor fetus, damning the child, and screwing the women who don’t meet their impossible standards. It’s estimated half a million children died in Iraq during the sanction years. But not a peep from the RTL mob. Children in the United States live in poverty and hunger, live on the streets, don’t get proper schooling or healthcare. But where’s the RTL lynch mobs? Harassing pregnant women, attacking clinics, shooting doctors, and promoting the conservative agenda of social darwinism that would bring back child labor, destroy the few progressive elements left from the New Deal programs, and claiming that it’s all God’s will and crowing about how Christlike they all are.
If only the Romans had had more lions we might have a rational, socially advanced country today instead of this pit of hypocrisy and arrogance and ignorance that’s being dragged back to the dark ages of religious insanity.
I agree, Geo. This supreme court decision is huge, but I wouldn’t even know about it if I didn’t receive and read my Common Dreams emailed articles and support Planned Parenthood. I live in a small West Texas town. Nobody’s talking about it.
The Fox Networks can play 24/7 V-Tech carnage description and victim characterization, which affects me emotionally maybe like the idea of abortion affects a right wing Christian. Repugnant.
Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” is such an important religious treatise. Relevant excerpts:
“Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more “moral” energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide.”
and
“You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults….are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery.”
Harris gives concrete examples and statistics to examine faith-based decisions and government policies in the reality of today’s world. Much abhorred and maligned, Harris’ words feel prophetic to me.
Let me tell you HOW uninformed people CAN be…
I was talking with a 25 year old college student, one day, and he asked me if HIV could be “gotten rid of” (eradicated, cured, from a person’s body).
Now, think of the ramifications of this: This young man had lived his ENTIRE life during the PRESENCE of HIV in our society. And he did NOT have a BASIC working knowledge about its transmission, or anything at all.
His explanation for this: He was educated in “private Christian schools” and “they weren’t big on sex education.”
How hard is it to say that there is a sexually transmitted virus out there that can be lethal?
Be they women, or men, young (teens, twentys), or older, many people are uninformed in the (supposedly) MOST informative of all societies (like ours; Western “freedom of speech” societies, etc.)
This lack of information about the BASICS has GOT to be addressed, at ALL social levels. It has NEVER truly been done, and there is NO incentive to do so.
Only THEN, once TRULY INFORMED, can we hold people accountable for their decisions on such matters.
On the other hand, some cases are just determined to be risky, despite all education done.
I know of one case, a woman who had gone well past 12 pregnancies, and was advised strongly by all doctors to never have any more pregnancies. Her reply was that as long as the Lord kept letting her have children, that she was going to do so. (I worked at the hospital where this took place.)
I know of a nurse, who was a very unstable diabetic. She contemplated getting pregnant. This was shortly after “Steel Magnolias” had come out. She asked me my viewpoint. I brought up two points.
(1) The movie, which she had seen. I reminded her that it was not fiction, that it really happened, and that she was exactly that kind of diabetic: extremely high risk.
(2) Genetically passing on her diabetes to a very small child. I asked her how would she feel, if her little 3 year old came up diabetic, and had to have insulin shots for the rest of his/her life, and she had to know that it was because she had passed it on to him/her. Would she be ok with that? She said yes, but hesitated.
Some time later, she’d gotten pregnant.
It ended with her in hepatic coma, and them having to terminate the pregnancy to save her life.
Granted, on the one hand, this is a perfect example about the importance of being able to save a woman’s life, and as such, it is legitimate.
But what of this other issue, also duly noted here? The fact that someone with so much information (a nurse) would make such a dangerous decision, risking leaving her (still fairly new) husband a widower.
What does it say of us when a woman well past 12 pregnancies, with multiple children of all ages, refuses to take to heart the doctors’ warnings, and continues to take the risk of leaving all of those children as orphans? (At least without their mother, that is.)
What does it say when a 25 year old man does not know that HIV is forever?
What do these things say of our society?
Are we, collectively, so “me” these days that we cannot see anything with any degree of heart about “others” anymore?
I don’t have a vote because I’m not a woman,doesn’t mean I can’t throw my 2 cents in.
As to a fathers right, there is none IF the mothers life is in danger in my opinion.
I would grant the right to make a decision on any abortion to anyone that would take personal and financial responsibility for the Mother and child for their lifetime. Personally I have always felt that if you make the choice you carry the responsibility.
I simply can’t understand how anyone can feel they should make a personal decision for other people based on their own prejudice or beliefs.
I’d unravel ev’ry riddle, for any individ’le, in trouble or in pain … with the thoughts I’d be thinkin’ I could be another Lincoln, if I only had a brain…
May 1, 2007
As IWW songwriter Joe Hill wrote in one of his most powerful songs:
Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We’ll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers’ Commonwealth.
The link to NAPW is wrong in the article.
The correct one is: http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/
Laura Flanders is great. Air America clearly doesn’t know how great, since they give Randi Rhodes the daily show and stick Flanders in the weekend ghetto. That station really thinks it’s an arm of the democratic party, and with Mark Green in charge, I can only imagine it will become even more so. Flanders (much to the contrary of the first commenter, who either mistakenly heard someone else’s show or needs to learn remedial listening skills) has I think received some heat from Air America establishment for being very critical of the democrats. I really hope the new Air America will continue to let her speak for and engage progressives on the weekend, at least.
“Progressives” are right to be concerned about the recent movements toward eventually banning all abortions, nationally. Personally, I see the abortion issue as an ethical dilemma: I believe a woman has the right to her own body; she should not be forced by the State to carry an unwanted pregnancy. However I also believe that abortion is not just the termination of an unwanted pregnancy; it’s also the termination of a developing human person. At what point that developing human person becomes a person with the same right to life as you or I is a theological and legal engima, one best left to local governments to argue, in my less than humble opinion.
I do know this for sure, though. If “progressives” do not face this dilemma with full intellectual honesty, the day will soon come when biotech companies will begin the purchase of the “product” of abortion — or whatever they are calling “it” these days –and will begin experimenting with “it.” The results could be intentionally dumbed-down worker bees to replace those nasty, complaining wise-behind worker bees in the Congo diamond mines who are always being such a nuisance, always wanting more time off to be with their families. What will “progressives” say then, one might wonder.
Nice to see the usual father bashing and the inability to comprehend men’s rights on this forum.
Obviously women, gatekeepers of sex, are “taken advantage of” by the men they allowed to have sex with them.
God you people make me sick sometimes.
I find some of the articles and discussons stimulating but when it comes to gender you have your heads so far up your arse it’s embarrasing
Men’s rights stop at the end of their penis.
Yeah but not their wallets eh?
Amazing that.
I understand you call this “equality”? Oh yeah, that’s right, there is no equality, cos men and women are differet - when it suits you, huh?
Like I said, head, arse and up.