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January 19, 2013 8:43 AM   Subscribe

There are four states in this country where there is only one abortion clinic in the whole state, including Mississippi, which is facing the prospect of becoming the first state where abortion access is, effectively, gone. via
posted by roomthreeseventeen (51 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is probably a naive question, but is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN? Or do these clinics only come into play in later terms of the pregnancy?
posted by geoff. at 9:01 AM on January 19, 2013


geoff., from this link:

Q. Can my regular doctor or ob-gyn provide the abortion pill?
A. In order to offer the abortion pill, a doctor needs to meet some basic qualifications. Almost any doctor who provides women's reproductive health care can meet these qualifications. However, some doctors choose not to offer the abortion pill. Call your doctor to find out if they offer this service. If your doctor does not offer the abortion pill, call the NAF Hotline for assistance in finding a medical abortion provider.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:05 AM on January 19, 2013


Many doctors who could perform abortions (i.e. they know how, they have the equipment, they are licensed to practice medicine) still don't. Shit like this is part of the reason why — though FWIW it's not the whole reason; there are plenty of legit non-fear-based reasons why a doctor in private practice might look at a specialized procedure and say "Nah, I'm not gonna do that, I'll refer my patients to someone else if they need it."
posted by and so but then, we at 9:07 AM on January 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


This is probably a naive question, but is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN?

Medically and skillset-wise? probably.

WILL any OB/GYN do it? Not always.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:09 AM on January 19, 2013


As the tag line goes.. 40 years ago abortion rights advocates won Roe Vs Wade. They have been losing every since.

(sad)
posted by edgeways at 9:25 AM on January 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think y'all are missing geoff's point.

If there are OBGYNs in Mississippi who will perform abortions, then abortion access is not effectively gone for everyone.

(Just the poorest people who are most at risk.)
posted by bpm140 at 9:26 AM on January 19, 2013


I didn't get the impression he was making a point, just asking a question.
posted by cribcage at 9:30 AM on January 19, 2013


No, the wealthy do not go to Planned Parenthood. You can buy privacy; there's an excemption for that in the bible, I'm sure of it.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:37 AM on January 19, 2013 [10 favorites]


If there are OBGYNs in Mississippi who will perform abortions, then abortion access is not effectively gone for everyone.

I take the point that (as was the case prior to Roe v. Wade) wealthy women will always have more access to abortion, but I don't think that it's as simple as all that.

Considering how fraught the issue of abortion is, please imagine the stress and possible personal fallout of having to call around to every OB/GYN in your town to find out who will perform an abortion, knowing all the while that you may get to the office and be lectured, or threatened, or exposed to all your neighbors.

Doctors will refuse service to women for any number of medical procedures, not for medical reasons, but out of their personal convictions about the expected roles of women in the world. This is the case for any number of women's medical concerns, but most intensely with any issue of reproduction. If you are going to a clinic which is known to offer a specific medical procedure, you have eliminated a huge amount of guesswork and fear from your option selection process.
posted by winna at 9:38 AM on January 19, 2013 [24 favorites]


I am honestly surprised that there's at least one in every state (at least, that's the impression I got from the article -- it didn't really say). I figured that Idaho or Wyoming or Utah would have run them all out of the state long ago.
posted by Etrigan at 9:41 AM on January 19, 2013


Now we know why they want their guns - so they can shoot doctors who perform abortions.

The comments on that article are amazing, I like the one about power and control - spot on.

It really does seem like America is becomming more and more like some 3rd world, right-wing, tin-pot dictator ship every single day now.
posted by marienbad at 9:44 AM on January 19, 2013 [7 favorites]


This is probably a naive question, but is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN?

Medically and skillset-wise? probably.


Abortion was not addressed in my med school's curriculum, and my understanding is that the majority of ob/gyn residency programs in the US don't really teach trainees the skills necessary (beyond the D&C skills that would be needed for a very early-term surgical abortion).
posted by killdevil at 9:48 AM on January 19, 2013 [7 favorites]


40 years ago abortion rights advocates won Roe Vs Wade. They have been losing every since.

I don't think it is the case that abortions are more restricted overall in the US now than they were right after Roe v Wade.

Now we know why they want their guns - so they can shoot doctors who perform abortions.

IMO, this sort of rhetoric from people on the left does more damage to advancing liberal causes than crazies with guns.

It really does seem like America is becomming more and more like some 3rd world, right-wing, tin-pot dictator ship every single day now.

Nah, it is slowly marching toward freedom and equality, which upsets the increasingly marginalized conservative right and causes more conflict and desperate attempts to stem that tide, but I am optimistic in the "arc of history" kind of way.
posted by ericost at 10:02 AM on January 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


It might be rhetoric, but doctors who perform abortions for poor and working class women are putting a large target on themselves. I'm sure it's a huge factor in deciding if they will perform them.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:16 AM on January 19, 2013 [6 favorites]



This is probably a naive question, but is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN?


There are a lot of people who do not have existing patient-doctor relationships with an OB-GYN. While some OB-GYNs might do it for a known patient, he or she may not be willing to do that for an unknown patient. Women's health clinics fill an important need, not just in providing abortion services, but also for providing necessary health care to women who may not have insurance and could not otherwise afford the care they need. This isn't just about abortion; it's about women's health.
posted by ambrosia at 10:46 AM on January 19, 2013 [11 favorites]


I don't think it is the case that abortions are more restricted overall in the US now than they were right after Roe v Wade.

This is incorrect. Until the Casey decision in 1992, SCOTUS held to a framework that rested on trimesters (states could not impose restrictions until the third trimester). And since the rise of the Religious Right in the late 70s/ early 80s, states have increasingly imposed burdens (24-hour waiting period, parental notification, mandatory viewing of videos on fetal development, etc.) that were largely or entirely absent after Roe. And that doesn't even touch on the increasing number of states who are defunding Planned Parenthood clinics and making access to family planning and reproductive health services for women who are pregnant and just want accessible, affordable prenatal care. If you're a poor woman in a largely rural state and you need prenatal care, cervical cancer screening, or a mammogram, states like Texas have made it much, much more difficult for you to get that care. Way to go, people who care about babies.
posted by rtha at 10:49 AM on January 19, 2013 [47 favorites]


geoff.: "This is probably a naive question, but is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN? Or do these clinics only come into play in later terms of the pregnancy?"

In the case of these "trap laws" (not scare quotes, just using an exact term), performing an abortion procedure subjects a doctor and her or his clinic to an overwhelming quantity of new rules, requirements, and restrictions. In Mississippi, for example, any doctor who performs abortions must have admitting privileges at a hospital. No hospital has been willing to grant that to the doctors working at the sole remaining clinic and it is not mandatory for any hospital to do so.

Ergo, while many doctors may be capable of and willing to perform abortions, law effectively prohibits them from doing so, just as intended by the authors of those laws.
posted by fireoyster at 10:57 AM on January 19, 2013 [27 favorites]


IMO, this sort of rhetoric from people on the left does more damage to advancing liberal causes than crazies with guns.

Yeah, crazies with guns don't kill people who work at abortion clinics -- liberal rhetoric does!
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:13 AM on January 19, 2013 [40 favorites]


In Mississippi, for example, any doctor who performs abortions must have admitting privileges at a hospital.

The legislature here in Indiana has been trying to get this rule enacted, too, in addition to their continued full-court press to de-fund Planned Parenthood entirely.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:04 PM on January 19, 2013


I remember reading an article by a doctor who performs abortions, on the bizarre phenomenon of pro-lifers seeking abortions themselves. In one case it was a girl who was regularly seen among the protestors out front and who continued to join the protest after her procedure, confident that the doctor was too ethical to rat her out. She (the doctor) also declined to perform an abortion on another woman who during the evaluation insisted that abortion was murder, even as she sought it. The doctor informed the woman that she was not in her opinion psychologically fit to undergo the procedure. I wish I could find that article now.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:34 PM on January 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


Although there's only one left here in North Dakota, the fight against women's rights has been rather quiet lately (although there was one blastocyst-personhood bill that got voted down two years ago, and a pretty vile fathers-rights movement that gave up on state-level laws and pushed one county to pass a law). I have to avoid driving down first avenue, because my wife will stick two upturned middle fingers out of the car window at the two old people standing on the sidewalk in front of the clinic holding up signs. It seems that the low-key anti-woman protests only occur on Wednesdays, which has of late been the only day I've seen anyone standing in front of the building, even their security guard.

One thing I wish Maddow's people had noticed, because it's clearly part of the anti-choice plan: First avenue, the street that goes in front of the Women's Clinic, is a one-way travelling west. There is a billboard just to the east of the clinic, which, due to the direction of traffic, faces east. On the back of the billboard -- not visible to cars at all, but facing the front of the women's clinic -- is an ad for one of those crisis pregnancy clinics saying that there are other options. It's just a billboard, but it's very clearly not directed at the general public, only for people walking into the women's clinic.

One bright side: during this year's Bras on Broadway, a breast-cancer awareness event that happens literally across the street from Women's Health, somebody went and put positive, supportive signs on the outside of the Women's Clinic, saying things like "Jesus wouldn't judge" and so forth. North Dakota has long had a weird relationship between Progressivism and Conservatism, it's nice to see moral progressive thought is still around and willing to speak up.

South Dakota is the one that's most likely to end up with a shooting -- the anti-choice groups have gotten downright ugly with all of the laws that they've tried and gotten passed over the past couple years. That, too, has quieted down a little, but a couple years ago things looked pretty bad.

Lastly: if you're still worried about North Dakota, at least women in Fargo can go across the river to the Planned Parenthood in Moorhead. They do not provide abortion services directly, but are still able to help women in need.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:42 PM on January 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


George_Spiggot: Those stories go around quite often, but are apocryphal and a little too-good-to-be-true.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:43 PM on January 19, 2013


AsraelBrown, as I recall this particular doctor identified herself. it seems unfair to tar as apocryphal all such stories based on the existence of ones that are unproven. Bear in mind that literal proof would involve identifying the patient as well, which of course no ethical doctor would do, or come close to doing.

Also, while one can grant the seeming improbability of someone seeking an abortion in a place they might be identified, there are a couple of countervailing factors: 1) it is quite likely to be, for obvious reasons, the only place available to them; 2) they're not particularly rational to begin with as their profound cognitive dissonance indicates. And 3) perversely, they may actually feel more comfortable with the familiar faces of the staff that have been stoically enduring their harangues for so long.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:53 PM on January 19, 2013



This is probably a naive question, but is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN?

Anyone with a basic level of competency in the area could do it. In fact, my understanding is back before Roe v. Wade's decision in the USSC, there was a big underground education process going on so that nurses all over could meet patient needs outside "The System".

In fact, back in Ought-Six, when South Dakota's little shitstorm erupted, someone took the lead, and posted a set of instructions to begin the conversation. That was, of course, run off the internet, but the wayback machine has a copy
posted by mikelieman at 12:57 PM on January 19, 2013 [7 favorites]


I keep telling those stupid people that if they get rid of all the fancy four-walled, electrified abortion clinics, then the only ones they will have left is the cast-iron, spanning rivers, tallahatchie bridge type.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 1:11 PM on January 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


Anyone with a basic level of competency in the area could do it. In fact, my understanding is back before Roe v. Wade's decision in the USSC, there was a big underground education process going on so that nurses all over could meet patient needs outside "The System".

Don't know if this is what you were thinking of, but the history of "The Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation, better known by its nickname "Jane"," is very interesting.
posted by rtha at 1:44 PM on January 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


George_Spiggott, are you thinking of "'The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion': When the Anti-Choice Choose" from this previous Metafilter post?
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:54 PM on January 19, 2013 [12 favorites]


hurdy gurdy girl, that looks familiar. The rather shabby gawker article that AzraelBrown linked to references it a number of times, only to lump it in with the anonymous stories it's disparaging; there's no suggestion that the takedown article's author tried to contact Joyce Arthur.
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:10 PM on January 19, 2013


I keep telling those stupid people that if they get rid of all the fancy four-walled, electrified abortion clinics, then the only ones they will have left is the cast-iron, spanning rivers, tallahatchie bridge type.

You assume they care? Sluts get what they deserve in their minds.
posted by Talez at 2:22 PM on January 19, 2013


George_Spiggot: Those stories go around quite often, but are apocryphal and a little too-good-to-be-true.

That may be, but the history of abortion and analogous causes does bespeak quite a litany of code-switching behavior. In any case, my reading of the bones of that Bruni anecdote is that a young woman in the milieu of an anti-abortion activist family/church/culture would have few choices but to surreptitiously obtain that abortion and go back to the front lines, as it were.

By the way, a flawed (even infuriating) but interesting film on this topic (which even displays some of that code-switching) is Citizen Ruth. It's on Netflix. At the same time as it manages to humanize and marginalize (as ideologues) both sides of the debate, it balances all this on an unemployed pregnant huffing addict, about the most unsympathetic vessel imaginable.
posted by dhartung at 2:25 PM on January 19, 2013


Way to go, people who care about babies.

We all know they don't actually care about babies, though.
posted by elizardbits at 3:42 PM on January 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


> Now we know why they want their guns - so they can shoot doctors who perform abortions.

IMO, this sort of rhetoric from people on the left does more damage to advancing liberal causes than crazies with guns.


On reading the first comment my initial reaction was "Terrorism? That's a bit inflammatory." Then I remembered "In the U.S., violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eight people, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort."

That Wikipedia article also counts "17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers." I think people who are opposed to abortion should own the atmosphere they've created. I also think it points out why the question "Is this not an operation that can be formed at any OBGYN?" is missing something important. An OB/GYN may be risking their life performing abortions.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:50 PM on January 19, 2013 [9 favorites]


There wouldn't be a problem if the OB/GYNs had guns.

A person is just a meme that can type
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:52 PM on January 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


Now we know why they want their guns - so they can shoot doctors who perform abortions.

For crying out loud, that is so full of bullshit. First, there are plenty of liberals who own guns. I'm one of them. I am extremely prochoice, but I also am pro second amendment.

This kind of thinking is why our country cannot come together and work on anything. There is too much bullshit and not enough thinking.
posted by SuzySmith at 4:07 PM on January 19, 2013 [8 favorites]


After the pill arrived in 1960 and Roe in 1973, there really was a liberation. But also a backlash began that I believe is still going on. The leaders of this assault on women's rights are men who were brought up to believe they should be controlling women and the fact that women are using reproductive rights to avoid that control is intolerable to them. The push to define life as beginning at conception is part of this ideology and directly threatens not only the morning after pill but also some forms of birth control such as the IUD, which is important for women who have difficulty tolerating hormonal birth control. There are some younger men who go along with the ideology but for the most part this is just straight up war against women having power over their own sexuality and reproductive choice. By pandering to their religious contingent, these men seek to gain political power. If they cite religious grounds, as they will do if scratched, they are violating my constitutional right to be free of legislation based on religion.

This is an especially distressing trend to witness as I remember how it was during the twenty-one years before Roe.

This is how it was for me: I was seventeen in 1952 when I was raped and got pregnant. Fortunately I was in New York City and a relative found a doctor who would perform a safe albeit illegal abortion. I took a long subway ride with the cash held tightly in my bag under my coat and walked up to the door of the address I had been given. I was met, interviewed and sworn to secrecy--I could never tell anyone about this or divulge his name or address. I was then told there would be no anesthetic so I was to leave and go down to the corner bar and drink two shots of whisky and return.

I'd never drunk alcohol (an omission I later remedied a bit too thoroughly) so I chose brandy because I'd read of people giving it to distressed women. It was 11 in the morning and the bar was almost empty; I remember being glad of that and thinking that one day I could write in a story about drinking brandy in a bar. When I returned, the abortion was not as bad as I had expected. After a minimal recovery time, I was firmly instructed that I must leave, walking normally and steadily. and go straight home, no taxi. If I had any bleeding or problems, which I was assured was unlikely, I was to go to the emergency room. I took the long subway ride back and I was fine. I had no problems, no complications. This doctor had a regular practice but was compassionate and believed women should not be forced to continue unwanted pregnancies so would accept a few such patients. Clandestinely. Illegally. It was shaming and dangerous.

A few months later, a family friend, whom a relative had asked to escort me home, raped me. I was overpowered and forced--I was not sexually active and had only the one experience previously but that was a stranger in a dangerous location. It never occurred to me to fear this man. I was very naive. Of course I got pregnant. This time the only abortionist to be found was a woman who spoke little English but brought an interpreter. She came and performed the operation on the kitchen table. I was terrified throughout, very aware now that it was illegal and dangerous. It was painful. I was told to go a doctor in a few days and get checked out, saying, if asked, that I had spontaneously aborted. I am sure the lie was visible on my body but I was treated, given medicine and eventually got better, although it was years before I was completely free of infection and pain. There was scarring and some question about whether I would be able to have children. I found a very good family doctor and it turned out I was lucky.

Although personally naive and penniless, I had family resources and a relatively vast amount of privilege. For anyone who did not live as a woman through those years, it is nearly impossible to understand how important Roe is to women's lives. How liberating it is to have reproductive choice. How many lives it saves. How many children don't lose their mothers to forced childbirth or botched abortion. How many young women don't lose their goals and dreams because of an unplanned pregnancy.

Access to abortion has already been so eroded that very few women today have the hundreds or thousands of dollars it would take to go to a city hundreds of miles from home in one of these precarious states, to jump through the hoops and wait out the time mandated in order to have an abortion. I particularly care that young women are being bullied by the coalition that is the religious right and the Republican party at an age when they do not even know what politics has to do with their dilemma. Many do not have the resources and have no one to help them. Many have no one they can tell. These clinics are not just for abortions--they provide birth control and other care for women which is just as important.

Women and men who have been born since the sixties and have themselves had children who have also never known abortion to be illegal or birth control to be unavailable are perhaps not aware of how completely our society depends on the two income household and what it will do to all of them to lose this progress. Reproductive rights hasn't been a cause young people espouse particularly because it has always been there for these generations and losing the right to choose does not seem possible.

What I have seen having lived through this particular arc of the American story is that there has been a relentless, organized push back against women's rights in large and small ways and that it is actually working to take away a constitutional right that our society now depends upon.

I feel almost as sentiment had it when Kennedy was assassinated--for one brief, shining moment there was Camelot. Choice is the Camelot for women.
posted by Anitanola at 4:54 PM on January 19, 2013 [670 favorites]


thank you for sharing your story, anitanola.
posted by lia at 5:25 PM on January 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


agreed, your story is so moving anitanola. Thank you.
posted by sweetkid at 5:29 PM on January 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


Thank you, thank you so much for telling your story, Anitanola.
posted by rtha at 5:46 PM on January 19, 2013 [3 favorites]


Anitanola, please check your memail. Thanks.
posted by rtha at 6:04 PM on January 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


Not just choice, also privacy.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:06 PM on January 19, 2013 [4 favorites]


Reading about these laws makes me feel so hopeless. Apart from the compassion I feel for women in the US trying to deal with this effort to keep you in the stone age, I worry that success there will embolden the religious right in Australia too.

I know the reasons people oppose abortion, I've heard them all and remain unconvinced. To me it just seems so wantonly cruel to try to ban them, or shame people into not having them, or even providing them. Don't approve of abortions? Then don't get one. But you don't have the right to force someone to give birth, same as you don't have the right to force them them to have sex with you, or force them to donate a kidney: their body is not for you to control. Every person has a right to bodily autonomy, and it is not your job to police their 'sins'. You have no right to attempt it.
posted by harriet vane at 10:00 PM on January 19, 2013 [17 favorites]


Women have less autonomy over their internal organs than the dead. The latter choose whether and which organs may be used for life-saving transplants. But women are being kept from choosing how their living body is used.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:40 AM on January 20, 2013 [14 favorites]


This is incorrect. Until the Casey decision in 1992, SCOTUS held to a framework that rested on trimesters...

Thank you for the correction! I think you are right, FWIW.
posted by ericost at 1:27 PM on January 20, 2013


Those stories go around quite often, but are apocryphal and a little too-good-to-be-true.

For a while, I attended a Catholic high school in a socially conservative and politically Conservative state. Our school had some sort of Yay We Are Such Good Little Catholics student organization (I forget what it was called), and one of their main activities was protesting against abortion. I don't know that they were ever out front of any specific local clinic that performed abortions, but they'd go stand in front of the town courthouse or along a busy street or march around downtown or what have you. Maybe sometimes they drove to New Orleans or somewhere else that actually had a Planned Parenthood to protest in front of.

Once a year, our school would have a special Save Teh Baybeeeez Mass which prominently featured female members of this particular club performing skits and reciting doggerel about how abortion is murder.

I knew for a fact that many of the girls who did this in their spare time had had abortions.

While I'd suspect that any random Talking Head stating that they knew that X prominent anti-choice activist had had an abortion was probably talking out of their ass -- it's just too blind item-ish -- it's certainly not "too good to be true" that anti-choice women have abortions all the damn time.
posted by Sara C. at 5:59 PM on January 21, 2013 [5 favorites]


You're probably very, very right Sara. I can only imagine the amount of pressure women are put under by the men in their lives when making this decision.
posted by Brocktoon at 6:52 PM on January 21, 2013


Not just choice, also privacy.

Again, I wonder if the pro-choice movement should cast their actions as pro-privacy.

Cast the anti-choice crowd as creepy snoops who want to follow you into the doctor's office and noisily push themselves into the private conversation between you and your doctor.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:09 AM on January 22, 2013


Sara C.: While I'd suspect that any random Talking Head stating that they knew that X prominent anti-choice activist had had an abortion was probably talking out of their ass -- it's just too blind item-ish -- it's certainly not "too good to be true" that anti-choice women have abortions all the damn time.

Yes, count me in as another who is completely unsurprised about anti-choice activists seeking abortions, as unbelievable or counterintuitive as it might seem.

In a religious culture where sex is forbidden outside marriage, where sex education is limited, inaccurate, or nonexistent, where men are viewed as having no control over their lustful urges and women are responsible for keeping them on the straight and narrow path...it's very likely that men and women would have unprotected sex outside of marriage. It's likely that women would get pregnant as a result. And it's entirely likely that these women who get pregnant would feel a panicked desire to NOT BE PREGNANT anymore, regardless of what they and their religion might be preaching to other women in the same position.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:34 AM on January 22, 2013 [2 favorites]


Scott Lemieux: 5 Myths About Roe v. Wade
posted by tonycpsu at 12:02 PM on January 22, 2013


... in and around Jackson, where anti-abortion sentiment is widespread and fiery, all seven hospitals refused admitting privileges to Dr. Parker and “Dr. Doe.” Some even refused to process their applications. The Mississippi Department of Health gave the clinic six months to comply with the law. On January 11, that period ended, with neither doctor having secured admitting privileges, leaving the state with the opportunity to revoke the clinic’s license as soon as March 4.
Mississippi's Last Abortion Provider
posted by yeoz at 12:28 PM on January 23, 2013






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