Shuttered: The End of Abortion Access in Red America
October 19, 2015 9:47 AM   Subscribe

"Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court opinion legalizing abortion — started in Texas. Now, as abortion rights are under unprecedented attack, it’s Texas that could trigger the end of Roe v. Wade. At stake: The reproductive rights of millions of American women, across the entire country." Shuttered: The End of Abortion Access in Red America, with support from EHRP, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
posted by milquetoast (54 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 


Man, this new use of "red" to mean "Republican" can be really jarring sometimes.
posted by edheil at 10:01 AM on October 19, 2015 [13 favorites]


I wish I had it in me to say something especially insightful or poignant about the situation, but I don't anymore. I see the US as on a trajectory to become something like Somalia with more money and bigger guns, and generally weep for the fact that generations of people are essentially on tap to be well and truly fucked from all sides.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 10:02 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Texas, today, dropped the hammer on Planned Parenthood.

Can our federal government finally hold Texas in contempt and withhold highway and other pork barrel funding from it? The videos were faked. The seditious horseshit games the people of this state keep pulling make it seem like we are living through the early stages of a religious coup d'etat.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:12 AM on October 19, 2015 [30 favorites]


I am a dad of daughters and sons; I am a man married to a woman who has great health care and who never needed PP's services. But I am not blind to the fact that we are lucky as hell, and that PP does a ton of work for plenty of others who are not as lucky as we are.

Why do some people feel the need to mess with something that doesn't hurt them -- that doesn't concern them at all?
posted by wenestvedt at 10:18 AM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


The Greatest Trick The Supreme Court Ever Pulled Was Convincing The World Roe v. Wade Still Exists

The 5th Circuit already effectively ended abortion access in Texas, implementation of that ruling is currently stayed by the Supreme Court, which today took no action on petitions for certiorari on the Texas case or the related Mississippi case requiring admitting privileges.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:18 AM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Until Kumar returned to Texas, the state where he grew up and which he proudly calls home, he had never heard a woman say that she preferred to undergo the procedure without anesthesia. “I want to feel this because I deserve this,” is what they tell him in Texas, he says, or “I need to feel what I'm doing and feel pain.” Another woman, he remembers, said, “I need to teach myself a lesson.” That upset him.
I'm pretty fucking upset right now, too.
posted by joyceanmachine at 10:22 AM on October 19, 2015 [24 favorites]


i'm so tired. i don't understand why this is the future, why this is happening in 2015. i mean, yes, i understand it: people hate women with a vicious feral virulence that, if i stopped being murderously furious about it for even a single second, would terrify me in the way these miserable shitstains WANT me to be terrified. i just don't really understand how society is expected to function like this. i don't understand how we can carry on.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:28 AM on October 19, 2015 [31 favorites]


i just don't really understand how society is expected to function like this. i don't understand how we can carry on.

I believe this on the female side and this on the male side sums up the desired endgame quite nicely.

They want to rewind the cultural revolution of the 1960s and bring America back to 1950. Where men were men, women were in the home and looked after the children.
posted by Talez at 10:35 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Whenever I hear progressives pontificate about how Democrats don't really need to keep an eye on abortion access anymore because sheesh, it's not like it's illegal or anything, all I hear is, "Pregnancy termination is irrelevant to me because I lack the plumbing required to be impregnated, ergo IDGAF" or "As an upper-class/middle-class/white/comfortably employed/healthy/unusually lucky/whatever American, I am ensconced in a bubble of privilege so opaque that less privileged women's hardships are rendered fully invisible to me."

The direct action tactics of the second wave will be made painfully relevant again much sooner than most Americans are willing to admit as women are increasingly forced to return to bearing all responsibility for everything our bodies can do (whether we consent to it or not), knowing where the money is, learning how and when you can administer a medication abortion, the risks inherent in looking back to the ancient ways, and taking care of our sisters no matter what. We need to draw on the incredible strength of our foremothers and never stop pushing, no matter how tired we are, even if we have to go all the way back underground. We owe it to every woman in the world. Men can pass all the laws they want, but our bodies will always be ours.
posted by divined by radio at 10:36 AM on October 19, 2015 [49 favorites]


I wish we could have an undercover gotcha video that would lead to universal healthcare or something worthwhile.
posted by dr_dank at 10:37 AM on October 19, 2015 [21 favorites]


Why do some people feel the need to mess with something that doesn't hurt them -- that doesn't concern them at all?

Because they don't think women are smart enough to have their own agency and need saving from themselves.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:39 AM on October 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


I wish we could have an undercover gotcha video that would lead to universal healthcare or something worthwhile.

There have been hundreds, thousands of videos over the years that should lead to universal healthcare. But the American people have stood up and resoundingly said "I don't want it if the lazy black single mother could possibly have it".
posted by Talez at 10:40 AM on October 19, 2015 [32 favorites]


The End of Abortion Access (for poor women) in Red America
posted by jeff-o-matic at 10:42 AM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's no longer acceptable to be egregiously and overtly white supremacists, so the conservative evangelical movement has taken on forced birth as their tribal marker.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:44 AM on October 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


It's not so much that these people literally _hate_ women. It's that they hate that there are women out there who do not Know Their Place. What is Their Place? To be subservient to men, as God wants. To accept more children every time God hand-places them in their wombs, as God wants. To be obedient to God and His Earthly Representatives in all ways, as God wants. To be punished for having unapproved sex, as God wants. To form an underclass to serve the needs of Proper Christian Folk, as God wants.

And when one of those Proper Christian Folk gets knocked up and can afford to fly off somewhere for a quiet, civilized abortion? It's what God wants, because the Prosperity Gospel says that if God didn't want her to make her own decisions he wouldn't have gifted her the resources with which to do so. Plus she's one of The Good People and not, y'know, a dirty welfare queen sinner rutting like an animal.

And, as rmd1023's link demonstrates vividly, it's a powerful tool for getting low-information citizens out to the polls to back conservative candidates.
posted by delfin at 11:02 AM on October 19, 2015 [19 favorites]


Saying that their god hates women doesn't really make much of a difference in the grand scheme of women-hating.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:15 AM on October 19, 2015 [11 favorites]


I wish we could have an undercover gotcha video that would lead to universal healthcare or something worthwhile.

I can visualize a gotcha sting operation that might have some political impact: obviously unqualified people (criminal/violently insane/revenge seekers) buying handguns.

That being said, there is a lot more personal risk to be had pissing off gun-nuts than there are reproductive rights advocates.
posted by el io at 11:26 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


What's most depressing about the status quo is that the “undue burden” standard was acknowledged by the Court as vague and manipulable. I recently re-read the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision out of a sense of… wanting to understand how we got here, perhaps? And I learned the following:

1. The joint opinion (O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter) ended up being controlling because at least five justices joined onto each part of it (though exactly which five varied from section to section). It spends the first dozen pages explaining why stare decisis is important, and why they can't simply overturn Roe v. Wade (even though they clearly disagree with it but won't say as much) because then they'd be saying that anyone could re-litigate any issue on the hope that the Court would decide differently the next time around.

2. Despite this lengthy preamble, they don't actually uphold Roe v. Wade — only its “essential holding,” i.e., the right of a woman to have an abortion. (They don't adequately explain why stare decisis should apply only to the “essential holding” but not to the rest of it.) They reject the trimester framework as inflexible — the viability threshold, in the two decades since Roe, had moved up a few weeks, so to them it made no sense to draw a line at the end of the second trimester anymore. They decided that it was too onerous on the state for abortion regulations to be given strict scrutiny — i.e., to be presumptively unconstitutional unless the state demonstrated that they were absolutely necessary — and instead proposed the “undue burden” standard. This standard says that an abortion regulation is unconstitutional only if “its purpose or effect is to place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”

Unfortunately, the decision does not define “substantial” or “obstacle” — and, in fact, the justices disagree about what is a “substantial obstacle” within the decision itself. The authors of the joint opinion say that this standard permits a parental notification requirement, a 24-hour waiting period, a counseling requirement (i.e., making women listen to information about abortion alternatives and other bullshit), and an obligation for doctors to keep records about the abortions they perform. But they say it does not permit a spousal notification requirement.

Justice Stevens largely concurred with the joint opinion, but stated that under the undue burden standard he'd also invalidate the waiting period and the counseling requirement.

Justice Blackmun, as the original author of the majority Roe opinion, said “fuck you guys; strict scrutiny still applies,” and said he would strike down nearly all of the requirements being disputed.

3. Infuriatingly, a majority of the court pointed out how bad the “undue burden” standard was at the time. Blackmun defended Roe's trimester framework as “far more administrable, and far less manipulable, than the ‘undue burden’ standard adopted by the joint opinion.” And Scalia — Scalia! — joined by White, Rehnquist, and Thomas, says that “the standard is inherently manipulable, and will prove hopelessly unworkable in practice.” (Scalia, for his many faults, is very good at mocking dumb things, and his opinion zeroes in on the undue burden standard's many flaws.)

The purpose of the “undue burden” standard, as stated by the joint opinion, was to ensure “that the woman's right to choose not become so subordinate to the State's interest in promoting fetal life that her choice exists in theory, but not in fact.” This is exactly where we are today — in a number of deeply red states, women have the theoretical right to get an abortion, but have to run through a regulatory gauntlet (and sometimes a literal gauntlet) to exercise that right. By this standard, Planned Parenthood v. Casey has failed spectacularly, and it's hard to see how the justices didn't see this coming.

The standard tells states, “listen, you're free to make getting an abortion annoying, just not too annoying,” and thus kicked off a two-decade experiment by abortion-unfriendly states to see exactly how annoying they could make abortions. Furthermore, since judges will typically compare a proposed regulation to the status quo when assessing how burdensome it is, it enabled states to tighten their laws slowly over time. When you've already got a 24-hour waiting period, why not 48? When you're already making doctors tell their patients stuff that the doctor doesn't want to say and the patient doesn't want to hear, what's so burdensome about a mandatory ultrasound? The frog boils.

It's astonishing to me that Roe, a 7–2 decision at the time, came to be regarded as some sort of fringe decision. (I know why, but it's still astonishing.) Two decades later, Harry Blackmun was the only remaining member of the Roe majority, and there was no one else around to defend it. That’s what happens when you’ve got twelve years of Republicans appointing to the bench. Those are the stakes in 2016 — the next few justices will be appointed by either a Democrat or a Republican. A Democrat in the White House won't get much done legislatively, but no matter what they'll be able to wriggle their court appointments through. Go vote for a Democrat, even if you have to hold your nose.
posted by savetheclocktower at 11:40 AM on October 19, 2015 [27 favorites]


"You can’t get a safe and legal abortion at a clinic that doesn’t exist."

Our imminent future of dangerous, illegal abortions with further persecution and prosecution of vulnerable women is terrifying.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:41 AM on October 19, 2015 [9 favorites]


/me cries

The war against reproductive rights is just...maddening. Fucking maddening. There needs to be absolute scorched-earth hell being raised over this.
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:45 AM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


What gets me is that here we are in the early 21st century, probably on the cusp of having to face the implications of human cloning, some variations of eugenics, and who knows how many other reproductive technologies, and we seem to be going out of our way to demonstrate our inability to reconcile even a millenia-old ubiquitous practice like abortion with our alleged principles of a free and fair society.
posted by XMLicious at 12:17 PM on October 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Down with big government.

(Except when it infringes on the rights of people I don't like.)

I swear I'm going to start hitting people in the head with a hammer and claim self defense.

(Not really, but man that would make me feel better.)
posted by Blue_Villain at 12:52 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


They want to rewind the cultural revolution of the 1960s and bring America back to 1950. Where men were men, women were in the home and looked after the children.

one especially shitty thing about how they've set 1950 as a norm from which we've diverged is that the 1950s were a completely bizarre decade, wherein the United States more or less had a massive unacknowledged collective case of untreated PTSD. Using it as a definition of normal is itself madness.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:06 PM on October 19, 2015 [18 favorites]


...the 1950s were a completely bizarre decade, wherein the United States more or less had a massive unacknowledged collective case of untreated PTSD. Using it as a definition of normal is itself madness.

cstross's excellent novel Glasshouse concerns [SPOILER ALERT] a sort of historical-reenactment reproduction of 1950s U.S. society in the distant future that turns out to be an Orwellian psychological warfare research project, unbeknownst to the participants.
posted by XMLicious at 1:23 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


They want to rewind the cultural revolution of the 1960s and bring America back to 1950.

No they don't. They want to rewind and bring America back to 1880.
posted by rocketman at 1:37 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's not so much that these people literally _hate_ women. It's that they hate that there are women out there who do not Know Their Place. What is Their Place? To be subservient to men, as God wants.

You say tomato, I say tomahto. Denying women the right to live as full persons is hatred. Or if it isn't, the difference is irrelevant to those affected. I don't really care what the deniers tell themselves their reasons are.

Oh and they don't want to send us back to the 1950s. The 1850s are more their speed, although some conservative "thinkers" also grumble that things have gone to hell since the Enlightenment, so I doubt that would be good enough for them.
posted by emjaybee at 1:54 PM on October 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


I already have a stockpile of cytotec, but I think I'm going to buy some more. I also am going to drop $80 and buy a manual vacuum aspirator.

I admire this doctor, and others like him, greatly, but I believe that that women simply have to reject the gatekeeping of the medical establishment. The internet has made this easier than ever.

It's absurd that we are giving surgical abortions to women who are well within their first trimester. You can do a medication abortion for as little as $12, and the medication is safer than the procedure. I am certain that there are doctors and pharmacists throughout the country who discreetly prescribe and fill for these medications, but it is frustrating to me that in this era of pop up "pain clinics" where scripts for opiates and weed cards are wheatpasted onto patients, we don't have a prescription based abortion network.

I'm just a nurse, not a doc, not a pharmacist... but it makes me want to start one.
posted by Athene at 2:00 PM on October 19, 2015 [28 favorites]


I already have a stockpile of cytotec, but I think I'm going to buy some more. I also am going to drop $80 and buy a manual vacuum aspirator.

I admire this doctor, and others like him, greatly, but I believe that that women simply have to reject the gatekeeping of the medical establishment. The internet has made this easier than ever.


oh my god that's brilliant.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:13 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I believe that that women simply have to reject the gatekeeping of the medical establishment.

Women perceive oppression as damage and route around it.
posted by valkane at 2:19 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


Sad but true: government considers women 'series of tubes'.
posted by mikurski at 2:59 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


When I had an abortion in 1998, I did so on my parents' health insurance, in a lovely, protestor-free clinic in Massachusetts, with supportive woman-positive comics taped to the ceiling and Inga Muscio books in the waiting room. And I know I was so fucking lucky. So I put my money wherever it will help, because that is the world I want not just for my own daughter, but all daughters everywhere. Still, I'm not enough, we're not enough. Good grief, I just want the daughters to be thought of and treated as real people.
posted by Ruki at 5:50 PM on October 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


I want to be clear that I don't want to go back to an era of illegal abortion. What I don't have any sort of problem with, however, is extralegal abortion in an environment that seeks to limit half the population's access to basic healthcare.

What I want is free, government funded, universal health care that includes all family planning free of charge and with minimal paternalistic nonsense barriers, up to and including abortion on demand. I'd also like to see subsidized day care, universal preschool, a baby stipend, a guaranteed minimum income and while we are at this, mass transit and a different, functional farm/crop subsidy program.

What I am willing to settle for is a population of empowered women who can control their fertility, and if that means getting an Obamacare IUD or ordering Saheli and cyto online, well, all those options are just fine with me.

Cytotec, aka misoprostol, is an old, well studied, well understood drug. The WHO considers it one of the hundred essential medicines of a functional health care system. Twelve 200 mcg tablets of cytotec, administered orally in three equal doses over the course of a day (800 mcg every 4-6 hours, for a total of 2400 mcg) end a first trimester pregnancy, without complication, 90+% of the time. In the US, cytotec is part of what is frequently known as RU486, the other part of which is mifepristone. Mifepristone is considerably more expensive, difficult to source, and harder to buy in small lots than cytotec is, but it does increase efficacy of pregnancy termination slightly. You can buy mifepristone online as well, but cytotec is very widely available, without a prescription, from Indian and Canadian online pharmacies, as well as US based online veterinary med vendors. Cytotec costs about $1, sometimes $2, per 200 mcg tablet, though it is also widely available in 100 mcg tablets. I suppose if someone was really desperate, they could ask a veterinarian to write their dog a script for stomach ulcers.

In the event that a person attempts to self medicate with cytotec in order to terminate a pregnancy, she will bleed heavily over the course of several hours. In the event that such a person becomes feverish, confused, or exhibits other symptoms of shock, she is one of the few who experiences an incomplete termination. Were she to go to an emergency room, walk in, or family doctor complaining of symptoms of first trimester miscarriage, the staff there would have no way of knowing that she had taken cytotec. There is no blood test that reveals its presence, and it plays nicely with other medications that would be given to a woman suffering from an incomplete miscarriage.

It is a safe, effective drug.

I do not think there is, nor should there be, any shame associated with ending a pregnancy that is unplanned, unwanted, or ill timed. But health care is a private matter for most people, and they should have the right to discretion if they want it or need it.
posted by Athene at 5:56 PM on October 19, 2015 [84 favorites]


I don't know how comments are judged sidebar-worthy, but Athene's ought to be.
posted by Cookiebastard at 6:30 PM on October 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


In a previous fpp about abortion, I said something about needing the Jane Collective to be resurrected (and someone else was like "what for abortion is legal jeez"), and now I wonder if there are already collectives in existence, even more underground than it/they used to be. I wish they didn't have to exist, but if they do, I'm glad.
posted by rtha at 6:43 PM on October 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Mod note: Corrected units to "mcg," micrograms, in Athene's comment.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:17 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Comment deleted. If you want to make a point about how women voted in a given year, you're going to need to explain how it is pertinent to this thread, preferably with some source.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:16 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Thank you Athene for your comment. I feel like every woman, every girl should be given this information somehow. These are our bodies, not the state's.

Also, I just want to post this interview with Helen and Graham Linehan on abortion in Ireland, where abortion is illegal in cases of rape, incest, or fetal abnormalities.

That's what the pro-life movement wants for the U.S. It's barbaric and inhumane, but that's their goal. I implore everyone to watch this video and decide whether you want to elect people in the U.S. who would support and actively work to implement such a reign of terror in this country.
posted by longdaysjourney at 5:09 AM on October 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I am certain that there are doctors and pharmacists throughout the country who discreetly prescribe and fill for these medications, but it is frustrating to me that in this era of pop up "pain clinics" where scripts for opiates and weed cards are wheatpasted onto patients, we don't have a prescription based abortion network.

Don't buy into this as a dichotomy. The fact that these pain clinics have to exist - for their "legitimate" purpose - is as a result of a different flavor of paternalistic and harmful intrusion into people's control over their own bodies. Our inability to cope with people's desire to chemically feel good and handle problems in a sensible way results in people dying in unnecessary pain. The fact that there are now operations where people can go through a farce in order to get their funtimes plant isn't a counterpoint to the way we mistreat women, it's just a bandaid on the way we've been mistreating a different group of people who don't want to play by the dominant (at least in power) orthodoxy.
posted by phearlez at 9:46 AM on October 20, 2015




To add to Athene's information and resources, Women on Waves helps get abortion pills to women who live in places with no access to abortion.
posted by tiger tiger at 2:17 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


Are there places where misoprostol is OTC? Maybe we have to resort to good old-fashioned smuggling.
posted by jackbishop at 8:27 AM on October 21, 2015


Phearlez, I am currently at war with my DON, and will likely be looking for a new job soon, because I went over my boss's head to get a dying man morphine shots. I am not at all opposed to pain clinics. I am dismayed that we don't run abortion care like we run pain control.
posted by Athene at 9:01 PM on October 21, 2015


Just saying that pain clinics exist because of a toxic sickness in our system. To look at them as any sort of model is wrong. There'd be some value if we could stand up reproductive health clinics here and there in that way but let's not forget they're prone to random fed crackdown and often serve people with financial werewithal, not to mention the challenges they face in even sourcing needed meds. They're just as fucked up a thing as illegally targeted PP clinics.
posted by phearlez at 7:40 PM on October 22, 2015


Becca Andrews: Texas Subpoenas Records of Planned Parenthood Patients Who Donated Fetal Tissue
On the heels of Texas stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funding on Monday, the state's Health and Human Services Commission on Wednesday issued a subpoena for the Medicaid records of Planned Parenthood patients who have donated fetal tissue in the past five years.

Investigators with the department are seeking to obtain information from clinics in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas including patient records as well as billing and personnel information related to the donations, according to Planned Parenthood.

Ken Lambrecht, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, said the move was "unprecedented."
Facism and misogyny all rolled into one, under the polite-sounding "religious freedom" excuse.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:29 AM on October 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


wow. just wow. what the actual fuck could they possibly legitimately need that information for other than to target those patients for an endless wealth of harassment and what basically amounts to terrorism?
posted by poffin boffin at 9:56 AM on October 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


It gets worse:
Texas investigators arrived without warning at Planned Parenthood facilities on Thursday and demanded documents, three days after the state told the healthcare provider it planned to terminate its Medicaid contracts.

Ken Lambrecht, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, told a news conference in Austin that the appearance of state officials at offices in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston was “a politically motivated … fishing expedition” for information including unnecessary details such as the home addresses of employees and their salaries.
Don't Mess With Texas Gilead.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:49 AM on October 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Charles Pierce: Because Benghazi Went So Well, We Have a New Planned Parenthood Committee. And it's chock full o' wingnuts.
Things went so well for the Republicans in Thursday's Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! snipe hunt that departing Speaker John Boehner, who may just be pranking the bastards at this point, on Friday announced the members of the next Special Committee For Expanded Ratfcking. This one will look into the fictitious sale of baby parts by Planned Parenthood. Here are your dogged GOP inquisitors tasked with "investigating" "evidence" produced by phony videotapes:
Marsha Blackburn, Chairman (R-TN); Joe Pitts (R-PA); Diane Black (R-TN); Larry Bucshon (R-IN); Sean Duffy (R-WI); Andy Harris (R-MD); Vicki Hartzler (-MO); Mia Love (R-UT).
​A real pack o'pips, this one. Blackburn is a thoroughgoing nut. Her Tennessee colleague, Diane Black, is no fan of the 14th Amendment, and hires people with interesting views about our African American president. Duffy's the former Real World contestant who complained that he can't make it on the nearly 200-large he gets for being a congresscritter, and who also put words in the Pope's mouth and is therefore going to hell. Bucshon has visited the shebeen before; here's another science-denying wingnut physician. He is joined on Grand Rounds in the nervous ward by Harris, another doctor who doesn't know fck-all about his day job. Mia Love is the perpetually rising Republican star from Utah, and Vicki Hartzler is just flat-out freaking amazing. She's standing tall against the Chinese, who are spying on her through her toasters. Put this bunch on TV, too, primetime. Yeah, this oughta work.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:11 AM on October 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Texas Violates Its Free Market Principles I know it's stupid to expect people on the right to be logically consistent, but if we can't nationalize healthcare because competition and the free market are good, then you have to let people choose Planned Parenthood if they want to.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:58 AM on October 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Harris is the same shitbird who meddled in DC self rule over marijuana recently.
posted by phearlez at 7:03 AM on October 25, 2015




Reckoning With Rosie
In the years since, as the facts about Jimenez’s case have emerged, her death has become a powerful reminder of what happens when abortion becomes inaccessible. Though abortion itself is now extraordinarily safe, it’s also become, if anything, harder to get than it was in the 1970s, especially in Texas.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:54 PM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Olga Khazan: Texas Women Are Inducing Their Own Abortions
Between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women between the ages of 18 and 49 have tried to end a pregnancy by themselves, according to a pair of surveys released Tuesday by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, a University of Texas-based effort aimed at determining the impact of the state’s reproductive policies.

The figure was found by asking a representative sample of 779 women whether they themselves or whether their best friends had ever tried to self-induce an abortion. Of the Texas women surveyed, 1.7 percent said they had performed an abortion on themselves, but 4.1 percent of them said their best friend had or they suspected she had.
[...]
West Texas’s Midland County, home to 151,000 people, is now 258 miles from the nearest abortion clinic, or about an nine-hour round-trip drive. The big question before the Supreme Court is whether distances like these pose an “undue burden” for women seeking an abortion. If women are inducing their own abortions because they’re not able to reach clinics, it adds fuel to the argument that the obstacles they face are too steep.

The Court is also being asked to determine whether the state’s abortion restrictions make clinics safer and protect women’s health, as the law’s supporters have claimed. Even if that was their intent, this study suggests thousands of abortion-seeking Texas women are being nudged away from healthcare settings entirely—be they safe or unsafe.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:39 AM on November 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's "funny" - if they were doing it because this was more comfortable for them I'd call this good news. The continued unavailability of oral methods of terminating pregnancy are an embarrassment, particularly when you consider how other countries make it OTC. But it can't be positive when you consider this:

“There was also the fact that I’m doing it at home, we’re not—though we have all of the information as to how much bleeding is too much bleeding,” one 24-year-old said, “there’s always that slight uncertainty of like I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

And man, what an awful state of health care that demonstrates. Why should anyone have to feel uncertain about how a safe, legal drug will behave? She should be able to just go ask her doctor without fear, shame, or worrying about paying for getting basic medical advice.

I wonder if PP or anyone else is using advances in availability of telemedicine to bring access for these sorts of drugs to folks? When my father-in-law had a heart attack they did an initial assessment via a remote doctor. PP can't do D&C that way, obviously, but this sort of consultation ought to be possible. It's a crime it should come to that but if the next choice is a 6 hour round-trip bus ride...
posted by phearlez at 8:56 AM on November 17, 2015


« Older The Life of a Professional Guinea Pig   |   “...illustrate exactly why people of colour need... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments