The Pro-Choice Generation

It was 1971. I had given birth to four live babies within 2 ½ years. I had no prenatal care for the first three births. We were very poor, very ignorant.

I was just 20 in May, 1966, when my first son was born two weeks early, 7 ½ pounds. I wasn’t ready to be a mother, but I fell in love with him instantly.

My young husband told me he’d heard that new mothers couldn’t get pregnant while they were nursing. He was wrong. In February, 1967, my second son was born, two months early, 3 ½ pounds. He lived 36 hours in an incubator, since his lungs weren’t developed. “At least you have your firstborn!” people said, trying to console me.

We used a diaphragm after that. It hurt and slipped around, annoying my husband no end. My third son was born in January, 1968. He was barely 3 pounds, and lived only 24 hours in an incubator.

They asked if I wanted to see him before taking him away. As I held his little body my husband lost it and swept everything off the hospital tray table onto the floor in a fit of rage.

The funeral home attempted to have him buried beside his brother, with just a marker on his grave, but failed. My two infant sons don’t even lie side by side in a graveyard somewhere in North Georgia.

We used an IUD after that. It, too, was uncomfortable, and I never knew if it was inserted correctly. My daughter was born in December, 1968.

Looking back, I now realize I was in mourning during that pregnancy. My maternity clothes were brown and black. I tried to endure the pregnancy without thinking about the baby inside, always expecting the worst outcome.

But this time would be different. After learning I was pregnant, we moved to Central Illinois, and I finally hooked up with a gynecologist. Dr. H. carried a pager on his belt. He saved me.

My daughter sailed past her 28th week, into her 8th month, and beyond. I was so relieved. Came the day when Dr. H. said he’d induce labor in 2 more weeks.

She had other plans. He was in church when his pager summoned him to the hospital after my water broke. She was all of 7 pounds, and breathed on her own right away. I was ecstatic.

We thought we had finally gotten the contraception thing down when I awoke one morning in 1971 knowing I was pregnant again. I knew , too, that I could not go through that again.

Abortion was illegal. Roe vs. Wade wasn’t even on the horizon. We’d both been raised in very strictly religious families. It didn’t even occur to me to go see Dr. H. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my husband. I knew I had to take care of this immediately on my own.

I’d seen the device Dr. H. had used for a dilation and curettage known as a D&C, the procedure doctors use to remove uterine contents. And I’d heard of hangers being used for abortions. I thought a hanger would make a useful D&C.

I didn’t feel any pain, but I knew I’d punctured the uterine wall when I felt sort of a pop. I was wrong about the hanger, but I still expected everything to be okay.

A week later we were in a restaurant when I began feeling faint. I had a raging fever: 106. Dr. H. said get to the hospital immediately.

They put me on an ice blanket to bring the temperature down. I was diagnosed with a “mysterious” pulmonary embolism, a blood clot on my lung. They didn’t let me see my children while I was in the hospital. After a long week I was finally allowed to go home.

I was lucky. A sustained temperature that high can lead to brain damage and even death.

Dr. H. saw me again in his office a few days later. Of course he knew I’d been pregnant, called it a miscarriage, and did another D&C. He never probed about what happened, I never volunteered.

What he said next told me that he didn’t have to ask. Another of his patients, he said, was experiencing the same “mysterious” symptoms I had had. I knew exactly what he meant.

He offered to do a tubal ligation — tie my tubes. I’d never heard of it. I had no idea there was such a simple procedure that could prevent me from ever getting pregnant again. My nightmare was finally over.

Trapped, the Sundance Festival Award-winning documentary about the assault on women’s reproductive health access premieres on PBS Monday, June 20 at 10pm. 

It’s a phobia, nothing more, nothing less. Best treated with therapy, people with it deserve to be treated with sympathy seeing as it is a mental issue and not their fault at all.

I’ve been seeing psychologists for over 3 years, been on medication for maybe a year and a half, and my issues haven’t gotten too much better.

Not to mention that things like autism (which is a HUGE factor in me never wanting to be pregnant/a parent) literally cannot be cured because it is a part of my brain and how it works.

Abortion Pill Procedure The medical abortion (Abortion pill or may be called Chemical Abortion or RU-486) is a two or three step process. During her first visit, the woman is given mifepristone, the drug that causes the death of the embryo. This drug blocks the effects of progesterone, a natural hormone that nurtures the developing fetus. The mifepristone may be administered as a shot or a pill depending on the abortion clinic’s policy.

In a typical medical abortion, the woman is instructed to take the second medication, misoprostol, two days later, which causes cramping that expels the embryo from the uterus. The FDA requires that this be taken by mouth, but many providers instruct the patient to insert it into the vagina. This drug is usually taken at home, without direct medical supervision.

The last step is to determine if the abortion procedure has been successful. In the case of an incomplete or failed abortion, a surgical abortion is often necessary.

Abortion Pill Reversal

Abortion Pill Reversal is a medical procedure designed to reverse the effects of the first abortion pill medication mifeprestone and allow a woman to carry the pregnancy to term. This is a relatively new procedure which has succeeded in a small number of cases. Progesterone, the medication used in the Abortion Pill Reversal process, is safe for pregnant women and their babies. There are no known risks to the health of the mother or the baby. Progesterone has been safely used to support pregnancies for almost sixty years. In fact, the largest study ever conducted on the safety of progesterone in pregnancy revealed that women who receive progesterone during pregnancy are actually less likely to deliver babies with fetal abnormalities.

The Pregnancy Clinic is now offering Abortion Pill Reversal. Because this procedure is not successful 100% of the time, if you have not begun your abortion and have any doubts about your decision, you should not proceed with the abortion. If you do proceed with an abortion pill and then change your mind, you may be able to successfully reverse the abortion pill procedure.

Abortion Pill Reversal is safe and confidential but extremely time sensitive.

Also, The Pregnancy Clinic is a Crisis Prengnacy Center and those tend to be pretty much full of lies from what I’ve seen.

But I guess you are looking at what @reginaeinferos is saying. So here you go again.

http://www.snopes.com/abortion-reversal/

*Points to note

WHAT’S TRUE: Some doctors have claimed that medical (not surgical) abortions can be halted or “reversed” through a new procedure.

WHAT’S FALSE/UNDETERMINED: That the referenced procedure is safe and works as described, or that a demand for such a procedure exists to any meaningful degree.

A September 2015 study published in the journal Contraception approached “abortion reversal” from a clinical perspective, identifying a host of flaws in the concept and its execution. Following a “systematic review of the literature on the effectiveness of medical abortion ‘reversal’ treatment,” researchers found that evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of the procedure was worryingly scant:

From 1115 articles retrieved, 1 study met inclusion criteria for abortion reversal, and 13 studies met criteria for continuing pregnancy after mifepristone alone. The one report of abortion reversal was a case series of 7 patients receiving varying doses of progesterone in oil intramuscularly or micronized progesterone orally or vaginally; 1 patient was lost to follow-up. The study was of poor quality and lacked clear information on patient selection. Four of six women continued the pregnancy to term [67%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 30–90%]. Assuming the lost patient aborted resulted in a continuing pregnancy proportion of 57% (95% CI 25–84%). The proportion of pregnancies continuing 1–2 weeks after mifepristone alone varied from 8% (95% CI 3–22%) to 46% (95% CI 37–56%). Continuing pregnancy was more common with lower mifepristone doses and advanced gestational age.

As that study noted, the initial study on which the claims rested was of “poor quality” and involved incomplete data. But most telling was the final sentence: “abortion reversal” procedure success rates hinged on low initial doses of mifepristone and stage of pregnancy (and coincidentally, those factors are also linked with intervention-free failures of medical abortion). Study author Dr. Daniel Grossman explained to Slate that:

In the “exceedingly rare” case in which a woman might take one pill and then decide she wants the pregnancy after all, there’s no research to show that progesterone shots will help her save it, he explained. Mifepristone “by itself is not an effective abortion regimen,” he said, and so many women who just take the first pill will not miscarry if they simply don’t take the second. If he had a patient who changed her mind halfway through, he explained, he would recommend doing nothing and monitoring the pregnancy to make sure it’s continuing normally.

The Atlantic reiterated the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists [ACOG]’s stance on the procedure, underscoring that it presented false hope to patients considering abortion while maintaining an easily-explained illusion of efficacy (commonly known as “confirmation bias”:

What’s puzzling about this measure, regardless of one’s opinion on abortion, is that the progesterone dose appears to be completely unnecessary. Women who only take the first pill already have a 30 to 50 percent chance of continuing their pregnancy normally, according to ACOG. The limited evidence we have suggests that taking progesterone does not appear to improve the odds of fetal survival by much. The abortion pill binds more tightly to progesterone receptors than progesterone itself does, one reproductive researcher told Iowa Public Radio, and thus the hormone surge is unlikely to do much of anything.

As Cheryl Chastine, an abortion provider at South Wind Women’s Center in Kansas, put it recently, “Even if these doctors were to offer a large dose of purple Skittles, they’d appear to have ‘worked’ to ‘save’ the pregnancy about half the time.”

In an undated statement [PDF], the ACOG similarly cautioned:

Available research seems to indicate that in the rare situation where a woman takes mifepristone and then changes her mind, doing nothing and waiting to see what happens is just as effective as intervening with a course of progesterone. Progesterone, while generally well tolerated, can cause significant cardiovascular, nervous system and endocrine adverse reactions as well as other side effects.

http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-760-progesterone.aspx?activeingredientid=760&

Here’s something that says what it does and what it can do. This site does mention that is LIKELY UNSAFE to use during pregnancy. And it also says it’s possibly ineffective for stopping miscarriage.

Miscarriage. Most research suggests that applying progesterone into the vagina does not reduce the risk of having a miscarriage during the first trimester in women at high risk for miscarriage. Also, injecting progesterone and another steroid hormone into the muscle after undergoing a test used to diagnose birth defects (called an amniocentesis) does not seem to reduce the risk of miscarriage or preterm delivery.

Says nothing about fetal anomalies.

Although multiple web sites carried news reports about “abortion reversal” procedures, that information was apparently published without additional corroboration of its claims. Medical literature on the concept of “abortion reversal” indicates that the procedure carries a success rate similar to that of “doing nothing and waiting,” and its outcome hinges solely (or largely) on the initial dose of medication and gestational age (factors that are independent of attempts to interrupt a pregnancy termination). The intervention also carries “significant cardiovascular, nervous system, and endocrine adverse reactions,” risks not associated with the likely equally effective course of “doing nothing.”

From any perspective, the claims made about “abortion pill reversals” seem inherently dangerous. The procedure appears unlikely to prevent medical abortions from proceeding to completion, and the issue addressed by “abortion reversal” is one probably better handled via thorough counseling prior to abortions rather than through a risky and unproven medical procedure that is seemingly no more effective than doing nothing at all.

I’ve seen this so many times. 

Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone needed to maintain the pregnancy. Because this hormone is blocked, the uterine lining begins to shed, the cervix begins to soften and bleeding may occur. With the later addition of the second medication, misoprostol, the uterus contracts and the pregnancy is usually expelled within 6 to 8 hours.

If pregnancy is continued after taking these medications, there is a high risk of fetal deformities.

Also, like the article of the girl dying of birth control. Literally there is no medication that is 100%. Life yeah, everything medical related whether it is procedure or medication isn’t 100% safe. Even the article said it was very rare for something like what that girl had.

You can claim CPCs are as “pro-woman” as you want, but they have a long and colourful history of lying to patients, and this time is no different. The success rate of a medication abortion failing is dependent on the stage of pregnancy and amount of misoprostol ingested, while taking extra progesterone can cause cardiovascular, neurological and endocrine problems. If you were really so pro-woman, you wouldn’t advocate for something that isn’t proven to work more than just doing nothing and carries the risk of harm to health.

pregnancy mention tw, dysphoria mention tw, food mention tw, long text post 

Hi friend!

For starters, I’m really sorry you’re dealing with tokophobia/gender dysphoria. I know how much those suck, and I hope this finds you okay!

To answer your question: I haven’t actually talked to many people about this, so I don’t know how “normal” it is, but I can tell you this is something I struggle with too. 

I’ve never wanted children, and I used to really struggle, because I felt awful for having this “gift” that I would never use, don’t want (never mind the fact that for me, this would not be a gift). Even now, I don’t feel guilty per se, but I get really angry, because it’s like, what the fuck is the point of this uterus? 

Having studied reproductive rights, and social justice things more extensively now though, I would imagine that we’re not the only ones dealing with this. For starters, if you’re assigned female at birth, you’re prepared, and told about the wonders of mommyhood from the day you’re born. By ten, kids of all genders have more than likely heard about “one day, when you’re a mommy” (I remember being like 7, and having my cousins tell me that I would never be happy in life, because I didn’t want kids, and that’s the “best and happiest” thing a woman can do). By 15, most people have seen some “I got pregnant on accident, but kept my baby and it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done!” movie/story, as well as the “I want to have a baby so bad, but I can’t, but this person can, and I’m really sad/jealous, but wait, what joy they’re giving me their baby!” movie/story (bonus points if you watched the movie on lifetime or we when you stayed home sick from school, and there was nothing else on tv-if you don’t live in the us, then bonus points for watching it on whatever your cheesy over the top movies tv station is in the same scenario, lol). 

By the time you’re an adult, regardless of what your gender is, you’ve more than likely heard about how great parenthood is, and how you should aspire to it, and how not having children is selfish/wrong/immature/avoiding responsibility/a disservice to society because “you’d be such a good parent!” 

Basically, what I’m getting at, is that we’re told from day one that we should aspire to have children, because they’re a gift, and not to do so when you’re able to is to be ungrateful. Then of course, throw antichoicers in to the mix, who would love for us to be breading sows, and it’s not surprising that people dealing with tokophobia and/or dysphoria feel bad for not having/wanting children. I mean, we’re pretty much constantly told about how bad we are for not having/wanting kids, so I think it makes sense that we then feel bad. 

But please know this! You do not owe anyone your uterus, nor do you need to be a parent one day. If you want to be one-fucking awesome! If you do decide you want to be a parent, and you want to adopt, that’s also fucking awesome. Adoption is great, and a completely valid, equally good option to parenthood as birthing is. If you don’t want kids ever-that’s also fucking rad! You can be happy, and complete without having children, and that does not make you selfish/immature/wrong/or any of the other negative, awful shit you’ll (more than likely) be told. It’s really sad, and unfortunate that some people can’t birth kids when they want to, however, that does not reflect on you, or make you bad for not wanting to. The funny thing about gifts, is that different people like different things. Although parenting and giving birth may be a “gift” to some, it is not to everyone, and that’s okay.

 I like to think about it like actual gifts-for me, an amazing new year’s gift, is one of the silent hill games I don’t have, or some kickass coffee. My partner on the other hand, hates horror games, and only drinks coffee on occasion (I know, I can’t believe it either), so these gifts would be shit for them. Or, for their birthday one year, I got my partner our cat, Rose (I knew they had really been wanting a cat, and we had talked about it a lot before), and this was such an amazing gift for them! But, my best friend, she’s severely allergic to cats (I know, pobrecita, she only gets kitty love through pictures), so a cat would be an absolutely horrific gift for her. Does this make either of them bad? Of course not! Should they feel guilty over it? Of course not! I think of pregnancy as being the same way. 

In either case, please know that you’re not alone! I’m always here to talk if you ever need to, and you’re awesome!

Cultureshift:

And I’m talking to several members of the pro-choice community, too. As a rape victim, you made me so nauseous, that when y'all reblog our posts I resist the urge to straight up block you.

Rape victims don’t need to be perfect in order to be supported. Do NOT let them get away with problematic shit, but citing that as a reason as to why you’re not supporting them is gross.

it which is an appalling mess. I’m just asking if you have any factual points of refuting his point on “women who willingly have sex using abortion to avoid consequences” and what do you think about the “extraction of embryo” thing?

rape mention, misogyny mention, gendered language, police mention tw

Hi friend!

Your friend sounds exhausting as hell, so cudos to you for your patience.

The main points that you can make are:

A) Children should not be punishment. Raising children should be something people do because they want to, not something people should be forced to do for having sex. I mean, think about what that says of your parenting views, if you think pregnant people should be forced to have kids, as punishment for having sex.

B) People have sex for reasons other than having kids. People have sex for intimacy. People have sex for fun. People have sex for the endorphin run you get from having an orgasm. People have sex for a million and two reasons, and you random dude, do not get to decide how and why everyone on earth should/can have sex. Sorry, dude. 

C) Having an abortion is not “avoiding the consequences of your actions.” Abortion is looking at your situation (pregnancy) and saying, “okay, so how do I handle this, what are my options, and what’s going to be best for me?” and then making that decision. Abortions are not fun, and thanks to restrictive laws, it can be quite the drawn out process. 

Also, there’s a million and one stories from rape victims all about how the cops/police system is not created for them. I don’t honestly even know where to begin, or to break all of that down.

For starters, there’s the fact that if you’re a: 1) Sex worker and/or 2) “Dressed provocatively” and/or 3) Trans and/or 4)were inebriated and/or 5) a poc and/or 6) Not “emotional enough” and/or 7) “Too emotional” and/or 8) In a relationship with the person who raped you and/or 9) Have ever willingly consisted to sex with them and/or10) are married to them and/or11) mentally ill and/or12) disabled and/or13) poor and/or14) homeless and/or15) have a chemical dependency issue

then there’s a good chance the cops will drop your case before it even begins, and honestly, this list can go on. Those are the reasons I can think of off the top of my head, that people have been told “they weren’t raped” for. I have known countless people who have experienced assault and shit, and had cops basically tell them to go home, and “deal.” And those are the best case scenarios. There’s been more than one incident where someone (this is most common among sex workers, and trans woman) goes to a cop for help, only so the cop can then assault them as well. 

To be even more honest though, I was raised on the fact that cops are not friends, are not to be trusted, and in my parents own words “are not to protect us.” So, it’s difficult for me to form “why cops are bad, and not here to protect poc, women, lgbt+ people, low income people disabled people, mentally ill people, etc. 101″ arguments, you know? 

The extraction thing is both fucking creepy, and confusing. Where are the fetus to be stored? What exactly is the point of storing them? What’s gonna be done with them? Where is the money going to come from to store them, and how much is that creepy fucking doctor visit going to cost? 

If you’re looking to make this an ongoing conversation with him, I would just start by talking. You could send him to look through our blog-we do have some pretty kick ass info on here, if I do say so myself. You could have him go through the other prochoice blogs as well, and introduce him to basic femininsm 101. 

If he’s more in to the whole college text thing, you can have him read some of Angela Davis’s work-she’s amazing, and has broken down everything that’s wrong with our police system, and how they are not here to protect/help most people. She’s an intersectional femininst, and so all of her work is approached from a poc, and women’s rights perspective, so her explanations are pretty solid and thorough. 

Anyways, best of luck, friend! I wish all of the emotional energy your way, and I hope it comes around!

If you support everyone having the right to choose, then you’re pro-choice.

Even if you personally want nothing more than a child and would only choose parenting or adoption, those would be your choices.

Your choice not to abort while supporting abortion access does not make you pro-life. It means that you’re making the best choice for you, and in your case, that choice is not abortion.