Jensen Misha Jensen. In that order.

screaming 😭

https://twitter.com/xxtristan_/status/1618326367602626561?s=46&t=7AaUggYDU1sZ5fa1R9e3QA

First, I want to thank you for acknowledging that your perspective on this may be informed from a place of systemic oppression of AFAB people, and for seeking out information. When people add on to this post with the purpose to educate, I implore you all to remember this person is seeking information. Please avoid shaming them or ridiculing them.

Let’s first address your questions:

1) “There are other alternatives to abortion aren’t there?”

Let’s first define abortion. “In medicine, an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost. A spontaneous abortion is the same as a miscarriage. The miscarriage of three or more consecutive pregnancies is termed habitual abortion or recurrent pregnancy loss”  (Shiel MD, MedicineNet).

¼ womxn will have abortions in their lifetime. Abortion is a medical procedure that can be requested or required for a lot of different reasons:

The pregnant person may not be able to carry an embryo to term safely.

The pregnant person may not have the financial support to pay for the medical bills that pregnancy costs in the US (prenatal and delivery alone can cost around $18k).  

I also want to add that people in this country are not given any kind of financial support for the time taken off for prenatal or postnatal care. Being out of work for this time could mean entering extreme poverty.

The pregnant person may not have the financial support or stability of lifestyle to support a child.

The pregnant person may not be physically up to the task of carrying a child to term and delivering. Not all womb-having people are up to what childbirth does to the body. Childbirth is one of the most dangerous things that a body can be put through.  In the US we’re just under 20 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, which is the highest in the developed world. Some undeveloped countries have better stats than we do

Abortion may be required as an emergency life-saving procedure for the pregnant person. And waiting for approval by a committee could mean the death of that person.

Medical interference can also be needed if the embryo has already been determined unviable (basically will not ever have life) because having dead tissue remain in the womb will kill the person. Wombs don’t always do what they’re supposed to and often they will still act as if the pregnancy is going along normally when the embryo stopped growing and forming.

Abortion as a medical procedure is part of basic reproductive healthcare. Denying it is like denying the use of a c-section or blood transfusions.

I also want to add that many of these GOP states are seeking to classify any and all contraceptives as “abortion” as well. This isn’t included in this bill specifically but it’s been named as part of their agendas.

2) “I mean I honestly don’t understand this bill nonsense but it mostly at least to me sounds like it’s just to keep children alive.”According to the CDC, 91.1% of abortions are performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation. At this time, this is an embryo and fetal tissue. It’s not a child. Pro-life people are placing the eventual *possible* life of a being that isn’t even formed yet above the autonomy and rights of a living human being (the pregnant person). A zygote without a brain or the ability to survive outside the womb is not a person, and therefore not a child. We have determined that something without brain activity is not alive. People with wombs are not incubators. This is not the sum of our existence.

Right now you cannot force a person to give blood or organs in life-saving situations. Why should it be okay to force a person to donate their entire body as an incubator if they don’t want to, which has health complications, and long-lasting effects on the body? We even afford humans that are DEAD more rights than womb-having people in this country. It is illegal to take organs or tissue from dead bodies with no brain activity without consent, but it’s legal to force a living person to act as an incubator for tissue and chromosomes that aren’t even formed to make a person yet?

Also, this bill has SO much more nuanced support for the oppression of women than just keeping “children” alive. This affords the state the right to investigate any suspicion of “intentional abortion.” This means, if a person miscarries, they may be subject to invasive investigation and murder charges on top of grieving for their loss and recovering medically. This bill also in no certain terms basically considers all womb-having people in their state to be the property of the state by allowing people to be extradited and charged if they have a LEGAL abortion procedure in another state.

3) “I mean there are adoption centers and people who will actually pay women who are pregnant to act as surrogates. Why is anti-abortion so bad?” We currently have 108,000 foster children up for adoption right this second in the US. This doesn’t even include unwanted pregnancies being given to private adoption agencies. Adopt one if you want to save a child, but forcing people to enter crippling debt, put their body through the abuse of childbirth, and possible forced poverty because of lack of childcare or compensation for missing work isn’t okay.

Additionally, anti-abortion really only seems to be concerned with one thing - popping out children. There is ZERO concern for the health, wellbeing, or survival of that child OR the parent afterward. This is oppressive and forced childbirth expectations. And again, reduces womb-having people as nothing more than a means to an end. Their life and wellbeing aren’t considered - they’re incubators.

4) “How is this a woman’s autonomy problem.”All of the above. The entire idea of denying women normal reproductive medical procedures or criminalize a natural thing that our bodies DO is inherently oppressive. Deciding that a womb-having person is just supposed to do their best to carry to term an embryo regardless of danger to their life, medical needs, e, inability to care for the child, inability to pay medical bills, or the abuse that childbirth puts on the body… and possibly condemning them to death, poverty, or life-long debt removes the ability for a person to choose what is done or what is done TO their body. It’s inherently oppressive.

Make no mistake, these bills have very little to do with saving the lives of children, and everything to do with keeping women impoverished, oppressed, and without any control over their own bodies and lives. These bills are also written and signed without ANY input or oversight primarily by the people they affect. This is not a choice that womb-having people made… these are oppressive laws being forced upon them.

Some final personal notes from me: I am currently in a place where I would suffer greatly from these laws if they were to be implemented in my state. First of all, if I were to get pregnant, mine would be a high-risk pregnancy. It is likely that I could lose the pregnancy anytime within the first two trimesters, which would require an abortive procedure to remove the remaining tissue. If I’m to get pregnant, I need to know that modern medical procedures that are agreed to be the most effective best practices would be available to me by a doctor without the threat of criminalization or debating on whether it’s necessary/legal. This affects all people who may ever become pregnant. This is a clear and present fear for us. It’s not just anti-abortion. If that’s all it was… the answer would be simple, don’t have one. If you need one to save your life, you can choose to say no. But it’s not. This is about controlling womxn, denying us healthcare, and we are afraid. We are all desperately terrified of this becoming the new normal across our country. ONE in FOUR pregnancies ends in the need for abortion. And if you need one, you get one. This is about whether or not we have access to SAFE and MEDICALLY sanctioned abortions. 

The Ohio anti-abortion bill mandates that in the case of an ectopic pregnancy (when a fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tubes outside the uterus) the egg must be reimplanted into the pregnant woman’s uterus. This is unscientific; there is no medical procedure to reimplant an ectopic egg. A ruptured ectopic pregnancy is a medical emergency that can cause internal bleeding. The egg must be surgically removed to save the mother’s life. (X)

In America, the act of having a child costs the pregnant person anywhere from $13,000 (vaginally birth) to $22,600 (c-section). Giving birth to a baby is expensive. Not everyone is in a position to do that, and they’ll be in debt for YEARS because of it.

So not only are they putting their own physical body and health and well-being on the line (bc carrying a child has an ENORMOUS impact on the body, and sometimes has life-long complications), PLUS their mental health and well-being (bc carrying a child is emotionally impactful in a huge variety of ways), but theyre also putting their long-term financial stability at risk.

Furthermore, if people want to decrease the number of abortions that occur, then they need to do two things.

Prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. This means educating people – teenagers especially – as to how to engage in safe sex, and it means making contraceptives more readily available – both of which are things that the pro-life crowd disapprove of. They think that children should be taught to abstain from sex, rather than taught how to have safe sex, even though there’s decades of data that shows that schools with an abstinence policy have a substantially higher rate of teen pregnancies than schools that teach kids how to have sex safely. Many of the pro-life cheerleaders also hate contraception, and they try to limit access to contraceptives, despite the fact that contraceptives are the best antidote to abortions.

Establish societal supports that look after children and parents. So many people WOULD have children if they knew that they could live a financially table life with the child. If they knew that they would get livable government support payments whilst on maternity leave. If they knew that subsidised or free childcare would allow them to return to the workforce without having to worry about what to do with their kid while at work. If they knew that they and their child would never go hungry. If they knew that they and their child would be able to afford a place to live. If they knew they would be able to afford a decent education for their child. SO many people have abortions because they know that having a child would throw them (and the child!!) into unrecoverable poverty. If those societal barriers were removed, then the number of children being born would increase. But, again, despite this being a major factor in the having of abortions, you’ll find that most of the prolife crowd do not agree with the concept of post-birth support. They’re all “think about the children” up until the child is born, and then after that, they’re all “well you shouldn’t have had a kid if you couldn’t afford it” and “why should OUR tax payer money go towards funding the survival of single parents when instead we could be funding the purchase of 10 sub-automatic machine guns each for every single cop” and etc.

If people want to prevent abortions, then they need to deal with the reasons that abortions exist. If pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a kid weren’t the equivalent of taking a flamethrower to your financial stability, then more people would keep their pregnancies. And if there was more education about contraceptives and if they were cheaper and more easily accessible, then there would be fewer unwanted pregnancies, and thus, fewer abortions.

Would it stop all abortions? Of course not. If all these things were fixed, should abortions still be allowed? Absolutely 100% yes.

But fixing these issues would substantially decrease the number of abortions that occur, which is what the prolife crowd claim to want. But instead of focussing on the reasons that people have abortions, and fixing those issues, the prolifers only ever focus on the abortion itself, which is missing the wider picture, and also is ineffective.

They are being victimised a second time and being forced to put heir lives in danger, physical mental and financial, for months after an attack. This would be a daily reminder of the trauma they have already been subjected to and could result in even more trauma.

This includes children.

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