Understanding the NY Abortion Ruling?

[Howl]

@BobJonesBabe, thank you for posting on this topic and sharing your experiences.  Perhaps query your fundy facebook friends if they'd prefer their tax dollars going towards sex ed and free contraceptives to cut the rate of abortions?  Seems like a reasonable way to cut the need for abortions, because....

Abortions could be eliminated almost entirely with early and appropriate sex ed with accurate and comprehensive information on contraceptives and free and easily available access to contraceptives for both women and men, especially teens.  

It drives me crazy to see all these fundy types picketing Planned Parenthood, the very group that provides low cost or free contraception, thus lowering the rate of abortions.  Cause and effect, people!  

My ex taught high school in a smallish town of 5000 people.  It was pretty shocking how many kids were sexually active, some even in middle school.  And how many were profoundly ignorant about how a girl got pregnant. 

Colorado piloted a free and extremely effective birth control program using LARC (long acting reversible contraception).  This program cut rate of teen births and abortions in half, saving the state tens of millions of dollars.  

Colorado's success with long-acting reversible contraception (LARC)

Sadly, many who are "pro life" are adamantly against education about sex and contraception and free access to contraceptives, especially for teens.

[VelociRapture]

@dharmapunk One of my daughter’s NICU Nurses posted twice yesterday about how it’ll be legal to kyrder babies slightly older than the ones she cares for soon.* I wrote a long response explaining what the law actually states and why it was written that way. My best guess is that if the life of the mother were at risk and if the fetus is viable, Doctors would likely do their best to deliver the baby. There are likely cases where that wouldn’t be possible, but I’d assume they’d do their best to deliver a baby who was past the point of viability and an abortion wouldn’t be necessary. 

*I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. The Nurse is otherwise a genuinely lovely human being. She is Catholic and takes her faith a bit more seriously than a lot of people our age in this area do, I’m guessing because she’s had several life threatening medical experiences over her life (born with a serious condition, organ transplant, cancer.) She’s a liberal in pretty much every other area I know about, despises Trump, wants everyone to have health insurance, thinks everyone should vaccinate their kids, etc. This is literally the first and only time I’ve seen something like this from her. 

[The Mother Dust]

21 hours ago, formergothardite said:

This is so true. @BobJonesBabe, if you haven't seen it I recommend the documentary After Tiller, which is about the four remaining late term abortion providers and how they handled things after Tiller was killed. I know that I always got the impression that late term abortions were done in shady places with doctors who pushed everyone to have an abortion and didn't care about the women, but this documentary showed how wrong this is. While they didn't reveal names or faces, they showed some of the women seeking late term abortions and it is heartbreaking. Most of them were sitting there sobbing because they wanted this baby and had found out that if born the baby was going to suffer. All the doctors showed such compassion and made sure that this was what the women really wanted. 

I didn't realize until I watched that how awful the anti-choice movement was. They systematically target these people and try to hurt them as much as possible. One of the doctor had daughters who had horses and one day anti-choice people burned his horses alive. Even the children of the landlord who owned the property where the abortion clinic is were targeted. They go after children in hopes that if they hurt the kids enough the parents will finally give in to them. One of the doctors even had his elderly mother harassed. 

Calling the movement a terrorist movement isn't out of line. The late term abortion doctors are not the monsters we were told they were, the real monsters are in the anti-choice movement. 

I saw that documentary, it was powerful.  I am no longer in NYS, but I grew up there, and will always be a WNY'er at heart.  I am so proud of my state for this.  I also feel a need to vent here, Dean Cain, that ignorant, pickme fuckwit, was on Fox (of course) telling everyone that 9 months pregnant women in NY will just have abortions on a whim now.  He has no idea the toll even a healthy pregnancy has on a woman's body....women that don't want a child will not deal with months of those symptoms...nausea, back and hip pain, sleep difficulties, incontinence, limited mobility, etc, just to finally go at the very end....nah.....I've just decided I went through all that for no reason....gonna get an abortion this morning with my coffee and bagel.     ?  

[candygirl200413]

Some of the people I went to undergrad with that are very pro-life shared how women should get onto birth control if they don't want to get pregnant. I had major issues but I think the biggest is that there the same type of people that don't want to pay for things like LARC or comprehensive sex ed. So it's like you can't have your cake and eat it too!!

[smittykins]

I swear, every other FB post on my feed is a variant of “Now in New York, you can murder a baby up to the very moment it’s born!” 

[SecularMusic]

10 hours ago, smittykins said:

I swear, every other FB post on my feed is a variant of “Now in New York, you can murder a baby up to the very moment it’s born!” 

Same here. My feed is filled with photos of newborns announcing "I could have been aborted yesterday."

[VelociRapture]

I only had one person do that. She is Catholic, a bit more religious than most people our age (lots of life threatening medical situations), and she was one of my daughter’s NICU Nurses. It’s a legitimately emotional topic for her for a lot of reasons. She posted twice and I responded with a long, thoughtful, and accurate post explaining what the law actually allows and why. She didn’t respond to that one. She did like a follow up post where I stated that I respect other people’s rights to believe what they want, but the facts should be known and a medical exemption needs to be available for women. I honestly don’t think she opposes the medical exemption for fetuses that are not viable. I think she reacted emotionally because she saw something that made her think it would be a free for all. I’m hoping my post sinks in with her and that she ultimately understands that that won’t be the case. 

What pissed me off though is another woman commented in agreement with the Nurse because she went through hell to have her son. I don’t know their specific story, but I’m assuming she’s a fellow NICU mom and it just pisses me off when people form their black and white opinions on complex topics based off nothing more than their own experiences. I didn’t respond to her because I didn’t trust myself to remain polite. 

[smittykins]

OT, but I love your avatar, @VelociRapture!

[Audrey2]

23 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Some of the people I went to undergrad with that are very pro-life shared how women should get onto birth control if they don't want to get pregnant. I had major issues but I think the biggest is that there the same type of people that don't want to pay for things like LARC or comprehensive sex ed. So it's like you can't have your cake and eat it too!!

And if men want to be all self righteous about the topic, maybe they need to keep it in their pants. I'm so sick of people (especially men) blaming women for birth control fails or having sex when, in order to get pregnant, they are having sex with MEN.

[VelociRapture]

6 hours ago, smittykins said:

OT, but I love your avatar, @VelociRapture!

We have @Palimpsestto thank for my magnificent new avatar. ?

[smittykins]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

And if men want to be all self righteous about the topic, maybe they need to keep it in their pants. I'm so sick of people (especially men) blaming women for birth control fails or having sex when, in order to get pregnant, they are having sex with MEN.

Exactly.  It pisses me off when they say “Just keep your legs closed if you don’t want a kid”(and notice how they never say “keep it in your pants”).  

[Palimpsest]

38 minutes ago, VelociRapture said:

We have @Palimpsestto thank for my magnificent new avatar. ?

Not really because I didn't create it.  I can't do that sort of clever thing.

Spoiler

I actually meant to google "Images velociraptor" but spelled it as Velocirapture  for obvious reasons.  And there it was - right in the middle of the screen.  Irresistible!

Serendipity.   

 

[LeftCoastLurker]

26 minutes ago, smittykins said:

Exactly.  It pisses me off when they say “Just keep your legs closed if you don’t want a kid”(and notice how they never say “keep it in your pants”).  

Yep...I've had this exact discussion with men. What I say is:

1. You know that sex can lead to pregnancy

2. You know the fact that women have bodily autonomy and the right to do with their body what they choose

3. If you are NOT 100% SURE  the woman you are choosing to have sex with will make a decision if she becomes pregnant that you are comfortable with THEN DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HER. 

Sorry for the "yelling" but this is a hot button issue for me.

[emscm]

Surprisingly, although I live in NY (@The Mother Dust fellow WNYer, hello!) almost all of the posts I have seen crowding my feed have been made by women. Possibly, my circle of male friends does not include many religious and/or conservative individuals. But, I just think that for women my age, many of whom are new mothers, this is a very emotional topic. It’s easy to react emotionally rather than try to collect more information first. 

I’m finding myself feeling slightly hypocritical for being so incensed by out of state Facebook friends voicing such uninformed but misguided opinions on the topic. I know every time a more conservative state passes another law restricting abortion rights I’m infuriated. I’m struggling not to feel like I have no right to be so annoyed by others’ opinions when I find them misguided and ignorant. 

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 1/26/2019 at 4:33 AM, dharmapunk said:

The second part I don't understand is the fact that the number of late term abortions could probably be reduced to almost zero if prenatal care was free, like it is in my country. By the time I was twenty weeks pregnant, I had had three ultrasound examinations (first time, low risk pregnancy). The vast majority of severe deformities would have been picked up on one of those. While I am pro choice, I think that late terms abortions should be a last resort.  Yet I get the impression that most of the people protetsting the law are against mandatory health insurance.  Very confusing from an outsider's perspective!

Here a lot of women get as little as one ultrasound the whole time, if even that,  depending on what insurance covers and they can afford, usually the 20-week anatomy scan. My first pregnancy I had my third ultrasound at the 20-week mark and it seems like that will be the case again this time: one at 8 weeks to check number of fetuses, placement in the reproductive system, etc., one with a blood screen at 11-13 weeks to screen for chromosomal abnormalities, and the anatomy check at 20 weeks itself. The initial ultrasound and the anatomy one are ordered as a matter of course at my obstetrician office, and the chromosomal screen is optional. Last time insurance covered everything with a small co-pay (fee at the point of services), but this time we have to pay out of pocket for everything until we reach our yearly limit (several thousand dollars). 

It's frustrating and a great irony that so many of the people who froth at the mouth about abortion refuse to consider ensuring that everyone has access to and knowledge of contraceptives, those who can't afford a child otherwise can access support services that would allow them to raise the child, and access to medical care that could preemptively diagnose and allow for some sort of treatment to have the child be as healthy as possible at birth.

I suspect most of us in this thread come down on the side of "late-term abortions as a last resort", especially since many of them are done as an act of either mercy or desperation.

[smittykins]

*CNYer waves to @emscm and @The Mother Dust*

[freethemall]

On 1/26/2019 at 4:33 AM, dharmapunk said:

Disclaimer: I am from Europe and I have no knowledge about US laws. But from what I have read in the media, there are two things that don't make sense to me.

The first is the part about "if the life of the mother is in danger" - where I live, once the baby is potentially viable, they would deliver the baby early, but attempt to save both the babies and the mother's  lives. I can't think of a situation where it would make a difference for the mother's health if she gives birth to a dead baby instead of a living one.

 

I highly recommend reading this article where a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks explains her situation, it gives you insight into how women come to this heartbreaking choice to terminate pregnancies that are often very much planned and wanted: https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-an-abortion-at-1781972395

And if it's too long to read:

Quote

I was already going to have to have a C-section no matter what, because two years ago, I’d had brain surgery. And my doctor checked with the neurosurgeon, who wouldn’t sign off on a natural birth. They were afraid that if I pushed, something might go on in my head, so the delivery had to be a C-section. And so we were considering putting me through major abdominal surgery for a baby that’s not going to make it, or risking that I go into natural labor and something pops in my head and I die, basically.

To be clear, if the doctors thought there was any way he might make it, I would have taken that chance. I truly would have put myself through anything. What I came to accept was the fact that I would never get to be this little guy’s mother—that if we came to term, he would likely live a very short time until he choked and died, if he even made it that far. This was a no-go for me. I couldn’t put him through that suffering when we had the option to minimize his pain as much as possible.

 

[The Mother Dust]

On 1/28/2019 at 9:35 AM, emscm said:

Surprisingly, although I live in NY (@The Mother Dust fellow WNYer, hello!) almost all of the posts I have seen crowding my feed have been made by women. Possibly, my circle of male friends does not include many religious and/or conservative individuals. But, I just think that for women my age, many of whom are new mothers, this is a very emotional topic. It’s easy to react emotionally rather than try to collect more information first. 

I’m finding myself feeling slightly hypocritical for being so incensed by out of state Facebook friends voicing such uninformed but misguided opinions on the topic. I know every time a more conservative state passes another law restricting abortion rights I’m infuriated. I’m struggling not to feel like I have no right to be so annoyed by others’ opinions when I find them misguided and ignorant. 

Go, go Buffalo! ?

[Imrlgoddess]

Had to step away from some FB stupid today.  A friend of mine asked in a post what was the uproar with the new bill and the very first response was from a man who twisted the intent.  Not wanting to get into a pissing contest online, I messaged and explained it to her-it as well received and we had a civil convo about it.  I went back a few minutes ago and I'm glad I avoided the post, it did indeed turn into a shit storm.