Jinjer 49: Westward Ho!

[SilverBeach]

11 hours ago, LaPeleona said:

It's hard to tease these things out but you are obligated to as part of pregnancy options counseling.

This would require reading body language, noticing any hesitancy, that kind of thing. Not sure all clinic workers are that sensitive or have the time, and a simple"Yes" response to the question about choosing the procedure for yourself is enough to move forward. I hope women who genuinely did not want the procedure have been able to muster the stength and courage to walk out.  I also hope women who genuinely wanted the procedure did not allow someone to convince them not to have it. 

[patsymae]

On 7/11/2019 at 12:31 AM, JustEnough said:

I agree so very very much with this. 

When I was in college we had to do an exercise in one of my classes where we were randomly assigned into groups of 5 or 6 IIRC and then we were given topics and we had to write a statement about the topic that 100% of the group agreed with. One of the topics was about abortion and out of our group all but two of us were somewhere in a middle zone of abortion being ok in some cases (like rape or incest) and not in others. I was on the abortion needs to be a legal option available to any woman who needs or wants one and the decision is between her and the doctor providing the abortion (and in my ideal world abortion providers are plentiful so there aren't women who could legally get one but practically speaking cannot access one). The other person was of the opinion abortion is murder and should therefore be illegal in all cases.

I argued my point without getting into my personal history and we completed the assignment, but as someone who has actually been pregnant and given birth after a rape, as vehemently as I disagreed with her 100% illegal/immoral position, there is something about the others in our group, with their "except in cases of rape and incest" that makes me feel like they care about punishing women and not at all believing in the sanctity of life of my living breathing child nor the lived experience of that child's very pro choice mother who made the right choice for her. 

On the other side I had a friend hold me up as some ideal of the pro-life side when I made that choice and that pisses me off to this day. My body, my choice. As it should be for every woman/girl in every situation. 

These laws affect real people in real life. It's shouldn't be to just get them born, woman be damned, and who cares what happens to mother or baby after.

don't know how to condense so sorry, but I love you. The fetus that I aborted was not, in my view, an actual human being. The child I gave birth to after I was raped, who has now given me a grandchild, is indeed a human being. My consent to having sex or my being forcibly assaulted (note I am not referring to rape as nonconsexual sex) has zero to do with their supposed status in utero. But we know that. Love you.

[LaPeleona]

13 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

This would require reading body language, noticing any hesitancy, that kind of thing. Not sure all clinic workers are that sensitive or have the time, and a simple"Yes" response to the question about choosing the procedure for yourself is enough to move forward. 

As with any profession there are bound to be people not good at their job. However, abortions are not in and out appointments and multiple people on the care team interact with a patient during their visit. If you have a pregnancy options/abortion counselor who is not doing their job correctly it's usually immediately clear to the entire care team.

[SilverBeach]

4 hours ago, LaPeleona said:

As with any profession there are bound to be people not good at their job. However, abortions are not in and out appointments and multiple people on the care team interact with a patient during their visit. If you have a pregnancy options/abortion counselor who is not doing their job correctly it's usually immediately clear to the entire care team.

You cannot make a blanket statment like this, clinics likely vary in their structure and protocol. Mine was an in and out appointment and the questioning was perfunctory and superficial.  What does the "care team" do when they observe someone not doing their job properly, as you state happens?  There was no care team for me.

Look, I support clinics providing this valuable service to women. But they don't need to be idealized,, neither does the experience.