Seewalds 47: Actions have Consequences; Sponsor Backlash Due to Jessa's Homophobia

[Thumper]

Miscarriage is absolutely devastating and my heart breaks for Jessa. I’ve also had a missed miscarriage, had a D&C and I’ll never be the same after it. It was definitely the worst experience of my life.

I do find it interesting how none of the older girls are anti BC. It really shows the limits of indoctrination.

[JDuggs]

3 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Fundies are always insanely prolife and anti abortion at all costs until their own lives are in danger. Although I will say I’m glad the Duggars aren’t the type to protest outside of planned parenthood every weekend with disturbing posters and harassing people walking near the clinic. But they still vote for all the prolife measures and politicians. So they are still restricting their own access. 

Since abortion is illegal in Arkansas, except to save the life of the mother, the Duggars no longer have the need to protest against abortion in their own state. They’ve won that battle. I think Jessa would take the position that Arkansas has gotten their abortion laws “right” and are sensible regarding miscarriages.

[Jinder Roles]

2 hours ago, Mama Mia said:

She said the D&C was because trying the medication route, or waiting to go naturally, weren’t advisable due to her history of hemorrhage (as someone  who had a near death hemorrhage in very similar circumstance - I’m glad her Dr took that into account) 

Until very recently virtually no one was anti measures that saved the life of the mother, or removed a dead fetus. D&C after the fetus had no heartbeat certainly would not have been controversial.  Surgery/ Medications to remove an ectopic pregnancy was not controversial. Early induction or c-section anywhere near viability because otherwise both mother and baby would die was not controversial. Except for some extremist segments of society, few had attempted to interpret these tragic but life saving medical procedures as optional. And we’ve seen well publicized accounts of what happens when these procedures are denied. Women die. Period. 

I don’t think it’s reasonable to lump in procedures used to remove a dead fetus, or to save the life of the mother and give the pre-term baby a shot at survival in the “abortion”* category and say that Michelle or Jessa are only fine with it when it effects them. Neither has ever said anything to contribute to the misconception that these procedures, in these circumstances, are wrong. They are both adamantly against abortion, but not these weird rapidly spreading views  that lead to denial of life saving medical help. 

It seems to me to be a really positive thing when women who are extremely conservative, ultra religious, anti-abortion  talk sensibly to their followers about what can happen during a pregnancy loss.

*and yes, I know the medical terminology for therapeutic abortion is different than common usage, I’m talking about the commonly accepted usage in this context. 
 

 

 

 

I get what you're saying but the fact is their anti-choice beliefs, rhetoric and support of politicians has lead to the denial of necessary medical care for many people in the U.S and the overturn of Roe.  Unfortunately these types of beliefs aren't new or as weird as you might think. Michelle and JB's entire "the pill is abortion" belief is misinformation spread by conservatives to restrict health care. I honestly think the banning of D&Cs is another example. Often people are so dogmatic in their beliefs they remove it from real life consequences, including when they are on the receiving end of said consequences. 

[Mama Mia]

12 minutes ago, Jinder Roles said:

I get what you're saying but the fact is their anti-choice beliefs, rhetoric and support of politicians has lead to the denial of necessary medical care for many people in the U.S and the overturn of Roe.  Unfortunately these types of beliefs aren't new or as weird as you might think. Michelle and JB's entire "the pill is abortion" belief is misinformation spread by conservatives to restrict health care. I honestly think the banning of D&Cs is another example. Often people are so dogmatic in their beliefs they remove it from real life consequences, including when they are on the receiving end of said consequences. 

There haven’t been any laws banning D&C’s when used in this circumstance. There HAVE been multiple cases of Dr’s being reluctant or refusing giving D&C’s and other appropriate procedures because they fear they will be charged anyway. That’s why I think it is important for women like Jessa to talk about necessary medical procedures in a matter of fact way.  So that people who share her general anti-abortion beliefs understand the difference.  But this topic is triggering stuff for me, so I might try to bow out of responding. 

[Howl]

I came across this twitter thread related to Jessa's People Magazine article. Things are heating up  because of confusion about medical terminology relative to miscarriage, D  & C and abortion.  

Yes, absolutely women are coming close to dying because of insanely restrictive laws.  I live in Texas.  It's a thing. This has happened to women  more than once and doctors are terrified.  

Beauty YouTuber Forced to Carry Dead Fetus for 2 Weeks After Miscarriage Due to Abortion Ban

Rep. Frederica Wilson [D-Fl]  Speaks About Being 'Forced to Carry My Dead Baby' After House Passes Anti-Abortion Bill  "Prohibited by law to induce labor, I carried my deceased child inside me for two months and almost died," said Representative Frederica Wilson as the House passed two anti-abortion bills

A local woman here in Austin shared a similar story.  She had to fly to New Mexico to get a D & C. 

 

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Howl

[Smoochie]

I was just coming here to post/say the same things. The denial and frankly ignorance in some of the twitter feeds is almost comical with some of them fighting 'to the death' that their ignorance is correct, that people should be respectful and that she didn't have have an abortion!

Frankly as someone else mentioned, this is no different than Michelle having a C-Section to save her life. If, as they believe and preach to others, Michelle should have carried her to term without medical intervention as there was NO guarantee that Josie would live and was barely on the edge of viability @ 25 weeks!

[Mama Mia]

27 minutes ago, Smoochie said:

I was just coming here to post/say the same things. The denial and frankly ignorance in some of the twitter feeds is almost comical with some of them fighting 'to the death' that their ignorance is correct, that people should be respectful and that she didn't have have an abortion!

Frankly as someone else mentioned, this is no different than Michelle having a C-Section to save her life. If, as they believe and preach to others, Michelle should have carried her to term without medical intervention as there was NO guarantee that Josie would live and was barely on the edge of viability @ 25 weeks!

You have that backwards. In Michelle’s case unchecked pre-eclampsia = dead mother= dead baby. NOT delivering early would be what would cause certain death to the extremely premature infant. In Jessa’s case the fetus was dead. You can’t kill something that is already dead. You can, and should, remove the dead fetus to prevent the mother from going septic. Physicians will use different methods of achieving this, hopefully based on the individual medical situation — not due to politics and fear of insane laws that misinterpret life saving medical procedures. 
The people who are saying “yes, she did so have an abortion!” Are just promoting and encouraging the extremist views that lead to the death of mothers. 

[Smoochie]

7 hours ago, Mama Mia said:

You have that backwards. In Michelle’s case unchecked pre-eclampsia = dead mother= dead baby. NOT delivering early would be what would cause certain death to the extremely premature infant. In Jessa’s case the fetus was dead. You can’t kill something that is already dead. You can, and should, remove the dead fetus to prevent the mother from going septic. Physicians will use different methods of achieving this, hopefully based on the individual medical situation — not due to politics and fear of insane laws that misinterpret life saving medical procedures. 
The people who are saying “yes, she did so have an abortion!” Are just promoting and encouraging the extremist views that lead to the death of mothers. 

Yes, I know dead mother = dead baby, but, per their beliefs that shouldn't matter. They were lucky that Josie survived the intervention to save Michelle. A week or two earlier, she wouldn't have and yes, it would have been considered an abortion (removal of the fetus) to save the mother.

Jessa said her doctor stated that the fetal sac looked good, but the baby did not. She did not say the fetus was dead, just that she was spotting and miscarrying. Typically the fetus exits the body on it's own. In some cases it does not and/or the Dr. suggests a D&C for health reasons.

However, in many states. right now, women cannot access the exact procedure because their state has ruled that it's an abortion as it is the same procedure and in their eyes when a fetus is in the body, there's a chance it could become viable. There are women right now being forced to carry dead fetuses, risking sepsis, due to this and having to travel out of state to get treatment.

I know the difference, it's semantics, but, what they protest against. Good for me, but, not for thee pre the typical Evangelical reaction to not just this, but, many other sins they profess to be against.

[NachosFlandersStyle]

Jessa is in so far over her head when it comes to media and PR. She posts a lengthy and confusing video that initially seems like she's announcing an ongoing pregnancy, then hits her viewers with possibly triggering miscarriage discussion -- but also words it in a strange way that invites comparison to other post-Roe stories. She has two and a half million IG followers and a politically active family brand; she knows full well that anything she shares to her platform can become the subject of widespread discussion. I'm sure she feels blindsided by this reaction but it might make her think twice about her choice to remain a public figure.

[AussieKrissy]

It makes me so sad reading all the women that have been in the same or very similar situation and been denied medical care.

I would love to see/hear her thoughts and or feelings on her good fortune to not currently be one of those women.

the mental gymnastics they must have to do...

[Chickenbutt]

My son sent me this today when he saw the Jessa article. I may or may not have mentioned the Duggars to him in the past.

“The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion” – Joyce Arthur's page 

I had never heard of this woman, but she has lots and lots of info on her page about religion, politics, feminism etc. 

If someone knows how to link Joyce Arthur's page, could you please? Thank you. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by Chickenbutt
Cant get the link to show

[Chickenbutt]

https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/

Maybe this will work

[Anna Bolinas]

9 hours ago, Mama Mia said:

The people who are saying “yes, she did so have an abortion!” Are just promoting and encouraging the extremist views that lead to the death of mothers. 

Calling this procedure an abortion is only bad if the person already sees abortion as a bad thing. In a world where the word abortion had neutral connotations, this wouldn’t be a conversation.

And yeah, some people are using this as a gotcha and that may not necessarily bring about the most productive conversations between the two sides, but at the same time I’m not that interested in ceding too much ground to anti-choicers by delineating between “good” procedures to remove a fetus and “bad” procedures to remove a fetus.

[KWLand]

My understanding is the legal and medical definitions of abortion differs.  They don’t match and before (none should have been) any law was passed restricting abortions they should have made sure they actually knew the medical definition of an abortion.

so legally Jess’s didn’t have an abortion but medically she did.  Even if she didn’t have a dnc, it was a spontaneous abortion.

it’s really a shame because a pregnancy and/or loss shouldn’t be politicized.  Because now doctors are pulled between treating a patient and because of differing definitions, that treatment can be seen as illegal.

[NachosFlandersStyle]

I don't expect that someone like Jessa is ever going to change her mind, but there are a lot of less extreme people who simply have never considered how the category of "abortion" is constructed or how often people experience edge cases that don't fit into an all-or-nothing morality. For their sake I think it's worth pointing out that we don't really have this super clear line between elective and medically necessarily, and that the lines that are being drawn legally are pretty arbitrary.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

I did not know Jessa had a D & C for the miscarriage. I also didn't know states like Texas had outlawed D&Cs or placed restrictions to endanger women.  It is a scary time to be a young woman.

Also I still don't fully understand why Michelle had a c-section. So she had pre-eclampsia. A friend of mine had pre-eclampsia, and the doctors still made her go 37 weeks. There must have been more going on for them to do the c-section at 25 weeks. I remember they originally said 24 weeks. Anyway she's a blasted hypocrite. 

[CanadianMamam]

6 minutes ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

I 

Also I still don't fully understand why Michelle had a c-section. So she had pre-eclampsia. A friend of mine had pre-eclampsia, and the doctors still made her go 37 weeks. There must have been more going on for them to do the c-section at 25 weeks. I remember they originally said 24 weeks. Anyway she's a blasted hypocrite. 

Pre-eclampsia can vary wildly from woman to woman. Sometimes it can be treated, other times it presents a danger to the mother and the baby and the baby has to get out of there AsAP before the mother goes into organ failure. 

Michelle is definitely a hypocrite but pre-eclampsia is no joke. 

[Skyline]

2 minutes ago, CanadianMamam said:

Pre-eclampsia can vary wildly from woman to woman. Sometimes it can be treated, other times it presents a danger to the mother and the baby and the baby has to get out of there AsAP before the mother goes into organ failure. 

Michelle is definitely a hypocrite but pre-eclampsia is no joke. 

This. How the drs handle preeclampsia depends on a lot of factors.

Sometimes it is carefully monitored until baby is full term. I went 36+6 with preeclampsia, IUGR, & twins. Missed my scheduled csection by one day (aiming for 37) and ended with an emergency section in the middle of the night when my water broke and my blood pressure decided to sky rocket to 140/stroke 🙄. 

Luckily I lived close to hospital, which is one of the reasons I was able get away with waiting and monitoring at home, but with VERY frequent check ups (urine test, blood pressure checks & NSTs every 48 hours) . Timeline between my labour starting and me holding my twins was 85 minutes. 

Preeclampsia is scary AF and can go very wrong very quickly. 

[Bethella]

1 hour ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

Also I still don't fully understand why Michelle had a c-section. So she had pre-eclampsia. A friend of mine had pre-eclampsia, and the doctors still made her go 37 weeks. There must have been more going on for them to do the c-section at 25 weeks. I remember they originally said 24 weeks. Anyway she's a blasted hypocrite. 

If I recall correctly, Michelle had HELLP syndrome which is a severe form of preeclampsia. 

According to the Cleveland Clinic

Quote

 

The name HELLP syndrome stands for:

H: Hemolysis, breaking down of red blood cells (cells that carry oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body). 

EL: Elevated liver enzymes (chemicals that speed up body reactions, such as breaking down proteins). 

LP: Low platelet count (parts of your blood that help with clotting).

 

 

[SamanthasMom]

I think the Duggars are for whatever is best for them. They don’t educate their children but Michelle and Josie certainly benefited from doctors’ care. Abortion should be illegal except that one time Jessa needs a D&C. They are complete hypocrites. If Jessa were any smarter she would not have posted this considering their ‘views.’

[nst]

14 hours ago, NachosFlandersStyle said:

Jessa is in so far over her head when it comes to media and PR. She posts a lengthy and confusing video that initially seems like she's announcing an ongoing pregnancy, then hits her viewers with possibly triggering miscarriage discussion -- but also words it in a strange way that invites comparison to other post-Roe stories. She has two and a half million IG followers and a politically active family brand; she knows full well that anything she shares to her platform can become the subject of widespread discussion. I'm sure she feels blindsided by this reaction but it might make her think twice about her choice to remain a public figure.

I'm sorry but I am not really following - are you saying a D & C is an abortion to save the mother ..and if she actually admitted that - well wow 

[backyard sylph]

The discussions I keep running into all over the internet demonstrate how little people understand about medical needs, how willing they are to make judgments about things they heard but didn't investigate, about hearsay, about third- and fourth-hand "information," and as a whole, showcase a frighteningly ignorant voting populace. 

And it really did all start with someone who thought women who had sex outside of modern marriage should be punished. 

You know how in Chocolat, the movie version, le Comte de Reynaud is discovered asleep and covered in chocolate in the window of Vivienne's shop? His fanaticism led him far, far from the original meaning of sacrifice and devotion, driving him temporarily mad in his need for control and perfection before God. He missed the forest for the trees. 

People are saved by the medical advancements that outstrip their anachronistic religious understanding of how life works. But clear definitions and context are so important in messaging; that went wrong 50 years ago here in the US, as a backlash to someone's need for privacy. 

[AprilQuilt]

22 minutes ago, nst said:

I'm sorry but I am not really following - are you saying a D & C is an abortion to save the mother ..and if she actually admitted that - well wow 

well yeah, a D&C is technically an abortion in that it is a surgical procedure to remove the pregnancy from the uterus. In Jessa's case it was done because the foetus had died but her body hadn't passed it: this is very often the reason for D&C because there's the danger of infection if the body doesn't pass the pregnancy on its own. In Jessa's case there's the additional risk of haemorrhage were she to deliver naturally. So her doctor was able to make the safest call for her, which was surgical intervention.

Lots of women now* don't have access to this treatment even if, like Jessa, the foetus they are carrying has died. The process has become intensely politicised because it's one way that elective medical abortions are carried out, but many many cases do not involve a living or viable foetus. Many pregnant people have been put in huge danger because this kind of care is not available to them, and in America it is probably going to get worse.

It's so incredibly basic and bad faith to outlaw an operation because you don't agree with what it might be used for. I hope Jessa is able to articulate that even in an anti-abortion world she had every right to access this sort of safe treatment and everyone else in her situation should too. I mean in a perfect world I'd like for her to also understand and articulate that the anti-abortion stance is utterly wrong, but we are so very far from perfect and drifting a little more each day, so I'll settle for wishing she might shine a light on the sheer partisan hypocrisy of it all.

(Having also had a missed miscarriage back at the end of November, which also ended in a D&C at 13 weeks, I really feel for her. It's a deeply distressing thing to go through and quite different from the other spontaneous miscarriages I've experienced. I'm so so grateful, however, that I had access to that treatment, no questions asked. The idea of having to travel and possibly break the law to get this kind of care - to be grieving and in pain and likely alone in a hospital very far from home is truly nightmarish but it's a lot of people's reality.)

 

*post the overturn of Roe but obviously ongoing in other places, and in Ireland things have only recently changed - the publicity of cases like that of Savita Halappanavar helped move the discussion on.

[SassyPants]

Boy, if all these {for the most part uneducated } “keep the government out of my life” folks could only just stay out of everyone’s personal decisions that do not affect them personally…Wouldn’t that be a nice thought and a more peaceful world?

IMO, Jessa and her DR get to decide what is the best medical care for Jessa. Gov Huckabee or JB Duggar should have no say. Jessa’s medical care and medical choices should not be on the ballot for her fellow citizens to decide.

Same goes for every other US citizen-

[CanadianMamam]

My feelings in this situation are complicated. I feel genuinely sorry for Jessa and I am glad she was able to get the medical care she needed. But I am also removed in three enter that her horrendous political beliefs do not affect me and that distance gives me compassion. If I was directly affected by those political ramifications, of I had to story about my own access to life-saving healthcare? I'd be furious. So I can understand why people are pushing back.

I hope that she learns from this situation, but I know she won't, instead she will likely just feel persecuted and think that people are attacking her at her most vulnerable without pausing to consider why. 

I am glad she had access to the healthcare she needed, but I wish every woman had the same access and I can fully understand why people are angry.

(I'll be honest and if it was Ashley Hoover in this situation, I would have a lot less sympathy because of how vocal and awful she has been). 

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by CanadianMamam
Posted twice for some reason