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‘Personhood’ Amendment Represents New Tack in Abortion Fight


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From what I've heard it's damn near impossible for women to get "fixed" when they're still young and fertile. Most doctors won't do it unless you've had kids or are older.

In some states, the law is that women still have to get their husband's permission :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-cussingblack: (and women's permission for vasectomy in fewer places).

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There's another part of this I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet, it will ALSO make several forms of birth control, including the pill and IUD's, illegal. This is because it's not proven that they stop conception 100% but also keep any embryo from implanting, which under this law would be murder.

I can't stand a lot of this stuff, other people should NOT be able to legislate what I do with my body. I don't like the idea of abortion and wouldn't have one but at least I have a CHOICE. Not everyone thinks the same. I just don't know why so many are all hell-fired up to go back to the bad ol' days of septic pregnancy centers and the many medical horrors that existed in liu of legal abortion.

Actually, we discussed that issue a lot, both here on new FJ and the old board. My view is that they are not only going after choice - they are going after women's ability to self-determine, which to me, is a lot of what contraception is about.

We have had many arguments about whether "the pill" or the IUD or whatever actually causes a "abortion" :roll: , and there will always be those who claim that a primary mechanism of both methods is to prevent implantation, not conception. That is actually not true, although it could happen in theory. On our old board, we had an experienced OB-GYN member who explained why that scenario is unlikely. I miss DocSharon!

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I mentioned this on the other thread about the Personhood amendment, but I feel it is definitely worth mentioning again.

Not everyone takes Birth Control to prevent pregnancy. Some people take because their cycles are awful. I am very thankful for BC pills personally. They let me function. I know I am far from the only one who takes BC for cycle trouble.

Also, agreed with StarryKitty: It's all but impossible to find a doctor who will sterilize a young woman. They refuse, thinking that you might change your mind. My condition got really bad and I asked about it once and was immediately shut down. You can't even ask such a thing.

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Not everyone takes Birth Control to prevent pregnancy. Some people take because their cycles are awful. I am very thankful for BC pills personally. They let me function. I know I am far from the only one who takes BC for cycle trouble.

They will have to pry my birth control pills out of my cold, dead fingers.

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Hell, once we have 'long term' fertility choices made, I plan on trying to convince a doctor that 'lifetime limits' be damned, I want depo back.

It cures migraines (for ME. Not for everyone, obviously, or I'd have them put it in the water supply)

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But seriously... what's happening over there? Women are in danger of losing their right to make decisions about their own reproductive system? :shock: U.S. is supposed to be a developed nation?

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Roe v Wade is national. But there is nothing to prevent states from passing restrictions, building codes that are impossible to meet, waiting periods, forcing a woman to get an ultrasound and look at it, and parental notification laws that will eliminate abortion because no one will provide it anymore.

It's simple. Against abortion? Don't have one. (Especially since the anti-choice folks routine vote down any kind of social safety net like free birth control, health care for children, increase in food stamps. free lunches at school, ect. You know, stuff that would take care of the kids they want born oh so badly.)

Laura Elle - this, so so so much.

It's especially frustrating for the women who don't seem to see or care that our rights are being taken away one little piece at a time.

There's another part of this I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet, it will ALSO make several forms of birth control, including the pill and IUD's, illegal. This is because it's not proven that they stop conception 100% but also keep any embryo from implanting, which under this law would be murder.

Mentioned here or mentioned in public - if you're thinking about in public, it's because that would make people stop and think that maybe it was a pretty stupid idea.

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But seriously... what's happening over there? Women are in danger of losing their right to make decisions about their own reproductive system? U.S. is supposed to be a developed nation?

Effie, in a word - Yes.

That is what their ultimate goal is.

Women losing the right to make what could be the single most important choice in your whole life - literally life or death - what to do with your own body. What to do with your own life.

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Not everyone takes Birth Control to prevent pregnancy. Some people take because their cycles are awful. I am very thankful for BC pills personally. They let me function. I know I am far from the only one who takes BC for cycle trouble.
Hell I take BC pills to GET pregnant. They're a staple of most infertility treatment cycles.
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It's all but impossible to find a doctor who will sterilize a young woman. They refuse, thinking that you might change your mind. My condition got really bad and I asked about it once and was immediately shut down. You can't even ask such a thing.

To be fair, many states have regulations about this. I think in CA you have to have two children and be at least 21, and there is something similar in WA. A doctor friend in WA told me that he has a patient who had 5 children (including 2 sets of twins) from 3 different fathers before she turned 18 and the doctor was not allowed to do a tubal even though the girl wanted one.

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I think this will end up in the Supreme Court very soon. It certainly needs clarifying (apparently). What they are doing is sneaky and goes against the spirit of the original Roe v. Wade decision.

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Not everyone takes Birth Control to prevent pregnancy. Some people take because their cycles are awful. I am very thankful for BC pills personally. They let me function. I know I am far from the only one who takes BC for cycle trouble.

They don't care. Just like they could care less abortions is actually a small portion of what Planned Parenthood does.

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As a long-time lurker I had to finally sign up to comment on this issue. How on earth did abortion (let alone birth control!!) become such a focus of American politics?? Do Americans not realize that there IS no "abortion debate" in most developed nations? That it isn't a major topic of discussion during election campaigns and rarely (if ever) garners a comment from politicians? This is strictly a private, medical issue that should be dealt with by a woman (and her partner, if she desires) and her physician. How do you, American Women of Free Jinger, stand to have these nut-job, misogynistic, pontificating, blow-hard politicians and their equally insane, insulting, dark-age female co-conspirators determine your reproductive futures? What can you do to finally put this bullshit to rest?

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As a long-time lurker I had to finally sign up to comment on this issue. How on earth did abortion (let alone birth control!!) become such a focus of American politics?? Do Americans not realize that there IS no "abortion debate" in most developed nations? That it isn't a major topic of discussion during election campaigns and rarely (if ever) garners a comment from politicians? This is strictly a private, medical issue that should be dealt with by a woman (and her partner, if she desires)

Well said!

Read through the whole thread now. Don't know whether to be scared, depressed or both.

I'll opt for both :(

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I find it interesting (not) that our resident fundies haven't popped up to explain how this Amendment won't REALLY be the end of birth-control/IVF/female autonomy, blah blah blah the wording is such that it's not really MEANT to deny half the population the right to control their uterus.....just saying, definitelyisfundie and others--- feel like s'plainin this one to us non-QFers, how the people you helped vote into office really, really don't hate women?

Fuckers. The entire Republican party, and anyone who votes for them, and anyone who is willing to put the well-being of a blastocyst over the well-being of real, live women.

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As a long-time lurker I had to finally sign up to comment on this issue. How on earth did abortion (let alone birth control!!) become such a focus of American politics?? Do Americans not realize that there IS no "abortion debate" in most developed nations? That it isn't a major topic of discussion during election campaigns and rarely (if ever) garners a comment from politicians? This is strictly a private, medical issue that should be dealt with by a woman (and her partner, if she desires) and her physician. How do you, American Women of Free Jinger, stand to have these nut-job, misogynistic, pontificating, blow-hard politicians and their equally insane, insulting, dark-age female co-conspirators determine your reproductive futures? What can you do to finally put this bullshit to rest?

It became the darling of the religious right in the late 70s and early 80s as a way of getting Christians (the so-called "moral majority") to vote in more elections.

Basically, it's a scare tactic - they tell people that any "liberal" politician who is even the least little bit pro-choice is a MURDERER!!!!! and is the same as HITLER!!!!! etc. It's basically just a way of mobalizing a bunch of people to vote for conservative politicians - spreadsheets about the national debt don't get people (too) worked up, plus it's tough to put a moral spin on economic issues; pictures of "aborted" fetuses do get people worked up and you can milk the moral/ethical issues that abortion brings up.

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As a long-time lurker I had to finally sign up to comment on this issue. How on earth did abortion (let alone birth control!!) become such a focus of American politics??

When moderate Republicans decided to roll over and let social conservatives take over the party.

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As an outsider looking in, I find the American political system fascinating/infuriating/frustrating. I realize that the Christian right has a huge influence on the Republican Party but, in day to day life, are there really THAT many right-wing Christians in the general populace? What percentage, realistically, of your population truly believes in patriarchy, creationism, limiting/decimating womens' rights in everything, (the insanity burns!!) etc.? What happened to the intellectual or centrist right wing? Is it dead and gone forever? For a country that has the separation of Church and State enshrined in your constitution, the evangelical crazies certainly seem to have a disproportionate amount of influence on your political system. (God knows our system has its problems, but overt religious influence is not one of them.)

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I live in a conservative pocket of a liberal state (California), and yes, there are lots of people that are very, very conservative in their views of abortion. I'm thinking of several women that I work with - these women are very nice and well educated and they have jobs, so they're clearly not the VF types. But, they're pretty strongly anti-abortion, as far as I know. A couple are for religious reasons, and then the others...I think their life experience just hasn't put them in a place where they've needed an abortion. I wouldn't call even the religious ones "evangelical crazies" but they clearly believe in the so-called traditional values - that sex should be reserved for marriage and so forth. However, none of them have giant families, so they don't subscribe to the no-birth-control part of the debate. In fact, I think most of them would be appalled by that. They're all really into being responsible for themselves and teaching their kids to be responsible as well, which is awesome - they've just bought into the fetus = baby thing. And, in thinking about these women, they all love children, one wanted more children (she has one) and can't have them, another is a recent grandma, etc - so I think the emotional manipulation of the anti-abortion movement hits them really hard. I'm not sure they've been faced with a situation where a pregnancy is a BAD thing you know? They've had their share of difficulties, but I don't think they've personally dealt with, say, a teenage pregnancy or a fetus having a medical condition that is incompatible with life.

Plus there are a LOT of people who go to church. And here, it's ok for churches to influence the vote - we had a big deal where the Mormon church basically bankrolled an anti-gay-rights ballot measure and they (and other churches) mobilized a whole bunch of people to protest, etc.

Back when we went to fundie church, I thought it was a sin to vote for a Democrat. Granted, I was only about 11 years old at the time, so I may have missed some subtlety, but that's the message I got. The idea is that abortion = legal murder. So, if you vote for someone who supports abortion, even in cases of rape/incest/life of the mother, you are the SAME THING as a murderer yourself, because you support it, and you, personally, have blood on your hands if you vote for a pro-choice candidate, and you, personally, will have to answer for that at the day of judgement. They would get around the whole "woman" issue by painting women who gave their children up for adoption as heroes, as if it's always as simple as that (for some women, pregnancy is a dangerous thing, either because of their own health situations or because of their life situations - but they never mentioned that part). They never mentioned things like family leave laws needing to change to help women who had children - the idea was that if you had a "crisis" pregnancy, you should just give the baby to a (presumably) nice, Christian couple where Mommy stays home all day, making leave a moot issue.

When we used to go to Operation Rescue events, they would lead the congregation in prayer, asking God to forgive our country for the sin of murder and to forgive Christians for not stopping it earlier, and begging God to withhold his wrath and such. They were really, really good at whipping people into an emotional frenzy over the issue. They talked about women who got abortions as if they only women who did so were poor teenagers who just needed someone to tell them it was ok not to have an abortion. They never talked about married women with other children who get abortions, or difficult health situations, or any of that.

Basically, they made the whole thing so black and white that the two side can't agree on anything at all, nor can they have a rational discussion.

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As an outsider looking in, I find the American political system fascinating/infuriating/frustrating. I realize that the Christian right has a huge influence on the Republican Party but, in day to day life, are there really THAT many right-wing Christians in the general populace? What percentage, realistically, of your population truly believes in patriarchy, creationism, limiting/decimating womens' rights in everything, (the insanity burns!!) etc.? What happened to the intellectual or centrist right wing? Is it dead and gone forever? For a country that has the separation of Church and State enshrined in your constitution, the evangelical crazies certainly seem to have a disproportionate amount of influence on your political system. (God knows our system has its problems, but overt religious influence is not one of them.)

Yes.

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I realize that the Christian right has a huge influence on the Republican Party but, in day to day life, are there really THAT many right-wing Christians in the general populace?

The problem is that they're not monolithic, and it's hard to get an accurate read on a lot of issues. Also, the politicians are fucking nuts.

What happened to the intellectual or centrist right wing? Is it dead and gone forever?

I don't know if it's dead or just been bashed over the head and left in an alley where they all hope it will die... A BIG problem in our politics is that a lot of issues have become very black/white, good/bad, and it's the loudest voices on either end of the spectrum that get heard, and not the middle. Plus the Right post "Invasion of the Party Snatchers" has become very anti-elitist. It's all about real America being some idyllic country place - never mind that a majority of us live in cities now. Sarah Palin is a "real American".

For a country that has the separation of Church and State enshrined in your constitution, the evangelical crazies certainly seem to have a disproportionate amount of influence on your political system. (God knows our system has its problems, but overt religious influence is not one of them.)

I'm going to take a flying leap here and guess that you're Canadian (based on your choice of animal) - a lot of people really disagree that there is supposed to be separation of church and state because the exact words aren't in there, and want to argue that the different clauses say different things. The "America was founded to be a Christian nation" thing gets thrown around a lot.

And in general a lot of people just interpret stuff to say what they think it should say.

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I realize that the Christian right has a huge influence on the Republican Party but, in day to day life, are there really THAT many right-wing Christians in the general populace?

I think it's the 'one issue' voters that skew the numbers.

Our politicians have worked very VERY hard to polarize the people of this country and destroy the middle ground.

Abortion is incredibly hot button--you convince these voters, who might otherwise vote for a democrat, that he/she is a murderer and...well, you've got someone who otherwise might be a moderate voting for a wingnut.

They forget that the 'opposition' is someone they agree with on 70% of other issues and that the person they voted for they disagree on in 60% of issues--they've decided that abortion (or marijuana legalization or the death penalty or something else) is their issue to vote on.

(and I will say, I have little enough respect for politicians to say I know it happens on both sides)

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Not everyone takes Birth Control to prevent pregnancy. Some people take because their cycles are awful. I am very thankful for BC pills personally. They let me function. I know I am far from the only one who takes BC for cycle trouble.

My roomie takes it for her PCOS.

I took it for my three-day migraines. For a while, without BC, I was stuck at home with terrible cramps and migraines.

But I guess being stuck at home is what they want for women.

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Thank you all for your various perspectives and interpretations. As I said, I'm fascinated by the American polictical debate. I am Canadian - "Caribou" WAS pretty obvious - and we have loads of nut bar right AND left wingers up here but our elections tend to be quick (five or so weeks from the time one is called till election day) and boring. It's the heavy religious aspect of your system that I find so odd and rather unsettling. Thanks again.

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