Having an Abortion
First, a warning! Any of you who find this subject triggering or upsetting, or have a problem with personal posts of a highly-charged nature - please scroll on by for the usual blog fare.
How Much Jail Time for Women Who Have Abortions?
By Anna Quindlen
A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.
State statutes that propose punishing only a physician suggest the woman was merely some addled bystander who happened to find herself in the wrong stirrups at the wrong time. Such a view seemed to be a vestige of the past until the Supreme Court handed down its most recent abortion decision upholding a federal prohibition on a specific procedure. Justice Anthony Kennedy, obviously feeling excessively paternal, argued that the ban protected women from themselves. "While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon," he wrote, "it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained."
Even with "no reliable data," he went on to conclude that "severe depression and loss of esteem can follow." (Apparently, no one has told Justice Kennedy about the severe depression and loss of esteem that can follow bearing and raising a baby you can't afford and didn't want.) Luckily, there still remains one justice on the court who has actually been pregnant, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg roared back with a dissent that called Kennedy's caveat about regret an "anti-abortion shibboleth" and his opinion a reflection of "ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited."
Those ancient notions undergird the refusal to confront the logical endpoint of criminalization. Lawmakers in a number of states have already passed or are considering statutes designed to outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned. But almost none hold the woman, the person who set the so-called crime in motion, accountable. Is the message that women are not to be held responsible for their actions? Or is it merely that those writing the laws understand that if women were going to jail, the vast majority of Americans would violently object?
Watch the demonstrators in Libertyville try to worm their way out of the hypocrisy: It's murder, but she'll get her punishment from God. It's murder, but it depends on her state of mind. It's murder, but the penalty should be ... counseling?
The great thing about video is that you can see the mental wheels turning as these people realize that they somehow have overlooked something central while they were slinging certainties. Nearly 20 years ago, in a presidential debate, George Bush the elder was asked this very question, whether in making abortion illegal he would punish the woman who had one. "I haven't sorted out the penalties," he said lamely. Neither, it turns out, has anyone else. But there are only two logical choices: hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can't countenance the first, you have to accept the second.
You can't have it both ways.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE
No, we can't have it both ways. Of course these anti-abortion protestors think nothing about the emotional & mental prison many women put themselves in for years. No regrets though. Just wish it was a decision we didn't have to make.
I will do this in reverse. My second abortion was my high school boyfriend. We'd dated for almost 7 months before we became intimate. Protection never crossed my mind since at that time, I was told because I had PCOS I would never get pregnant. We were together on & off almost a year.
Just a few weeks into my second semester of Sophomore year in college I found out I was pregnant. I had PCOS so skipping a period, pain and even intense bleeding were part of my life then.
I didn't tell my parents,. My mother had been diagnosed with an ovarian tumor and I didn't want to burden her. I tried in vain to contact the boy who'd gotten me pregnant but no response. One of the best friends I ever had and one of the only people who knew, drove me to Maryland to talk to him but we were turned away. He didn't seem to even want to know me all of a sudden or care that I was pregnant. I ran into him about 15 years later and brought it up. He still could have cared less.
My friend then drove me to Planned Parenthood. I had the procedure. I paid for it myself. And I asked for a lot of pain killers when I woke up. I stayed with friends and went to bed hopped up on pain killers. I slept most of 3 days and cried quietly in my room. I told everyone it was the PCOS pain. I went back to college and later played the a lead role in a show that paid for another year of my education, as well as winning an award. I felt like everyone knew. But almost no one did. I was so depressed when I should have been on top of the world.
My first was a bit of a shock. I had been with a boy I met in college about 3 times. He was very sweet and I liked him but he didn't seem to return my feelings. He never called, we never dated and only was "with" me when he ran into me and we ended up together. I did think we were at least friends. He'd introduced me to another friend of his who had started dating me but we all hung out off and on. Just after my freshman year ended, I went in for my regular GYN appt. I had only been intimate with him in that past 16 months. I was scheduled for a D&C because I hadn't had a period in few months and my PCOS symptoms were stable but not improving. A friend drove me to the appointment and did some shopping nearby.
In recovery, my doctor came in and pulled up a chair after closing the door. This was back in the day when the doctor could see you alone without a nurse present. He was upset that I was pregnant and that he'd performed an abortion. My PCOS had skewed the old-fashioned blood work so diagnosing outright pregnancy would not have been possible. I got a lecture about safe sex and putting him in a "position." He would not tell my parents. I was over 19. I felt terrible. I went home. Took to bed for a week and cried.
I didn't get involved with anyone after that for almost 2 years. It seemed all any guy wanted from me was sex. And I did everything I could to avoid it. It was obvious, even to me, I was not good at making choices. I didn't understand at the time that I was a magnet for narcissists & sociopaths... that came much later. But I felt so sharply alone.
A few weeks later I flew to stay with the family of the guy I was dating. I didn't tell him what had happened. Nor was I interested in being intimate with him then. He called the boy who got me pregnant to come out with us a few times, as they didn't live far apart. The other guy was 'too busy'. Every time we called for over 3 weeks.
I decided it was a clear sign this boy didn't care and didn't want to know. I took the deep guilt and depression upon myself. And shared it with no one else until I was much older.
Today I am a mother, of my own choice, and love my children beyond measure. I am divorced parent, raising my kids under mostly my own steam. My children and I are very close and hope they don't have to make decisions I had to. Particularly under a cloud of not being able to choose what happens with their own bodies.
Do I deserve to go to jail for making those decisions? No. I don't think so. But if the law decided I needed to go to jail, would it have been right?
I know I made the right decisions. And sometimes right decisions aren't easy. Besides, it is my body.
Isn't it?
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO JBLOG ME
However, its my blog and I'll post if I want to.
In 7th grade my English teacher, Mrs. Fisher, asked us to write an Op-Ed piece on a current issue in the news. I'm giving away my age but I chose Roe v. Wade. Mrs. Fisher called my mother when I turned it in and told my mother that what I had written was A++ material but the subject might be too controversial for the small, right-wing town we lived in. My mother, in a moment of clarity, told her to "grade the paper on the English merits, not the subject." She did. I got my A++. Foreshadowing.
In 7th grade my English teacher, Mrs. Fisher, asked us to write an Op-Ed piece on a current issue in the news. I'm giving away my age but I chose Roe v. Wade. Mrs. Fisher called my mother when I turned it in and told my mother that what I had written was A++ material but the subject might be too controversial for the small, right-wing town we lived in. My mother, in a moment of clarity, told her to "grade the paper on the English merits, not the subject." She did. I got my A++. Foreshadowing.
I've had 2 abortions. I am not counting the clinical D&Cs I had to have because of my PCOS; which sometimes only let me have 2 - 3 periods a year. I had the latter to avoid cervical and uterine cancer.
No these were abortions. The second one, I knew I was pregnant. I was 18. The first, I was 19 and had no idea I was pregnant until afterward. And I will explain.
In an article in Ms. Magazine, Debbie Findling said:
"Findling, 42, is married, with a 5-year-old daughter, and has been trying to get pregnant again while pursuing her career as a philanthropic foundation executive.
She says too many of her allies in the abortion-rights movement tend to minimize, at least publicly, the psychological impact of abortion.
"It's emotionally devastating," she said in a phone interview. "I don't regret my decision—but I regret having been put in the position to have to make that choice. It's something I'll live with for the rest of my life."
How true. Not a day goes by I don't think about it. I do not regret what happened. In the overall scheme of things, particularly concerning the 'relationships' that brought about the pregnancies, it was for the best. But I still feel the emotional devastation I experienced in what I had to do. How alone I felt. How alone I still feel. How often during my 12 1/2 years of infertiity treatment I convinced myself that Hashem was punishing me for the abortions. Judeo-Christian guilt dies hard.
In the current issue of Newsweek, Anna Quindlen has the following in her column:
How Much Jail Time for Women Who Have Abortions?
By Anna Quindlen
Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. CLICK HERE. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them."You have to hand it to the questioner; he struggles manfully. "Usually when things are illegal there's a penalty attached," he explains patiently. But he can't get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.
A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.
"They never connect the dots," says Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. But her organization urged voters to do just that in the last gubernatorial election, in which the Republican contender believed abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. "We wanted him to tell the women of Iowa exactly how much time he expected them to serve in jail if they had an abortion," June recalled. Chet Culver, the Democrat who unabashedly favors legal abortion, won that race, proving that choice can be a winning issue if you force people to stop evading the hard facts. "How have we come this far in the debate and been oblivious to the logical ramifications of making abortion illegal?" June says.Perhaps by ignoring or infantilizing women, turning them into "victims" of their own free will.
State statutes that propose punishing only a physician suggest the woman was merely some addled bystander who happened to find herself in the wrong stirrups at the wrong time. Such a view seemed to be a vestige of the past until the Supreme Court handed down its most recent abortion decision upholding a federal prohibition on a specific procedure. Justice Anthony Kennedy, obviously feeling excessively paternal, argued that the ban protected women from themselves. "While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon," he wrote, "it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained."
Even with "no reliable data," he went on to conclude that "severe depression and loss of esteem can follow." (Apparently, no one has told Justice Kennedy about the severe depression and loss of esteem that can follow bearing and raising a baby you can't afford and didn't want.) Luckily, there still remains one justice on the court who has actually been pregnant, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg roared back with a dissent that called Kennedy's caveat about regret an "anti-abortion shibboleth" and his opinion a reflection of "ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited."
Those ancient notions undergird the refusal to confront the logical endpoint of criminalization. Lawmakers in a number of states have already passed or are considering statutes designed to outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned. But almost none hold the woman, the person who set the so-called crime in motion, accountable. Is the message that women are not to be held responsible for their actions? Or is it merely that those writing the laws understand that if women were going to jail, the vast majority of Americans would violently object?
Watch the demonstrators in Libertyville try to worm their way out of the hypocrisy: It's murder, but she'll get her punishment from God. It's murder, but it depends on her state of mind. It's murder, but the penalty should be ... counseling?
The great thing about video is that you can see the mental wheels turning as these people realize that they somehow have overlooked something central while they were slinging certainties. Nearly 20 years ago, in a presidential debate, George Bush the elder was asked this very question, whether in making abortion illegal he would punish the woman who had one. "I haven't sorted out the penalties," he said lamely. Neither, it turns out, has anyone else. But there are only two logical choices: hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can't countenance the first, you have to accept the second.
You can't have it both ways.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE
No, we can't have it both ways. Of course these anti-abortion protestors think nothing about the emotional & mental prison many women put themselves in for years. No regrets though. Just wish it was a decision we didn't have to make.
I will do this in reverse. My second abortion was my high school boyfriend. We'd dated for almost 7 months before we became intimate. Protection never crossed my mind since at that time, I was told because I had PCOS I would never get pregnant. We were together on & off almost a year.
Just a few weeks into my second semester of Sophomore year in college I found out I was pregnant. I had PCOS so skipping a period, pain and even intense bleeding were part of my life then.
I didn't tell my parents,. My mother had been diagnosed with an ovarian tumor and I didn't want to burden her. I tried in vain to contact the boy who'd gotten me pregnant but no response. One of the best friends I ever had and one of the only people who knew, drove me to Maryland to talk to him but we were turned away. He didn't seem to even want to know me all of a sudden or care that I was pregnant. I ran into him about 15 years later and brought it up. He still could have cared less.
My friend then drove me to Planned Parenthood. I had the procedure. I paid for it myself. And I asked for a lot of pain killers when I woke up. I stayed with friends and went to bed hopped up on pain killers. I slept most of 3 days and cried quietly in my room. I told everyone it was the PCOS pain. I went back to college and later played the a lead role in a show that paid for another year of my education, as well as winning an award. I felt like everyone knew. But almost no one did. I was so depressed when I should have been on top of the world.
My first was a bit of a shock. I had been with a boy I met in college about 3 times. He was very sweet and I liked him but he didn't seem to return my feelings. He never called, we never dated and only was "with" me when he ran into me and we ended up together. I did think we were at least friends. He'd introduced me to another friend of his who had started dating me but we all hung out off and on. Just after my freshman year ended, I went in for my regular GYN appt. I had only been intimate with him in that past 16 months. I was scheduled for a D&C because I hadn't had a period in few months and my PCOS symptoms were stable but not improving. A friend drove me to the appointment and did some shopping nearby.
In recovery, my doctor came in and pulled up a chair after closing the door. This was back in the day when the doctor could see you alone without a nurse present. He was upset that I was pregnant and that he'd performed an abortion. My PCOS had skewed the old-fashioned blood work so diagnosing outright pregnancy would not have been possible. I got a lecture about safe sex and putting him in a "position." He would not tell my parents. I was over 19. I felt terrible. I went home. Took to bed for a week and cried.
I didn't get involved with anyone after that for almost 2 years. It seemed all any guy wanted from me was sex. And I did everything I could to avoid it. It was obvious, even to me, I was not good at making choices. I didn't understand at the time that I was a magnet for narcissists & sociopaths... that came much later. But I felt so sharply alone.
A few weeks later I flew to stay with the family of the guy I was dating. I didn't tell him what had happened. Nor was I interested in being intimate with him then. He called the boy who got me pregnant to come out with us a few times, as they didn't live far apart. The other guy was 'too busy'. Every time we called for over 3 weeks.
I decided it was a clear sign this boy didn't care and didn't want to know. I took the deep guilt and depression upon myself. And shared it with no one else until I was much older.
Today I am a mother, of my own choice, and love my children beyond measure. I am divorced parent, raising my kids under mostly my own steam. My children and I are very close and hope they don't have to make decisions I had to. Particularly under a cloud of not being able to choose what happens with their own bodies.
Do I deserve to go to jail for making those decisions? No. I don't think so. But if the law decided I needed to go to jail, would it have been right?
I know I made the right decisions. And sometimes right decisions aren't easy. Besides, it is my body.
Isn't it?
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO JBLOG ME
Comments
He turned out to be fine, but I had decided I would get a D&C if they found he had it.
You are very brave for sharing your story.