Consider the Coat Hanger

[cali]

A twisted piece of wire isn't just a symbol of dangerous abortions; it's a symbol of inequality.




In the mid-1950s, a woman went to an abortionist. She had been raped and now, pregnant, she sought his help.

As he prepared to perform the procedure, he said to her, "You can take your pants down now, but you shoulda' -- ha! ha! -- kept 'em on before."

For the service, he charged her $1,000, but, as Leslie Reagan recounts it in her essential book When Abortion Was a Crime, "offered to return $20 if she would give him a 'quick blow job.' "

Degrading? Yes. Humiliating? Certainly. And also: Expensive -- very.

Contrast that scenario with some of the at-home remedies undertaken by another woman, seemingly lacking the spare $1,000. "One woman," Reagan writes, "described taking ergotrate, then castor oil, then squatting in scalding hot water, then drinking Everclear alcohol. When these methods failed, she hammered at her stomach with a meat pulverizer before going to an illegal abortionist."

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/consider-the-coat-hanger/261413/

[redqueen]

1. K&R

[niyad]

2. and that is what they want for women again.

would post that picture of gerri santoro from ms.magazine, but don't know how.

anybody who does, the pic is on this wiki page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerri_Santoro

[smirkymonkey]

3. I would spend every cent I had to make it to a liberal Northern European country where I could get a

safe legal abortion and apply for asylum from this right wing, murderous dictatorship.