Alabama American Taliban: Women can be prosecuted for taking abortion pills

[Hekate]

9. Well, since terror is the point, that hardly matters. As someone who has followed the issue...

Last edited Thu Jan 12, 2023, 10:01 PM - Edit history (1)

…for 5 decades, people who are anti-choice originally said it was all about “babies” and precious life — and they bombed clinics, burned down clinics, murdered doctors, maimed and blinded a clinic worker who opened a nail bomb, and not to be satisfied that, doxxed doctors and workers and volunteers and stalked their children to and from school.

There’s more. I always supported Planned Parenthood wholeheartedly on the basis that they educate people, dispense contraceptives, do cancer and STD screenings, and in general prevent abortions. Abortion is something like 3% - 5% of what they do.

Moving along. Over 10 years ago I noticed a shift in the propaganda of the groups that oppose abortions: there was a push to redefine the most reliable contraceptives as abortifacients. I am a mother, grandmother, well into my 70s, and about 20 years past menopause. Understand that when I was in high school the social punishment for sex was ferocious: you got pregnant, they took your baby away — and it was illegal to prescribe the Pill for girls under 21. But in my adult fertile years I conscientiously used the best contraceptives available, and had my 2 kids and quit. I cheered (though had no need of) innovations in reproductive technology like Plan B.

Imagine my horror when I read how the fanatics were telling women that the IUD causes abortions, and other shit like that. That told me there was no lie too vile for them. They don’t want to prevent abortion by preventing pregnancy — they want women to get pregnant and be forced to give birth.

They shut down women’s clinics wherever they could, in the guise of “saving babies.” Instead, women died. Texas, with only one women’s clinic left in its vast territory, ended up with a maternal mortality rate equal to that of a 3rd World nation.

All this was before Dobbs, before the overturning of Roe v Wade. Now comes the real terrorism: passing laws that criminalize any interference with a woman’s womb by medical doctors. Doctors are threatened with prison and loss of their medical licenses. Hospitals, presented with women bleeding freely from miscarriages pause to call the lawyer and are advised that if there is a “heartbeat” they must wait until the woman is actually dying. Women who have already started to go septic and are running a fever are told they must wait. Women are sent home — to live or die. This, my fellow DUer, is terrorism.

I finally went from only reluctantly discussing abortion to declaring: You bet I am pro-abortion, because it is part of the continuum of women’s necessary health care.

It is personal for me, because my mother was pregnant 7 times in 9 years. I am the oldest and I remember. I remember the hospitalizations, tho didn’t find out till I was much older that she almost bled out on the operating table, and had an out of body experience where she had to decide to breathe in again. There was no “baby”— there was a gawdawful mess. That was one. Another time she simply kept a slow continuous flow for months until she got real anemic, and our family doc ordered her in for a D&C, which everybody with any brains knew was not an “abortion” but the rational treatment for a miscarriage that did not resolve in its own. Another was a full-term stillborn boy, which broke her heart. Poverty, the lack of medical care, the lack of self-care… my 3 siblings and I could have been orphans.

I want you to understand that the ignorant fanatics who are writing these new laws are defining the lifesaving treatments my mother got in the early 1950s as “abortions.” They are criminalizing them. They don’t give a damn if living breathing women live or die. They don’t know or care just how risky pregnancy can be.

So about those abortion pills. Here’s the precedent: They already think Plan B causes an abortion (it does not) and thanks to Dubya and his “conscience clause” no hospital, doctor, nurse, or pharmacist who objects to Plan B is required to stock them or dispense them. Better not get taken to a Catholic hospital if you get raped. Better not have a little honeymoon weekend with your spouse and forget to pack your diaphragm or whatnot — because you might find yourself calling every pharmacy for miles around on Monday morning.

Abortion pills that you can get in your own would seem to be ideal. The rest of the civilized world seems to think so. But not Taliban America.

Proof? Pfah. The grocery store and drugstore know when you purchase a home pregnancy test, and start sending ads for baby supplies. Millions of young women use apps as period-trackers (time to toss some tampons in your purse) and ovulation-trackers (time to either get it on in hopes of getting pregnant, or avoid sex to achieve the opposite). The developers of those apps sell your information to any and all. Your info is a commodity. You signed away your privacy by installing and using the apps. Anyone who manages to find a dispensary for abortion pills will find their purchase just as easily tracked.

Scared yet?