Safe, Legal, and Rare.

[Endangered Specie]

In the words of the big dog :)

[Eric J in MN]

1. I wish Kerry had quoted Bill Clinton on that (nt)

nt

[ramapo]

3. Yep, big mistake

Kerry should've stressed that every day, every appearance, not the nebulous right to choose

[sandnsea]

6. He did

In addition to saying we can't legislate religious doctrine. Unfortunately, people on the left ignored his votes and hammered him in his attempts to have a responsible discussion; people on the right ignored his attempts to have a responsible discussion and hammered him on his votes.

[Eric J in MN]

7. Let me re-phrase that: I wish Kerry quoted Bill Clinton

on that more often, including during the Debates.

[Hobarticus]

2. That should be our rallying cry...

In all the debate about abortion, inever hear any dialogue about how to counter the socio-economic conditions that make abortion an option for so many.

methinks that needs ot front and center.

[Endangered Specie]

4. Hence why I thought it should be the first post in this forum.

[Terran]

5. Too right.

We need to work toward the kind of society that makes abortion largely unnecessary. Unfortunately that ain't on the agenda right now...at ALL.

[seaj11]

8. Why isn't it on the agenda?

I know we're concerned about our candidates winning in '06 and '08, but if we're going to defend Roe v. Wade, we need to have the good ol' ammunition of facts and a surefire way to deliver them. We need to start asking why abortion happens NOW, and start thinking about ways to prevent the conditions that cause it.

[LiberalAndProud]

9. Generally the "conditions that cause it" would be interpreted to

mean sex -- in some circles.

The rightwing mantra can be summarized as follows:

God is good.
God hates sex.
Sex makes abortions.
Abortions make stem cells.
Stem cells are bad.

God is good.
God hates terrorists.
Terrorists are brown.
Iraqi children are brown.
Iraqi children are bad.

We must truncate the logic to understand our adversaries.

[seaj11]

10. and they don't understand

why abortion happens. Why don't people use birth control? And if they do, why doesn't it work? Why do people have careless sex in the first place? Repukes bring it all down to "Some women are sluts, and they deserve what they get." As a woman who's had a pregnancy scare, even on birth control, I know that most unwanted pregnancies are simply accidents.

So, yeah, that's the RW mantra, but we need to start putting out the REAL reasons for unwanted pregnancy and abortion. We can't let religious fundamentalists dictate what less religious citizens do.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cjmr]

12. Well, except that abortions don't make stem cells

When an embryo is at the stage that they use to harvest stem cells from for stem cell research, the woman does not even know she is pregnant yet. Abortions do not yield stem cells.

There are only two ways to get embryonic stem cells for culture. Take them from unused frozen embryos from a fertility clinic, or fertilize the eggs yourself in the lab.

Fetal and embryonic tissue from abortions can and is used in other forms of medical research, however. And I'm not too sure on the legality of that, actually.

[bush_is_wacko]

13. To the contrary...

Actually stem cell research does not include aborted fetuses. However, that does not make it acceptable to evangelicals and fundamentalists. They believe life begins at conception, even if conception occurs in a petri-dish. The fact that these "babies" will die because they have been frozen too long doesn't make any difference to them. Many of these Christan's have used this method to become pregnant, even though their churches tell them only God has the right to create life. I'm not sure what the answer is for these people. In my eyes, if they are not willing to provide homes for the millions of orphaned, abused, neglected, children out there regardless of race, creed, and or religion, they really have no right to tell me I can't donate my fertilized eggs to publicly funded research. Privately funded research may be the only hope, they have no say there. I have never been able to convince any of them that is the case, but I try anyway....

[Wisc Badger]

24. It could not have been stated

better than the way you did. Abortion is a subject that has been to easily charactertured by both sides. It is not nearly as simple as either side would have us believe.

Abortion is a hard decision, no doubt about it.

[iverglas]

14. yeah, just like heart surgery

"Safe, legal and rare". That's what heart surgery should be, no? After all, it's pretty risky stuff.

If people engaged in safer eating practices, they wouldn't need so damned much heart surgery.

Anybody making an election issue of heart surgery?

Odd, isn't it, how we all seem to think that people's choice to have heart surgery is just their own damned business?

Oddly, given the risks inherent in heart surgery (which are multiples of the risks inherent in abortion), no smart politician has yet called for it to be "rare".

Well, not too oddly. Because politicians who started making people's cardiac-care decisions a political issue would probably find themselves voted out on their ears by all the folks who need, or who have family members who need, or who realize they may one day need, heart surgery. They'd all probably not want politicians in office who wanted to make the medical services they need "rare".

The offensive, presumptuous, authoritarian notion that it is someone else's business what medical services women choose, and that some women's choices are icky, is what underlies this "abortion should be rare" bullshit.

If the underlying motivation for the statement were concern for women's health and well-being, then I think we'd be hearing something like:

Abortion should be safe and legal, and contraceptives (and information about their use) should be universally available, and young women should have greater educational and employment opportunities, and society, and especially the schools, should take steps to counteract the viciously distorted image of women that is conveyed to girls and young women and that they internalize to their detriment, and decent housing and childcare should be available to parents of young children, etc., etc., etc.

Abortion "should be rare" ONLY because unwanted pregnancy should be as rare as women who have access to all the information and assistance and opportunities they need can and choose to make it for themselves, in their own best interests.

Had the big dog said "abortion should be safe, legal and rare" to *me*, I would have smacked his nose with a rolled-up newspaper and told him to mind his own business.

[REP]

15. I Second the Above

I'd add that we need better contraceptives. The ones we have now have a lot of undesireable side-effects for too many women, or can't be used by many, or have high failure rates. I don't think anyone ever wants to get pregnant just to abort (take that back; I remember a case where a woman did that years ago in hopes of helping her father's Parkinson's disease). Additionally, young women who wish not to be parents and who wish to be sterilized should be able to do so without having to jump through so many damn hoops. Funny, isnt it, that when a young women says that she would prefer not to have children, she's referred to counseling - but the same young woman announcing that she's having a baby is greeted with a festival of material goods! A young woman who wishes to be sterilized may find herself being asked by a surgeon, "But what if you someday meet a man who wants children?" Perhaps she shouldn't go to college, either, in case she someday meets a man who prefers uneducated women? Whatever she does, she should put aside what she wants for her life for an imaginary man's wishes!

[yo-yo-ma]

18. I am curious what you would want in birth control

I mean, ideally.

After decades of very little change in contraceptive options, in the last five years or so we finally have many more choices.

There are many new oral contraceptive formulations with a better side effect profile. There is the patch, there is the vaginal ring (my personal favorite), there is a new IUD which reduces menstrual flow, there will soon be a lower dose injectable depo, and stage two (?) clinical trials are beginning on a trans-cervical form of sterilization.

Side effect profiles vary by method and by person -- but overwhelmingly these methods are tolerated. As for efficacy, it varies by method -- hormonal methods are about 95% in typical use, the IUD and injectable Depo are over 99%.

As for the surgeon you mentioned, that tends not to be the question asked in the circumstance of seeking sterilization. Usually it depends on the age of the individual seeking sterilization as it should be considered permanent. And somewhere around a third of women who are sterilized "regret" it when asked later. (Far fewer, however, seek reversal.) The question that would more likely to be asked is, "Are you 100% sure, if your life circumstance didn't change . . ."
And then I would tell her that the failure rate for sterilization is the same or higher than that for the IUD or Depo (depends on the age of sterilization).

The contraceptive community is really not that misogynistic anymore (I hope).

[Nikia]

20. How about for men?

I suppose this would be less useful for the single woman but for some married women, it would be helpful if there was a male contraceptive pill, patch, or shot.

[REP]

21. Better, Cheaper, Fewer Side Effects

You say these methods are 'tolerated,' which is indeed the correct word. Women tolerate all manner of side-effects (pain, headaches, cramping, bleeding, etc) rather than undergo pregnancy. Some women may even decide that they can't tolerate the side effects, and end up with an unwanted pregnancy. If pharmaceutical companies can give Bob Dole a hard-on, surely they can come up with something that works, doesn't hurt to put in, and doesn't make women feel like hell.

It was a surgeon I quoted, but rather an amalgam of respnonses numerous women I know have received from surgeons when requesting a tubal ligation. I'm interested in where you got your numbers; I'm familiar with studies of nulliparous women who do not regret being sterilized and find the number you mention specious, unless you were referring to multiparous women. But yes, women still get asked "but what if you meet a man who wants children?" I was asked that a few years ago - and I wasn't particularly young then, either (but I was then and remain nulliparous).

And yes, the failure rate for banding or Fichie clips is not as good as Depo-Provera, but fulguration (burning of the tubes, the most common method) has a failure rate of less than 1%. Sterilization doesn't cause the cramping and bleeding that an IUD does, nor does it present the constant risk of infection an IUD does. Depo-Provera is not appropriate for all women, especially not those with certain kidney diseases.

[yellowdogintexas]

16. that is exactly what the big dog meant

"rare" in that in an ideal world, there simply should not be much need for it.

the world where birthcontrol is available and affordable
the world where the youth are well educated on reproduction
the world where "morning after" drugs are immediately available to rape and incest victims.

and the world where young men are taught the necessary respect for women ..so that they don't push the young girls into early sexual activity. and young women are taught to value themselves for reasons other than whether or not they have a boyfriend.

[WildClarySage]

17. And where women

who opt to be single mothers can do so without worrying about finances, acceptable childcare, and being subjected to the Shame-On-You-Police.

[Djinn]

19. why only them

"the world where "morning after" drugs are immediately available to rape and incest victims."

any reason why the morning after pill should only be available to victims of rape/incest? why not women who realised they forgot to take the normal pill? or had a condom break, or just had some unexpected sex?

Abortion should be available when and where it's needed - the "rare" thing sets me on edge to be honest.

[politicat]

22. Agreed. Rare is a weasel word.

The abortion rate has not changed significantly since the 20s. It's run about 25/1000 women/year for as long as we can find even remotely reliable numbers. (pre-Roe, we had to use self reporting, maternal death, hospital rates and prosecution and extrapolate.) Oddly enough, those seem to be about the same numbers for 16th C. Venice and 18th C. France.

The difference now is that it's not hidden, and we collect statistics on it. What the Neo-cons don't realize is that the abortion rate was not lower before Roe, it was just underground and not monitored. Nothing's changed but the safety and the reporting.

The other thing they don't realize is that in countries without legal abortion, the abortion rate is higher in most cases because it's equally a form of contraception. Even in Ireland, where abortion is still illegal, the number of women who go to the UK or come to the US for an abortion still exceeds the US rate per 1000 women.

One in four of us has had an abortion. I don't think you can call that rare.

Pcat

[rfkrfk]

23. Concentrate on 'legal'

Safe, rare, are weasel words .
Safe, follows legal.

[Cooper]

25. questionable math.

The abortion rate has not changed significantly since the 20s. It's run about 25/1000 women/year for as long as we can find even remotely reliable numbers.

One in four of us has had an abortion. I don't think you can call that rare.

25/1000 does not equal one in four. where are you getting your numbers, anyway?

[iverglas]

26. questionable math indeed

25/1000 does not equal one in four.

And amazingly, no one said it did. Read what you quoted (I emphasize to assist you):

It's run about 25/1000 women/year
for as long as we can find even remotely
reliable numbers.

That's 25 abortions per 1000 women (1 abortion per 40 women) per year. It has nothing to do with what proportion of women have abortions in their lifetime (since the same 25 women could, theoretically, be having an abortion every year -- or, if no women ever had more than one abortion, 750 of those 1000 women would have had an abortion by the end of 30 years.)

As for the other assertion:

One in four of us has had an abortion.

... that's low, by my understanding.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute (take it or leave it) estimates higher:

http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm

Based on 1992 abortion statistics for the United States,
an estimated 43 percent of women will have at least one
abortion before they turn 45, according to an article in
the peer-reviewed journal Family Planning Perspectives.
Abortion rates have declined since 1992, so the real number
may be lower. The journal is published by the Alan Guttmacher
Institute, a nonprofit organization for reproductive health
research, policy analysis and public education.

Hope that helps.

[noamnety]

27. I don't see "rare" as a weasel word

Reducing the causes of abortion seems like a good goal to me, not because of morality, but because it is a lot of stress on a woman's body, and it's expensive.

I view it like any medical procedure; if you can take precautions to avoid the need for surgery, that's a good thing.

Education, access, affordability, convenience, effectiveness, comfort, and lack of side effects are all be good goals for birth control. They won't eliminate unwanted pregnancies, but they will reduce the number - while giving women more choices.

I would say the same about anything leading to surgery. Bunion surgery should be safe, legal, and rare - but some women chose to aggravate a bunion by wearing high heels. I'm not the high heel police, I wouldn't make a law forbidding high heels, but personally I think it makes more sense to wear flat boxy toed shoes than wear high heels if there's a chance it will lead to surgery afterwards.

Education about the long term affects of high heels would probably be a good thing. That's different than saying people that wear them are "immoral". And it's different than abstinence - it's not like saying women ought to go barefoot. And even with comfy flat shoes, some women are going to get bunions anyway, and some will opt for surgery.

[iverglas]

28. different ...

Education about the long term affects of high heels would probably be a good thing.

As would be, of course, education about the potential effects of unprotected sexual intercourse.

But I'm failing to see what earthly sense it would make to say -- or in what circumstances anyone would even think of saying -- that bunion surgery should be rare.

By the way, I have bunions, and I haven't worn a high heel in 25 years. It's genetic, m'dear. Beyond my control. Just as contraception (and even "abstinence") can fail. So I'd actually be rather offended at anyone saying that bunion surgery should be rare. There may be some dolts who need it because of their foolish or ignorant wardrobe choices, but in actual fact I'd bet that more of us persons of bunions would have got 'em regardless of what precautions we took.

The reason that 99% of the "abortion should be rare" brigade says it is that they have negative opinions about abortion, and about women who have abortions, not concerns about the well-being of women with unwanted pregnancies.

If there were widespread negative opinion about bunions and people with bunions, I'd be given serious pause if I heard a politician saying that bunion surgery should be rare. I'd be hearing someone blaming me for my own problems, when I bear no blame at all; and I'd be afraid that Ralph Klein was fixing to de-list bunion surgery from publicly insured medical services in Alberta. (Well, actually, my own province doesn't cover bunion surgery generally anyhow, but I think that's because it's of questionable benefit.)

But the big thing is that, despite the fact that bunion surgery puts a person out of commission and off work for a significant chunck of time (I know, I waited on my friend for a couple of weeks after she had hers) and thus involves costs to society as a whole, and uses scarce medical services that could be put to better use if (allegedly) prevention were practised, there's just nobody out there saying that bunion surgery should be rare.

Even more to the point, we don't hear a lot of clamour for cardiac surgery to be rare, even though it's very risky and expensive and a lot of it could be avoided by preventive practices too. (I'll point out that I also have a genetic propensity to a cardiac artery blockage, of which my father and grandfather died and which I have started being monitored for, so I'd be particularly peeved if anybody started calling for remedial surgery to be rare in that case, too.)

And then there are the unwanted pregnancies that women do not abort, resulting in children they do not want (assuming that they did not change their minds about the pregnancies, and continued them even though they did not want to be pregnant or have a child). Is there anybody calling for unwanted motherhood to be rare? Abortion and unwanted motherhood are no different in this sense (although the latter is certainly much worse in many ways, in my view): they are both end results of unwanted pregnancies, and both result from some element or elements in the same set of causes (ignorance, ineffective contraception, coercion, etc.). Surely both should be rare.

If we want to reduce women's risk for unintended/unwanted pregnancy, let's just say so. I see absolutely no reason to say that one choice that women make to deal with such pregnancies should be rare, particularly while saying nothing about the other.

Imagine. Unwanted motherhood should be safe, legal and rare.

Nobody's compelling women with unwanted pregnancies to have abortions, but there sure are a lot of people trying to compel women with unwanted pregnancies to be mothers.

[noamnety]

29. I'm fully aware it's genetic

I have them too; I know they are genetic. That's why I used the word "aggravate", instead of "cause".

That was my point, to compare abortion to something that is clearly not a moral issue, like bunions. Nobody would say we should reduce bunion surgeries for moral reasons, but nonetheless, if there were a way to reduce the need for bunion surgery, we should be pursuing it, whether it is development of different shoes, or education, or some medical breakthough.

I picked something you can't fully control - genetics - because. as you pointed out - that's how pregnancy is. Despite preventative measures (wearing flat shoes, using birth control) the results are not always controllable by your actions.

In the case of heart disease, why can't we say heart surgery should be rare, legal, and safe? If you had a way to avoid heart surgery, wouldn't you want to do it (assuming it didn't come with bad side effects and you could afford it)? My husband's on blood pressure medication for just that reason - in our family we want heart surgery to be rare. Not at all meaning that he won't have it if he needs it, and do it guilt-free, but we want to avoid the need.

Abortions as a rarity refers to the underlying causes being rare, not access being rare.

[iverglas]

31. still differing

Abortions as a rarity refers to the underlying causes being rare, not access being rare.

That may be what you mean when you say it. It simply is not the only possible meaning that anyone else might hear when you say it, or the only possible thing that anyone else might mean when s/he says it, or what most people mean when they say it.

It is equivocal. I just don't see any reason for saying, or agreeing with, equivocal things in circumstances in which one may be taken by others to be saying, or agreeing with, very unpleasant things, and when there are perfectly good ways of saying, unequivocally, what one means.

The simple fact is that no one does say that cardiac surgery should be rare. People who want to talk about reducing the need for cardiac surgery simply talk directly about reducing the need for cardiac surgery.

If you had a way to avoid heart surgery, wouldn't you want to do it ...?

Sure. Does that mean that I should say "cardiac surgery should be rare"? I don't think it does. I think I should just say what I mean: heart disease should be rare.

Abortion, like cardiac surgery, should be safe and legal. That is a statement of a policy position: a statement that the person making it objects to safe abortion services not being legally available.

"Abortion" (or cardiac surgery) "should be rare" is an entirely different kind of statement; as you mean it, it is not a statement of a policy position. It's the thing that doesn't fit in the sequence. It's like saying "artificial insemination should be rare" when what you really want is for men not to become sterile as a result of contracting mumps, and for a good anti-mumps vaccine to be available, and for people to have easy access to the vaccine and the personal resources (whatever it takes to be aware of and choose to avoid pointless risks) to obtain it.

In the case of heart disease, why can't we say heart surgery should be rare, legal, and safe?

(And the order is inverted ... why?)

We could say it if we wanted, I guess. The interesting thing, and my point, is that we don't. We say that the problem - heart disease - not the solution to the problem - cardiac surgery - should be rare. There being no campaign to prevent anyone from having cardiac surgery, it just doesn't occur to us to say anything at all about cardiac surgery being safe, legal or rare.

There *is* a huge and neverending campaign, in the US, to make abortion illegal and therefore unsafe. That is why people say that it should be safe and legal. Whether or not it should be "rare" has absolutely nothing to do with whether it should be safe and legal, and it is completely beyond me why anyone would mix the two very different notions -- the safety and legality of abortion, the ability of women to avoid unwanted pregancy -- up into a single slogan to be used in a context that includes the campaign to make abortion illegal and therefore unsafe.

I completely fail to see what benefit is gained, by women, by someone saying that abortion should be rare. Abortion is a choice made by individual women, and it is that choice that is in issue, not abortion. "Abortion should be safe and legal" addresses the real issue: the ability of women to make choices about their own pregnancies. "Abortion should be rare" drags totally different things into the frame, and those things have nothing to do with the issue of choice.

Abortion and reproductive choice are totally different things. One is a medical procedure, one is a policy issue. "Abortion should be safe and legal" is a statement of policy, and of the only acceptable policy: women must have choice. "Abortion should be rare" is either a statement of an unacceptable policy (making abortion rare by imposing restrictions on access to it) or a pointlessly oblique and content-less statement of a desire for how the world should be (making abortion rare by taking some unspecified action to bring about some unspecified state of affairs in which women do not want abortions).

If I heard my local right-wing politicians telling me that cardiac surgery should be rare, knowing that what they had in mind was reducing health care costs and thus, likely, instituting some triage system by which the health plan would not cover cardiac surgery for people who didn't have the sense or decency to exercise regularly, I'd simply be a fool to respond by saying "oh yes, cardiac surgery should be rare". I'd instead be standing up and saying "cardiac surgery must be available in accredited medical facilities under the health plan to people in need of it".

I would invite them to say that heart disease should be rare, and to do something to reduce its incidence, but if they asked me whether cardiac surgery should be rare, I'd tell them that I prefer mine medium-well.

A Brit cartoon strip called "Ms. Augusta" once had the title character, a wise-cracking little girl, ask her older brother what he was up to. "Oh, not much," he replied. And the headline in the next edition of her domestic newspaper read: Clive says he's not up to much.

I'm not willing to be the subject of a headline that says Pro-choice forces agree that there are too many abortions. Knowing that someone plans to equivocate on the meaning of the words you use, why would you use them?


(edited to fix little incoherency)

[Jackie97]

30. I completely agree.

Now, tell this to the anti-choice movement trying to stop education and who are trying to make access to contraception harder.

If anti-choicers who agree with these ideas would just stand up to the so called pro-life movement for promoting what causes more pregnacies and abortions, the anti-choice movement would have less power.