Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information

As of yesterday, there is a new law in Nebraska that bans most abortions after twenty weeks.  This was done under the assumption that the fetus can feel pain at that stage.  The law will undoubtedly be challenged on the basis that it runs counter to Roe v Wade, the original Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in this country.  In that case, the Court basically said you cannot outlaw abortions until after 24 weeks. 

There is a good chance that this law will make its way to the current Supreme Court.   Of course, the Court could decide to not consider the case but the way things are going over there, there’s a good chance they will.   So, at that point, the Supreme Court will be deliberating over the issue of fetal pain.

Now, let me try to sort this one out.

In this country, the states can electrocute, gas or inject with poison a real, live person.  Yes, I know the argument in favor of such barbarity is that in (most) cases that person is a very bad person who committed some heinous crime.  So, that person must pay the ultimate price!  I get that piece.

But in Nebraska, a physician, who is acting solely at the request of the woman, cannot inject a drug called digoxin into a fetus/baby that is clearly alive but is also just floating around in the womb, unaware of what the hell is going on?

C’mon, let’s get real folks. 

Please do not tell me that the baby (I’ll use that term) is floating around in there, thinking about what it’s going to eat that night or what college it will go to.  Can pro-lifers say with a straight face that the fetus (equal time to pro-choicers) can see that needle coming down and feel it when it is injected?  Does the baby/fetus really feel that little pinch and realize that this is the end? 

The right to life movement (which polls show overwhelming support frying adult criminal) wants to outlaw abortions – period.   They will come up with any angle, any strategy to make it more and more difficult to obtain an abortion in this country.  This is just another way of going about that.  

Indeed, why did they begin at 20 weeks?   I thought “life” began at conception?   I thought it is a person from minute one?   If that is the case, why didn’t they go all the way back with this “it feels pain” argument?  

The way I see it, abortion is a form of maternal euthanasia.  It is a sad occurrence, one that no one willingly wants to face.  Much like the decision to euthanize a 90 year old parent, this is a very tough one that is not made willy-nilly. 

Don’t these politicians have anything more constructive to do with their time?

A short while ago, the Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy opened up in Chantilly, Virginia.  They proudly announced that they are “pro-life” and would not offer birth control pills, condoms and other items.  Yesterday, they announced they are closing because of a lack of business.

I am not going to gloat.  Instead, I want to talk about pharmacies that refuse to offer certain items because they do not support what those items represent.  We’ve all heard, for example, how some pharmacies are not offering emergency contraception because they consider it immoral.   In many states, they are passing so-called “conscience laws” which allow pharmacies to refuse to sell certain items. 

I gotta tell you.  I have absolutely no problem with these conscience laws.  

Let’s say I open up a little convenience store in the town of Hartsfield, Montana (Pop: 1,200).  I am gonna sell the usual things:  groceries, newspapers, those nice smelly things that you can hang on your rear view mirror.  But I don’t want to sell cigarettes.   Sure, I could make a nice profit if I did, but, darn it, I do not want in any way to be part of the spread of lung cancer in this country.  So, I’m gonna make a statement and tell folks to drive down to Pete’s Diner and get your cigarettes there. 

Or say the Grand Dragon of the local KKK comes walking in.  He is dressed in full KKK regalia, looks like he’s going to the monthly meeting with the boys.   He wants to buy a few donuts for the Board of Directors.  Well, darn it, I just don’t want to sell my stuff to his kind.  I refuse to take his money. 

What am I missing here?

I am pro-choice and think that contraception should be as available as possible.  But if a pharmacist is pro-life and the thought of even handling that packet of birth control pills is repulsive to him, then why should he be forced to offer them?  

Now, if a woman goes to a hospital for an abortion and a nurse refuses to help, I have more of a problem with that one because that woman might not have any other options.  That’s a tougher one for me. 

But the Grand Dragon can go down the street and get his donuts elsewhere.

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion in the case of Roe v. Wade.  In that decision, the Court basically said that a woman could have an abortion with few restrictions until the point of viability (24 weeks). 

Over the years, the Court has changed but the majority has continued to reaffirm the basic decision.  However, the Court has also approved restrictions on the abortion procedure.  For example, they have declared that state legislatures can impose “parental consent” laws, that 24 hour waiting periods are constitutional and they have outlawed the “partial birth abortion” procedure.  Still, at this point, on the basic issue of legal abortion, the count is 6 in favor and 3 against. 

Now, some pro-choice groups argue that the score is really 5 in favor of legal abortion and 4 against because they count Justice Kennedy as a swing vote.  That may be true.  I am no constitutional law scholar.  On the other hand, it could be fundraising hype.  You know, scare folks so they’ll send money.   

No matter what headcount you believe, the pro-choice movement could be in trouble, even though we have a pro-choice President. 

As you have heard, Justice John Stevens has announced that he is resigning from the court.  Stevens has been a solid pro-choice vote.  President Obama will soon nominate a new justice to fill that slot.

Here’s the problem.  In the past, Presidents have nominated justices thinking they had a particular ideology, only to find out later that the opposite was true.  Justice Stevens was nominated by Republican President Gerald Ford and was considered a Republican himself.  Well, he turned out to be one of the most liberal justices on the court.  Unless that nominee has a long history of legal decisions, it is often hard to know what to predict.

On the other hand, if Obama nominated a clear pro-choice justice (like Diane Wood), then the pro-life groups and others would be up in arms.  And, while a filibuster is rarely used when it comes to Supreme Court nominees, the tone on Capitol Hill is anything but normal these days.

So, to avoid a possible confrontation, Obama might nominate someone who is not as clear on the issue.  And who the hell knows what could happen after that? 

Stay tuned.

“Don’t kill your baby.  Just put her up for adoption!”

Any of you who have debated a pro-life person has heard this one before.  They make it sound oh so easy.   Just carry a child for nine months, an unwanted child at that, and at the end of that nine months just hand it over to some agency or to an eager young couple.

Pro-lifers like to talk about how women who have had abortions ultimately come to regret their decision.  I’ve written about that before.  But what they don’t want to hear is how the adoption process is not as optimal as one might think. 

First, there is the simple fact that a woman who wants to put her child up for adoption must first carry that child for nine months.  Let’s say it’s a fifteen year old girl.  That young girl will have to deal with all of the issues that other women deal with during a pregnancy.  Morning sickness or worse, regular doctor visits that she might not be able to afford, going to school every day and having to explain what is going on.  I mean, you women out there know that pregnancy is not always a walk in the park.  But, that’s okay, say the pro-lifers, just go with the flow.   

Then that woman has to give birth.  I hate to remind everyone, but did you know that more women die of childbirth each year than abortion?    The pro-lifers don’t mention that minor statistic. 

But let’s say everything goes well and the woman/girl finally has a baby.  Don’t you think that, despite the fact that it was an unwanted pregnancy, the mother is now going to have very mixed feelings about giving the baby up?  Do you think it is going to be easy to just have the baby and send it off to a foster care situation or to a private adoption agency?  

And speaking of regretting one’s abortion, don’t you think that twenty years later, that woman who gave up her child will have recurrent thoughts about the baby she gave birth to?  In the case of a closed adoption, the birth parent will have no idea where her child is, but she’ll know her baby is out there somewhere.  Think of the pain, the recurrent thoughts about where her child is and what the child looks like.     

Pro-life people like to say that there are “people lined up to adopt a child.”  It’s just not that easy.  

Most couples that want to adopt need to pass some very strict tests.  Clearly, they need to have a stable home and a decent income.  So, picture that couple, living up there in Westchester, New Yord, waiting for a baby.  They’ve already paid the lawyers thousands and thousands of dollars and one day they get a call that a baby is available.  It’s the baby of that young fourteen year old girl.  The couple is Caucasian, in their mid-thirties.  They look at the paperwork and see that the baby is African American and that the mother is a crack addict. 

So, do you think that couple is going to jump all over that one?   Give me a break. 

It’s a harsh world out there and at times I really think the pro-life movement is living in la-la land.  Indeed, on the abortion.com Facebook page, a question was posed to the pro-lifers, asking them how many children they have adopted.  

Not one person has replied yet.

About two weeks ago, I wrote about Congressman Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan.  Over the last few months, Stupak gained national attention as the leader of a group of pro-life Democrats who supported healthcare reform but were concerned about language in the bill that may have permitted federal funds to be used for abortions.   Ultimately, Stupak and several other members of the House of Representatives voted for the healthcare bill when they convinced President Obama to sign an “Executive Order” verifying that no federal dollars would be used for abortions.  The bill, with those crucial votes, passed and is now law.

Today, Congressman Stupak announced that he would not seek re-election.    When I heard the announcement, I felt sad.  

Now, I know that in my earlier blog I said I had no pity for Stupak who received a number of death threats after his vote.  I argued that when he called abortion doctors “murderers” and other things he ran the risk of inflaming some less than stable people.  Ultimately, he became the target of the hatred as well.

My sadness comes from the fact that Congressman Stupak’s actions of a few months ago took balls.   That’s because he had to have known that voting for the healthcare bill and getting others to vote for it would be his political death knell.

Stupak feels strongly that federal dollars should not be used for abortions.  So, when the House and Senate passed their versions of the healthcare bill and the right to life lobbyists said that both bills still might allow federal dollars to be used for abortion, Stupak met with the President.    At Stupak’s urging, the President signed the Executive Order, but the anti-abortion crowd said it wasn’t enough to protect their concerns because the Executive Order was not law.  Still, Stupak organized this action and his comfort with it led him to ultimately vote for the healthcare bill.

When Stupak voted for the bill, he knew he was done for.  He knew that the anti-abortion groups would call him a traitor, which they did.  He knew that he could no longer rely on their political support.  Without their support, he was basically dead meat in his district in Michigan.  That’s why he made his announcement today. 

Stupak could have taken the easy way out.  He could have held firm and withheld his vote on healthcare and feigned outrage that federal dollars would be used for abortion.   But he saw the bigger picture and, at the risk of pissing off a key interest group, he accepted the Executive Order, basically trusting Obama’s word.  

For that he has paid a big price.

I totally disagree with him on the issue of abortion, but I have to quietly applaud that he was true to his principles.  He remained against abortion and for healthcare reform – and it precipitated the end of his congressional career.  You don’t see that very often these days.

We talk a lot about abortion on this blog but we rarely talk about the clinics where the abortions are performed.  We all know about them to some extent but for years their work has been shrouded in secrecy.  As a consequence, there are lots of misperceptions out there.  Let me give you a quick profile. 

The vast majority of abortions in this country are performed by “independent” abortion providers.   By “independent,” I mean clinics that are NOT associated with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.   Many people are surprised to learn that, despite their visible public persona, PPFA clinics actually perform only about ten percent of the abortions in this country.  The other clinics are free standing facilities that are owned by a physician or a private individual.  Abortions are rarely performed in hospitals. 

It’s hard to get an exact count, but there are about 700 independent abortion clinics in the country.  There are some chains of clinics, such as the All Women’s Health Centers in Florida and New York or Family Planning Associates in California.  But, for the most part, each clinic has one owner. 

The average clinic is open three to four days a week.  Saturday is the busiest day, mainly because many women work during the week and Saturday is the most convenient day for them.  The average price of an abortion in the first trimester is $450.  That fee normally includes the abortion, counseling services and a follow up visit.  In rare cases, a clinic will perform an abortion for free.  As the pregnancy advances, the price goes up.  An abortion at 23 weeks can cost several thousand dollars. 

Every clinic has its own personality.   There are some clinics that are purely “medical” in nature in that the waiting rooms look like your average physician’s waiting room.  That is, a little austere.  Then, there are other clinics that might have different “cozy” kinds of furniture or pictures on the wall.  Some clinics that are run by former “hippies” reflect, well, you can imagine what they reflect. 

There is a group of clinics that subscribe to the “head and heart” mode of counseling, where the counseling is a little more intense.  Some clinics do very cursory counseling, just giving the woman her options and talking about the surgery.  Some of these clinics believe it is “insulting” to “counsel a woman to death” because it presumes they are not smart enough to make the decision on their own. 

Some clinics have protestors out front.  But, for the most part, it’s not like it used to be in the 1990’s when dozens and dozens of people would gather in front of the facility and block access to the clinic.  While there are always some exceptions, for the most part the pro-life movement has adjusted its tactics and many of them just stand outside a clinic and pray.   That, of course, is their constitutional right.

Believe it or not, some clinics also have adoption agencies.  Some clinics have a lot of security, some have none.  Some have female doctors but most of the clinics still have male doctors.  Many of the doctors are older as young physicians are concerned about getting into the field.  On the other hand, there are some cities that have too many abortion doctors.   

The clinics belong to national organizations and get together for annual conventions to discuss reproductive health issues.  Speaking of, all of these clinics do more than perform abortions.  For example, they insert IUDs, offer wellness programs, some do botox injections. 

I’ve worked with clinics for many years.  If you have a specific question about how they perform their job, fire away and I’ll respond!

I follow with great interest the fascinating conversations on the Abortion.Com Facebook page.  There are close to 3,000 “friends,” both pro-choice and pro-life, who have some very interesting and, usually, civil dialogues about the issue.  I say “usually” because there are always those who need to SCREAM at you and those who just spout the usual “ABORTION IS MURDER” stuff.  You come back and ask a simple question like “do you support birth control?” and they just disappear.  Maybe they’re exhausted from all of the intellectual energy they just expended.    

The other day, there was an interesting admission by a pro-lifer.   This woman is a very reasonable, calm, smart woman from Florida.  She is always quick to chime in when pro-choicers ask the tough questions and she, in turn, asks tough questions as well.  Of course, no one expects to change any minds and she is just as locked in as others, but I do have the sense that she is learning more about the mindset of a woman who decides to have an abortion and she is also learning about doctors who perform them.

Suddenly, just the other day, in a very long thread towards the bottom of the page, she “quietly” admitted that years ago she had had an abortion. 

What the heck?  

I had to read her comments several times to make sure I was reading it correctly. 

So, it seems that years ago, when she was much younger (well, weren’t we all?), she became pregnant and she CHOSE to have an abortion.  Yep, that’s right.  This pro-lifer exercised her constitutional right to choose.  But now, she wants to take away that same right from millions of other women.  It was good for her then, but it’s not good for others now.

She says that she has now come to regret having the abortion.  Okay, I get that.  Indeed, I addressed that issue just the other day in another one of my potentially Pulitzer Prize winning blogs.  She has even gone so far as to join the “Silent No More” campaign that I referred to in the same blog. 

So, I’m trying to sort this out.

 She had an abortion and she regretted it.  Okay.  Now if she were just out there telling women to really, really think hard about the decision, I’d have absolutely no problem with that.  But she doesn’t stop there.  She takes it to the next level and says that women should not be able to access the same procedure that she took advantage of years ago.  That sounds a little hypocritical to me.

Years ago in her youth, she “got in trouble,” as they used to say.  She made what she thought was the right decision for her at the time.  She CHOSE to have an abortion.   Then, many years later, now that her life has been “straightened out,” as she says, she wants to take away that same right from other women who might be in the same situation as she was.

What am I missing here?

Just down the block from my house is a Catholic Church.  Of course, it being Easter Sunday, the parking lot is mobbed, police are directing traffic.  This gets to me to thinking about my own religious background.  

For many years, I was your typical New York, Irish Catholic.   Went to church every Sunday, got my First Communion and then was confirmed.  I never really understood what the confirmation ceremony was all about except that I was suddenly a “soldier of Christ.”  Cool. 

When I was about 16 or so, I stopped going to church.  Or, more accurately, my mother decided that she could no longer force me to go.  Let’s face it, I was not going to church all of those years because I wanted to go.  I was being dragged there against my will every weekend.  The only thing I enjoyed about going to church on Sunday morning was stopping at Calanzo’s Italian Bakery after services to pick up donuts, scones, a rhubarb cake and cruellers.  After all, we hadn’t eaten since the night before (against the rules) so I gobbled those carbs down as fast as possible. 

I left the church because I was scared.  I was always taught that God was a vengeful God, everything was about what you couldn’t do.  Every one of the Ten Commandments started off with a “thou shall not….”   I was constantly afraid of going to hell for committing a mortal sin.   Sure, you could always go to confession every Saturday to be absolved of that sin but what if you looked upon a member of the opposite sex with lust in Monday’s Algebra class and you died on Tuesday before you could get to confession?  You just got a one way ticket to hell, baby….

Indeed, to this day I remember standing in a field across the street from my house one fine Saturday afternoon.   I was 13 years old and was going to confession in about an hour when I decided to say my first curse word out loud.  After all, I could scream the word and then go straight to Father Costello and confess, right?   The slate would be wiped clean.  

When the time was right, I yelled out “shit” and waited for the lightning bolt to strike. 

Nothing.  

“Shit!” 

Nothing.  

Hey, this ain’t so bad, I thought.  Shit, shit, shit, shit….

Went to confession an hour later and all was forgiven.

For many years after that, I didn’t think about the Church.  But when I got involved in the pro-choice movement on a national level, my fear of the church returned.  I soon learned how the church could incite people and organize mobs of protestors to block access to a clinic.  I watched priests stand in from of an abortion facility and scream at women who were there to obtain an abortion.  Heck, they even yelled at women who were just going in to get some birth control.  I sat in on sermons and heard about the “evils” of abortion and how women who had them would burn in hell.  I remember one priest in Alabama say publicly that it was “justifiable homicide” to kill an abortion doctor.   

There was so much hatred emanating from those pulpits and I learned all over how to fear the church.  And when I look at all of those cars in that church parking lot across the street, I wonder what they are being told about women who have abortions.  And the interesting thing is that the majority of women who get abortions are Catholic.