in honor of Dr. George Tiller

For every desperate woman he helped, for every child not consigned to a life of hell on earth, for every Kayla who didn't have to suffer, for every potential Adrian who didn't live in misery and kill another in the process, for every infant tortured to death by her parents, for every starved and ruined baby on this earth, Dr. Tiller was an angel of mercy. There will always be abortions, always, whether legal or not. Dr. Tiller saved lives and he terminated pregnancies and he was courageous enough to continue to help women, no matter the hatred directed his way.

state of oklahoma mandates vaginal probes for women

My sorry assed fucking state just passed one of the most regressive anti-abortion bills in the country. In order to freely determine what happens to her body once SB 1878 goes into effect in Oklahoma, any woman who has made the decision to terminate a pregnancy will have to undergo an ultrasound an hour before the procedure.

This is a trans-vaginal ultrasound, which requires a probe to be inserted into the vagina. This will be mandated by the state. Along with this physical violation, "medical personnel must then provide an explanation of the ultrasound. They also must display the ultrasound so the woman can view it, although she may avert her eyes."

She. may. avert. her. eyes. Really? Doesn't the state fucking own her goddamned eyes too??? I have written about abortion before and I know from my own experience that it is a rare woman who makes that decision lightly.

This fucking law intrudes into the private life of a woman at what is, for most, a vulnerable and difficult time of life. I am outraged. I really can't believe it. Our democratic governor, Brad Henry, vetoed the bill, but only because he thought it didn't provide exceptions for rape/incest victims.

His veto was overriden by the legislature, including dozens of democrats. And it's them I'm most pissed off about. It's one thing to have some fuckheaded right wing lunatic like Sally Kern blathering on about gays and hate. At least she is what she is and it's evident for all to see. These fucking democrats are selling us out at every level of government, everywhere. I am sick. Furious. Disgusted. I hate my state today.

roe, wade and me

Thirty five years ago, I had an abortion. It was the first of three in a period of four years. I could explain all of the circumstances in an effort to gain your understanding, but that's not why I'm writing this. I am bravely writing these words and still, still, I feel the urge to tell you that one of those was the result of being raped and one was because . . . because . . . and therein lies the problem. I feel that I must justify, must explain, must make you experience what happened to me in those years between 15 and 19 so you will not judge me, so I will not be diminished in your eyes because of the choices I made. I'm writing this because I am tired of the message ~ subtle and not so ~ that I should be ashamed.

It's not that I'm proud. I guess I am neutral. And I am not psychologically wrecked. My heart doesn't ache when I see an infant. I don't mark the dates as they pass, longing for the children I could have had. More than anything, I am grateful, so very grateful, that I became pregnant one month after the Supreme Court's decision that would, at last, legally allow me the right to choose what would happen with my own body.

Women have always had abortions, always, since ancient times. Whether Roe v. Wade ultimately stands or falls will change nothing except the quality of our lives as people who live with the potential of pregnancy. It will change the quality of women's lives and if we lose Roe, women will begin dying again because women will not stop terminating pregnancies.

I was essentially a child when I became pregnant, yet I had long been aware of abortion and the various means to accomplish that absent the clinics which came later. Friends from junior high had, variously, consumed poisonous substances, taken blows to the belly, jumped from a roof (with resultant broken leg and intact fetus), gone to Mexico, been flown to England for the dread late stage saline termination. There were rumors that the marginal physician downtown, a butcher by all accounts, would accommodate women in need for sexual favors.

In a short period of time, my junior high years, in one small town known for its high educational level, prosperity, and relative sophistication, one girl died as the result of her efforts to stop the life growing within her. The coathanger abortion is almost mythological, and yet Juanita punctured her own uterus late one Saturday night, bleeding to death in her bedroom. There were probably others, but I knew Juanita, a peripheral figure in my junior high set of friends.

I was lucky. Roe v. Wade was newly minted and there was a clinic 100 miles away and I had a parent who agreed that a pregnancy was unacceptable. The fact of being pregnant imbued me with a clarity about my life that had been missing to that point. I came back determined to rid myself of an abusive boyfriend, determined to finish school and convinced that the only way I'd ever have the kind of life I wanted would be to get the hell out of that Oklahoma town.

I am coming out of the closet with my abortions on this 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade because I think it is important to do so. Almost all of the women I know have terminated a pregnancy, yet almost no one talks about it except in hushed tones, one on one, and perhaps it should remain so. Yet I cannot help but think that we are at risk of losing this critical affirmation of privacy and the right to self determination because we are silent. We are silent out of shame or out of sadness, or we are silent because we are not ashamed and we're not sad and we're only grateful and that's really not acceptable in this country, this land where we exalt the potential life of a mass of cells and diminish the value of the woman who owns them.

It would be more acceptable if I could say that I am anguished about the decisions I made in those crazy years in my teens, that I wake up thinking of those potential children, that I feel something missing in my soul. I am not and I do not. I never wanted children and have always wished I could pass on to some other woman my breathtaking fertility. I do still have passing moments of anger for the doctor who, after considering my request for a tubal ligation, patted me on the knee and said "you're far too young, you'll find a fine man one day and then you'll want children." Had he honored my request, I would be writing this confession about a single pregnancy.

We will reduce the need for abortion when we make inexpensive, quality birth control available to all women of childbearing age. When we provide thorough, quality sex education to every student in every school, the need for pregnancy termination will diminish. I'm not holding my breath for those changes, despite the spectacular failure of abstinence only prevention programs. It is a farce and it infuriates me that politicians play games with something so intimate and personal as this. It is my uterus and any life within depends on me. It is my choice and mine only. I hope to God we never go back.

Okay, now that's off my chest, back into hibernation with my papa. Hugs.

raped? pregnant?

Having that baby will make you feel better. This sickens me. How dare he? And why is he not booed and hissed off the public stage? Mr. Sam Brownback of Kansas, potentially your next president:

"Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that's been raped?" the Kansas Republican asked at the St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers gathering.

"We need to protect innocent life. Period," Brownback said, bringing the crowd of about 500 to its feet.

Five hundred men rising to their feet to cheer this ass? This issue is very, very (very) personal to me. I despise this man. He has no idea what it's like to even be pregnant, let alone pregnant as the result of rape. Oh, and pumpkins? He's got a riff on gay marriage too. Pig.

anti-abortion folks savage dobson

It's kind of sweet, really, to see the anti-abortion people turning on hater-in-chief, James Dobson. They were misled, you see, and they're blaming Dobson. I'm sure there's some blame to be assigned there, and I have no doubt Dobson managed to profit significantly by beating the anti-abortion drum while the Supreme Court was recently considering the case which would ban partial-birth abortion. But I have little sympathy for people who don't bother to research an issue and who simply take the word of another because he's allegedly Christian. Boo hoo hoo, he sold you out, live and learn.

As we all know, the Supreme Court's recent ruling on partial birth abortion does nothing to stop late term abortions, it just eliminates the safest option for accomplishing one. I know for the most part that the right wing nuts love you until you're born, but banning partial birth abortion just increases the chances of death for the fetus and the woman.

Brian Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right to Life and a signer of the ads, disagreed.

"All you have to do is read the ruling, and you will find that this will never save a single child, because even though the justices say this one technique is mostly banned -- not completely banned -- there are lots of other techniques, and they even encourage abortionists to find less shocking means to kill late-term babies," he said.

Another signer, the Rev. Bob Enyart, a Christian talk radio host and pastor of the Denver Bible Church, said the real issue is fundraising.

"Over the past seven years, the partial-birth abortion ban as a fundraising technique has brought in over a quarter of a billion dollars" for major antiabortion groups, "but the ban has no authority to prevent a single abortion, and pro-life donors were never told that," he said. "That's why we call it the pro-life industry."

In Rohrbough's view, partisan politics is also involved.

"What happened in the abortion world is that groups like National Right to Life, they're really a wing of the Republican Party, and they're not geared to push for personhood for an unborn child -- they're geared to getting Republicans elected," he said. "So we're seeing these ridiculous laws like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban put forward, and then we're deceived about what they really do."

Yup, you've been sold out, folks. Sold out in the interest of collecting your money and sold out as a means of gathering support for the Republican party. Sucks, doesn't it? The WaPo has the complete article.