I want to thank everyone involved in the Dkos endeavor straight away. This is my first time coming to a blog, much less participating. I think Dkos is a wonderful community, rich and robust so thank you for this lovely and informative public space. I have read some beautiful diaries here and I have just scratched the surface.
I have been pondering how to use blogging to enhance my reason for being here...which is public discourse on how to improve quality abortion care for all. So I am single issue for the moment as there is a crises occurring and women are dying in the USA because of pregnancies they cannot terminate.
State abortion restrictions have gone INSANE and our policy makers do not speak. Women and their families are being devastated because there is no access to abortion care unless you have means. This is happening now. So criminalization or overturning Roe has become moot. To fully understand the extent of the problem go to www.pbs.org and watch the Frontline piece The Last Abortion Clinic. It is available free via video streaming.
The medical capability (and this does not mean availability) to terminate an early pregnancy has gotten better and better because of technological advancement. We can terminate a pregnancy as a soon as a woman knows she is pregnant. That would be three weeks pregnant. So imagine this if you will. A very very small "potential life" (it smaller than a pencil eraser if you can even see it) that obviously is not sentient but has UNTOLD potential (or not) if continued. Of course at this early stage there is no guarantee that the pregnancy will continue to full term because God regularly causes/does abortions. Hence miscarriages. So we have this "potential life" to weigh against the life of this woman or girl who is standing there pregnant. Plus the "post born" children this woman/girl already has. And the future "pre and post born" children these women/girls will have.
Forget for a moment contraception. Forget for a moment education. GO WAY DOWN STREAM. You will find trapped pregnant women. They are desperate. They are scared. They have no resources. They don't want to be pregnant and IT MAY EVEN THREATEN THEIR HEALTH but it doesn't matter. If they have transportation they can get excellent pre-natal care at the local teaching hospital. And crises pregnancy centers will start them out with diapers and a stroller, which as we know is all one needs to provide for healthy and successful children these days. They will receive EXCELLENT prenatal care as this is how we train our wonderful neonatal doctors at our medical schools. These high risk pregnancies are wonderful "teaching tools" and all effort is made to save the PREGNANCY.
There was a women from Alexandria, Louisiana in a nursing facility. Her nurse was getting ready to discharge her and was slightly frantic to find help for her. "Etta" was 36 and had had a stroke. She could not walk, could speak with difficulty and was learning to swallow again. And then they found that she was six weeks pregnant. It happened just before the stroke. She had had a job but was now being transferred to Medicare because of disability. Etta and her husband had six children. I remember the youngest child had MS and was very dependent on Etta for care. This six week pregnancy would compromise her recovery from her stroke and was life/health threatening for her. Her pregnancy needed to be terminated. No one would provide abortion care in central Louisiana. They still won't. They would let this woman die rather then provide abortion care. They were very clear that the continuation of the pregnancy might kill this woman and consequently leave her "post born" children motherless, including the little one with MS who was so dependent on his mother. But hey, no resources are available for abortion care...and abortion is taking a human life and clearly IMMORAL besides, so let this woman die or have her health destroyed. Let these children be motherless. This is the moral course for Louisiana and its policy makers to follow. And ironies abound as the "life saving" abortion procedure this woman needs takes less than five minutes and can be done in any doctors office, if it were not illegal in a doctors offices at this point in time in Louisiana.
So we have over ninety percent or of all abortion care occurring in the first three months and most of these before seven weeks. Imagine what would happen if we really made early abortion care available to poor women. Imagine a world where there was true reproductive justice and women could be provided quality abortion care regardless of income very early in the pregnancy.
For all the talk about abortion (and I understand why people are sick of it as there is so much TALK about abortion) there is little discussion on the PROVISION OF ABORTION CARE. So there is the amazing disconnect. Politically we are supposed to talk about making abortion rare. But in reality what we are talking about is making "abortion care" rare which is a very bad thing for women and their families.
And women are dying. Children are being made motherless. And no one cares. No one will speak to improving and increasing access to quality abortion care. The resources to provide abortion care have to come from somewhere. Training for the provision of care has to be taught someplace. It is as though we are supposed to create quality abortion care out of thin air while everyone talks like all of this is some kind of "abstract" moral debate or a strategy on winning an election. What a total disconnect while women and their families suffer.
Until we realize our societal responsibility to provide quality abortion care to poor women in the United States little will change and women will continue to die and and families will suffer. Through public discourse we must influence our policy makers to assure comprehensive health care which includes access to quality abortion care for all. Because, in truth, it takes a village to provide quality abortion care. Do we have the moral fortitude required?