Blogger puts guide to abortion online

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article351714.ece

Blogger puts guide to abortion online
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By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 17 March 2006
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A blogger has added fresh fuel to the abortion debate that divides the US by posting online detailed instructions on how to perform such an operation. She said she had received death threats as a result.

The blogger, who uses the pseudonym Molly Blythe, said she was inspired to post the abortion guide after the recent signing of legislation in South Dakota that outlaws abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. The only exception to the law would be if the woman's life was threatened if she continued the pregnancy.

Ms Blythe said: "Myself and some friends have been collecting this information for the past couple of years because we believed that Roe vs Wade was not going to be around for ever."

The guide, titled "For the Women of South Dakota: An Abortion Manual", lists the equipment required and the procedure to follow to carry out a dilation and curettage abortion.

(snip)

complete story: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article351714.ece

I'm convinced after reading it's thread here, that it is far safer than hangers.

I appreciate her outrage and her wanting to take action but is this the best course of action?

early 90's I believe, womens groups were having meetings in cities all over the US, teaching women how to preform these. They were doing it so "back-alley"-abortions could be safer.

She does have a good point, but, I think there are far better means now than their used to be. Smuggling the abortion pill, would be better.

it comes to that.

for the 10% of cases where RU486 doesn't do the full job, a D & C will still be necessary.

other. I'd say, if anything, we now have even more access to information than those women did and have the potential to take care of these matters privately and safely.

People pretend that there were no abortions before Roe, or only a few "back alley" jobs. In fact, abortion has been women's knowledge in every society for thousands of years, much of it quite safe.

because the result is that women are desperate and fall into the hands of a back alley abortionist or their own attempts and the result is septic abortions.

The fact is that NOTHING takes the place of having safe and legal abortion. We should not stand for anything less.

But I think people mistake the excellent argument (the threat of the septic, unsafe abortion) for universal truth of pre-Roe abortion. There were plenty of relatively safe abortion practices pre-legalization, usually developed by women among themselves.

Medical abortion that is safe and legal is of course preferable; it is the best alternative we have. But let's not mistake the history of the thing. Women have been practicing relatively safe abortion strategies for as long as there have been societies (and patriarchy); they've just been mostly under the radar, because that is where women's knowledges were consigned. The threat of the back-alley abortionist is good imagery to keep abortion safe and legal, which is what we should do. It circulates well. It makes sense to people. It has become a part of the cultural mythology, and is therefore extremely rhetorically effective. And, of course, it has a larege share of truth to it, and plenty of women did die from illegal, unsafe abortions practiced by amateurs and hacks of all stripes. But that's only part of the hoistory of abortion, and we shouldn't confuse rhetorical effectiveness with historical accuracy.

and I'm not talking your local midwife.

There is potential for bleeding.

Especially if it's not actually a medical procedure.

when doctors became involved.

Ok, ok, I'll give you the fact that women are a lot less likely to die in childbirth now, but who's to say that would not have been the case had things stayed the same AFTER we learned how important washing one's hands is?

In both my wife's pregnancies, doctors caught and treated problems that would have killed her and/or the babies without their intervention. And even then we almost lost her to the aftermath of the second pregnancy. Giving birth was always a medical procedure-- we just didn't have the medicine before.

I could come back here with a couple of anecdotal cases of friends of mine who had complications CAUSED BY doctors.

Giving birth is a natrual process that has been turned into a medical procedure, often for good but sometimes for not so good.

There was a good book about a decade ago called "The American Way of Birth" that sheds more light on this.

Your argument is that doctors have made childbirth a medical procedure. Really? Really and truly? Women didn't die before the advent of medical procedures? Eclamsia and gestational diabetes and severe bleeding and umbilical cords wrapped around the necks of babies, to name just a handful, weren't problems before doctors? Really?

Giving birth IS a medical procedure. It demands quite a bit physically on your body and those stresses routinely cause physical problems. Yeah, if everything goes perfect maybe all you need is a midwife. But as the record shows, things hardly ever always go perfectly. And when they don't, and all you have is a midwife, well, there is a reason that so many women before the advent of modern medicine didn't make it to their golden years.

There was no golden age of natural birth. The age before modern deliveries was filled with death and blood.

The biggest cause of death during times when medical intervention was not common was due to fever and infection AFTER the child was born. This was because of ignorance about handwashing.

Yes, babies may have died due to the complications you enumerated, but if the problems were that severe, how would any of us be here at all?

Many of the "inteventions" doctors routinely do or have done in the past are unnecessary and harmful.

It is folly to blindly trust the medical establishment in ANY area during this age of hospitals run by businesses.

As for "when all you have is a midwife" - I'm sure there are plenty of trained midwives who would like to hear your take on their ability to handle such problems.

I agree.

But that doesn't mean it isn't also medical in nature.

"Yes, babies may have died due to the complications you enumerated, but if the problems were that severe, how would any of us be here at all?"

Oh, probably becasue they don't affect everyone who is pregnant. But that doesn't mean that I am willing to abandon the health and well being of the women who are affected by these problems. That is the same attitude that you take with the washing hands stuff -- yes, modern medicien reduced infectiosn severely -- but by more than washing hands, I should add -- but that doesn't mean that the other very severe problems went away.

What interventions do doctors do that are harmful or unneccesary? If you are going to contend that doctors are harmful to pregnant women, then I suggest that you provide some evidence.

Midwives cannot handle serious medical problems in anything other than a first aid basis. I am well versed in first aid and can and have saved peoples lives by stablizing them until a real doctor could arive -- but that in no way makes me a doctor. Any honest, competant midwife would tell you the same thing.

It is a fact that hundreds to thousands of women each year who would have previously been damaged permantly or killed by pregnancy avoid those perfectly "natural" fates. I, for one, consider that a good thing, natrual or not.

There are midwives and there are nurse midwives licensed by the state. Nurse Midwives have advanced practitioner degrees. They should not be treated with the same fear and suspicion that comes across in your post. Many people deliver at home. It is a personal decision as is birthing method or pain control during labor. No one who is high risk is permitted to deliver at home.

Pregnancy is not an illness. I understand that your perspective is that it is a medical condition, not everyone agrees including many in the health care field. This change in perspective has given us Fathers in the delivery room, refusal of episotomies, no more enemas before labor and more acceptance of alternative birthing methods.

If you are curious about unnecessary procedures during delivery, look up C-section, and episiotomy to start.

Even the insurance companies think that's too much.

Look, I'm not saying a high-risk pregnancy should not have medical intervention. I'm just saying that a lot of "intervention" is unnecessary. In my initial post, I mentioned a book called "The American Way of Birth" that looks at how the medical system has tried to "standardize" giving birth - forcing most women into situations that are unnecessary.

If a woman goes into labor, she's going to give birth whether a doctor is there or not (and my mother did it when the doctor wasn't in the room, so the "put her under" thinking she wouldn't know.) But the majority of normal pregnancies could be handled in a much more thoughtful way.

If you think I'm so wrong, talk to someone at Kaiser Pemanente where a woman with a low risk pregnancy never even sees a doctor - just midwives and nurse practitioners.

on women's health. My ex husband's mother died giving birth to his sister. That was back in the the 1930s. So I thought that things are so much better today, then my daughter developed HELLP Syndrome in her first pregnancy. Luckily her water broke and she went to the hospital. Her bloodwork showed that her liver was breaking down. An emergency C section was done. I don't know, but perhaps her paternal grandmother had had HELLP Syndrome, too, and it went undetected.

IT was a scary experience for all of us.

I'm finding reports of only one death out of 11-13K procedures. Childbirth is more dangerous. This is the organization blogger referenced-

snip>
Appalled at the exorbitant procedure fees and upon discovering that their main abortionist wasn't a licensed physician, the women of JANE learned to perform illegal abortions themselves. Eventually, the underground collective performed over 12,000 safe, affordable abortions. Word of the illegal alternative was spread through word-of-mouth, cryptic advertisements, and even by members of Chicago's police, clergy, and medical establishment.

Little remains to document the organization's clandestine existence. Most of JANE's records were destroyed to protect the participants, leaving the women themselves to tell their stories. JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE utilizes in-depth interviews, archival footage, and the few remaining personal effects to bare witness and illuminate this once-hidden refuge.

JANE was comprised of a cross-section of the political community of the early 1970s. They included members of the National Organization of Women, student activists, housewives, and mothers - a diverse group that shared one conviction – that access to safe and affordable abortion was every woman's right. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE powerfully documents a group of courageous women who were willing to translate their politics into action by providing safety and dignity to women of all backgrounds.

With the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973, JANE gradually disbanded. By then these ordinary women had assisted thousands of other women from all walks of life: matrons and teenagers, radicals and government wives.

http://www.fwhc.org/jane.htm

and it made a powerful statement. I was very encouraged to learn from her post that there was an underground in the Chicago area, I believe, called "Jane" that provided abortions without a single loss of life. Women are ready to take care of each other.

That should be said.

I'm sure were i a teenage girl in need of an abortion,
i would have already read all the websites with
the instructions like this:

http://www.sisterzeus.com/Hsp1shlp.htm

Gosh, its too bad a comprehensive website does not
exist with an expert system to explain the safest
home method given the period.

Doctors are not trustworthy, and we're back to the
19th century where healthcare is "buyer beware".

If the fundies have anything to learn, it's the dangerous side of life. By showing the "worst case" scenario, perhaps it will make some people think more carefully about wiping RvW from the lawbooks. We've been talking for years about how it would go if RvW were overturned, and about how many young women would die as a result, and the fundies have shaken it off as poppycock. Seeing it in black and white, and every other color might rattle enough of them to reconsider. I doubt it, but reality has to make some of them wake up sooner than later.

The RightWingers are going to go SpinNuts.:crazy:

either.

Its a pretty instructive guide written for someone setting up an underground clinic.

I noticed that most of the flaming/appalled reactions came from men. Of course.

There was this one guy who went on and on about how his wife was pregnant from a rape when he met her, and if she had chosen to abort, he wouldn't have a wonderful (step/adopted?) son now. As some other blogger pointed out, surely his son must apprectiate him telling the entire internet that he is the product of a rape. Father of the year. Indeed.

You mean he actually made her carry the baby to term AND raise it as her own? Now that's real torture for both the mother and the child. Every single time she looks at him, she sees the face of the man who raped her.

What kind of fucking asshole would do that to his wife?

have to deal with it.

Jerk.

Sometimes they do, but not always. I think you have to take it at the right time. The earlier the better.

http://mollysavestheday.blogspot.com/2006/02/for-women-of-south-dakota-abortion.html

Interesting Posts

It's amazing...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=690817&mesg_id=690817

.... information of any and all kinds should be available to anyone who wishes to know it. This is what the internet is good for!

The only thing that she should be warned about is to put it on a foreign server and not one in the U.S. With the current assholes in charge, they might cook up some inane reason to close her site down. If it's on a foreign server, she should be more safe.