Recently in Abortion Category
It will not come as surprise to most of you that I am Pro Choice - and have been for as long as I can remember. I rarely talk about my beliefs about abortion when I am wearing my work hat because I don't want to offend anyone or get into a debate.
And I don't want to have a debate about abortion now - I think we all agree that what happened in Philly shouldn't have happened. Period. I have no interest in changing your belief about abortion, so please don't try to change mine.
I first learned about abortion when I was about seven. I was digging through a pile of Ms. magazines looking for the "Stories for Free Children" section, when I came across this photograph of Geraldine Santoro dead on a hotel room floor.
It was scary to me to see this and for years I was haunted by her image. I don't know now if I knew what had happened to her, but knowing Ms. Magazine, I was probably able to figure it out.
Fast forward to my early 20's - I worked for the YWCA at the University of Washington's Abortion and Birth Control Referral Service telephone hot line. I helped women (and sometimes men) learn about the abortion procedure, birth control, adoption and where they could get safe, affordable and respectful health care.
This lead me to volunteering as a patient advocate at the now closed Aradia Women's Health Center. One of the first and best women's health care and abortion clinics in the Seattle area.
My job was to counsel women before, during and after their abortion procedure. This work was phenomenally rewarding and healing for me because I was able to give them the help, care and kindness Gerri Santoro didn't receive.
The care we provided was as it should be - respectful, open, calm, kind and up to the highest medical standards. The complete opposite of the situation in Philadelphia. When I think about these people's choice to take advantage of women at such a vulnerable time I am as shocked as I was when I first saw that picture of Gerri.
How could they be so cold as to torture women who were already desperate? The vast majority of abortions are preformed early in the first trimester - many of the women they treated were in their second trimester. I can't understand how they could provide this service in this way and justify their methods.
My fear is this gruesome situation will lead people to think this is the state of abortion providers and clinics in the United States. Fortunately, it's not and will never be, unless, of course, the law of the land is changed. If abortion becomes illegal in the US, I fear this situation portends where women will end up when they decide to terminate their pregnancies.
Today is the anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Whether you are Pro Choice or Pro Life, mark this day by telling your children about birth control and condoms. Make sure they know pregnancy is preventable. And tell them you expect them to wait to have sex for as long as possible. Regardless of our beliefs, we owe it to our kids, the women who were tortured at this clinic and to Gerri, to do all we can to help them avoid an unplanned pregnancy.
Great news from the Guttmacher Institute – the teen abortion rate has declined a whole bunch since 1974.
It’s dropped from 33% in 1974 to 17% in 2004. It took 30 years, but progress is progress, right?
The reason for the drop? Increased use of birth control and the availability of more effective methods. And for the record, the drop started before we had federally funded Abstinence Only programs, so we were already on the right track.
The only bad news in this good news is Black and Hispanic women obtain abortions at a rate 3 to 5 times higher than that of white women. Throw in a good dose of poverty, and the numbers increase.
Historically, these women are poorer and have less access to healthcare than the majority of white women – even white teenagers.
We need to think about what we can do to help young and poor women gain access to birth control. Voting for a candidate who sees the connections between poverty, access to birth control and abortion, is probably a good placed to start.
