Blog for Choice Day

It's blog for choice day again, and I'm hoping this is the year blog for choice day actually inspires me to maintain this blog.

This years theme is "trust women." Now to me, the idea that we should trust women to make their own healthcare decisions is a given, and I'm sure a lot of people feel this way. But is that the way we deliver healthcare to women in the US?

I have the unique perspective of working as a nurse on a labor, delivery and postpartum unit in a large university hospital. In addition to caring for birthing mothers and their babies, we also care for high-risk antepartum women and we provide abortions for fetal anomalies or if the mother's life is in danger. To be clear, it is my personal belief that women should have access to abortion services no matter what her circumstances, but the stories I am about to relate here are composites of my own personal experiences.

I have seen pregnancies that put mothers' lives at risk continued because the did not want to terminate, and have seen some of these same women almost die in an attempt to carry their pregnancy to term when all of their doctors recommended that they terminate the pregnancy.

I have also cared for women transferred from smaller hospitals with babies with lethal fetal anomalies because their hospital couldn't, or wouldn't, terminate the pregnancy. In addition to grieving the loss of a very much wanted child, they feared the scrutiny of their peers if they told them they terminated their pregnancy. It is part of my job to reassure them that the choice they made is okay.

What I find both fascinating and infuriating is that in anti-choice circles, the woman in my first example is a hero, but the second woman is either a. selfish or b. somehow unable to grasp the enormity of her decision. I work with nurses who would happily care for one but not the other. But to me, they're just both women who need care and support.

I have seen both women make extraordinary sacrifices, the former risking their lives because of their conviction and the latter cradling their lifeless, tiny baby with tears in their eyes, grieving the loss of their child.

I just hope it's a choice I never have to make. And I wish it weren't restricted to the point that it is. In my state, there is a mandatory waiting period and mandatory reading material for any women having an abortion including information on adoption and prenatal care, no matter what the circumstances. Because apparently women and their care providers cannot be trusted to make this decision on their own; the state has to tell them , " you know you're stopping a beating heart, don't you?" It's a paternalistic slap in the face.

I also know their are women for whom abortion is an easy choice, and even a relief. On several occasions, that would have been me had I found myself pregnant when I thought I might be. Choice is also restricted by access and social circumstance, and with the current health care reform legislation, it has the potential to be further restrictive.

Abortion is a medical procedure, the need for which is best determined by a woman and her healthcare provider. Restricting access to abortion services is just as morally reprehensible as restricting access to open heart surgery, which also happens, but without the state mandated moralizing.

When I think about trusting women, I also think about how that relates to care of women in normal pregnancy and childbirth. I am off to a Planned Parenthood benefit though, so this will have to be the first in a two part series.

Stay tuned.

Read this interview

H/T Feministing

Dr. Wicklund says it better than I ever could.

I don't use the word lightly, but today's abortion providers: physicians, nurses, clinic coordinators and volunteers, are heroes. They certainly aren't in it for the money. Corrected for inflation, the cost of an abortion today is about half of what it was in 1973; in other words, the cost really hasn't changed (but is still is high enough to keep the procedure out of reach for many women, especially as the Hyde Amendment continues to prohibit the use of federal funds for abortion services unless the women's life is in danger).

And their numbers are dwindling; according to the National Abortion Federation 87% of US counties lack abortion providers, and that number jumps to 97% in non-metropolitan counties. Three US states also lack providers. The providers that do still practice often have to split their time between clinics, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles to provide the most common surgical procedure in the US.

Why so few clinics? Clinics face opposition from the moment they attempt to move into a town; even construction workers face intimidation, even though these clinics provide essential primary reproductive health care to both men and women.

Dr. Wicklund makes a point that is both compelling and courageous when she asserts that ob-gyns and family practice physicians have an obligation to provide abortion services as part of their services rather than referring them to a system of clinics that is overburdened, underfunded and so sparsely located that few women even have access to them.

While the work clinics do, both the clinical services they provide and their advocacy for womens' health, is necessary and important, placing the whole burden provision of abortion services squarely on their shoulders is undue. It increases their workload and makes them an easy target for anti-choice protesters.

So read the interview, then read the book (I plan to). Then, if you know an abortion provider, thank them for me.

Blogging for Choice: A Day Late

I've always been better able to write when presented with a topic. As such, blog for choice day provided an excellent opportunity to get my new feminist blog up and running.

But I'm a procrastinator. So here goes, a day late, but better late than never, eh?

A little background: I'm white, middle class, with a bachelor's degree, so yeah, I write from a position of privilege, but I try to maintain awareness of said privilege.

With that in mind, I am pro-choice.

I am pro-choice because:

I recognize that reproductive choice means so much more than just the freedom to choose abortion. In it's purest form, reproductive choice is the freedom of women's bodies from state control: Freedom from forced pregnancy and forced sterilization, and everything in between.

I, like a couple of my favorite feminist bloggers believe that access to safe, legal abortion, is a moral good, just like access to life saving heart surgery. It places trust to manage reproductive capability in the hands of women, i.e. those who reproduce, which is where it should be.

Rape victims should not have to suffer to obtain medical care. Anti-choicers commonly claim to support exceptions to rape and incest in anti-abortion legislation. So, even with those exceptions, what do rape victims have to do to obtain abortion services? Do they have to go before a judge and relive the nightmare they've already experienced? Does their rape kit become evidence? Would judges be able to exercise "conscience clauses" similar to the ones exercised by physicians and pharmacists used to deny women contraception?

It is up to women and their doctors to decide which treatment or procedure is most appropriate on a case by case basis. The state has no business telling doctors they can't perform certain procedures when they are less invasive, and therefore, less risky than others.

When the rights of a fetus supersede the rights of a mother (in the biological sense), there are dangerous consequences.

When the rights of the state supersede the right of a mother (in a biological sense), there are dangerous consequences.

I don't want to be forced to conceive, forced to give birth, forced to undergo any medical or surgical procedures "for my own good" or for the good of my children.

I am pro-choice because my body is mine.