Abortion in the boonies
My son, a long time guitarist, has recently taken up playing the banjo. What a fun instrument it is. It immediately reminds me of Deliverance, "Duelling Banjos" and the American boonies. Talking of the boonies, I see the great state of Oklahoma has just passed a new law requiring any girl requesting an abortion first to undergo an ultrasound examination, either abdominal or transvaginal. The decision as to whether it is transvaginal is the doctor’s, not the patient’s.
“For first-trimester abortions, the fetus is so small, you don’t get a good look unless you put in a vaginal probe. So, Oklahomans are forcing them to do that so the women can see the body parts better. You can have some 14 year old girl who got raped by her uncle Billy Bob, and she will still have to have that vaginal probe put up her an hour before the procedure. To me, it’s unconscionable. It’s all about shaming you". Dr Kathryn Brewer.Abortion is still legal in Oklahoma, but a tranche of legislation has introduced endless rules designed to restrict access to abortion and also (deliberately or not) to humiliate women who choose to have an abortion.
So here's to the victims of incest and rape: we know you've been through a tough time, but we're going to need to stick one more unnecessary piece of medical equipment inside your vagina, and subject you to a humiliating procedure when all you want to do is move past the traumatic experience and get on with life. Oh! Oh look! See that fetus? Now, where did you want to schedule your abortion?Meanwhile, in the intellectual boonies of British politics, the appalling Nadine Dorries seems to be using the Oklahoma legislation as a template for her mendacious campaign to restrict abortion. If her amendment to reduce the foetal age limit to 20 weeks is passed, she will not stop there. See her “Time to slow down abortion” campaign.
(Government has no place between my legs)
I would like to chain Nad to a cinema seat and make her watch endless films of terrified teenage girls dying in agony from perforated uteruses after botched backstreet abortions.
Labels: abortion, Duelling banjos, Nadine Dorries, Oklahoma, the boonies
33 Comments:
Uggh!
The Republic of Gilead is upon us.
Your blog is now too political.
You had my support when exposing the stupidities of NuLab's mis-management of the NHS. I applauded your accolades. Blogger of the Year was it? Bravo - then.
You have now totally lost the plot. Stop being a GP, and run for parliament as an independent.
Goodbye.
Nadine Dorries is an innumerate inmbecile with no understanding of societal change, population, nor self determination.
"There were 86,000 abortions a year in 1970 and 200,000 now."
Ok fine, but there were also more than 5million fewer people living in the UK. Fewer of them were fertile women.
According to the Actuary Dept,the UK population is officially projected to rise from 60.6 million (mid-2006) to 77 million in 2050 - that's more than another two Londons.
Encouraging unwanted pregnancies is a BAD idea, we are short on resources for the wanted children as is.
Encouraging personal responsibility and effective contraception is a GOOD thing, until we are better at it then supporting women through difficult choices about their own bodies and lives is non-negotiable.
"Four months, three weeks, two days" would serve as at least a sort of substitute for said cinematic spectacle.
Let us hope that the instincts of the Labour party keep abortion legal and unrestricted.
Why chain her to a cinema seat? Send her to nations where abortion is illegal. Ideally a one-way ticket.
Second Rachel's description of the abysmal Nadine Dorries. Though I would add the word "dishonest".
I have argued on some of the science blogs that Ms Dorries' persistent misquoting of the statistics on survival of premature infants meant she must either be a fool (who couldn't understand them) or a liar (who could but chose to lie about them to further her idological agenda).
The near-universal consensus on the science blogs was that she is both.
Terminations are a desperately sad thing in many cases, but the way to reduce the number is (as has been said ad nauseam, but is opposed by Nadine and her religious fringe buddies) to have better sex education, and better education and social provision all round.
Well, it seems that Nadine has convinced many senior Conservatives to sign up to the campaign, including David Cameron and Michael Howard. So I reckon Crippen will be voting Labour again, despite his rantings about Gordon Brown and NuLabour.
Has anyone noticed the resemblance?
Nadine Dorries MP
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lincolnshire/7393835.stm
A cardboard cutout nurse
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.page&personID=121187
Rachel is a worry if she believes that abortion is the answer to the UK' s overpopulation. Yes England's population is projected to rise to over 70 million but that is solely because of immigration from the E.U. and the developing world. England's indigenous population figure is projected to fall significantly, and is well below replacement.They are the ones haveing the abortions.Have a read of yesterday's Sunday Times,"The population explosion on Europe's doorstep".
No wonder Dr Crippen supports Obama. They share the same opinion of working-class Americans (bitter, clinging to guns and religion), who live in the 'Boonies', defined as outside of New York City, Chicago, and the Left Coast.
"I would like to chain Nad to a cinema seat and make her watch endless films of terrified teenage girls dying in agony from perforated uteruses after botched backstreet abortions".
I think that sort of anecdote is a tad unfair - in the era your extreme scenario (rarely) happened, such women rarely had access to contraception and faced condemnation and possibly poverty/abandonment on a massive scale compared with today when she would have far more support.
You might just as appropriately suggest Ms Dorries watch people with terminal conditions attempt botched suicides, were she to equally campaign against euthanasia.
She's entitled to her view. And I'd share the feeling that aborting a healthy 20+ week foetus of a healthy mother is something a civilised society should not be doing.
Have you not had patients with post-abortion stress/regrets/fertility problems? I have. If you haven't, perhaps you should go to a cinema and listen to some of them?
Dr Delilah
"Abortion is now being used as a form of contraception"
I HATE this BS. The only people who could possibly say such a thing, it seems to me, are the ones who have never had (or will never need to have, i.e. are men) an abortion. Who on Earth would rather go through an abortion than use a condom? Please.
(And even if it were true: surely if someone would rather have an abortion because they're too lazy/too embarrassed/too ill-educated to deal with contraception, they're absolutely the LAST candidates one would pick for responsible child-rearing.)
I heartily agree with something Dr Crippen (IIRC) said a while back on this topic: late abortions are awful, absolutely, but there would be a whole lot fewer of them if a) contraception advice, and social attitudes to contraception, were improved, and b) access to abortion facilities was a speedier process, so that those who want or need abortions can get them over with.
Off topid I know, I wasnt going to leave a comment but the required word verification code is just too good - fuqku.
Brilliant
Nadine Dorries, a supporter of the right to choose?
Hmm... she doesn't sound much like one here, and I quote:
'She said: "If a baby feels pain as part of a barbaric abortion process - which is what happens post-20 weeks - and if we know that baby could live if it was allowed to be born, then there comes the point when that baby has rights which are of equal parity to the mother's."'
So disreputable she is, then.
On a related note, did anyone watch last night's 'Dispatches'?
""Abortion is now being used as a form of contraception"
I HATE this BS. The only people who could possibly say such a thing, it seems to me, are the ones who have never had (or will never need to have, i.e. are men) an abortion. Who on Earth would rather go through an abortion than use a condom? Please.
(And even if it were true: surely if someone would rather have an abortion because they're too lazy/too embarrassed/too ill-educated to deal with contraception, they're absolutely the LAST candidates one would pick for responsible child-rearing.)"
Of course abortion is a recognised means of family planning in this country. You are pregnant, you don't want to be, you have an abortion, family planned!
I hate BS as well but not the same as you. The majority of abortions are done for social reasons and convenience. That is a fact. Let's get rid of the pretence that it is something else. Let's get rid of the mockery of the Abortion Act at the moment and allow social abortions up to a limit and medically indicated abortions up to a limit.
"Nadine Dorries, a supporter of the right to choose?"
Yes, up to a maximum of 20 weeks. Fact.
Bollocks.
Nadine Dorries does not like abortion. She wants it made illegal. Reducing the limit is a bitty baby step towards her eventual end-goal of the outlaw of abortion.
No, she hasn't said this in public, or in private as far as I know. I make this conclusion from her twisting of the facts, her emotional and alarmist language, her emotive images and her shrill and shrieking parade of the one or two babies pre 24 weeks that have lived as a rally for her cause.
The small print tagged on the end ("oh, by the way, I totally support your right to choose. Go girls! Right on (you baby-murdering witches. oops, must delete that bit").
If Nadine pushes this through, I feel sure she'll be making noises soon about pushing an 18 or 16 week limit through. And so on and so forth. Luckily I think most MPs are uneasy about this vote, let alone lowering the limit still further.
Woops! Meant to say
"The small print tagged on the end ("oh, by the way, I totally support your right to choose. Go girls! Right on (you baby-murdering witches. oops, must delete that bit") does not convince me, and should not convince anyone, of her commitment to the right to choose"
:(((
Anon @ 4.48pm said
"Nadine Dorries, a supporter of the right to choose?"
Yes, up to a maximum of 20 weeks. Fact.
I think that is assertion rather than fact.
However, on a blog on the Spectator last October here Nadine Dorries said (in the comments below her article)
You are right about one thing, I do want to go lower than 20 weeks - I would settle for the European average of 13 weeks, but would prefer 9
Tim Ireland has a collection of links to last night's Dispatches in his article here
Ms Dorries stars in part 5 with a slightly odd fundamentalist lady.
The odd fundamentalist lady (alan 4:48), who clammed up when challenged last night on her views re: Allah being Satan. Has written most of Mad Nad's motion on reducing the abortion limit for her. So now there are two crazy, swivel eyed loons involved.
Nadine writes in her jauntily titled '20 reasons for 20 weeks'.
'nearly two thirds of the public and more than three quarters of women support a reduction in the 24 week upper age limit.'
My query is who comprises members of the public? Did Nadine ask the Women's Catholic Guild's view and leave it at that?
No need Dr C to plonk Nadine in front of a film, as she is very fond of telling the public and, women, that she herself has been a nurse and has been present at late abortions. (I wonder if she behaved in a professional manner while attending these?).
Good Lord, I thought I'd left this crap behind when I moved to the UK feom Ireland 10 years ago...
"Yes, up to a maximum of 20 weeks. Fact."
Prague. Nice city. Shame about some of the immigrants, though.
(More likely to be a) fact.
The legislation failed Dr. Crippen.
I must point out Dr. Crippen. Your own abortion law is more restrictive than Oklahoma, or any other State in the Union.
Even if the ultrasound bill passed and were signed into law, Dr. Crippen......the patient still had the option to simply say "that's nice, but I want the abortion anyway".
In the UK, unless the law changed, you need a two-physician opinion that the pregnancy posed a threat to maternal life/health.
If the woman looked at the sonogram, told the doctor she wanted the abortion anyway, for her own convenience, and the doctor did the abortion, that would be a violation of UK law, would it not?
.......arf
The legislation failed Dr. Crippen.I must point out Dr. Crippen. Your own abortion law is more restrictive than Oklahoma, or any other State in the Union.Even if the ultrasound bill passed and were signed into law, Dr. Crippen......the patient still had the option to simply say "that's nice, but I want the abortion anyway".In the UK, unless the law changed, you need a two-physician opinion that the pregnancy posed a threat to maternal life/health.If the woman looked at the sonogram, told the doctor she wanted the abortion anyway, for her own convenience, and the doctor did the abortion, that would be a violation of UK law, would it not?.......arf
+++++
Hi Arf
I'm glad it failed. But there is still a lot on the statute book that is restrictive.
As regards the UK law, with respect, you are wrong. We have abortion on demand. Yes, you need two docs to sign but that is now a trivial formality. No one who signs even bothers to tick which box they are signing under. No one looks at the forms.
You may or may not approve of abortion on demand but, believe me, that is what we have in this country
John
>>You may or may not approve of abortion on demand but, believe me, that is what we have in this country.
Funny, Dr. Crippen......you need to tell these people about it:
http://tinyurl.com/4n86fx
Links to the Telegraph. Somebody in your country thinks you do NOT have abortion on demand, and that there is something wrong with having to sneak around your Abortion Act of 1967.
Whether or not you enforce your laws is another matter. The fact is the laws exist in your country. The fact is, there is less restriction on abortion in Oklahoma than there is in the UK.
Or try plain old Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law
I don't support that law either, but the fact remains, even if the sonogram were required, you would still have legal abortion on demand in Oklahoma, and you would not have it in the UK. There are groups in your own country that want to change that, just Google "abortion on request".
This post has been removed by the author.
Under the existing Abortion Act, drawn up in 1967, a termination can take place only after two doctors formally agree that the procedure is medically necessary.
++++++++
Technically you are of course correct, you need two doctors to agree. If you look back in medical notes, in the first year or so of the Steel Act, there was all sorts of rigmarole even, for example, suggesting getting a psychiatrist as one of the doctors and so on and so forth. Then, rapidly, everyone realised that it was a charade. Terminations are safer than pregnancy and so ALL terminations are justifiable under the act without further thought. It would be misleading in the extreme to suggest to those who do not know that the two signature requirement prevents abortion. It does not. It is a classic example of fudge.
I covered this in detail in “The Abortion Charade”
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2006/12/abortion-charade-and-joffe-bill.html
and have included a copy of the “green form” that doctors have to sign. Take a look at it.
Go to any abortion clinic and two signatures will be produced for you without hesitation and without much in the way of counselling.
I agree entirely that it would be good to get rid of the requirement but it is still a charade.
John
Under the existing Abortion Act, drawn up in 1967, a termination can take place only after two doctors formally agree that the procedure is medically necessary.
++++++++
Technically you are of course correct, you need two doctors to agree. If you look back in medical notes, in the first year or so of the Steel Act, there was all sorts of rigmarole even, for example, suggesting getting a psychiatrist as one of the doctors and so on and so forth. Then, rapidly, everyone realised that it was a charade. Terminations are safer than pregnancy and so ALL terminations are justifiable under the act without further thought. It would be misleading in the extreme to suggest to those who do not know that the two signature requirement prevents abortion. It does not. It is a classic example of fudge.
I covered this in detail in “The Abortion Charade”
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2006/12/abortion-charade-and-joffe-bill.html
and have included a copy of the “green form” that doctors have to sign. Take a look at it.
Go to any abortion clinic and two signatures will be produced for you without hesitation and without much in the way of counselling.
I agree entirely that it would be good to get rid of the requirement but it is still a charade.
John
Dr. Crippen that's my point. I agree.....as best I can without actually practicing in the UK.....it seems everyone ignores the law. So it's effectively "abortion on request".
In the USA it is literally abortion on request by the letter of the law.
What would happen if someone wanted to make an issue of it? Got a patient coached to give the right story "It's for my convenience and not for my health" in so many words, said it to the doctors, who then sign off the lie.
Actually, in a country the size of the UK, I'm surprised it hasn't happened. I know it would happen in the USA......would have been tested just like that before the ink was dry on the abortion law.
Am I "paranoid"? Heck, Dr. Crippen, someone thinks that's a potential problem, it's not hard to find the organizations in your own country who feel the same way.
......arf
Dr. Crippen I don't know when you were in Chicago. If you were there before the Roe decision in 1973, abortion was illegal in Illinois.
On the other hand, the law was widely ignored. Gee, ignoring the law in Chicago, what a surprise.......
Read about the organization "Jane" in Chicago, a series of safehouses, some just a few blocks from where you lived.
http://www.cwluherstory.com/CWLUFeature/TribTheater.html
They were very quietly doing abortions. They say they were done technically very well, and morbidity and mortality as good as physicians. The police knew about it, and generally looked the other way.
Ao....abortion illegal on the books in Chicago, but done anyway. If you wanted one, just ask around and you'd get one.
So does that mean Chicago had abortion on demand?
........arf
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