Welcome to Litsy!

This book will enrage you. It gives you a look at what no access is like in El Salvador for wealthy and poor womxn, and how Oklahoma became a red, anti-choice state. The first chapter is about Beatriz Garcia, who was a victim of the cruelty of El Salvador‘s abortion ban. Highly recommended.

There are serious long-term costs associated with teen motherhood, for the mother and child, and for society at large. Teen mothers are disproportionately likely to drop out of school. They are more likely than older mothers to raise their families in poverty, with negative consequences for the entire family‘s health, education, and long-term stability.

How can a woman be prosecuted for illegal abortion, if abortion is legal in the United States? The answer lies in the fact that we regulate abortion, as we do all health procedures. Abortion is only legal when it is performed in compliance with these regulations.

The cruelty is the point. Slowly chipping away.

In 2007, in Mato Grosso do Sol,a remote state in Brazil, officials subpoenaed ten thousand medical records from two decades of practice at an abortion clinic and sentenced three hundred women to perform community service for having committed the crime of abortion.

Abortion is not a crime!!!

If women already are opting to attempt to end their pregnancies on their own, surely they will continue to do so in greater numbers if abortion becomes illegal and thus even harder to access. And as greater numbers of women attempt to self-abort, we will see an increase in the number of women seeking emergency care after self-abortion. Any effort to enforce laws against abortion will focus on what happens in the emergency room.

For any woman with a smart phone and money, illegal abortion today is far less risky than it was in 1972. That is to say, the risks of illegal abortion very by class, age, education level, geographic location, and race.

Fight for reproductive justice!

Even today, when abortion is legal in all fifty states, women travel in order to avoid local abortion restrictions.

The Supreme Court‘s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade barred states from making it a crime to have an abortion before viability. It left states free to regulate abortion, though, just as they would any other health procedure. And they did.

Abortion on demand, free and without apology! Repeal all the laws!

Like western Europe with its child allowances, the United States has a fertility policy. We know how much it costs to have a baby; we know how much it costs to raise a child. And for the most part, we refuse to subsidize that cost. Having a baby in the United States is expensive. And the government is comfortable with the high price point. 🙄🤬🖕🏻

In many countries worldwide, including most of Western Europe, governments pay families a monthly allowance for each child they are raising. Day-care is affordable, as is healthcare. Both are government subsidized. Workers are guaranteed several months paid maternity leave. In some countries, mothers receive a year off from work, with pay, after having a baby.

⬆️This is also what repro justice looks like! US, get a move on!

There is no paid maternity leave in the United States. And there‘s no subsidized day care. Yet the majority of women in the country must work in order to support their households. These policies reflect a position that the costs of caring for children are a private responsibility, rather than a public obligation.

⬆️This is also part of reproductive justice!

When I asked whether they would support a complete ban on abortion, telling them briefly about Beatriz‘s case, Chisko answered without hesitation: “I learned early on that if a woman is healthy enough to get pregnant, she‘s healthy enough to go to term.”

What the fuck?! This is typical language from fake clinics. 🙄🖕🏻🤬

We opened Rose Home in 1986; we had a twelve-year-old girl in foster care, gang raped. She was pushed by the state to have an abortion. She didn‘t want it, so I helped arrange to take her into federal jurisdiction, where a federal judge gave Birth Choice custody of her. We brought her home and eventually we helped her get money so she could be reunited with her mom and move to a safer neighborhood. (Here, the author cringes at the manipulation)

Motherhood is really expensive. What‘s interesting about the costs of motherhood is that most of the costs actually could be reduced, if a government chose to do so.

Hello!!! This too, is part of reproductive justice!

We already had a law saying life begins at conception. Why did we need one saying ‘Constitutional rights attach at conception‘? It‘s not possible to give the unborn the right to vote, so it seemed redundant to me. —former OK House Speaker.

Ya think, you idiot?!

One of the questions I asked everyone I met was what they thought would happen in OK if Roe v Wade fell. Ryan Kiesel, who had served ten years in office fighting for reproductive rights, had a cynical response: The right doesn‘t want to win. They don‘t want Roe to fall; it‘s their political touchstone; it avoids the need to talk about anything else; if that‘s taken away from them, they‘re going to have to deal with splits in coalition.

I was troubled by his moral vision, and, even more, by his willingness to use his office to impose it on others. He has given little thought to the question of what might happen if the agenda actually became law. Indeed, I was struck by the lack of details in Smith‘s vision for what might happen if abortion became a crime. 🙄🖕🏻🤬

Mike Reynolds, former OK State Rep, Republican, believes life begins at conception. He grieves that so many oral contraceptive users don‘t understand that the pill doesn‘t merely prevent ovulation, but also stops a fertilized egg from implanting. I explained that the vast majority of hormonal contraceptives do work by suppressing ovulation so that the egg never ripens and there is nothing to fertilize, but he dismissed my interruption. 🙄🖕🏻

The lucky ones have lawyers spending years undoing errors that led to convictions. But there‘s no way to undo the harm brought on by a state that took a woman in crisis, having arrived at a hospital hemorrhaging and in pain, given birth alone, lost a child, and treated her like a criminal. Ban abortion and that pattern will intensify; hospitals will increasingly become the site of a crime scene investigation, and poor women will be the suspects.

When abortion is illegal, it is unsafe. In El Salvador, scores of women die yearly from illegal abortions; they aren‘t the daughters of the elite, whose money helps them find safe, private ways to end unwanted pregnancies; they‘re the women living far from cities, in cinder-block homes with dirt floors, no running water; women who use coat hangers in the age of the Internet because they cannot afford to purchase abortion drugs online.

In El Salvador, having a child at age fourteen isn‘t simply a cause for shame in the eyes of a religious community; it also increases the odds of a life lived in crushing poverty, of marginal education and employment, of vulnerability to the violence and chaos that scores the lives of the poorest Salvadorans. Some, opt to kill themselves.

It is too painful to imagine what it feels like to go into labor suddenly, alone, far from the hospital. To be carried to the hospital, hemorrhaging and in pain, having lost the pregnancy. To arrive there only to be accused of killing your baby, by a state that never had evidence the baby was born alive, let alone that you intentionally killed it.

⬆️This is what criminalizing abortion looks like.

Each was serving a sentence of between 30-40 years; the majority were poor, uneducated, young; over a quarter were illiterate and hadn‘t made it past third grade. All experienced obstetrical complications at some point during their pregnancies, resulting in late miscarriages. They gave birth unattended; their newborns were stillborn or died shortly after birth; they bled so heavily that they sought care at a hospital, where they were arrested.

Christina Quintanilla unknowingly had a precipitous labor and delivery in her home due to ongoing gastric problems. She was bleeding, cuffed and arrested for homicide of a fetus beyond 7 weeks gestation, and sentenced to thirty years in prison. Two years in, a lawyer helped her get out but her name was not cleared.

⬆️This is what criminalizing abortion looks like! A fucking nightmare!

In case after case, the Salvadoran criminal justice system has wrongly convicted poor women of homicide when the only evidence against them was that they had a late miscarriage. 🤬🤬🤬

“How does it feel as a doctor to see a ten-year old girl, pregnant as the result of incest?” I asked.
“I‘d say it was worth it to allow her to have that baby. You can have a difficult situation, but as long as you‘re supported, you will continue to go forward. You‘ll be able to overcome any obstacle.”

You, sir, are one sick fuck. 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🤬

In El Salvador, the law is not applied to everyone, but rather only to certain individuals. In private hospitals, things are done where no one really knows what happened except for the doctor and the patient. The story of how abortion is prosecuted in El Salvador begins with this reality: doctors at public hospitals call the police and poor women are prosecuted.

Here, {in 🇸🇻} the right to confidentiality comes with a price tag. Patients at the private hospitals buy their privacy—no one ever reveals their secrets.

Herein lies the inevitable challenge for abortion law enforcement: in the absence of physical evidence such as trauma to the uterus, there is no reliable way to distinguish a woman experiencing complications from an illegal abortion from a woman who has suffered a miscarriage.

Republicans want to punish womxn for having a miscarriage, having periods, and using birth control. ‘Pro-life‘ womxn vote AGAINST themselves!!!

The medical profession long has been clear that its job is to heal, rather than to work as agents of the police.

So provide abortion healthcare to all peoplx that need it! The law has no place in a uterus or any other body part.

There are serious problems with using doctors to enforce abortion laws. In reporting their patients, doctors break the law and violate the oldest of ethical principles—patient confidentiality.

A womxn never has to talk about her abortion(s) unless she‘s wants to. Mind your business!

Three things occurred when abortion was outlawed in El Salvador: 1) abortion remained commonplace and rates did not drop even though it was illegal 2) doctors became involved in law enforcement 3) innocent women were accused and convicted of abortion-related crimes. The United States can expect the same.

Sometimes, I feel desperate in all of my body, and I don‘t want to be alive. —Beatriz Garcia

I could spend pages exploring what‘s wrong with the assumption that, by having sex, a woman waived her fundamental rights to protect her own health and safety, should she become pregnant.

Womxn will not be punished for their sexuality, nor for failure of contraception, nor for an unwanted pregnancy, nor for a severe fetal anomaly!

“I want to live,” she said quietly. “I beg from my heart that you let me.”

Beatriz Garcia pleaded with her Salvadoran government to allow her to terminate the dangerous pregnancy that was causing her so much suffering.

Two puzzling things stand out in the assemblage of experts who made up the IML‘s panel. First, there was no one who specialized in high-risk pregnancy. Second, was Fortune Magnana‘s emphasis on religious diversity. Why did he think it important to include Catholics, Masons, evangelicals? Both indicate how the politics of abortion shaped legal proceedings in Beatriz‘s case.

El Salvador forced Beatriz to wait until her life was in immediate danger before allowing her to terminate her pregnancy. The law increased chances that she would suffer permanent damage to her vital organs; it forced her to endure months of physical pain and psychological distress. And all for the sake of a fetus that everyone agreed would never live.

RIP Beatriz Garcia💔

In 1998, El Salvador passed a law banning abortion under all circumstances. Until that point, abortion was illegal except in cases involving risks to maternal life, severe fetal anomaly, and rape or incest. It was one of the final acts of the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet when leaving office in 1988.