Welcome to Litsy!

Carol Joffe has been writing on the subject for quite some time. In this book she discusses the real cost of anti-choice fanatics on those providing care, and those seeking access to it. The chapter on Catholic hospitals is particularly disturbing. Highly recommended read.

Reducing the stigma of abortion is critical, because there will always be a need for abortion. Contraceptive failures will occur. Some will be unable to afford the most effective contraceptive methods. Wanted pregnancies will become unwanted, because of the pregnant woman‘s illness or a tragic turn in the health of her fetus or a change in social circumstances such as the breakup of a relationship or a devastating economic setback. And more.

Reproductive justice points out that as Indigenous women and women of color it is important to fight equally for (1) the right to have a child; (2) the right not to have a child; and (3) the right to parent the children we have, as well as to control our birthing options, such as midwifery. We fight for the necessary enabling conditions to realize these rights. This is in contrast to the singular focus on abortion by the pro-choice movement.

There aren‘t two different kinds of women sitting in our waiting room—women who have abortions and women who have babies. They‘re the same women at different times in their lives. 60% of abortion recipients already have children.

One of the reasons that European countries have such better indicators of reproductive health—fewer unintended pregnancies, lower infant mortality rates, and so on, are the National Healthcare Systems, which offer everyone routine preventive healthcare.

America, I‘m looking at you.

Lack of money for contraception is just one indication of a larger problem. Black women are less likely to have healthcare coverage and less likely to live in safe and clean neighborhoods than white women. Worse sexual and reproductive health outcomes—higher rates of unwanted pregnancies/STIs/low-birth-weight babies/ higher rates of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and other conditions.

We CAN and we MUST change this.

Every week, without fail, at least one patient tells me how mortified she was when her family physician or ob-gyn gave her the results of her pregnancy test, cheerfully congratulated her on the baby to come and immediately began setting her up for prenatal care without any consideration at all for how she might feel about it.

Dr. Poppema was astonished to hear the patient ask, “When are you going to use the steel ball with the knives on it?” The young woman went on to say that she had been told by a counselor at a CPC of such a steel ball with “tiny razorlike knives that would spin around in my uterus.”

OMG. Don‘t these same people say it‘s wrong to lie?

I‘ve heard stories of women whose partners or parents beat them if they discover them using birth control; flushing birth control pills down the toilet; poking holes in condoms; yanking out IUDs. The ability to use contraception is a struggle not only against poverty and right-wing lawmakers but also with their partners.

THINK before you ask, why didn‘t you use birth control?

Texas and several other states have reduced state spending for family planning and redirected these funds to crisis pregnancy centers, facilities that counsel against abortion, preach abstinence, and do not offer any education or services relating to contraception.

CPCs=fake clinics! Disinformation, emotional manipulation, lies, reproductive coercion, heavy religious setting, tax exempt, no hippa regulations, no actual doctors, no help. 🆘🆘🆘

Only in a society that provides what is now lacking in contemporary America—affordable housing, living wages, better child care, better domestic violence programs, and above all universal healthcare—would women and their children have a shot at a better life. Accessible and affordable contraception and abortion would make an enormous difference to women and to the children they already have.

Facts! 💯💯💯

Individual pharmacist and drug store chains began to refuse to fill prescriptions, claiming that EC was an abortifacient and it would violate their beliefs to agree to distribute this drug. Some pharmacists even began to refuse to fill prescriptions for regular oral contraception, on the same grounds. Some doctors have refused to offer assisted reproductive services to lesbian couples or single straight women.

Ectopic pregnancy is a true emergency. It‘s crazy that a woman might unknowingly...end up at a Catholic hospital with a life-threatening obstetric emergency and not be offered all medically reasonable treatments. Another physician was treating a patient 19 weeks pregnant who was in the process of a very prolonged miscarriage. The patient was already septic, and she had a temperature of 106°.

She was very early, 14 weeks. She came in…and there was a hand sticking out of the cervix. Clearly the membranes had ruptured and she was trying to deliver…there was a fetal heart rate…we called the ethics committee and they said, ‘Nope, can‘t do anything.‘ So we had to send her to University Hospital, 90 miles away.

What the fuck?! How terrifying and traumatic! Antis literally have no problem getting peoplx killed!!!

The Catholic Church‘s opposition to abortion is well-known, and no informed person would go to a Catholic hospital for an elective abortion. But what happens when pregnancies are life-threatening, as with ectopic pregnancies? They are the leading cause of first-trimester maternal mortality in the United States.

Anti choice people would rather let you die than remove them. They don‘t care.

Catholic hospitals (including secular ones involved in mergers) and their employees are bound by the guidelines within the Ethical & Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services. They prohibit abortion, sterilization, birth control, assisted reproduction, and the dispensation of emergency contraception.

I suggest you get another job then, because your job is to provide care.

When the patient was briefly admitted to the hospital before her scheduled abortion because of a flareup of her DVT, her obstetrician attempted to persuade her to continue this high-risk pregnancy and even made her take a tour of the newborns‘ nursery!

That‘s called reproductive coercion, and it is never okay!
Shown: one of our fanatic, uterus obsessed protestors: David Benrexi. Look at his Facebook. He‘s OBSESSED.

This is quite baffling to me: two courts found an adolescent too immature to decide on an abortion but mature enough to have a child?

A list of things an 11-year-old cannot do by law: buy a PG-13 movie ticket; buy a lottery ticket; buy cold medicine; buy a T-rated video game; drive a vehicle; vote. A list of things an 11-year-old is now required to do: carry out a full-term pregnancy 🤔🧐🤨

Informing the parents of a teenagers‘s pregnancy and intent to abort can lead to physical abuse or rejection from the house. Sometimes worse tragedies can result. She told me of several young women who swallowed whole bottles of quinine pills. A teenage patient who came to her clinic after a failed attempt at self-abortion: “She had burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn‘t even examine her because her vaginal tissue was so painful.”

To put the risk of abortion in perspective, let me say this: Be sure to buckle your seatbelt and drive carefully on the way to the clinic and back home. Your trip to and from the clinic in your car will probably be the most dangerous part of your abortion.

Facts! Don‘t fall for the ridiculous lies from the antis!

When the most extreme sectors of the anti-abortion movement experience a presidential administration that supports abortion rights, violent acts increase, and during the tenure of highly visible pro-life president, these acts decline.

What does this say about the Biden/Harris administration? We have a mass of individuals who don‘t believe they won the election, insane conspiracy theories such as QAnon, and a severe problem with white supremacy!

In 1992 when Bill Clinton became president, there was a considerable reduction in blockades and sieges at clinics because of new legislation, FACE (Freedom of Access to Clonic Entrances), which for the first time made impeding access to clinics a federal crime and resulted in jail sentences for offenders—something judges had often refused to impose.

•Despite this, prosecution still often fails to occur.

In most European countries, in contrast, more abortions take place in hospitals that are part of national healthcare systems, resulting in much lower levels of harassment.

America, I‘m looking at you.

Some of these hospitals were Catholic institutions, which forbid abortion and several other reproductive services in their facilities. Some were secular hospitals that had merged with Catholic facilities, an increasingly common situation that subjects them to Catholic directives on reproductive health care.

•Mergerwatch.org will tell you what‘s going on with merging hospitals.***

“You can‘t just be a doctor in this field – you have to be a political activist too.”

—Dr. Suzanne Poppema

Bush‘s Selection as DASPA was Eric Keroack, the medical director of A Woman‘s Concern, a fleet of “crisis pregnancy centers” in the Boston area. The website of his organization claimed that “crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality, and adverse to human health and happiness.”

WTF are you even talking about???!!!! Also, CPCs are FAKE CLINICS 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻

The man selected to run the nation‘s family planning program (William Reynolds “Reyn” Archer III—selected by Bush) said, “When it became possible for women to buy contraceptives on their own, men lost their manhood.” Also remembered for telling a congressional hearing that he believed women who visited federally funded family planning clinics should not be told of the availability of nearby abortion services, even if their lives were at stake.

I think many Americans‘ discomfort with abortion cannot be separated from the larger discomfort with sexuality that is such a striking feature of American society. I am hardly alone in noting the unhealthy combination of sexual puritanism and sexual saturation that characterizes present day America.

I mean, we have to sexualize burgers? But sexual healthcare isn‘t okay? Make it make sense!!!😬🤔