Archives for 2010

…go back to talking about local access. This seems to be the new motto for pro-choice enthusiasts after failing to make the kind of impact they would’ve liked on the Maternal Health Initiative.

Kimberley’s mind was made up. The mother of a toddler, she was pregnant again and wanted an abortion. But as a resident of Prince Edward Island, which doesn’t have a single abortion provider, she had to drive over four hours with her boyfriend to New Brunswick, dodge anti-abortion protesters, then pay $600 out of her own pocket for the procedure.

As a child growing up in Alaska, my small city was over three hours from absolutely everywhere. It’s the price we paid for cheaper housing, less crime, less pollution, and we looked forward to our regular road trips for shopping and sometimes for less eagerly awaited hospital visits. Here in Nova Scotia, people living rurally often travel long distances to Halifax for doctor’s appointments and specialist procedures.

Growing up rurally myself, I find it incredible that anyone would actually want an abortion clinic to move into their town. Especially in a small community, such as those in PEI (total population approx. 140,000), that relies heavily on tourism. The community would hardly want clinics dotting the landscape they’ve worked so hard to preserve.

It’s ridiculous that I have to leave my own province. It’s my own body, I need to have control over it,” said the soft-spoken woman in her mid-20s, who asked to use a pseudonym because her family and friends didn’t know she was having an abortion.

Her friends and family would have been more likely to know, had she had the procedure in a local small town hospital.

After an abortion your risk of  a preterm delivery of your first wanted child goes up. Posted here, but it’s subscriber access only. I’ve copied part here:

Dr. Ghislain Hardy, a third-year resident in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at McGill University did a retrospective chart review of women who had delivered a baby between 2001 and 2005 at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Among the 17, 916 women who had a singleton delivery, 2,276 (13%) also had undergone a previous abortion and 862 (5%) had two or more induced abortions.

After adjusting for baseline characteristics, women with one previous abortion were 45% more likely to have a premature child at under 32 weeks; 71% more likely at less than 28 weeks; and more than twice as likely at less than 26 weeks. This association was even stronger for those with two or more abortions. “Preterm birth is a major concern in our health-care system today. It is the most important cause of neonatal morbidity,” said Dr. Hardy in his presentation. The rate of preterm birth is on the rise in Canada, and was more than 8.1% in 2006. Preterm birth is a burden on neonatal intensive care units, and these children go on to have health and social problems.

I had to assume when I read Dr. Robinson’s letter that she is willfully blind to the studies showing psychological problems after abortion. This letter is, er, to the point in response to her:

Dr. Gail Erlick Robinson neglects to mention that the “relief ” some women experience after abortion all too often takes the form of suicide. While Dr. Robinson rubbishes Dr. David Reardon, whose research has documented substantially increased incidence of suicide post abortion, based on medical records from California, Dr. Reardon merely confirmed what Dr. Mika Gissler and colleagues had reported back in 1996 in the British Medical Journal in another “gold standard” study based entirely on medical records from the Finnish abortion and death registries. Gissler et al. found that women who had had an induced abortion in the prior 12 months were three times as likely to commit suicide compared to women who had not been pregnant during that year, and six times more likely to commit suicide compared to women who had had a live birth in the prior 12 months. Clearly, post-abortion depression is a much more serious problem than postpartum depression. Importantly, not a single study has refuted these inconvenient but rock-solid scientific findings about post-abortion suicide.

Joel Brind, professor of biology and deputy chair, Department of Natural Sciences, Baruch College, City University of New York.

‘Wired for Sex, Lies and Power Trips‘ is the new CBC documentary I watched last night.

Whenever I talk to someone about why abortion is anti-woman, I usually do so arguing that it doesn’t stop or inhibit the violence that leads them to the abortion in the first place, but rather it helps perpetuate a vicious cycle by further demeaning them. So I had this thought in mind while one teenage girl after another reported her own story of assault (ranging from name calling to a ‘dry rape’) on sexually charged school grounds.

You know, you think that okay, then maybe I could grab her ass ’cause the way she dresses, she’s telling me to grab her ass.
Billy, 17

They keep doing it even if you say no or stop ’cause they think you’re joking so it gets kind of difficult to tell them to stop.
Kelsie, 15

They don’t think that the little things they do is sexual harassment. They just think it’s normal.
Pauline, 16

A sort of meandering column on what it means to be a feminist.

I suppose the problem on the anti-abortion versus pro-abortion front is that you can’t have it both ways. And both sides say they are defending women. I know I am: defending a woman’s health, her wholeness, her potential, her acceptance in society with or without children.

The problem is that those who defend abortion say exactly the same thing.

… are leading to older, much older, mothers.

For centuries, being childless in India was a stigma so severe that it drove many women to suicide and gave men grounds to take another wife. […]

…they have increasingly been seeking in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment from thousands of unregulated private clinics that have sprung up across the country.
As a result, the issue now is that women who are old enough to be great grandmothers are risking their health by undergoing fertility treatment so as not to die without a child.

The doctors who provide the treatment, mostly in the conservative northern states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, say they are helping women who feel it is their social and religious obligation to produce an heir.

… and scoot over. Is the tube a microcosm for our culture at large?

Nobody will be surprised to learn, from two separate surveys, that heavily pregnant women have trouble getting a seat on public transport. All pregnant women report this. There are several reasons, I think. One is obviously that the tubes are so crowded in the first place. Another is the  selfishness of passengers on the underground.

Animal Freedom Day is coming up on July 24. Apparently animals are saying: “Don’t eat me!” This is very pressing, especially considering July is the height of BBQ season. So many will gather around steaks, ribs slathered in sauce, peach chicken with a hint of soya, salmon on cedar planks…

Where was I? Right. Animal Freedom Day.

Unfortunately, I will not be around. Hate to get all sanctimonious on these folks, but I’ll be away with World Hope Canada–call ’em Human Freedom Days–at this time. But consider buying a t-shirt to celebrate?

With a name that means ‘all’, the new drug ellaOne is being marketed as just that, an all in one ‘contraceptive’.

Ella works as a contraceptive by blocking progesterone’s activity, which delays the ovaries from producing an egg. RU-486, too, blocks the action of progesterone, which is also needed to prepare the womb to accept a fertilized egg and to nurture a developing embryo. That’s how RU-486 can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and dislodge growing embryos. Ella’s chemical similarity raises the possibility that it might do the same thing, perhaps if taken at elevated doses. But no one knows for sure because the drug has never been tested that way.

As the National Health Service in the UK recently advised young women to “stockpile” morning after pills, we are setting a dangerous precedent for the new all-in-one pharmaceuticals. What ella does chemically is perhaps not as severe as what it does socially, which is to erase an already blurry line between contraceptive use and routine chemical abortions.