… are feeling the pressure.

I’m getting sick of it.

Sick of measure after measure, new legal stipulation after stipulation passing, aimed at limiting access to abortion—locally and nationally—like this past week’s Foxx amendment, which ensures that no tax dollars will be spent to train health-care providers to perform abortions. Abortion, mind them, remains a legal and crucial medical procedure for women in spite of the Draconian regulations suddenly being placed on it left and right.

[…]

A friend of mine—we’ll call her Rose—used to be on the other side of the argument. Like any good Catholic girl, she didn’t believe in abortion. Until, just as she neared her 17th birthday, the morning sickness kicked in. A hospital visit, and there it was: Her birth control had failed due to a drug interaction. She was pregnant.

“I was upset, my mom was upset and we had to tell my dad. He was really, really upset,” she recounts now, several years later. Neither she and the father (her former long-term boyfriend), nor her parents (both worked full-time) were in any way equipped to care for a baby. “It was hard, but I decided [an abortion] was the best thing.”

[…]

And so I challenge those who stand against it without understanding, those who make the laws without being there, those who spit fire at anything pro-choice without ever having had to choose: Put yourselves in her shoes. If abortion means the end of what would have been (or, to some, already was) a new life, the question is still valid: What makes that life any more important than the woman’s life, forever altered and maybe hindered by the decision to have an unplanned child? What about all the people Rose will help—the lives she’ll save when she becomes a nurse—that wouldn’t have been, had she chosen otherwise?

The comments to this article really speak for themselves (3 of the 4 I read were in favor of abortion restriction). But she asked the question, so I’ll answer. What makes a baby’s life more important than a mother’s? Nothing, and absolutely no one said it’s more important. What is important, is having a life to begin with, however altered. And those alterations, like parenting and finishing school, like parenting and working as a nurse, well, we pro-lifers have an app for that, it’s called resources. Contact any pro-life organization, or any crisis pregnancy center, and they’ll have staff and volunteers waiting to help and meet your specific needs.

And as for Rose’s potential lives saved as the nurse she wouldn’t have been with a baby (though I can’t actually think of any nurses I know who don’t have children)…I’m kind of shocked to hear someone use potentiality as an argument for abortion. What makes those patient’s lives worth more than her baby’s? And what about all those potential lives her baby could have changed?

I’m sick of it.

Sick of person after person saying women need abortion.

So, here’s my question. What makes a life as a mother so seemingly worthless and hindered that we think abortion is the favorable alternative?

Don’t let them fool you ladies, we’re a capable lot.

A broad movement to limit access to abortion is gathering steam. So says The Economist.

Chai Ling is a Chinese dissident who has started a campaign called All Girls Allowed:

People ask from time to time what my position on abortion after rape is. This time I was asked this by a reader because of this CNN column.

My line for the media is that I’d be happy to discuss abortions for rape victims in more detail when we eradicate the 98 percent of abortions that are not the result of rape.

Behind that answer, however, lies a deep concern for the victims of rape, and a deep conviction that abortion kills a human being and is therefore not a solution for a rape victim.

Today we live in a culture that accepts abortion as a solution. People’s views vary, but generally, for many Canadians, abortion is a plausible solution for an unwanted pregnancy in any of the following life circumstances: Poverty. Life stage. Wanting to finish education. Wanting to compete in an athletic event where nine months out would mean you couldn’t. Not wanting to be in contact with the father, who you believe will be involved and you don’t want him to. The list goes on.  

None of these reasons consider the humanity of the child. And the humanity of the child doesn’t change, given the reason for having an abortion.

We are appalled when someone is raped. And the circumstances are horrifying. We don’t view abortion as horrifying, and therefore, to many, abortion in the case of rape makes sense. I get that.

However, I am horrified by abortion, and so, in my mind, when you consider the trauma of rape you don’t top it up with the trauma of abortion. 

I know I’m in the minority on this one, and so I return to my media line. Let’s have a big discussion of rape when the vast majority of abortions for social reasons have been eradicated.

I’m not sure what it will take to change the societal attitude that abortion is AOK. I recently spoke to a woman who was about to go for her third abortion. To be clear: She is using abortion as birth control. I was definitely more eaten up by this situation than she was. I jumped into high gear to try and help her, because I thought she wanted help. Turns out she actually didn’t. She was being offered help up and down the block, but abortion was the “solution” she wanted. Some kid paid the price because she didn’t feel like it. Not claiming her circumstances were ideal, no, but they weren’t dire either. I’m just saying it’s a sad world when help is offered and denied when someone’s life is on the line.

We don’t view abortion as a life and death circumstance. And if we did, we wouldn’t offer it up as a solution to rape victims.

(And by the way, I think the politician’s dialogue clipped here by the author sounds terrible, callous and useless, but then again, so is this CNN columnist’s viewpoint.)

Pregnant in Heels: It’s a new TV show. I probably won’t see it, given my cableless life. I do wonder how it is that these Sex and the City types manage to wear high heels over the miles of Manhattan sidewalks, pregnant or otherwise. But especially when pregnant. Must involve lots of cabs.

____________________

Deborah adds: Oh, but you have to look at the one practical side! Most high heels are slip-ons! Way easier than bending over (or trying to bed over) to tie my converse shoes! And you don’t have to put on socks to wear heels, so even less trying to reach your feet! (Admittedly, I was determined to be able to wear heels while pregnant, especially after one of our priests exclaimed early on (not too seriously) “Heels! Why are you wearing heels? You shouldn’t be wearing heels, you’re pregnant!” But then the hormones made my ligaments too lax and now I don’t even do any walking without a cane. I guess the joke was on me!) 🙂

_______________________

Véronique adds: It’s just like at my house!!

Let me just say, I am not a fan of linking motherhood to patriotic duty. Women shouldn’t be having babies simply because the birth rate is down, but the situation in Russia does show, on a national scale, why abortion is not a solution.

Like a scene out of an old Charles Dickens novel, Russian women who are considering abortion might soon be able to leave their newborn children anonymously at the doorstep of special government funded wellness centers if a new bill passes the Russian parliament.

The bill was sponsored by the State Duma Committee for Family Affairs and the Russian Orthodox Church. Under the proposed law, a woman who decides to leave her child at a wellness and adoption home will be exempt from parenting and financial responsibilities. The centers will only be available for children under six months old.

According to data compiled by Ria Novosti newswire in Moscow, Russians have more abortions than their European counterparts. In 2008, 87 out of 10,000 women had abortions, surpassing Romania in second place with 59 out of 10,000 women and Britian, with 35 out of 10,000 women aborting pregnancies.

Russian law permits abortions up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

Russia’s abortion totals have come down between 2004 and 2008, at least, going from 1.7 million in 2004 to 1.2 million abortions in 2008. The number of abortions in Russia was almost equal to the number of babies born in 2008. According to the Russian Health Ministry, there were 1.7 million births in Russia in 2008 comparaed with 1.2 million abortions.

Experts say the low birth rate in Russia is reaching a critical point. It began to decline in 1992 as a result of poor medical services, social problems and high alcoholism, Ria Novosti reported. The government is working to reverse the trend.

An ectopic pregnancy makes it to 32 weeks, Mom and baby are doing fine:

When doctors told Nicky Soto that her baby was growing outside her womb, the Arizona mom was stunned and scared. Soto was told that her life would be at risk if she opted to continue with the ectopic pregnancy — and no one held out much hope that the baby would survive.But Soto, 27, had struggled for five years to become pregnant. After some soul searching, she decided to take the risk, fearing that this might be her last chance.

The abortion rate for UK women over 40 is up by one third.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the Pro-Life Alliance, said: “These figures are extraordinarily depressing -when we see high rates of teen pregnancy we often end up debating whether ignorance is to blame, but you would think that by the age of 40 women would have some idea how things work.”

I too would have hoped that by 40 women would have some idea of how things work and wouldn’t use abortion as birth control.

People! Sex remains connected to pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood is suing another state.

PIERRE, S.D. — Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday seeking to block a South Dakota law that would require women seeking abortions to face the nation’s longest waiting period — three days — and undergo counseling at pregnancy help centers that discourage abortion.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to suspend the law until a final ruling on whether it violates a woman’s constitutional right to abortion established under the US Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. The law is set to take effect July1.

The legal challenge was filed in Sioux Falls, where Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota operates South Dakota’s only abortion clinic.

State Representative Roger Hunt, Republican of Brandon, the chief sponsor of the bill, said the lawsuit was expected.

“I don’t understand why, because it just seeks to give women more information, and it seeks to remove coercion, seeks to deal with a number of coercion elements where you have possible rapes and problems within families and whatnot, and we’re trying to help those women deal with that coercion,’’ said Hunt.

Here we go with another “Tyranny of mother’s milk” article. Listen here, I am not opposed in principle to formula. I have even fed it to my children. But I have several issues with rants such as this one, the first one being that hard cases make bad law. A mother felt that her breast milk was not sufficient to nourish her infant and some healthcare providers with inadequate or incomplete  formation on breastfeeding made it worse. Can we really draw a public health conclusion about this? As someone who struggled through a similar challenge, I will tell you exactly what the problem was: inadequate follow-up by a nurse with inadequate formation. What we need is more research and information about the root causes of the inability to breastfeed (no, everything is not linked to a poor latch). As long as we have health care providers (whether they are doctors, nurses of nursing consultants) blaming everything on a poor latch, we’ll have situations like the one described in Wente’s article.

But that wouldn’t make a rant, would it? Much better to blame it on an evil patriarchal scheme to oppress women using their own children! Let me try to make something perfectly clear to those who hope that formula-feeding will liberate them from the tyranny of baby: human infants are needy and helpless. The well-meaning nurse who told you that formula-fed infants slept longer, she lied. If that makes infants oppressive, then so be it: human infants are oppressive. It’s not an evil scheme to oppress women, it’s just The Way Things Are. Unlike horses, our infants are not expected to stand-up and flee danger within their first hour of life.  Why does liberation have to mean liberating ourselves from our own children? Why do we have to deny motherhood and the fact that we are able to respond to our infants’ needs to be liberated women?   But mark my words – I have 6 children and I am expecting 2 more – if you think that formula-feeding will liberate you from your children, you are in for a big shock.

The other thing I would like to mention – and I choose my words carefully – is that healthcare providers, especially doctors, are in the business of making us feel guilty for our unhealthy choices. Read that again and think about it. Do you think that any OB/GYN worth his salt has a fleeting remorse about making a pregnant smoker feel guilty? And let’s not even approach the topic of overweight people, especially pregnant ones. Human milk is the best nutrition for human babies. You may choose not to breastfeed for a long list of reasons but it does not remove the fact that human milk is best for human babies. Once again, this is not an evil scheme to oppress women, it’s just The Way Things Are.  Any doctor or nurse who pretends otherwise or avoids mentioning it for fear of triggering guilty feelings is not doing his job. I had to be transferred to hospital for complications following a home birth (baby was fine, I was not). Do you think the duty OB/GYN held back from lecturing me about the dangers of homebirths? Not for a second. Did I feel guilty? Yes. That was the whole point.  We start our pregnancies avoiding everything from soft cheese to caffeine and once the baby is out, we’re supposed to avoid finding out that breast milk is better for them? Fight the tyranny, demand proper information!