(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

I probably should have posted the Bush rap post after this. But too late now.

Legally, a doctor can still surgically take a dead body out of a pregnant woman. But in reality, the years of angry debate that led to the law’s passage, restrictive state laws and the violence targeting physicians have reduced the number of hospitals and doctors willing to do dilations and evacuactions (D&Es) and dialations and extractions (intact D&Es), which involve removing a larger fetus, sometimes in pieces, from the womb.

...

On my fourth morning, with the bleeding and cramping increasing, I couldn’t wait any more. I called my doctor and was told that since I wasn’t hemorrhaging, I should not come in. Her partner, on call, pedantically explained that women can safely lose a lot of blood, even during a routine period.

I began calling labor and delivery units at the top five medical centers in my area. I told them I had been 19 weeks along. The baby is dead. I’m bleeding, I said. I’m scheduled for a D&E in a few days. If I come in right now, what could you do for me, I asked.

Don’t come in, they told me again and again. “Go to your emergency room if you are hemorrhaging to avoid bleeding to death. No one here can do a D&E today, and unless you’re really in active labor you’re safer to wait.”

I had to stop reading this article the first time, because I started crying. THIS is what happens when you put in place stupidly stringent anti-abortion policies that don't allow for medically necessary exceptions. THIS is what happens when you terrorize (and yes, it is terrorism, however loaded a word that is these days) abortion clinics and make the lives of the people who work at these places a living hell, for the single-minded goal of protecting a pinprick sized glob of cells that can't think or feel at the expense of a mother who has a dead baby inside of her. This could have been my mother. This could have been my cousin. This could have been my coworker. This could have been any woman I passed on the street today. The right to access these medical services is not a vague abstract, and any person in power who does not understand this is utterly devoid of sanity, reason, and compassion.