Culture Of Life, My Fuckin' Ass
Oct. 8th, 2006 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomFrom Majikthise:
But I am more pissed than I've been in awhile.
A lot of what I want to say is said by Amanda at Pandagon, way more nicely than I am capable of right now. In a desperate attempt to be constructive rather than incensed, I will point out that the lady is accepting PayPal for the abortion she has to get (in rural Ohio, oy). Address is bitingbeaver at yahoo dot com.
Gaaaaaaaah.
Last month, feminist blogger Biting Beaver wrote about a nightmarish experience she'd had with a broken condom and a callous medical system that refused to give her emergency contraception over the counter or by prescription.I am trying not to lose it over here.
Instead of getting medical care during the critical 72-hour window of opportunity, BB was stalled, humiliated, scorned, quizzed, and deceived. A nurse tried to tell her that EC was "the abortion pill" other healthcare providers grilled her about her sexual history and her marital status. Her pharmacy wouldn't sell it to her OTC, her doctor wouldn't call in a prescription, and the local emergency rooms wouldn't give her a 'scrip because she wasn't raped or married.
Pat yourself on the back, culture of life, Biting Beaver is pregnant and she's getting death threats.
But I am more pissed than I've been in awhile.
A lot of what I want to say is said by Amanda at Pandagon, way more nicely than I am capable of right now. In a desperate attempt to be constructive rather than incensed, I will point out that the lady is accepting PayPal for the abortion she has to get (in rural Ohio, oy). Address is bitingbeaver at yahoo dot com.
Gaaaaaaaah.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 02:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 02:46 am (UTC)Note that it depends on the one claiming it.
Bad Christians protest funerals for people who did nothing (GodHatesFags).
Good Christians attend them for people regardless (The Amish going to the funeral of the gunman)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 05:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 02:47 am (UTC)4 visits for a medical abortion is 1 more than mine was, though. I wonder what the fourth visit is for.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 02:48 am (UTC)But not one has offered adoption.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 03:11 am (UTC)(This from when I thought I might be pregnant and wasn't sure if I should keep taking birth control pills or not, and my doctors told me it was fine to do so, because if I had een pregnant, it wouldn't have harmed anything.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 10:38 am (UTC)Progesterone mostly just stops egg and sperm *from meeting*. It is not terribly effective taken *after* conception. In fact, taken after conception, it can HELP SUSTAIN a pregnancy. Which makes it a near perfect drug for pro-lifers if their *real* goal is to prevent abortion. But that is not their real goal. Their real goal is control. So they *LIE* and tell people that it is an abortificant, when it is far, far from it. Because that gives them more control.
I have people near and dear to me who put themselves through *hell* for *years* after taking emergency contraception because they were told it was an abortificant.
It is a LIE.
Plan B is a high dose of progesterone. It acts by preventing egg and sperm from meeting. What most non-fertility-geeks don't realize is that the optimal time for intercourse for conception is a day or two prior to ovulation, and that there are changes that must happen in the sperm prior to ovulation that the woman's body makes happen, and that the sperm are modified, stored briefly and then released slowly in batches during that optimal time. It's like if you go to a friend's house and no one is home, you have to have a key... and if you check in with the friend beforehand, they can tell you where to find the key, you go find it, and THEN you can gt in.
So there have to be the right conditions: Sperm at the right time in a body with the right chemistry (fertile mucus which happens in a low-progesterone, relatively high estrogen environment) and structure (functioning fallopian tubes) and that can be stopped *cold* by a high dose of progesterone any time from when the sperm show up to the point at which they get to the egg... the primary function, they believe, is that progesterone rapidly changes the fertile mucus to barrier mucus and it's like getting bad directions, or you get to the house and the key is gone.
BUT... as soon as ovulation happens, the body flips a switch and starts producing progesterone like crazy, even more so if conception *has* occured.
You know what they do for women who are having a hard time staying pregnant in the early part of pregnancy?
THEY GIVE THEM PROGESTERONE.
So... someone has a condom break a couple days before ovulation.... they have *until ovulation* but no farther, and Plan B will not work. It really depends on how long the fertile mucous phase is, how long Plan B can be effective.
Fertile phase usually lasts between 2-5 days, tops. So someone has a broken condom any other time of the cycle, Plan B "works" because it is not necessary. Condom breaks 5 days prior to ovulation? If the woman does not have fertile mucus, it may be irrelvant. If she has fertile mucus, then YES, Plan B will have up to 5 days to be effective.
Break that condom 36 hours prior to ovulation? You've got about 24-36 hours for Plan B to be effective, and after that, well, you're screwed. Or wait, the screwing came first, but anyway. Break that condom the moment you ovulate? You probably won't get pregnant anyway, because the egg is gonna die before the sperm can get directions, get modified, and get there.
So the 72 hour thing? It's a vast oversimplification.
Oh, and you know where else you can get progesterone? The minipill. There are very, very good reasons NOT to take a superdose of standard estrogen-containing contraceptives. But the minipill? It's just progesterone. It's not as high a dose. But if you look at the amount of progesterone in Plan B and the amount of progesterone in a minipill, the math isn't that hard.
People need to understand this stuff. I've been studying pregnancy for *years* and it was not until recently that I really "got" all this.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 03:13 am (UTC)The only reason I'm not screaming right now is the comfort of my friends' eardrums. Christ on a stick.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 03:14 am (UTC)I had to stop reading her blog because I desperately need to go to bed here, but thanks for posting this, thanks for posting the paypal info.
Gods my head hurts. Some people are just evil. *sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 03:28 am (UTC)Pro-choice, pro-life, whatever...it's not whether birth control or abortion is good-bad, illegal-legal, moral-immoral. At the end of the day, it is NO ONE'S business. No one's (*$#&( business but hers, perhaps her partner, and perhaps whatever supreme power she believes in. NO ONE ELSE'S. Doctors, nurses, clergymen, protesters, rightwingers, leftwingers, judges, newscasters...NO ONE'S.
Hot button issue for me...I have a hard time trying to think straight when faced with such moral narrow-mindedness.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 03:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 04:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 04:29 am (UTC)The key difference? I'm Canadian. My pharmacist offered me EC when I called to ask about the drug interaction that started the whole kerfuffle. If I had decided to take it (which I didn't for various reasons), it would have cost me $40(CDN) and a bus ride. The pharmacist said, "Tell me if you want it, and I can have it ready for you to pick up when you get here."
EC is available without a prescription behind the counter in Canadian pharmacies. You just have to ask for it, just like the Tylenol with codeine. The pharmacist didn't want to know about my sex life, didn't ask me any prying questions, and didn't attempt to slut-shame me at all. Those of you who might be in the situation and are close enough to the Canadian border might want to take that into consideration.
I've been trying to get the word out for a while now about this. If even one person hears me, and it saves someone else from being pregnant when they don't want to be (and from having to have an abortion subsequently), I'll consider that a real...mitzvah. (If indeed secular non-Jewish people can have mitzvot.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 04:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 09:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-11 08:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-11 09:16 pm (UTC)There /are/ caffeine+acetaminophen and caffeine+ASA products, so canucks jonesing for the triple combo could just buy one and take the missing ingredient, I s'pose.
this tangent brought to you with love from Canadian Pharmacy Jurisprudence Nerd.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 04:35 am (UTC)I love that the Victorians could recognise that it took two to get pregnant, but she says her SO is never mentioned in the hatemail. People drive me nuts. My husband and I faced that choice ten years ago, and chose in the end to keep the baby because I have issues, but even so we went through all the fear and anger, because I did NOT want to have a child. And I know from experience that the child of a woman who felt trapped by her pregnancy is a pretty miserable thing. My mom was stuck with Dad for over a decade before she could get away, and take me with her. She was trapped by pregnancy in marriage to a man who beat her, because her family would disown her for abortion or single parenthood.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 08:21 am (UTC)From where I sit, all I can do is offer my best wishes to her for the best possible outcome for her. That and my tears to go with hers for the pain she has suffered and is still suffering.
Lee Darrow, C.H.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 06:39 am (UTC)And that there will be NO appeal, NO recourse to other sources and no adoption allowances.
THAT will shut these people up.
It will also never pass because THEY would never allow it because of their unmitigated "let 'George' take care of it" attitude - and there IS NO "George" to DO that!
And, what i find REALLY strange is that, according to a recent CNN poll, almost 80% of these "loving 'Christian people' (note use of quotation marks to denote the falsehood of that claim) are FOR capitol punishment!
So, according to THEM, it is not okay to stop some cells from POSSIBLY fertilizing an egg in the womb that MIGHT get fertilized (but might not!), but it is PERFECTLY OKAY to kill a grown human being - even if there is a SIGNIFICANT CHANCE OF ERROR IN JUDGEMENT TO DO SO (see the 68 people exhonerated in Illinois alone on DNA evidence inthe last 5 years as proof)!
The explosion you hear in the background is another hypocracy meter detonating under the strain...
Lee Darrow, C.H.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 10:46 am (UTC)For you: Because no one should be treated the way you were treated, and the cost of this, whatever you decide, should not fall entirely on your shoulders. I'm hoping you get *way* more money than it would take for the basic procedure/pill. I'm hoping you get enough money that you can afford to sue the bastards.
not saying all religious folk are intolerant...just that most intolerant folk tend to be religious.
Date: 2006-10-09 11:27 am (UTC)In conclusion, to all intolerant people everywhere who go out of their way to make life very difficult for the rest of us free Americans, please, go fuck a Bible.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 01:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 04:53 pm (UTC)There's no shame in being a Christian. There is shame on them, for saying they are, and not delivering on that promise.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 07:10 pm (UTC)*shoves a ballpoint pen in his temple*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-09 08:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 02:36 am (UTC)As for the rest... Ick.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 03:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 05:30 am (UTC)Abortion is a regrettable thing, but in this case, it's what she wants, and I'm angry at the people who forced her into this situation.
Otherwise, I'll be glad to contribute towards the purchase of ammunition for anyone who wishes to be her armed escort. (Rubber bullets, right? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink)