I am so tired of living with the decisions people make based on their beliefs in an imaginary being, as a woman my choices to control my own reproductive health have been severely limited simply because of people's belief in an imaginary being. In a magical sky-daddy.
Those beliefs are now going to subject women to no choice but to have a back alley abortion,because the choice of a safe legal medical procedure has been taken away.
You cannot force people to live by your beliefs, you cannot force someone to live by your choices just because it makes you feel better, you cannot and you have no right to take away a woman's control over her own reproductive choices, simply based on a belief in an imaginary being.
Excerpts from an article on Huffingpost.
The Return Of the Back Alley Abortion
Back Alley abortions are back, you need proof, you want evidence? You need look no further than Texas, because deep in the heart of Texas back alley abortions are now available. People living with decisions that other people make based on their belief in an imaginary being are the now the norm in Texas.
"We know that prohibition and criminalization will never stop women from having abortions," said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. "Illegal, self-abortions are a form of civil disobedience. Women will violate unjust laws and bear the health risks and the legal consequences, without causing harm to the people or institutions that make their decisions criminal."
You cannot force a choice upon a woman she does not want, you cannot force your choice on someone else just because it makes you feel better. You cannot force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term if she DOES NOT WANT that pregnancy. Closing down access to safe legal abortion does nothing to stop abortion, it just stops safe legal abortions...nothing more.
Anti-abortion advocates say the idea of back-alley abortions returning is just a scare tactic their opponents use to try to keep abortion legal. No actually we pro-choice advocates are saying it because it's true and you need to look no further than Texas to find proof.
The proliferation of well-trained, regulated, legal abortion doctors in the last 40 years has led to "dramatic decreases in pregnancy-related injury and death," according to the National Abortion Federation.
Now, however, Texas and other states are reversing course. State lawmakers enacted more abortion restrictions between 2011 and 2013 than they had in the previous decade, a trend that appears likely to continue in 2014. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that nearly 300 anti-abortion bills are currently pending in state legislatures.
The new restrictions have had a significant impact on women's access to abortion. A Huffington Post survey last year found that since 2010, at least 54 abortion providers across 27 states had either closed or stopped performing the procedure. Sixteen more shut their doors after Texas lawmakers passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country last summer. A federal appeals court upheld two of the new restrictions in a ruling last week.
As a result, researchers and women's health advocates say, women today are resorting to many of the same dangerous methods they relied on in the pre-Roe era: seeking out illegal abortion providers.
The situation is particularly dire in Texas. In 2011, the state had 44 abortion clinics, but more than half of them have since shuttered due to new anti-abortion laws. In September, when a state law requiring all abortions to take place in ambulatory surgical centers goes into effect, reproductive rights advocates expect 14 more clinics will have to close, leaving only six facilities to serve the nearly 75,000 women who seek abortions in Texas each year.
The poorest area of Texas, the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexican border, has no remaining abortion clinics. Women who live there have to drive roughly 240 miles to San Antonio for the nearest clinic, but many of them are Mexican immigrants with restrictions on their work visas that prevent them from traveling that far.
In addition, the state has slashed funding for family planning, forcing 76 clinics that offer birth control and other reproductive health services but do not perform abortions to shut down.
Women outside of Texas face the same obstacles. Jennifer Whalen, a 38-year-old Pennsylvania mother, was charged with a felony in December after she ordered a package of misoprostol and mifeprestone online from an overseas pharmacy for her pregnant 16-year-old daughter. Abortion is difficult to access in Pennsylvania due to severe restrictions on clinics there, and the closest clinic to Whalen's town was across state lines in New York.
Whalen was charged with one count of medical consultation and judgment after her daughter had to go to the emergency room to be treated for an incomplete abortion and a urinary tract infection.
By forcing women back to alley to have an abortion that is not pro-life that is pro-death. Pro-life, anti-choicer's could give a rat's ass about women, this is about control nothing more.
The GOP are delusional if they think they can simply force women to stop having abortions. Not gonna happen. Outlawing this procedure has never ever worked and has ONLY succeeded in making abortions more dangerous and women more miserable. Abortions are a fact of life. If you give a species a love of sex, no estrous cycle, and the higher brain functions humans have, you are GOING to get unwanted pregnancies and you're GOING to get abortions. Women have been terminating their pregnancies forever, with varying results. Now, we have an incredibly safe procedure and a society that supposedly cared about women's lives, health, and rights. But there's still this group of people who think they can stop women from getting abortions....THEY ARE WRONG.