Intact dilation and extraction

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

Here's a story from Mississippi concerning reproductive rights from the BBC.

Abortion battle lines drawn in Mississippi

The Jackson Women's Health Organization is an anonymous enough building in the heart of strip mall America. Anonymous save for the permanent protest outside.

Arriving here is an intimidating, even shocking, experience. Anti-abortion campaigners hold up enormous and gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses. They stop every car going into the car park and try to persuade those inside to wind down their windows and take their literature.

The women going into this clinic for an abortion are screamed at. One protester, a man, yells "Don't go to those demons, don't let them take your money, don't let them kill your baby". When I ask him why he is being so aggressive, he tells me it's because America needs to know the truth: "Abortion is murder," he says.

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Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

This week's news has been dominated by stories about the South Dakota abortion bill, an amended version of which passed the South Dakota House by a vote of 50-18 on Friday, Feb 24th. The bill (HB 1215) would ban all abortions in the state except to save a pregnant woman's life and it's been sent the bill to Gov. Mike Rounds (R), who has indicated support for the measure. Also in the news are related stories of other states mirroring South Dakota's efforts.

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Power Moves

From the LAT:

High Court to Address 'Partial-Birth' Abortions
By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court today set the stage for a major ruling on abortion by agreeing to decide whether Congress can outlaw so-called "partial birth" abortions during the mid-term of a pregnancy.

The case, to be heard in the fall, will test whether lawmakers can strictly regulate how abortions are performed.

[cnn]

Some doctors say this surgical procedure, which they call an intact dilation and evacuation, is the safest method of ending a pregnancy because it reduces the risk of bleeding and infection. But Republican lawmakers describe it as gruesome and inhumane, and they want to make it a crime, even for otherwise legal abortions.

Six years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a similar state law banning such abortions and ruled by a 5-4 margin that it was unconstitutional to endanger a woman's health in the process of regulating abortion.

In recent months, three U.S. appeals courts voiced the same view in striking down the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act which Congress passed in 2003.

But the justices said today they will hear the Bush administration's appeal.

It argues that the judges should rely on Congress's view of the medical risks of mid-term abortions, not the court testimony of medical experts.

And Congress announced this surgical method of removing an intact fetus was "never medically indicated," despite the views of the doctors involved.

And don't miss the crux of the deal, and deal it is, as a supposedly modern (but we're not) science-based (but we're not) country sells out a majority group, women, to religion and politics. And make that BOTH Republicans and Democrats. Little difference in the desire for power.

While the doctors focused on the safety of their patients, Republican lawmakers said they were focused on the effect on the fetus.

They said this abortion procedure is inhumane because the doctor punctures and compresses the skull of the tiny fetus as it removed from the woman.

For Shame America.

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WaPo weighed in and the NYT.

Over to Rude Pundit, for what we all know so well:

As election season heats up, and the things that really matter to the nation, like say, the war in Iraq and government secrecy and Republican Congressional scandals, start to drive the polls over to the Democratic side, we can all look forward to hearing Bill O'Reilly spitting mad over contraception parental notification, Sean Hannity screeching like a monkey with its nuts in a vice over gay marriage, and Rush Limbaugh ironically blowing out farts over broadcast decency. Man, the Rude Pundit can't wait to get to prayin'.

Ms.Magazine and some straight truth:

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.� [...]

At last I found one university teaching hospital that, at least over the telephone, was willing to take me.

“We do have one doctor who can do a D&E,� they said. “Come in to our emergency room if you want.�

But when I arrived at the university’s emergency room, the source of the tension was clear. After examining me and confirming I was bleeding but not hemorrhaging, the attending obstetrician, obviously pregnant herself, defensively explained that only one of their dozens of obstetricians and gynecologists still does D&Es, and he was simply not available.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.

No, I couldn’t have his name. She walked away from me and called my doctor.

“You can’t just dump these patients on us,� she shouted into the phone, her high-pitched voice floating through the heavy curtains surrounding my bed. “You should be dealing with this yourself.�

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

Today we open with some cites from a story at Counterpunch by Elizabeth Schulte that recalls pre-Roe vs. Wade days. We'll close with a different one, too.

Abortion Before Roe

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Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

More news concerning the South Dakota Abortion Task Force.

Flap arises over information removed from abortion report

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - An abortion-rights supporter says she's upset that the final report of the South Dakota Abortion Task Force was altered from the version approved at a Dec. 9 meeting.

Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood, said the changes were made without the knowledge of abortion-rights advocates on the panel. Looby said she thinks the action was designed to protect the state against a potential libel suit.

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