@goodgrammaritan / goodgrammaritan.tumblr.com
Advice from a cis female friend of mine: if you've been considering an IUD, get it now
There is too much good information in the tags and replies to screenshot and boost it all, but its worth reading through the reblogs and replies on this post to get more information!
Information from Planned Parenthood about it here
Can someone please transcribe this? He talks way too fast for me to do it.
I've got you:
“So, let’s just give you some general tips for your own reproductive health today. Just as an upfront thing, a lot of what I’m gonna tell you might sound very conspiratorial right now or even extreme: it’s not. In fact, you can find criminal cases where following some of these tips might’ve actually prevented prosecutors from bringing a case against someone. It’s that bad.
[By] the way, a lot of the research from this video I pulled out of this report [“Pregnancy Panopticon; Abortion Surveillance After Roe” by Albert Fox Can, Esq. Eleni Manis, PhD, MPA, May 24, 2022] by the S.T.O.P. organization. Go read it, I promise you it is worth your time.
As many smarter people than me have said right now, delete your period tracking apps. Do it. If you expect your cycle to be disrupted for any reason whatsoever, use cash to buy any medicines. If possible leave your phone at home while buying those medicines.
If you do buy contraceptives, make sure not to horde them. 1. They have a shelf life 2. That can attract suspicion, and 3. Frankly, a lot of people need them right now. Speaking of; use cash for everything, every purchase related to your reproductive health. Crypto is nowhere near as safe as you think it is and I don’t need to tell you not to trust Amazon or third party retailers with your purchase data.
Communications is extremely important here because prosecutors can and will pull the search data of people they are trying to prosecute. For all searches related to your reproductive health use a VPN and use TOR, I promise you DuckDuckGo and Incognito mode are simply not enough. For one-to-one communications you need to use something that is end-to-end encrypted: For text messaging that’s an app like signal for email that’s an app like proton mail. Make sure that the data from those apps is not stored locally on your phone or in the cloud; enable disappearing text messages or regularly delete that data, especially if you’re crossing state lines, borders, or anywhere else where someone might want to watch you.
Your phone can still get pings and be tracked even if you turn it off, so if you really want to be safe enable Airplane mode and [disable] any kind of NFC [near-field communication] or bluetooth, and if you want to be extra double secure you can buy small Faraday cages that physically block electromagnetic radiation. Be sure to test them on your phone when you get them.
If you’re traveling, you need to be extremely careful about who you tell the reasons for your travel. Don’t post about it on social media at all. Don’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to know. By the way, that very much includes your doctor or nurse. Because yes, while your data is protected by HIPPA, HIPPA is not an absolute defense, and if a state is trying to conduct a criminal investigation your personal health information can be subpoenaed. There are some limits to that but they won’t necessarily be enough to protect you. If you want to know more about this, you can look at Connecticuts Reproductive Freedom Defense Act which seeks to protect people who travel to the state to get abortions.
And lastly, be very careful. You need to approach this with the same level of caution that you would approach a drug deal, because the fact is either today or in the next few weeks for over 80 million Americans abortion will now be an illegal medical procedure. You need to be careful, and for what it’s worth there are clinics in Ontario, Canada, that provide abortions at low cost and without asking for permanent residency or for any kind of ID or Passport. Avail yourself of them.
Stay safe, you can do this.”
Two notes from me:
Another note: just using Signal and Proton Mail doesn't immediately mean your messages are encrypted. You can use these tools to send messages, but if the recipient isn't also taking proper steps to encrypt their messages, anything you send them will be in plaintext and fully readable to anyone listening. This means you need to coordinate in advance with anyone you want to communicate with and make sure you're both using Signal/Proton/etc. and have both configured your devices to send encrypted data BEFORE you start sending each other messages with sensitive information.
Conservatives like to point at late term abortions as a morally unjustifiable, but the truth is that they are usually performed on women who were trying to carry to term. These women don't "want" abortions, they NEED abortions.
My grandmother nearly died having a miscarriage. My teenaged mother had to take her to the hospital when she refused to take herself because she was in denial. She was literally bleeding out. She had a late stage abortion and it saved her life. The doctors told her that if she tried to carry another baby to term it would kill her. Not "could" kill her, it WOULD kill her.
I only got to know my grandmother because she had access to a safe and legal abortion. She never spoke about her loss. Ever. I know she remained sexually active, which means if she had gotten pregnant again she would have gotten another abortion. I dont know if that was ever neccessary as, again, she never spoke about any of this.
I only know the story because my mother shared it with me. My mother was the first woman in her family that didn't miscarry at least once.
So yes, I support access to all abortions, even if not especially late term abortions.
[Image description: Text reads as follows:
Pete Buttigieg with the only acceptable answer RE: "late term abortions:"
Buttigieg: I think the dialogue has gotten so caught up on where you draw the line that we've gotten away from the fundamental question of who gets to draw the line and I trust women to draw the line when it's their own health.
Chris Wallace: So just to be clear, you're saying you would be okay with a woman, well into the third trimester deciding to abort her pregnancy.
Buttigieg: Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional --
Wallace: It's not hypothetical, there are 6,000 women a year who get abortions in the third trimester.
Buttigieg: That's right, representing less than 1 percent of cases. So let's put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation. If it's that late in your pregnancy, then almost by definition, you've been expecting to carry it to term. We're talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name. Women who have purchased a crib, families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother or viability of the pregnancy that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice. And the bottom line is as horrible as that choice is, that woman, that family may seek spiritual guidance, they may seek medical guidance, but that decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made."
End image description.]
If you are in the upper midwest and need access to abortions, Minnesota governor Tim Walz signed an executive order protecting people who come to Minnesota for reproductive care from legal repercussions in their home state. This order maintains that both getting an abortion, and helping someone get an abortion, are legal in MN, and other than when ordered by specific court orders, it will stop outside states from investigating the reproductive care someone gets while in MN. There is a great article with details here.
The number one cause of death in pregnant women is murder. Think About That.
...oh.
And the sad thing is that they think they’re helping to preserve life.
"Interstate 55 carries 10s of thousands of abortion seekers out of southern states to Illinois, where abortion is legal. I-55 is covered with horrific, shaming billboards. Shout Your Abortion put up 6 good ones, to show love & affirmation to those making the journey." x
how about some good news?
as reproductive rights are under fire in the United States, most countries have moved toward expanding access - USA, Nicaragua, Poland, and El Salvador are outliers
in the past three decades, 60 countries around the world have made abortion laws more liberal and expanded access to reproductive health services, increasing the quality, accessibility, and safety of abortion care while raising maternal health outcomes
most international authorities call abortion a crucial aspect of health care
in related news, free contraception and sex-ed have helped Finland reduce teenage abortions by 66%
it's almost as if right-wing politicians don't care about citizens' health or actually reducing abortions
This should be repeated every day until the election. Expel Republican christofascism.
I literally do not care what the Bible says about any political issue. I am not Christian. Christian scripture should have zero effect on my life or my personal freedoms.
The fact that I did not mention abortion anywhere in this post, yet the replies and reblogs are filled with Christians trying to “well actually” me and/or resorting to anti-choice insults is… telling, to say the least.
this feels relevant
(chuckle)
...Article's free, BTW. Go read the rest of it. And have a look at the comments.
damn ok lake superior
Ok yeah that lake is superior
(Guardian story by Ava Sasani, graphics by Andrew Witherspoon)
It’s been one year since the US Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion. The procedure is now prohibited in 14 states and restricted in six more, leaving large swaths of the midwest and south without access to basic reproductive care.
To mark the first anniversary of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision (the case that overturned Roe v Wade), the Guardian has created a visual directory of state legislators who embraced the opportunity to restrict abortion access. These are the faces of lawmakers and governors whose votes helped pass bans on abortion at conception or after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.
Because of the sheer volume of anti-abortion laws that have taken effect over the past year, bans that predate Roe – like the 19th-century statute that Republicans are trying to resurrect in Wisconsin – are not included here. Additional bans in Wyoming, Ohio, Utah, and North Dakota are also excluded, because state courts have indefinitely blocked those laws from taking effect. The remaining nearly 1,600 legislators in this graphic are responsible for the chaotic patchwork of abortion restrictions that has emerged in the year without Roe.
I really don't think abortion is a good excuse for the lack of care that someone had. Except in cases of rape. But aside from that, there are so many ways to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Why does a little soul must be punished for lack of oversight of its generators? If you don't want the baby, there's adoption, I think it causes far less suffering than abort, because there are people who really are willing to love this new being. Don't you think? Didn't mean to be rude before or now.
Okay.
First off, you can be using three forms of protection, and still have an unplanned pregnancy. Birth control is not flawless. It helps, of course, but no matter how responsible someone is being, they can find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy.
“Well if you choose to have sex you have to be responsible for and accept the possibility you might get pregnant and have a baby. You shouldn’t have sex if you don’t want a child!”
Whether someone gets pregnant when theyre on three forms of birth control or gets pregnant from completely unprotected sex, repeat after me:Children are not a punishment for sex.
Children are not a punishment for sex.
CHILDREN ARE NOT A PUNISHMENT FOR SEX.
Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting are not punishments for sex!!!
We don’t deny smokers cancer treatment because they accepted the risk by smoking, we don’t deny people who got in car accidents medical attention because they took the risk by driving, hell, we don’t even deny criminals who shoot others, and OD on drugs medical attention, so we sure as hell can’t deny a pregnant person medical attention because they took the risk by having sex.
Adoption is a great option, but it only solves the problem of not wanting/being able to parent a child. Not the problem of being pregnant.
Pro-lifers seem to forget that pregnancy and childbirth itself, even if adoption follows, can ruin a person’s life, and is extremely transformative, be it in a positive or negative way. You are never going to be the same once going through that. It changes your body, your hormones, your emotions. Many people experience crippling sickness and complications, causing them to lose their job, lose their home, have to drop out of school, etcetera. Prenatal care is not cheap. Mothers who fall pregnant may struggle to feed their already living breathing feeling children and lower their quality of life if forced to carry a fetus they don’t have the means to provide for or deal with.
And it all comes down to the fact that people cannot and should not be made to sacrifice their bodies for a pregnancy they do not want, for whatever reason they do not want or can not have it. We have an awesome thing called bodily autonomy. Meaning nobody can use our bodies without our consent. Even when we are DEAD. If you and I got in a car crash, and I died, and you desperately needed one of my organs to survive, you STILL couldn’t take that organ, even though it is of no use to me, to save your own life, unless I had consented when I was alive to be an organ donor. Therefore, claiming that a fetus has a right to use a pregnant person’s body for 9-10 months, has the right to take over all the pregnant person’s organs and body chemistry, has the right to change their body forever, not only does it give a fetus more rights than anyone else in the world, it also gives the pregnant person less rights than a dead body.
There is also a major flaw in your argument, which is “Except in cases of rape,” because in that statement, you are proving that it really isn’t about the fetus. If you truly believed that fetuses had rights, were sentient souls deserving of a chance at being born, it wouldn’t matter whether they were conceived through rape or not, would it? Fetuses that result from rape and fetuses that result from loving relationships are biologically the same, so why does one deserve rights in your opinion, and the other not? Perhaps you have internalized misogyny which causes you to believe that females deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies because they had sex.
I am pro-choice because I am pro-pregnant person. I am on the side of the living, breathing, loving, crying, feeling, struggling people who find themselves carrying a pregnancy when it is not convenient, and I am pro-giving them the option to protect themselves, their jobs, their goals, their bodies, and their pre-existing families, by supporting their access to a safe and legal abortion with no judgement.
this is the most properly worded rebuttal to this argument i have ever seen. seriously, if you don’t understand why being pro-choice is so important after reading that, there is no hope.
This first thing I thought when I woke up from surgery was I am so hungry and I need ramen right now! but the second thing I thought was Oh my god, I’m safe.
I was safe.
I thought about having kids someday, but the thought was always divorced from the concept of having to grow them in my body. Whenever I thought about it, I would either start screaming or my mind would shut down. My worst nightmares featured discovering I was pregnant, and realizing I would have to keep it, and go through childbirth. I was terrified.
I got the surgery, and realized I was safe, and I never had those nightmares ever again. It was like finding out I was bulletproof.
Later, I looked at the broken condom, and I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t see my hopes and dreams turn to ash as I pivoted all my energy into a child I didn’t want. I didn’t see a possibility of starvation or homelessness because my already modest income went to a child I couldn’t afford. I didn’t see my disabled body becoming further disabled, or killed, by a pregnancy that I didn’t want.
Read more between the pages commentary: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68216364 (free post, no paywall)
This post was flagged as “adult content” but I successfully (and very quickly) got my appeal approved.
To whatever conservative fuckhead who reported this as inappropriate, it didn’t work, and it’s still here, and I’m going to keep posting it forever so I can help people obtain the medical care they need. I hope poison ivy fills your yard, and may all your pets forevermore be maliciously incontinent.
It doesn't matter.
The people who don't like abortion also don't like birth control, because it's about controlling women who dare to have sex, and about how they should suffer for having it. No matter how many studies or test runs about this or that, they don't care. They don't want women to have control over their bodies. They don't want women to vote. They don't want women to have jobs. They just want to control us, and by "control" they mean "punish."
Caption:
[[@else: I suppose it's time to tell my abortion story. Of the abortion that didn't happen, that led to me.
A lot of anti-abortion people put words & thoughts into the mouths of the unborn.
Well, I'm one that was recommended to stay unborn, who got born, and here's what I say.
My mother found our very early in her pregnancy that there was an extremely high risk to her if she continued.
Terminating the pregnancy was floated by one of the doctors. It would have been legal due to the risk to her, but heavily stigmatized.
Her family was deeply Catholic. She was deeply Catholic.
She did not terminate. The risk became a reality.
So I'm here, and she's not.
I'm glad to be here.
It is hard to put into words the gratitude you feel to a mother who sacrificed herself entirely for you, and I'm not going to try here.
Because I'm also very angry.
Without in any way taking away from the courage and selflessness with which she bore her situation and which she showed in all aspects of her life
I don't believe she ever really felt like she had a true choice.
The stigma, the religious dogma, the judgement - everything she'd ever known - told her she could not save her own life.
Her parents would have, however sadly, believed she'd go to hell. Her family and friends and community would have judged her.
Everyone she'd ever loved believed it was wrong. And so she believed it was wrong.
Needlessly.
I don't know what choice she would have made if it had been a true choice.
Maybe she would have chosen me anyway. Maybe she would have chosen to stay for her two already-existing children and for all those who loved her so deeply.
But she should have had a real, true choice.
Would I trade being here for that?
In a heartbeat. Without hesitation.
My siblings could have grown up with their mother.
My grandparents could have seen their beloved daughter live out her beautiful life, instead of mourning her every day until their deaths.
Her brothers and sisters would not still thirty years later feel the pain of losing the sistre they loved so much.
She could have continued to bring the light to the world that she had always brought, that I have heard so much about.
My father perhaps would not have descended into the grief & guilt that destroyed him, our relationship with him, the innocence of our childhoods.
Now, I think about how my young nieces & nephews will grow up without her, without the kind of grandmother I had. That pains me too.
I grew up in the devastation of her death.
I've watched the consequences of it play out for thirty years.
I can see what might have been differently if she'd had a true choice and it snatches my breath away, to see the suffering that didn't have to be for the ones I love most.
I know that it is not my family, but it is also profoundly difficult to know that it is because of me.
Or to be more exact, because the world did not allow my mother her right to a true choice, and my being here is perhaps a result of that.
It's not a burden I'd wish on anyone
I wish that I could have told her. It's okay. Stay. Live. Be happy.
I wish I could know that she knew that that was more than ok.
Don't I want to be here? Don't I want to be alive, aren't I glad to live??
Now that I'm here, sure. But had I never been, what would I have lost? Nothing.
You can't miss what you never had. Can't lose anything when you never existed.
There's no pain or loss in not existing.
I didn't exist then, to want anything. I didn't exist to hope or wish or fear anything.
I didn't exist back then. Not me. There was a possibility. An idea, a hope maybe. Some cells, a process in her body. Not me, any more than a sperm was me or an egg was me.
*I" didn't become until much later. Til I was born.
My mother wouldn't have taken anything from me or cause me any pain by living for herself, because I didn't exist to lose anything.
There was so much pain, so much loss in losing her. Loss that will ripple down generations.
So I will say to my dying breath, as the person who only lives because she didn't abort, that whatever she thought or chose or did not chose, she should have had a real choice to abort.
That she should have felt that aborting me was valid and good a choice as not.
Everyone should feel that, and have real access to enact that choice without obstruction or shame or question.
Whether it is their actual life at risk, or not. A forced pregnancy can be the death of many things, not just the end of ther person's life.
Having me took away from the world everything that my mother could have given it.
Forcing someone to have a child against their will can take away what that person could be and bring if they had their choice, whether they live through the pregnancy or not.
Most of all it takes away their right - their inalienable right - to choose how they live their life in their own body.
A non-person, a hypothetical future event, the birth of someone who doesn't exist yet, doesn't have that right.
Other people, who claim to speak for the unborn do not have that right.
We all lose so much by it. It can cause such pain and suffering, for child-bearers, for children, for everyone.
Do not pretend to speak for the unborn.
Do not pretend to speak for the children born against their mother's will.
Do not pretend that you care for them while you hide misogyny behind dogma.
My mother deserved her right to a real choice.
Everyone does. Unconditionally.
As the child who could have been aborted, I tell you - to oppose that right, let alone work to criminalize it, is unforgivable.
I'd like to emphasize because I didn't say it loud enough in the original thread:
There doesn't need to be a tragic story or a threat to life to make abortion ok.
It can be simply because you don't want to have a child. That's all. You still have the right to a choice.
I told my sad story because:
a) it is important to me to counter the rhetoric of anti-choice folks, that claims that if the unborn could speak they would be anti-choice
b) forced pregnancies can really f*ck up lives in many ways and that needs to be recognized.
But:
There shouldn't have to be a tale of woe to justify bodily autonomy.
It's a right. An absolute right. It should be protected by law.
That's it. That's all.
Last thingL I want this point to be heard, but I don't particularly want to deal with blowing up on twitter.
I will probably lock my account down at some point, but I would like this still to be shared. Maybe use an unroll app and share from there if you would like to.]]
Abortion IS NOT a human right.
I wonder if prolifers, like our friend here, have ever actually dug into *why* we argue that abortion is a human right.
I mean, I say I wonder. But we all know they haven't.
But just in case no one has articulated it for you: abortion is a human right because it safeguards our dignity and personhood under the law. It protects our ownership over our own bodies and our right to self determination. It is a safety net against the sorts of abuse and exploitation that only people capable of becoming pregnant are vulnerable to. It is harm reduction and health care.
Access to abortion is the garauntee that if we are in a bad situation, we won't be forced into a worse one because of our biology. Access to abortion is the safety net against failed and unviable pregnancies, the way to minimize risk and pain when a pregnancy becomes dangerous.
Access to abortion is the promise that we get to choose who the father of our children is, not having that forced upon us through acts of violence.
Access to abortion is an option for people who find themselves in need of options- for whom the loss of options will mean suffering and indignity.
Forced pregnancy is listed as a human rights violation by the UN. It is important to think about why.
Abortion isn't just a human right, it's one that's impossible to attack without standing directly opposed to the idea of freedom.
You know, the idea that you should be free to live your own life and not be beholden to a lord or king or what have you? Yeah, that's what you have to fight against if you oppose abortion.
People who oppose abortion are people who don't think human beings should be free. And last I checked, those aren't the kind of people who contribute to a healthy, free, and equal democracy.
It’s morally wrong to murder a innocent human being no matter how small.
A human, no matter how small, is not entitled to the organs of another person against their will.
Look, I get it. If you completely ignore the very real, complicated, messy, painful, wildly diverse, sometimes traumatic or tragic lives of the people who are pregnant, and ONLY focus on the (assumed healthy and viable) fetus, it's very easy to sit on your high horse and pass out these kinds of unnuanced morally simplistic edicts.
But the devil is in the details, and the people who are pregnant are people too, and whether intentional or not, your rhetoric causes a huge amount of suffering and harm to them.
Look, I'm not going to argue with you. I don't really get the impression that you're here with an open mind to the topic. That's fine. This reply wasn't for you - it's for everyone else who will read it.
Anti-abortion rhetoric is, at best, ignorant and niave. It is, in practice, wildly harmful and dehumanizing. It causes people to suffer, to carry dying and dead fetuses, it intensifies trauma and puts people in increased risk of intimate partner abuse. It creates a culture where the ability to become pregnant is a liability and a vulnerability. And if you refuse to take a step back and see the humanity of the people who are pregnant, then you are promoting violence against them.
You're allowed to not like abortion. I'm not asking you to throw a party over it. But the humane and ethical thing to do is to work to EXPAND and strengthen the choices we have, so fewer people find abortion their best option. Not take choices away and turn them into faceless incubators.
