April 12, 2006 2:33 pm


:note: Jimmy Eat World – “Bleed American”

There is no shortage of absolutely infuriating things going around the internet lately, most relating to women’s health. In an article run by The Stranger, they detailed a situation in which a woman was not able to receive vitamins (VITAMINS, people. Not birth control, not EC, VITAMINS) because the prescription came from a women’s health clinic that just so happens to perform abortions. The pharmacist had no idea whether or not the woman in question had actually had an abortion (probably not, since she was trying to obtain, you know, PRENATAL VITAMINS), yet still refused to fill the prescription. Meanwhile, pharmacists all over are completely okay with dispensing Viagra and Cialis. (Bring on the spam comments.)

Even more infuriating than that, a pharmacy refused to dispense abortion-related antibiotics to a patient. Antibiotics. So, let’s see… You’re upset that someone has had an abortion, so you withhold medication that could save their life? I see. Far better to have the mother die as well, since she did have an abortion. Pro-life? Not so much. This, to me, is in the same vein as bombing abortion clinics and murdering doctors. These people are all about “right to life” and “pro-life” and “live live live” so they… kill people. Hmm.

This article from The New York Times (registration required, sorry, it’s not long) deals with the country of El Salvador and how abortions are illegal in every single context imaginable. No exceptions due to rape, incest, health of the mother, nothing. You get an abortion, and you face anywhere from 2 to 50 years in jail. If the fetus is determined to have been viable (based solely on a “rule of thumb” weight of the fetus at the time of the abortion), you are charged with aggrivated murder.

Also, if you have the misfortune to experience an ectopic pregnancy, doctors will do nothing for you as long as the misplaced fetus has a heartbeat. This means that you may have to just sit and wait in the hospital, undergoing multiple ultrasounds, until your Fallopian tube has ruptured. Yes, ruptured. A simple operation could have prevented it from rupturing, but the misplaced fetus (even though it would have died anyway, since you can’t carry an ectopic pregnancy to term in any stretch of the imagination) had a heartbeat and therefore had to be preserved, at the expense of the mother’s health and wellbeing.

I can’t help but think that all this stuff shows that we value the life of an unborn, unviable fetus than we do a living, breathing woman. Cecily had a rough period a while back when a viscious commenter attacked her for what happened during her pregnancy with twin boys. She experienced severe Pre-eclampsia (the only “cure” for which is delivery) and was forced to terminate the pregnancy in order to save her own life (multiple organ failure was imminent). The twins were not yet viable, meaning even if they had been born, they would not have survived. Was Cecily to die right along with them? This commenter seemed to think so, and insisted the twins would have lived if she had only “done more.”

This comment on Bitch, Ph.D. illustrates something very, very scary. Someone falsified the results of an amniocentesis test because the results indicated the fetus had Down’s Syndrome, and (I’m assuming) the lab tech did not want the couple to terminate the pregnancy. According to the commenter,

The “Down’s” karyoptype was replaced with a normal one, and then ~7 months later a Down’s baby was born to this family that had followed the rules and gotten the proper testing done to be able to make an informed decision regarding their fetus’ future.

The couple had the right to make an informed decision, and this lab tech apparently did not agree with that right.

This post on A Little Pregnant details a bill (called the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act) that is being proposed to Senate. According to Julie:

the bill would allow insurance companies to flat-out ignore nearly all state laws that require coverage for certain conditions or treatments â€” you know, those little extras like cervical cancer screening, bone marrow transplants, alcoholism and drug abuse treatment, mental health services, breast reconstruction, minimum maternity stay, provision of diabetic supplies, inclusion of domestic partners in policy coverage, direct access to your OB-GYN, continuity of care during pregnancy, mammography, contraceptives, infertility diagnosis and treatment…

Yeah. The list goes on. Terrifying, no? Especially with affordable health care being the way it is right now. She provides a link to all the US Senators, and a boilerplate letter (just copy and paste!) with which to contact your respective state senators. I did it. You should too.

Just for good measure, I’ll throw in this link to Jon’s political post on Blurbomat, which talks about the sorry, sorry state of our government at the moment.

As they say, if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

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  • Abby says:

    Also, the US government, which has never before been anti-vaccination, is refusing to vaccinate for HPV, a very common STD, also the number one cause of cervical cancer.


  • Meggan says:

    Yeah, I posted about that a while ago, I think. Maybe. It seems like I may have, at least. I was (am) pissed because they’re refusing to vaccinate based on the idea that it will encourage young girls to have risky, pre-marital sex (because no marital sex is ever risky :|) since they would no longer have to worry about getting cancer. RIDICULOUS.

    Something I also forgot to mention here, is that they’ve recently determined that the deaths that had been attributed to the “abortion pill,” RU-whatever, were actually from Toxic Shock Syndrome and not the pill at all. I should go find the link where I saw that… Maybe tomorrow. I’m going to bed. :P But yeah, the deaths weren’t from the pill.

    [edit: 15 minutes later]
    Found the post. I only said a sentence about it, but man. Stupid.

  • Abby says:

    The thing that annoys me about the lack of HPV vaccinations, is that it’s a women’s health issue, and I feel like if it were something that would make it less risky for men to sleep around, a lot of the (mostly male) (probably not all faithful) conservative congressmen would be more for it.

    I still think it’s true that women get looked down upon more for sleeping around than men do, and that’s just not very fair.