I have a friend who is about 12 years older than I am...she actually had to have a doctor certify that she was mentally incapable so that she could have an abortion back in the 60s. NEVER AGAIN.
I'm from a different country, with different history. My father is a doctor whose practice began in the mid 1950's. He has shared many a story with me (without divulging private information) about the "bad old days" and how he became one of the first physicians at the time who blazed the trail and so was able to meet the pressing needs of desperate women in a hospital setting and under the best of conditions. The euphemism was "D&C for menstrual irregularity".
I've seen this entire issue from a slightly different viewpoint and that has given me strong opinions upon it, even though I'm not a woman. We now have the technology for reproductive choice... but it is imperfect and still looked at with disdain for moral reasons by some people who seem to regard sex as inherently wrong and see pregnancy as a "consequence".
I don't like abortion. I've never known a woman to have one and not be emotionally moved. But I will fight, tooth and nail, to ensure that safe and legal abortions will always remain available to those who require them.
What I would like to see is for the religious rite (I refuse to call their attitude "right") to step up and say: if we want to reduce abortion, we need to invest research dollars into better conception control... control where BOTH partners need to be actively trying to conceive before a conception can take place. And, even then, there are times that the health of the mother will require abortion... and it must remain a legal option.
Science brought us the space age. Religious conservatives continue to mourn for the simple days of the stone age.
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chiming
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Date: 2011-01-22 04:37 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-01-22 09:30 pm (UTC)From:I've seen this entire issue from a slightly different viewpoint and that has given me strong opinions upon it, even though I'm not a woman. We now have the technology for reproductive choice... but it is imperfect and still looked at with disdain for moral reasons by some people who seem to regard sex as inherently wrong and see pregnancy as a "consequence".
I don't like abortion. I've never known a woman to have one and not be emotionally moved. But I will fight, tooth and nail, to ensure that safe and legal abortions will always remain available to those who require them.
What I would like to see is for the religious rite (I refuse to call their attitude "right") to step up and say: if we want to reduce abortion, we need to invest research dollars into better conception control... control where BOTH partners need to be actively trying to conceive before a conception can take place. And, even then, there are times that the health of the mother will require abortion... and it must remain a legal option.
Science brought us the space age. Religious conservatives continue to mourn for the simple days of the stone age.