Keep Your Hands Off My Body!

[Jane of Arc]

I'll make it simple for everyone.

You're talking about events with MY BODY.

MY BODY belongs to ME.

I make decisions alone (or with the help of my family, my doctor or my God) for MY BODY.

KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY BODY!

[DLWet]

Originally Posted by Jane of Arc

I'll make it simple for everyone.

You're talking about events with MY BODY.

MY BODY belongs to ME.

I make decisions alone (or with the help of my family, my doctor or my God) for MY BODY.

KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY BODY!

The only reason folks wd consider setting up rules that would affect your autonomy is because they believe that the life of another human being trumps your own autonomy in the case of elective (not non-elective) abortions. Now, you may disagree with the premise implicit there, but it sure helps to frame the issue in terms that at least acknowledge the other side's perspective/(not wholly misogynistic) intent.

dlw

[DLWet]

one more thing...

The gov't is involved in the regulation of all industries, including the abortion industry. The use of libertarian language to defend women's right to elect abortions in defined circumstances is not helpful. It obscures how all choice is made in a legal/moral framework and that the framework is the real issue here, not whether women ought to have autonomy/control over their lives/bodies.

dlw

[Jennifer_SFBA]

What about world human overpopulation that threatens all life in our world?

Under present worldwide economic conditions, human starvation in our world will dramatically increase.

Originally Posted by by Michigan Daily by AP[/QUTOTE

U.N. report: Starvation kills 6 million children each year

United Nations food agency announces goal to reduce number of starving by half in 2015

November 23rd, 2005

ROME (AP) - Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year, and more people are malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa this decade than in the 1990s, according to a U.N. report released yesterday.

Many of the children die from diseases that are treatable, including diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles, said the report by the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of malnourished people grew to 203.5 million people in 2000-02 from 170.4 million 10 years earlier, the report states, noting that hunger and malnutrition are among the main causes of poverty, illiteracy, disease and deaths in developing countries.

The U.N. food agency said the goal of reducing the number of the world's hungry by half by the year 2015, set by the World Food Summit in 1996 and reinforced by the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, remains distant but attainable.

"If each of the developing regions continues to reduce hunger at the current pace, only South America and the Caribbean will reach the Millennium Development Goal target," Jacques Diouf, the agency's director-general, wrote in the report, the agency's annual update on world hunger.

The food agency said the Asia-Pacific region also has a good chance of reaching the targets "if it can accelerate progress slightly over the next few years."

"Most, if not all of the - targets can be reached, but only if efforts are redoubled and refocused," Diouf said. "To bring the number of hungry people down, priority must be given to rural areas and to agriculture as the mainstay of rural livelihoods."

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, on a visit to Rome to meet with FAO and Italian officials, said yesterday that free trade and economic growth were key to fighting hunger.

"We have world goals in terms of reducing hunger, and in terms of long-term prospects, it really does involve the ability of countries to engage in economic relationships with each other," he said. "We want economies around the world to improve, that is really what's going to provide the long term stable base upon which people are let out of poverty."

Diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, which kill more than 6 million people a year, hit the hungry and poor the hardest, according to the report's findings. Millions of families are pushed deeper into poverty and hunger by the illness and death of breadwinners, the cost of health care, paying for funerals and support of orphans.

About 75 percent of the world's hungry and poor live in rural areas in poor countries, the report found.

Now with the dire worldwide result of NEOCONSERVATIVE economic policies expect increased world hunger and many, many, many more children dying of hunger and related disease, or should they survive, impaired physical and mental functions.

[Jennifer_SFBA]

What about this during the time that abortions were illegal?

Originally Posted by counterpunch edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, originally written by Michelle Bollinger[/QUOTE

An Era of Tragedy for Women
When Abortion was Illegal
By MICHELLE BOLLINGER

Abortion was criminalized throughout the U.S. between the late 1800s and 1973. But during that time, millions of women sought and obtained abortions anyway.

Of these, tens upon tens of thousands died from illegal abortions or complications arising from them. One 1932 study estimated that illegal abortions or complications from them were the cause of death for 15,000 women each year. Current, more conservative, estimates of the death toll still stand at between 5,000 and 10,000 deaths per year.

Some of these deaths were the result of the abortions themselves, but many more were from infection and hemorrhaging afterward. Because of the fear of being punished and socially ostracized, many women--and their doctors--kept their real condition a secret.

The right wing has gone on an organized campaign to discredit such statistics, going as far to claim that deaths from illegal abortion were "just" a few dozen a year--and that the anecdotes of items such as coat hangers being inserted into women's bodies to cause an abortion are false. In reality, coat hangers were just one horror among many during the years of illegal abortion.


* * *

While abortion was illegal for decades, not all eras of illegality were the same.

In the 1930s, for example, abortion was widespread and extremely common. There was still tremendous risk involved, given that penicillin and antibiotics were not available until the Second World War. But even at this time, abortion was increasingly safe, relatively speaking.

The Great Depression produced an economic crisis that sharpened the need of women to control childbearing. Due to the 1920s campaign to make birth control available, by 1937, 80 percent of American women approved of using birth control. Moreover, the labor movement and socialist movements of that era produced an environment that largely supported women's reproductive rights. The fact that Russia following the 1917 revolution had been performing safe, legal abortions influenced radical doctors in the U.S.

In 1939, 68 percent of medical students in the U.S. reported that they would be willing to perform abortions if they were legal.

Many did. As Leslie Reagan describes in her excellent book When Abortion Was a Crime, clinics operated in open defiance of the law, and were often run by trained doctors, nurses and midwives. One such clinic in Chicago performed about 2,000 abortions a year between 1932 and 1941.

For these and other reasons--such as the availability of sulfa drugs--maternal mortality declined in the 1930s. Illegal abortion accounted for 14 percent of maternal mortality.

But by the early 1960s, the situation had reversed dramatically. In New York, for example, deaths resulting from illegal abortions accounted for 42 percent of the maternal mortality rate. There were fewer abortionists in 1955 than there were in 1940. Across the U.S., larger and larger numbers of women died from illegal abortion after the Second World War than before.

In the post-Second World War era in the U.S., there was a backlash against women's rights, and women working outside the home and living independent lives. Central to this was a crackdown on illegal abortion that drove it underground and ushered in an era of tragedy and horror for women.

Clinics and midwives' homes and offices were raided and their patients' lives exposed publicly in show trials that mirrored the worst of the anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthyist era. Women were accosted by police detectives outside clinics and forced to testify against those who performed abortions. Anyone who didn't cooperate was likely to wake up the next morning with details of their personal lives splashed all over the pages of the newspaper.

As a result, most illegal abortions were increasingly self-induced by women, or performed by a back-alley butcher.

Both were nightmares in their own right. Women often tried to induce abortion or cause a miscarriage by throwing themselves down stairs or inflicting violence on themselves. They ingested, douched with or inserted into themselves a chilling variety of chemicals and toxins--from bleach to potassium permanganate to turpentine to gunpowder and whiskey. Knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors and coat hangers were all among the tools used by women who had no choice but to resort to these means.

Thousands of women died from poisoning and injury. Thousands of others lived, but with the pain of permanent injuries and disfigurement.

[Jennifer_SFBA]

Continued:

Originally Posted by counterpunch edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, originally written by Michelle Bollinger[/QUOTE

Women who sought abortions from back-alley butchers encountered similar horrors. Because of the crackdown, the clandestine nature of illegal abortion meant that women who sought them were often blindfolded, driven to remote areas and passed off to people they didn't know or couldn't see. Leslie Reagan's book contains stories of women forced to get abortions from drunk abortionists, using unsanitary tools in filthy rooms and even the backseats of cars.

The humiliation and isolation imposed on women because of the illegal nature of abortion meant that many women, after receiving one, feared going to a doctor when they suffered complications.

In Reagan's book, one woman recalled how a fellow college student who had an illegal abortion "was too frightened to tell anyone what she had done. She locked herself in the bathroom between two dorm rooms and quietly bled to death."

Some women didn't suffer this fate--because of their class. Nearly all middle- and upper-class white women who sought abortions were able to obtain one in hospitals or outside the U.S.

But the vast majority of women faced deplorable conditions, and women of color suffered the worst. Nearly four times as many women of color died from illegal abortions as white women. Before 1970, when abortion was legalized in New York City, Black women accounted for 50 percent of deaths due to illegal abortions. Puerto Rican women accounted for 44 percent.

The history of back-alley abortion is full of countless horror stories.

In 1964, 28-year-old Geraldine Santoro bled to death on the floor of a Connecticut hotel room after she and her former lover, Clyde Dixon, attempted an abortion on their own. Dixon, who had no medical experience of any kind, used a textbook and some borrowed tools. When things went terribly wrong, he fled the scene, and Santoro died alone.

Meanwhile, after Roe legalized abortion, every restriction passed has meant that more women die.

In 1977, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, banning federal Medicaid funding for abortions for poor women. Shortly after the law went into effect, Rosie Jimenez, a 27-year-old student and single mother, couldn't afford a private abortion. She obtained an illegal one and died from infection. A decade later, 17-year-old Becky Bell got a back-alley abortion because of restrictions under Indiana's parental notification law. She suffered a horrific infection and died as a result.

And these are just a few of the better-known stories of the victims of the war on women's reproductive rights.


* * *

THE MASS social movements of the 1960s and early 1970s--in particular the movement for women's liberation--created the context for the Supreme Court to uphold abortion as a constitutional right for women in 1973.

After Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, women's health improved significantly. Entire wards of hospitals dedicated to aiding women suffering from complications from botched abortions could be devoted to other uses. In New York City, after abortion was legalized in 1970, maternal mortality dropped by 45 percent. Women were finally freed from the terror of the back alley.

The legalization of abortion was a shining moment in the struggle for women's liberation. For one, the shame and nightmares that often accompanied illegal abortion had been overcome. But also, by winning abortion rights, the women's movement placed the demand that women alone must control their own bodies at the center of the broader fight for liberation.

Under capitalism, women cannot be equal to men without having control over reproduction. Ultimately, women bear the physical, emotional and financial burden of bearing and raising a child. And women--working-class women in particular--bear a "double burden" of both wage labor at work and domestic labor at home. This dynamic drives the sexism that permeates our society.

Any fundamental challenge to the inequality faced by women must have the struggle for women's reproductive rights at its core.

[Michael DeM]

Originally Posted by DLWet

The only reason folks wd consider setting up rules that would affect your autonomy is because they believe that the life of another human being trumps your own autonomy in the case of elective (not non-elective) abortions. Now, you may disagree with the premise implicit there, but it sure helps to frame the issue in terms that at least acknowledge the other side's perspective/(not wholly misogynistic) intent.

dlw

First of all, welcome aboard DLWet. I understand your point and where you're coming from. It's interesting to note, however, that many of the countries where abortion is illegal also happen to be the ones where women are still treated as second-class citizens, whereas abortion tends to be legal more in highly industrialized countries where women have greater status in society. I can't help but notice the correlation and wonder if there's more to it than just the issue of fetal rights.

[Ms. Sanity]

Agree with Jane of Arc.

I can't even bear a child, but I'll fight for the rights of Jane and others to do what they think is best with their own bodies.

I'll take the so called pro life brigade a LOT more seriously when 60% of them take in at least one foster child or adopt a child who needs a home. They talk about what OTHER people should do---but they don't "walk the walk." To my mind, their talk is CHEAP!

Ms. S.

[Jane of Arc]

The only reason folks wd consider setting up rules that would affect your autonomy is because they believe that the life of another human being trumps your own autonomy in the case of elective (not non-elective) abortions. Now, you may disagree with the premise implicit there, but it sure helps to frame the issue in terms that at least acknowledge the other side's perspective/(not wholly misogynistic) intent.

Let's frame this issue based on justice. It's a fresh perspective.

Without the woman's body there is no other "life".

Without the woman's body there is "no other human being".

The woman and her rights as an individual and citizen come first.

If we were talking about men's bodies ... well ... we wouldn't even have an "issue", would we. In American, women have been able to vote for less than a century and in other parts of the world women are still bought and sold. Is this relevant? You bet it is.


.

[DLWet]

Originally Posted by Michael DeM

First of all, welcome aboard DLWet. I understand your point and where you're coming from. It's interesting to note, however, that many of the countries where abortion is illegal also happen to be the ones where women are still treated as second-class citizens, whereas abortion tends to be legal more in highly industrialized countries where women have greater status in society. I can't help but notice the correlation and wonder if there's more to it than just the issue of fetal rights.

I've no doubt that increase political voice for females makes a diff in increasing their rights. My concern is with resolving this issue by treating all the parties in the US evenhandedly so that other issues of life/death and/or women's rights can get more play in our elections.

I find the frames on both sides quite often don't help in that regard.
dlw

[DLWet]

Originally Posted by Ms. Sanity

Agree with Jane of Arc.

I can't even bear a child, but I'll fight for the rights of Jane and others to do what they think is best with their own bodies.

I'll take the so called pro life brigade a LOT more seriously when 60% of them take in at least one foster child or adopt a child who needs a home. They talk about what OTHER people should do---but they don't "walk the walk." To my mind, their talk is CHEAP!

Ms. S.

lots of them do...

but of course there are folks who walk the walk and others who probably just use the issue as a pretext for voting for their wallet-book. And there are those who are genuine mysogynistic, but you never should characterize in the worse way possible all of your political opponents. That doesn't help expedite the compromises that are critical for maintaining a healthy democracy.

dlw

[DLWet]

Originally Posted by Jane of Arc

Let's frame this issue based on justice. It's a fresh perspective.

Without the woman's body there is no other "life".

Without the woman's body there is "no other human being".

The woman and her rights as an individual and citizen come first.

Sloppy logic is not persuasive. What is the cost to the woman to possibly altering the defined circumstances when she may elect an abortion? The cost would be that society would need to educate us so that women who choose to be sexually active and do not wish to give birth self-discipline themselves to test for pregnancy on a monthly basis so they will have plenty of time to elect an abortion.

If a change in the law required 75% approval of voting systems, it would never let the time-frame for electing an abortion fall below 7 weeks after conception.

If we were talking about men's bodies ... well ... we wouldn't even have an "issue", would we. In American, women have been able to vote for less than a century and in other parts of the world women are still bought and sold. Is this relevant? You bet it is..

My arg is that the legal decision to treat the human unborn as legally-protected persons can be made on the basis of widespread empathy of other mature human beings. The 75% criterion for whether the status quo would be changed would then suffice to guarantee women sustainable protections and/or due process in the alteration of their rights.

So do you want to stake your rights as a woman on the absolute right to choose to elect an abortion at all stages of pregnancy or do you want to free up your political capital/time/energy to fight for further extensions of women's rights along other lines by allowing that your right to elect an abortion is necessarily defined by rule of law?

dlw

[lynchbug]

I support a woman's right to sovereignty over her own body. This includes the right to any medical abortion. As discussed in another thread on the right to choose, the Supreme Court has already decided in Roe that this is the legal truth.

Additionally, that same, other thread discusses the unknown but very high frequency of miscarriage (spontaneous abortion, and the dangerous missed abortion.) Most pregnancies on earth end not in live birth, but in miscarriage. Spontaneous abortions are difficult to count accurately, as many are very early term, and indistinguishable by women from a late menstrual period. Spontaneous abortions occur throughout the the 40 week span of pregnancy, and do not cover still births, that is, delivery of a fetus which died at some point during the pregnancy.

My support for a woman's right to choose is based strongly in the Constitution, and in the forming principles of individual and collective sovereignty the Revolutionaries of the Continental Congress, The Founders, and the Framers have promulgated through their writings and the laws and declarations they made.

Additionally, Nature's Law demonstates that most pregnancies will not end in live birth.

I know that women face risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth, as they do also in any abortion of any kind. Death during childbirth is by no means rare in the United States.

Sovereignty, in the United States of America, is held in two ways. Sovereignty resides individually, in each person of legal majority. Also, Sovereignty is shared collectiely, administered by the majority, through the three branches of the Federal Goernment, and in each of the several states, and autonomous territories, protectorates, and other special political subdivisions.

These definitions are provided to emphasize the nature of Sovereignty.

1sov·er·eign
Variant(s):also sov·ran \ˈsä-v(ə-)rən, -vərn also ˈsə-\
Function:noun
Etymology:Middle English soverain, from Anglo-French soverein, from soverein, adjective
Date:13th century
1 a: one possessing or held to possess sovereignty b: one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere c: an acknowledged leader : arbiter
2: any of various gold coins of the United Kingdom
From the Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. All rights remain the property of their owners.

2sovereign
Variant(s):also sovran
Function:adjective
Etymology:Middle English soverain, from Anglo-French soverein, from Vulgar Latin *superanus, from Latin super over, above — more at over
Date:14th century
1 a: superlative in quality : excellent b: of the most exalted kind : supreme <sovereign virtue> c: having generalized curative powers <a sovereign remedy> d: of an unqualified nature : unmitigated <sovereign contempt> e: having undisputed ascendancy : paramount
2 a: possessed of supreme power <a sovereign ruler> b: unlimited in extent : absolute c: enjoying autonomy : independent <sovereign states>
3: relating to, characteristic of, or befitting a sovereign
Frome Merrian-Webster's Online Dictionary. All Rights remain the property of their owners.

sov·er·eign·ty
Variant(s):also sov·ran·ty \-tē\
Function:noun
Inflected Form(s): plural sov·er·eign·ties
Etymology:Middle English soverainte, from Anglo-French sovereinté, from soverein
Date:14th century
1obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it
2 a: supreme power especially over a body politic b: freedom from external control : autonomy c: controlling influence
3: one that is sovereign ; especially : an autonomous state
From Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. All rights remain the property of their owners.

We have many laws and legal procedures which preserve our individual sovereignty in many matters. Many of these are enumerated in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America.

At the most rudimentary level, during the twentieth century, though having it roots in the late 19th cetury and earliler, we saw increasing legal constraint on the personal affairs of the individual. These most notably are seen in The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the 18th Amendment of 1917, and other such laws enacted in this country, as well as consraint of United States Citizens by International Treaties continued to be enacted through 1970. A sad note is that many of these Acts were primarily brought to law in attempts to suppress racial and idealistic minorities during the 20th Century.

Basically, in my humble opinon, if we are to have the Freedom the Revolutionaries and Founders won for us, and which succeeding generations did make the supreme sacrifice to preserve, we must stand solidly upon the principle of individual Freedom and Sovereignty, or we shall have none.

A woman's right to control her own body's reproductive capacity is a paramount example of freedom, and is not the concern, otherwise, of legislative bodies, courts, or their neighbors.

The political right is also coming after your birth control pills, and any hormonal medications which could be used to create similar contraceptive effect.

Reject Jefferson's "Enemy of Liberty".

Reject the globalist corporate oligarchs, do not submit to them, and tell them most directly:

KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY BODY

I'd also suggest giving the conservative pundits on talk radio and cable networks a long hiatus from your personal life. I mean, that cannot be at all good for you on a dail basis, now can it? Especially if you work in women's reproductive healthcare.

YES, WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTHCARE, A SUB BRANCH OF HEALTHCARE, IS THE INDUSTRY. I DON'T BELIEVE THERE IS AN ABORTION INDUSTRY. (search the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the IRS websites...it's not listed.)(Also, Thomas/Reuters Financials doesn't have it listed.)

Oh, and Do Not buy Their Books! (The previous administration's, that is.)