My job in the US was to assist pregnant women to get prenatal care (and, of course, health insurance). I very rarely saw women wanting an abortion. Sadly, the exception was because of lack of health insurance. In the US having a baby is expensive - between $30,000 - $50,000. If you don’t have good (or any) health insurance, and are not poor enough for Medicaid (meaning you have a minimum wage job), having a baby becomes a financial hardship. I did see cases with unplanned pregnancies, where upon finding out the costs, the women decided to seek an abortion. Our US society damns women if the do, and damns them if they don’t. If Texas, and other States, want to ban abortion, the least they could do is to support prenatal care and labor and delivery. But that won’t happen.
10 weeks is better than 6 weeks - but not by much. But if you are in Europe, you don't have to travel hundreds of miles to seek a safe abortion. What continues to gall me is that with all the advancements in education, literacy, etc. that women are still second class citizens. As long as men rule, we will always be in that Biblical position - be obedient to your husband (father, uncle, minister, male teacher).
I hope the American electorate makes the GOP pay for this assault on women's reproductive rights. And your close with the Harris query to the pathetic Kavanaugh is perfect!
Nancy, I very much appreciate your voice and all of your posts--from the sightseeing posts to the ones in which you delve deeper. As a recent immigrant to Portugal, I love the way you research to tie these deeper topics in to life and law and history in this, our new home. I was raised in a very conservative, fundamentalist Christian community in Illinois. I was born in the 70s, and grew up believing that abortion was one of the worst possible sins--because that was what all the adults around me kept telling me. But then, in high school, my closest friend got knocked up. Her mother had been killed when we were in 5th grade and so she had no one to talk to her about the realities of sex (our Christian school was very squeamish about even saying the WORD "sex" and the only sex education we received was a very awkward conversation in which the teacher told us girls that we were meant to be wives and mothers and, as such, we needed to make our bodies available to our husbands whenever they wanted us. But of course, not before marriage! My friend was heavily pressured to have sex by a guy she liked and she got pregnant the very first time. She told me later she didn't really understand what he wanted or what was happening but she wanted him to keep paying attention to her so she did whatever he asked. Her experience, and the clinic I drove her to so she could "explore her options," began to crack the foundations of what I believed--what I had been taught--about abortion. Though it took me a few more years to flip from anti-abortion to pro-choice, I made the leap in my 20s. Now I have a daughter who is just entering her pre-teen years. When Kavanaugh whined his way onto the Supreme Court, I told my husband, "We have to get our daughter out of this country. We're going to lose Roe v. Wade." When Coney-Barrett was scuttled onto the court, he finally believed me. Watching Texas this summer was terrifying because I know it's not the last state that will enact such laws stripping women of their bodily autonomy. But I also had that sinking feeling of confirmation, like, "I *knew* this was going to happen!" That was followed by a massive surge of relief (and some form of survivor's guilt), as I thought that I was SO GLAD my daughter will grow to womanhood here, in Portugal, instead of in the U.S. She is one of the big reasons we decided to relocate. We want to give her a different view of the world, but also more options. More choices. More bodily autonomy. ...All of that to say that I like it when you speak your mind, even about the topics that raise the trolls. Please, keep doing it.
Best post so far! Very well done. Since you're such a good writer, I'd be very interested in reading your take on Portugal's laws around drug addiction and treatment — and specifically, because of your US immigrant history (like me) — why the unqualified success of Portugal's program has not been held up as an example, and copied by tons of other countries.
My job in the US was to assist pregnant women to get prenatal care (and, of course, health insurance). I very rarely saw women wanting an abortion. Sadly, the exception was because of lack of health insurance. In the US having a baby is expensive - between $30,000 - $50,000. If you don’t have good (or any) health insurance, and are not poor enough for Medicaid (meaning you have a minimum wage job), having a baby becomes a financial hardship. I did see cases with unplanned pregnancies, where upon finding out the costs, the women decided to seek an abortion. Our US society damns women if the do, and damns them if they don’t. If Texas, and other States, want to ban abortion, the least they could do is to support prenatal care and labor and delivery. But that won’t happen.
10 weeks is better than 6 weeks - but not by much. But if you are in Europe, you don't have to travel hundreds of miles to seek a safe abortion. What continues to gall me is that with all the advancements in education, literacy, etc. that women are still second class citizens. As long as men rule, we will always be in that Biblical position - be obedient to your husband (father, uncle, minister, male teacher).
I hope the American electorate makes the GOP pay for this assault on women's reproductive rights. And your close with the Harris query to the pathetic Kavanaugh is perfect!
Nancy, I very much appreciate your voice and all of your posts--from the sightseeing posts to the ones in which you delve deeper. As a recent immigrant to Portugal, I love the way you research to tie these deeper topics in to life and law and history in this, our new home. I was raised in a very conservative, fundamentalist Christian community in Illinois. I was born in the 70s, and grew up believing that abortion was one of the worst possible sins--because that was what all the adults around me kept telling me. But then, in high school, my closest friend got knocked up. Her mother had been killed when we were in 5th grade and so she had no one to talk to her about the realities of sex (our Christian school was very squeamish about even saying the WORD "sex" and the only sex education we received was a very awkward conversation in which the teacher told us girls that we were meant to be wives and mothers and, as such, we needed to make our bodies available to our husbands whenever they wanted us. But of course, not before marriage! My friend was heavily pressured to have sex by a guy she liked and she got pregnant the very first time. She told me later she didn't really understand what he wanted or what was happening but she wanted him to keep paying attention to her so she did whatever he asked. Her experience, and the clinic I drove her to so she could "explore her options," began to crack the foundations of what I believed--what I had been taught--about abortion. Though it took me a few more years to flip from anti-abortion to pro-choice, I made the leap in my 20s. Now I have a daughter who is just entering her pre-teen years. When Kavanaugh whined his way onto the Supreme Court, I told my husband, "We have to get our daughter out of this country. We're going to lose Roe v. Wade." When Coney-Barrett was scuttled onto the court, he finally believed me. Watching Texas this summer was terrifying because I know it's not the last state that will enact such laws stripping women of their bodily autonomy. But I also had that sinking feeling of confirmation, like, "I *knew* this was going to happen!" That was followed by a massive surge of relief (and some form of survivor's guilt), as I thought that I was SO GLAD my daughter will grow to womanhood here, in Portugal, instead of in the U.S. She is one of the big reasons we decided to relocate. We want to give her a different view of the world, but also more options. More choices. More bodily autonomy. ...All of that to say that I like it when you speak your mind, even about the topics that raise the trolls. Please, keep doing it.
Excellent post, Nancy. Thanks for a thoughtful treatment of a very contentious issue.
In case you missed it, Mexico passed legalization of abortion the same week as the Texas law. Juxtapositions...
That's a great article Nancy, thanks for writing it. Let's talk soon.
Thank you Nancy. This is important.
Now that a Texas Doc has performed an illegal abortion and is being sued by a convicted felon in ARkansas let’s see what happens.
Best post so far! Very well done. Since you're such a good writer, I'd be very interested in reading your take on Portugal's laws around drug addiction and treatment — and specifically, because of your US immigrant history (like me) — why the unqualified success of Portugal's program has not been held up as an example, and copied by tons of other countries.