Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld
March 13, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 1 Comment
A recent study shows that, increasingly, women around the country are seeking illegal abortions. Even worse, many are so desperate that they try to abort themselves.
We might be looking at a new run on wire hangers.
Not surprisingly, most of these seem to occur in states that have passed laws limiting the kinds of health-care options available to women. This is separate (but just as reprehensible) as eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood, so that many women can’t get breast cancer screenings or PAP tests.
No, it’s laws like the one in Texas, that demand that women’s health clinics have hallways of a certain width. As a result, millions of women don’t have access to safe, legal abortions.
When this happens, some women continue helplessly continue their pregnancies. Some of these women will have their babies, and love them. Some of these women will have their babies and give them up for adoption. Some of these women will have their babies and either abuse them or raise them in abusive families. Unfortunately, some will either get illegal abortions, or seek out ways to abort themselves.
This is personal to me. My mother had an illegal abortion. This was in the 1950s, after my sister and I were born. She told the story about how she and her sisters, before the fact, would make nervous jokes about how abortions were performed on dirty kitchen tables. When the time came, the abortion doctor led her through his spotless kitchen, then down the stairs to his filthy basement.
Nearly 30 years later, I had my own abortion, legal, safe and sterile in a doctor’s office on Fifth Avenue with narrow hallways. I have never, ever regretted it.
For as long as we have known where babies come from (and maybe even before), women have tried to control their own bodies. It doesn’t matter what the social rules were, what the God said or what the men said. We have always looked for abortions (or “induced miscarriages”), legal or not. Restrictions on women’s access to health-care, including birth control and abortion, kills women. That has been true as long as there have been laws.
My days of worrying about an unplanned pregnancy are long over. I could sit this issue out, wrap myself up in my cloak of motherhood. Roe V. Wade is the law of the land, and maybe I want to fight for new rights, not argue over old ones.
That’s not going to happen. As long as women’s lives are considered less important, and women’s health is debated not in terms of our own quality of life but our function as baby-makers, we all have to speak up.
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, has noticed that, when she is not smiling, her dimples turn into jowls.
Sheila
March 13, 2016 - 8:50 am
It rattles my brain that after all the strides that were made, we are dealing with the devaluation of women in 2016.
Mike Gold
March 13, 2016 - 9:08 am
“I want to fight for new rights, not argue over old ones.” I wish. We constantly have to deploy and defend our rights. The Morally Superior will, and have, always work hard to return women, the poor and the disadvantaged to the chattel class. If you (generically) think the fight for, say, marriage equality is over and has been won, you need to pay more attention to history. You simply do not have a right until you use it — successfully, and repeatedly.
George Haberberger
March 14, 2016 - 10:52 am
The idea that women’s lives are considered less important by those who oppose the legality of abortion on demand is the exact inverse of the Pro-Life position. Women’s live are considerably more important because of their critical role in the creation of life. Unfortunately, some women seek to deny that role in much the same way slave-holders denied the humanity of an entire race.
“Some of these women will have their babies, and love them. Some of these women will have their babies and give them up for adoption. Some of these women will have their babies and either abuse them or raise them in abusive families. Unfortunately, some will either get illegal abortions, or seek out ways to abort themselves.”
The conspicuous absence of the word “baby” in the last scenario is most telling. Only when the fetus is born, do Pro-Choicers consider it a baby, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary.
And even if, regrettably, a child is raised in an abusive home, that is still preferable to not being born at all. Patrick Stewart, Charlize Theron, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Ludwig von Beethoven and Johannes Brahms were subjected abusive childhoods. Would the world be a better place without their contributions to society? Should they have been killed in utero to spare them the abuse? Obviously not. Abortion is the ultimate child abuse.
And it shouldn’t need to be pointed out that the photo accompanying the column is a specious false equivalency.
Mike said:
“The Morally Superior will, and have, always work hard to return women, the poor and the disadvantaged to the chattel class.”
By the way Mike, since you did not put Morally Superior in quotes or qualify the term in any way, can we assume that you consider that term an accurate description of those who are Pro-Life?
Howard Cruse
March 14, 2016 - 11:22 am
My mom was an Alabama Baptist preacher’s wife, and I’m quite sure she never had an abortion or considered having one. But she considered family planning to be of great importance and remembered when acquiring simple contraceptives was illegal; she also had great compassion for any woman who faced the morally complex issues that came with an unintended pregnancy.
She was a passionate supporter of Planned Parenthood’s mission, and she would have been horrified had she lived to see it recklessly demonized. As I have been.
tom brucker
March 14, 2016 - 8:23 pm
As the battles for control of women’s rights ebbs and flows, it is not surprising that messages from older generations need to be passed to the younger. In a couple of paragraphs Martha has either thrown herself and her mother under the bus, or she has made herself vulnerable and taught that women’s rights must be individual rights, or the consequences will touch us all.
Rene
March 18, 2016 - 4:30 pm
I gotta agree with George on this one. The picture is rubbish. Sperm is not the same as a fetus. (Though I disagree with George about women’s supposed role in anything. A woman’s role is varied and there are as many different roles as there are women)
It’s also tiresome how some generalizations are always made when one speaks of Pro-Lifers:
– No, not all Pro-Lifers are judgmental of women who have had abortions. When a person is in an impossible situation, who am I to judge them? It’s possible to be against abortion and still be understanding of women who have had them.
– It’s possible to be against abortion and still hold favorable views of other methods of contraception, like the pill and condoms. Not all Pro-Lifers are religious extremists.
– It’s possible to be a Pro-Lifer and recognize that social and economic conditions that push many women into poverty are more determinant in the big number of abortions than some supposed moral leniency in sexual matters.
– It’s possible to be a Pro-Lifer and recognize that some women who have abortions, particularly those who are poor, are pressure into it by males who have abandoned them or urged them to have the abortion. It’s not woman-blaming all around.