Today is the annual anti choice march, offensively called the March for Life.
If you identify with the so-called “pro-life” movement in the United States then you support an organization advancing beliefs based on lies. This is fact.
The forced birth movement, which is what they should be a called by anyone in the press who cares about facts, advances lies about IUDs being abortifacients and varies lies about abortion safety. For example, the forced birth movement has advanced the idea that abortion causes breast cancer (wrong), that abortion causes depression (nope again), and that it is risky (it is safer than pregnancy by a long shot).
They also support laws that force doctors to lie about abortion safety to women and of course they want to make abortion illegal. Making abortion illegal only makes safe abortion illegal. This is also fact. If laws prevented abortions there would not be 20 million unsafe abortions annually.
The forced birth movements supports forced ultrasound laws even though viewing an ultrasound does not change the mind of women who have a high decision certainly regarding abortion.
There are ways to reduce abortion, so if someone actually wanted to call themselves pro-life they’d be working on ways to expand access to IUDs and comprehensive sex education. reduce poverty, and prevent domestic violence. What are the chances we’ll see creative signs for those today from marchers?
Exactly.
Everything the forced birth movement does hurts women, so they are the opposite of feminism.
Mandatory delays, ultrasound laws, and laws about admitting privileges all reduce access and raise the cost, which contributes to delays as women make increasing complicated plans for travel and need more time to raise money not only for the procedure itself, but for the travel arrangements. Even though abortion is still safer than pregnancy, with each passing week the risk of complications rises and so these laws directly hurt women.
The risk of death in pregnancy is greater than the risk of death from an abortion. If 100,000 women decide to keep their pregnancy 8.8 will die. If 100,000 women have an abortion 0.6 will die.
In countries with no abortion or limited access to abortion because of geography, not enough clinics, or poverty women get very sick and many die from their unsafe attempts at abortion. Approximately 5 million women are hospitalized each year because of unsafe abortions. The March for Life literally wants this to happen. They want women to be maimed and die. That is the consequence of restrictive laws. That is fact.
No one is marching in support of life today, they are marching for lies.
Call them out for exactly what they are, people who actively seek laws that willl lead to women dying from unsafe abortions. They are people who think is it fine for a woman to shove a stick in her uterus or drink bleach or bleed to death on her bedroom floor. As long as she dies quiety it will be okay.
Dr. Jen Gunter 
Why is the AMA AWOL on these issues? Every time Republicans degrade health care by requiring practices that are contraindicated, medically unnecessary, or medically harmful, I hear/read nothing but silence from the medical establishment. Where the hell are they? I can only assume many doctors agree with the assault on women’s health care, or somehow think that to save the profession they have to allow politicians to destroy it. I mean, where will it end? With more forced live experimentation on humans imprisoned for their religion or their beliefs? When is the AMA going to stand up and say, “ENOUGH!”? What a bunch of cowards. Talk about moral turpitude.
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 7:37 AM, Dr. Jen Gunter wrote:
> Dr. Jen Gunter posted: “Today is the annual anti choice march, offensively > called the March for Life. If you identify with the so-called “pro-life” > movement in the United States then you support an organization advancing > beliefs based on lies. This is fact. The forced birth m” >
Dear commenters, please send these great statements to the WH & all the republican reps in the House & Senate whose plan it is to hurt women by defunding PP. The more calls, letters & faxes they receive will let them know we Are paying attention & will not stand for it.
The amount of nonsense information re: abortion is staggering. I’m with you 1,000%. Please keep on speaking out about this!
I find your writing compelling and important. With the present administration modeling olympian levels of cognitive dissonance, encouraging abandonment of critical thinking in favor of alternative truths and pseudoscience, we need intelligent voices in defense of rationality. Thank you for your efforts to educate!
I didn’t know about the misinformation campaign. I just know that this crowd seems to care only about the fetus versus an actual human being (at any stage post-birth). But, I don’t think that’s really the case. Their shtick is about controlling women.
There aren’t many zero-sum games in life, but this is one of them.
If a fetus is granted human rights from the moment of fertilization (the ultimate goal for these people) then the woman loses hers. If she cannot terminate a pre-viable pregnancy if she wishes, then let’s call it what it is. She is reduced to reproductive chattel, enslaved to her uterus.
And beyond their total lack of advocacy for preventing unwanted pregnancy, I would bet good money that they oppose any programs for helping mothers, fathers,babies, or children. Parental leave? Nope. Food stamps? Nope. Anti poverty programs, subsidized childcare, increased minimum wage, guaranteed healthcare, school lunches, well financed public schools, anti-pollution measures? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope!
This is just evil, is what it is.
OK. Here’s the deal, I don’t want women to have abortions because the baby (fetus, whatever) is a separate, living being from the woman. That being said, the pro-life movement has told some doozies over the years to try to prevent abortion. And, they aren’t very hip on many of the things that will prevent abortion because they are religiously very conservative. But, they don’t want women to be maimed and die. I’m on the sidelines of that culture and the people in the movement really care about the babies. It is important to spread the facts about abortion, but it’s also important not to ascribe motive where it hasn’t been previously stated.
Hmm. Catherine Martin’s comment came through to my email, but isn’t showing up here yet? Well, this is one thing she said I want to reply to.
“I don’t want women to have abortions because the baby (fetus, whatever) is a separate, living being from the woman.”
This is a patently ridiculous statement. Can a twelve-week fetus survive outside a woman’s womb? If so, why don’t you volunteer to finish the gestation for a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant?
Oh that’s right, you can’t. Therefore, following the principle of bodily autonomy (and the law, per Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey) the woman has the absolute right to make decisions about her body until viability. And you have no business telling me what to do with mine.
I delete comments that I find ridiculous due to religion/lack of science.
Thank you for continuing to spread the real facts regarding all women’s health issues.
You just said the truth the way it is.
Excellent. We all should call out the forced birth movement, because that is exactly what it is. I remember when they first started using that term, “pro-life,” and when first used, the newspapers always put that phrase in quotes. (We’re going back many decades now.) Too bad that they didn’t stick to that if they have to use the phrase at all.
Words are important and forced birth is factual as opposed to right to life. We need to use more appropriate wording and not allow others to choose our words for us.
I am 1,000% with you. Time to rip off the mask here and just call it what it is. The more restrictive abortion laws are, the more women will be maimed and die. That’s the truth. I was there when abortion was illegal – but for me, it wasn’t a stick. It was a wire. So, yeah.
You’re my favourite blogger ever. Please don’t stop. Sx
Thank you!
Reblogged this on Sasharose31's Blog.
Excellent, as usual. Than you!