Email I received yesterday from the National Network of Abortion Funds, which helps women pay for abortions they otherwise could not afford.
I’m participating in the 3rd Annual National Abortion Access BOWL-A-THON. I mean, OWLATHON. Donate any amount and win a batch of salted caramels!
You know, the only reason I was able to save your wife’s life was because I had the skills I learned by doing abortions.
—Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care, by Lori Freedman
(Source: vanderbiltuniversitypress.com)
Ask An Abortion Provider
From The Hairpin: Hello! I am a person who is training to become an abortion provider. As you can imagine, it is really fucking weird to be one of me, especially lately! I think maybe you have some questions? Ask An Abortion Provider
Overheard: “She’s going to have the baby,” he said. And then, after a pause, “Yeah, she was gonna get one but it cost like five hundred bucks.”
Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills…
“Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills, with castor oil…we try to get them to the ER before their cardiac rhythm is interrupted…Sometimes they douche with very caustic products like bleach. We had a patient, a teen, who burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn’t even examine her, her vaginal tissue was so painful….”
“Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don’t. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families…”
If you assume the quotes above come from a veteran of the abortion rights movement, talking about the “bad old days” before Roe v. Wade, when desperate women suffered death and injuries because abortion was illegal, you’d be partly right. The speaker is a longtime worker in reproductive health, whose involvement with abortion started before Roe. But the situations she describes are occurring now.
