In response to Lu

My clinic is in one of the states that requires doctors to ask two questions at the ultrasound: "Do you want to see the ultrasound?" and "Would you like to know if it's twins?"

Only once have I seen this change a mind, but the woman with twins last week (who already had three children and a laid-off husband at home to support) wept in the recovery room. Did it change her mind? No. Did it make it harder for her? Absolutely. It is not only a kind of emotional blackmail, the requirements force women to make their choice, over and over again, even after they've decided. And each time, whatever their reasons, it makes it harder.

And you end up with situations like this, where all of our mandatory bullshit just frustrates people and makes the experience worse. There are so many hoops we have to jump through, and make our patients jump through. It makes me sick sometimes.

Then again, sometimes I appreciate portions of it-- and this is the part that I don't know that anyone but providers will understand.

As much as I love my job, and its mission, and the feeling that I'm helping women... sometimes I resent them. I know that a lot of the attitude I have to deal with comes from the fact they're dealing with the social stigma-- women are made to feel shitty about their choice, and they take it out on me. I understand that, but sometimes it pisses me off. And while I never lose professionalism in interactions, I know that my co-workers and I sometimes are... less than kind when we finish scheduling appointments for particular women, such as those who "don't like *that* word". It's just that, despite the stigma, we still need people to face the choice they're making.

In some way, that's what all the rigamarole does-- it makes women face their decision. I hate that it's made out to be such a huge decision, and I don't think any shame should be attached to it, but one of the things we're required to do in those mandatory counseling sessions is judge potential coping issues. And not being able to say the word "abortion" is one of those signs.

Alright, I'm going to close this here. I'm not necessarily sure I've said all I needed to, or as well as I could have, but it's what I needed to say.

...because getting an abortion isn't hard enough yet

Thank you, Jezebel for the heads up on this issue. I'll hope Eli is prepping her own post on this too.

The short version is this: the religious right isn't happy simply taking your right to choose away. While you can choose, they want you to choose life. We've known this for a while, but they are also trying to legislate things that will make it harder and harder to choose an abortion. In this case, various states are forming ultrasound laws -- that is laws that require health care providers to offer an ultrasound so you can see your speck before you definitely decide to abort it.

Abortion is already a hard decision for many. These laws simply exist to try and emotionally blackmail people. Regardless of the reasons for getting an abortion, this plays on someone in a hard situation's emotions in a way that I think is underhanded and dirty. Beyond that, the cost of the ultra-sound is just one more hoop making it more and more difficult to get on with your life. If you followed the link ("In this case") you saw that there's a law in the works in SC to force you to wait a full 24 hours post-ultrasound view to think about what you're going to do. Like getting sent to your room. That's another clinic visit. Which means another payment. Another scheduling. Another difficulty.

I have no doubt these laws will work to limit abortions -- those who were scraping together to afford them before will be even less able to afford them now. Those who were on the fence about going to the clinic, not because they want to keep the child, but for outside reasons, now have one more hoop (or possibly two in SC). The groups behind this will see it as a victory, fewer abortions. But I would rather see people freely able to make choices about their life and their body without a host of people they've never met getting involved.

Newsletter day!

Today my completely awesome cousin forwarded an e-newsletter to me from Congress.org. The letter highlights stuff going on in Congress, giving examples of bills that were introduced and explains them in easy plain English. It also links to the full text so that you can go read it.

Eli: Oh, awesome on the second one!
Prove that my work sucks, bitch, or pay me more!
Woo, repealed Congressional auto-raises!
And FUCK life at fertilization. What are they going to do with spontaneous abortions? And yay voting on the weekends!
Lu: I mean a lot of them are stupid. But I like that you can click and go see the bill and sponsors and stuff
Eli: I'm on the fence about the citizenship thing, and uncertain what "caller ID honesty" means.
Like, it is necessary that some IDs come up blocked.
Lu: Right
I'm realllllly pro HR 414 though
Eli: Yay noose=intimidation, boo reparations.
Lu: I do not think you should be able to take stealth pictures
Eli: YES.
But.
Lu: Um... I'm less noose=intimidation=HATECRIME
I was pro-it when I read it
Eli: Depends on the situation, I think. Because the Jena situation was clearly a hate thing.
Lu: but now I'm thinking. Like, yeah a lot of the time a noose is hate crimey.
But sometimes it's just Halloweeny
Eli: Ooh, yeah, that's a problem.
Lu: and I don't think we should legislate away the Halloweeny stuff just to take care of the Hate Crimes
Eli: And as for the camera phone thing, a lot of the time you just don't want to hear a damned clicking every time you're myspacing it up.
Lu: Also, now that I am getting this weekly, do you want to make discussing it a weekly part of the blog?

Eli: Yes.

So there you have it. We'll be getting this newsletter once a week and be talking about it. We weren't really intending to post this, so it's not exactly our collected thoughts. Mostly just gut reactions like "Oh, I like this!" followed by a lot of "Oh, actually, when I think about it, do I really want that legislated?" In the future, we hope to, you know, have gotten past that when we talk about it. Or maybe not. We'll also post links to the actual bills when we discuss them I hope.

Anything to add Eli?

--Lu