Why Criminalizing Abortions is a Horrible Idea, or Another Reason I’m Relieved I Live in Canada.

So I read this article today: Link

It has gems like the following:

Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.

In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”

In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.

In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible.

In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.”

Excerpt from an article by Lynn M. Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin

I suggest you read the whole article if your at all alarmed by this. If your not alarmed by this to some extent you should probably check your pulse, and if you do find your pulse you may want to get some help of the psychiatric variety.

Some of you many be asking what the hell is going on, and questioning the legitimacy of these claims. But the war on abortion is due to the nature of it’s goal has been and will continue to be a war a women right’s to their own bodies. Because at the end of the day you can talk about restricting abortions without saying that women have less right to controlling their body then does a fertilized zygote (or embryo, or eventually fetus. each having there own arguments associated with them) There is not way around that problem. But worse then just restricting abortion many state have basically criminalized them, leading to women literally dieing and being jailed.

Worse still many of these women where not having abortions, many don’t even now they where pregnant, some of these women are vehemently anti-abortion. All that need to happen for you to be jailed with many of these laws it having a pregnancy terminated or in risk of terminating, and you lose your right to bodily autonomy.

And because there is not good way of determining a miscarriage from most abortions these laws regardless of intention where doomed to succeed only in criminalizing female side of reproduction. Given miscarriages occur somewhere in over 20% of all pregnancies. Given how many women become pregnant in a year imagine if this becomes a problem through out the USA? Women might need to flee the country just to have children, or if they do have a miscarriage they will have to hide it, even if they are risking their life due to complications, because they might just get sent to jail!

Is it any wonder why they where calling these laws the war on women? I hope for the sake of women through the States that everyone reading this will spread the message, and help stop this atrocity before the anymore women are unjustly abused by this laws and policies. There has already been at least 380 of these cases, and the rates are only on the rise.

If you actually want to reduce the rates of abortions like most sensible people do. Then support sex education for children. The best way to stop abortions is to make sure pregnancies can happen unless they are wanted.

Withteeth

What is the Most Terrifying Thing About Death?

I’m in a bit of a morbid mood right now, so bear with me. Death is a terrifying thought for many reasons. Death itself doesn’t really scare me. Once I’m gone I’m gone, that’s it. But the process of dying is kind of scary. I don’t want to suffer. I don’t want to be in pain. When I die, I hope it’s quick. But I’m also afraid that my life won’t mean anything. Mostly I just view this as a silly flaw of our society. We are told that being average isn’t good enough and that we should strive to be special. But there are 7 billion of us. What are the chances that even a seventh of the human population will know my name after I die? And why should I care? I don’t know a billion people. I’ll never even know a million, or a thousand. At most I’ll know a couple hundred, and I’ll know less than half of that well. So why do I care if my life means anything? 

I don’t want to die with regrets, so I want to enjoy life as much as possible. And I want to accomplish as many of my goals as possible. I want to have children and see them grow into adulthood. I want to get published and travel a lot. But mostly I just want to be happy. If I die happy, then my life can’t have been for nothing. It doesn’t matter if anybody remembers me, or if I left anything with my name on it behind. It only matters that I enjoyed the time that I had.

So why is death scary? I suppose at this point it is scary because I’m 25 and, with any luck, my life won’t even be half over for another 20 years. But there is always the chance that I could die tomorrow. I’m not ready to die, which makes the very idea scary.