Terrifyingly anti-woman law passed in Oklahoma

[SethStarkaddersMum]

I am absolutely at this.

A law has been passed in Oklahoma to force women who want abortion to undergo vaginal ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus and view the ultrasound image before terminating a pregnancy.
Even if they are rape or incest victims.

words absolutely fail me.

OOOh Getorf I didn't know that happened to you!

I was told I was the only notified failure in 2003!

('twas a big story on MN at the time and I faced suggestions of giving her the middle name Mirena!) I can't find the thread on a search, but it was all very exciting and terribly scarey.

I had a recurring painful kidney condition in pregnancy with ds and was offered a termination with dd2. She was worth everything I went through to have her.

Weegie how bloody strange!

Was not on MN then (blimey you're old ) - I was very early pregnancy - prob about 6 weeks they said. It was all a bit mystifying however had a scan and there the baby was, in the womb as well. They were convinced that it would be ectopic. They arranged for me to come in a few days later to have the mirena out, however I miscarried in the meantime. This was in 1999!!

They said that it must have been an earlier gestation than that, and that it implanted and spontaneously miscarried, which was (how they explained it) how the mirena worked.

God knows but I never trusted it after that. The bloody thing was sold to me as absolutely infallible (well as good as dammit).

Did they take your mirena out, or did they leave it in btw (Can it stay there in the uterus whilst you are pregnant?)

The doctors told me that the ywould have to remove the mirena as the foetus would not co-exist, however they said that there would be a chance that the foetus would abort at the same time.

I go on all mirena threads I find where they say 'are there any side effects' and I say yes, pregnancy, no matter what they tell you it is possible to conceieve on this, even if it looks statistically impossible.

I'm ancient I joined when ds was just tiny in early 2002! My reg number is somewhere down in the 5000s!

Mine was in my cervix - had been pulled down by a smear, i knew there was wrong with it, had migraines and was premenstrual - but a period never came.

Was quite fun to sit with the OB and he said "when was your last period" and I pointed to 13 month old ds and said "before he was born!".

It was easy to remove as it was in my cervix. It just fell out.

Dd2 is a delight but I went through 3 years of hell - pregnancy and 2 after, until it was all over.

Well bloody hell. Poor you though that pregnancy and after sounds awful, I hope all is well now though.

Blimey weegie - what a story!

Sorry for crap link.

here

Apparently I was one of the first people to have the mirena (1995). the surgery i went to trailed it.

What a crap claim to fame.

'I wouldn't have had an abortion if I'd found myself pregnant with my husband. I'd have thought it was our own fault for being careless, which we never are. There's no excuse for being careless about using contraception--ever. If you are drunk and have unprotected sex you have been stupid. Sorry.

If I was raped I'd take the morning after pill. Immediately. In the hope that I'd catch the (possibly) fertilised egg before it implanted.

Still a mortal sin according to my religion, but one i could live with.'

So again, sex is punishable by having to have the resulting baby. What a strange attitude. We no longer live in a time when women are slaves to their fertility, having to have babies if they happen to fall pregnant. And I for one thank god for that.

And as for rape victims taking the MAP. Yes, because they will of course be thinking straight enough to go straight to the pharmacist won't they . I think a common reaction to rape is denial, I can't see many victims going straight to get the MAP can you??

Just to follow on from people getting pg with coil - I know someone who got pregnant after having tubes tied. She had had them tied cos she'd been told it wuold be dangerous for her to have another baby.
She then terminated. Not something done lightly, and she had been responsible.

From IlovemydogandMrObama's link:

' "The Act notes that '[n]othing in this section shall be construed to prevent a pregnant woman from averting her eyes from the ultrasound images required to be provided and reviewed with her.'"

glad to hear it! I was wondering how they were going to force women to look and not close their eyes....
(once you say you're going to give women forced vaginal ultrasound nothing seems too extreme to be possible any more....)

"If I was raped I'd take the morning after pill. Immediately. In the hope that I'd catch the (possibly) fertilised egg before it implanted"

and if it failed? then what?

"If I was raped I'd take the morning after pill. Immediately. In the hope that I'd catch the (possibly) fertilised egg before it implanted"

I was raped & lost several months of my life on a strange sort of autopilot. Even now, 4 years on, I can't really tell you anything about any of the time following the rape - I do know that I continued talking to my rapist (a friend) for a very long time afterwards as though everything was normal. & it certainly didn't ever occur to me to sit in front of a health care professional & explain that I needed it & put up with their judgement - I couldn't afford it over the counter even if I'd have considered it, due to my age. It just wasn't a factor at that point.

I understand (I think) where non extremist prolifers are coming from in terms of abortion as a moral issue although I don't agree with you.

However for me there are some blatant problems with the practicalities of all this and more than one moral issue at stake.

The first, most obvious one, is the backstreet abortion issue which has already been brought up.

Another is the issue of rape and abuse. I can things of few things less humane than forcing a woman to carry to term and give birth to a child conceived by rape or sexual abuse.

A less serious but more pervading issue is that of how our society views sexual relations and contraception. Sex is not really connected to procreation in terms of our patriarchal consumer society. Sex (and particularly the woman as sex object)is used to sell everything from films, tv and music to cars, shampoo and yoghurt. This objectification of (mostly women) is where most young people get most of their 'education' about sex. In NONE of this is either an unwanted pregnancy or contraception an issue.

I fail to see how a society which constantly bombards its population with sexualised images and attitudes of that population can suddenly expect everybody to only ever behave in 100% sensible ways in their personal sex lives. It just doesn't make sense to me how those two things can be possible together. Either we trivialise sex or we don't. Saying as we most certainly do trivialise sex and disconnect it from procreation when it suits us as a society to do so, I think it is antiwoman to then do an about turn and demand that women bear the distress and burden of unwanted pregnancy. A woman who ends up pregnant who doesn't want a baby is no more to blame then her male sexual partner. In a fair society which cares about equality, leaving the woman to bear all the responsibility is immoral. In a society which frames much of female identity in the terms of sexual object as seen by the male gaze, it is hugely hypocritical and misogynistic.

Good points, well made@BC

What a thought provoking and excellent post Beachcomber.

Excellent post BC

Gosh thanks.

Was a bit worried it might come across as jumbled nonsense as I was kind of thinking out loud.

I think all I'm trying to say is that abortion as a moral issue does not, cannot and should not exist in a vacuum.

'"If I was raped I'd take the morning after pill. Immediately. In the hope that I'd catch the (possibly) fertilised egg before it implanted"

and if it failed? then what?'

Very good question. Probably I'd have a termination. I can't see I could carry a rapist's child to term. But this would be a huge, huge religious and moral issue for me. I'm just glad that it's probably not going to happen now as I am peri-menopausal.

This is completely effed up. Where are the human rights/women's rights activists. This is disgusting and I can't see what purpose it would serve. I also can't believe (if it wasn't vile enough) that they can't make exclusions for rape/insest victims. I am absolutely mortified.

Toccata:

"confirm that MAP doesn't always do it's job even when taken immediately after the deed (well a couple of hours later as soon as the Drs opened)"

• this happened to a friend of mine too, and she was later told that the MAP should be taken 12 hours after the intercourse. Because she took it too soon (having given the doctor a vague answer to when the intercourse occurred, just because she didn't know it mattered) it didn't work and she got pregnant.

I think toddlerama's points are completely different to the right-wing hardliners. I agree with her that things need to be done to lower the abortion rate, and a shift in attitudes could be one of those things.
Lots of other changes have already been made in society(providing mothers with housing etc). This is not the same stance as the woman-hating right-wingers. Still definitely the woman's right to choose. I can see why some women would put their life at risk by undergoing an illegal abortion. So it's not pro-life at all is it.

Like Getorf I would normally namechange, but I'm totally sickened by this law and need to share my experience to try and explain why this is such a backwards step.
In 1997 I had a serious car accident - I nearly lost my life. Luckily the doctors managed to patch me back together and saved my left arm after a vast amount of surgery. I had numerous full body x-rays and was on a morphine drip for a week. After I left hospital I found out I was pregnant...
I was engaged to DH and really wanted to start a family, but the pain was unbearable...and I was having panic attacks every few hours.
My doctor told me I would most probably miscarry and after days of discussion with DH we decided for the state of my physical and mental health I should terminate the pregnancy. I was the hardest decision of my life and I'm still scarred by the whole experience but I have to remind myself daily that it was the right thing to do.
You cannot judge everyone Leonie, and to be FORCED to go through such a procedure and listen to the description of the foetus is, in my opinion, totally barbaric.

brightongirl, that is so sad. The best decision under the circs, especially with the amount of X-rays etc. but still very tough decision.