Mumsnet demanding that I change my nickname

[AbortionFairyGodmother]

Suddenly after posting on several transgender issue related threads, I am getting a note in my email inbox:

"We wanted to drop you a line about your Mumsnet nickname, because we've have had a few reports from other posters about it and how it has caused distress.

Our aim is to make parents' lives easier by pooling and sharing advice and support, and while we're all for free speech, we really don't feel that this nickname is in the spirit of our philosophy.
We're asking therefore if you can change it please. "

Yeah, well, a lot of parents need abortions. My nickname is here because I am an abortion activist who sends abortion pills to women (mostly mothers!!) who desperately need them and are not in areas where they can access them.

Watch this, women. This is what censorship looks like. No "misgendering" people, no getting too far out of line, no being too public about your activism. Because it will offend someone. Best to make my nickname something like KittensAndFlowersLOL, right?

^ she doesn't have to clarify anything to anyone here does she?

Im glad others have had the courage to report your name which I think is awful.

i think she should out of decency as she made this thread,

The thread was to complain about the request to change her username, which she did quite graciously once reassured that it wasn't anything "personal" from MNHQ.

Nothing to do with decency.

What Yonic said.

FWIW I was confused by the name - I kept trying to make it a play on words. I didn't realise it was literal.

Now that I know what it means, I think what you do is really important. Not without issues and risks of course, but probably preferable to backstreet abortions or an unwanted pregnancy in a developing country.

The name was obviously provocative and controversial. Only you can decide whether that bothers you, and I guess on reflection you have decided that it wasn't worth it hence the name change (which is great).

i thinks its odd she wont clarify , when she's so out there blase about what she does.

I was just interested, hence my questions. Wasn't insisting on clarification. Having had a medical abortion I remember all of the questions/checks/tests afterward so I wondered how it's safe.

OP doesn't have to answer of course, she doesn't have to answer anything.

I can't speak for the OP but I'm guessing she isn't medically qualified.

Because that's the bloody point isn't it?. If the people she is helping had access to an abortion performed by a clinic/medical professional then they wouldn't feel the need to take pills they received in the post and don't understand the pharmacology or the origin of those pills.

So they're desperate to take that risk. To take that risk with their health and even their lives.

Because the alternative is proceeding with a pregnancy that they don't want or trying to self - abort using dangerous methods or have a back street abortion which could be just as dangerous.

If it was the choice between the risk between taking pills I'd bought/had donated with no medical supervision or guarantee they were legit or inserting a sharp instrument into my cervix or herbs/leaves or other 'remedies' into my vagina or having someone else (a back street abortionist) do that to me - I know what I'd try first.

Because it takes so much courage to click report?

Its very difficult at times to know what to report and what not to.

There's just so much inconsistency when it comes to monitoring.

Im glad others found it as distasteful as I did and went on to do something about it.

It can be difficult to judge what MNHQ will view as unacceptable.

But of course it takes no courage to anonymously report a post on an anonymous forum.

Report and see what they say. No-one except MNHQ will ever know you did it.

That's not courage. It's anonymously clicking a link on the Internet.

If she said it was legal, would you leave at that, FE? I doubt it.

PPs have made the point that abortion pills by post are not an alternative to a legal and medically supervised abortion but to an illegal back street abortion that comes with many more dangers.

What I do is in a legal grey area in the US (because abortion pills are non-scheduled substances), and illegal in South America. I have had a number of abortion providers examine the information I send with the pills about how to use them. They approved and said it was very clearly written and accurate.

The pills may be sugar pills, that sometimes happens from online pharmacies. To my knowledge, one woman I've sent them to didn't have anything happen when she took them, not even cramps, which typically means a pharmacy sent inert pills instead of active ones--a common fraud. People worry they will substitute other types of active ingredients, but they never explain why someone would use expensive active compounds instead of just making up a sugar pill with nothing active at all, which is actually what happens with fraudulent pills.

So is there a risk? oh, yes, certainly! It's just less than the risk of birth. Less than the risk of aborting in other ways. Women who contact me are considering herbal remedies that can lead to uterine rupture and all kinds of other methods (one mentioned the awful myth that if you fall down the stairs it's surefire to cause a miscarriage)...

I do my activism because in some countries in the world without abortion access, hospitals have to devote whole wards to septic abortions--I've seen them with my own eyes, and it is harrowing. Women will do a lot to avoid having a baby if their circumstances do not allow for one. They'll risk death and shame and fates you'd probably consider worse than death. Botched surgical abortions cause more deaths during pregnancy than any other cause worldwide, and even unsupervised misoprostol/mifepristone abortions are FAR safer than illegal surgical abortions or herbal abortions, which are the two primary alternatives for most women seeking pills.

IMO the username is inappropriate. It conflicts the basic right to have access to abortion by choice, which is unfairly denied many women, with the act of abortion itself, which would not be greeted so enthusiastically in many circumstances. An 'AbortionFairyGodmother' during the one child policy of China would have been a hellish monster.

If she said it was legal, would you leave at that, FE? I doubt it.
please dont make unwarranted assumptions about what i would "leave it at"

please dont make unwarranted assumptions about what i would "leave it at"

Blimey. I might not have made any assumptions; now I sure as heck am.

Dad, I don't know how the OP can be expected to safeguard against the service she provides being used for forced abortions, but I'm pretty sure she does not supply the People's Republic of China with blister packs of misoprostol. As she has repeatedly explained, she sends pills to women who need them, in countries where there is no access to safe abortion. You can't take her username out of context, substitute a context of your own choosing and then claim that that's why it's inappropriate. And conflict is not a transitive verb (irrelevant but really annoying).

And for everyone bleating about the legality of what the OP is doing: the laws in these countries are inhumane, lethal and contravene the basic global human right to health. If a state creates a law that causes the suffering and death of women, orphaning their children and depriving their families of income and support, then this law deserves to be broken. In the words of Emma Goldman, "No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law."

Yy swan.

A fairy godmother is a character who grants wishes.OP didn't call herself AbortionAgentOfTheState.

Blimey. I might not have made any assumptions; now I sure as heck am.

? what assumptions? im getting some ridiculous responses to a perfectly valid question if its not legal how is it certain these tablets are safe?

Read the OP's latest post, on this very page, FE.

Frankly, I think you are trying to sound like you are making threats so I won't engage with you further on this.

Making threats? You're sounding increasingly silly

Op mentions a woman in Texas. Is abortion illegal in Texas?