Opinion | Early Abortion Looks Nothing Like What You’ve Been Told – The New York Times

By Erika Bliss, Joan Fleischman and Michele Gomez

Drs. Bliss, Fleishman and Gomez are co-founders of the My Abortion Network and primary care doctors who provide abortions as part of their primary care practices.

• • Jan. 22, 2023

4 MIN READ

“Jewel is a student in her early 20s who lives in Texas. When her doctor confirmed she was pregnant, Jewel felt panicked. She knew it wasn’t the right time for her to have a child, and that abortion was illegal in her state.

Fortunately, Jewel had resources. After doing her research, she packed a bag and flew to New York City, where her sister lives. From there, the two women came to see one of us — Joan Fleischman, a family medicine doctor who has been providing abortions in her small practice in New York City for over 20 years.

Jewel, who asked to be identified by her middle name, told Dr. Fleischman about her experience in Texas. Medical staff members “were trying to push a happy pregnancy, while I was miserable and crying,” she said. Jewel sensed her doctor was afraid to even talk about other options because the doctor feared losing her license.

Dr. Fleischman performed an ultrasound, which dated the pregnancy between five and six weeks. She discussed Jewel’s options and, after confirming that Jewel wanted to end the pregnancy, completed a manual uterine aspiration procedure. This method uses a hand-held device and takes a few minutes to complete in a regular exam room.”

Great article, great comments. Such as:

Edward Blau

WisconsinJan. 22

This excellent article offers facts and truth, unlike the screamers marching with what they claim are aborted fetuses. As a retired physician I can remember the days before Roe when women with status were able to have a safe D&C for “menstrual irregularity” while poor women suffered from septic abortions. Either women are equal citizens who have the same rights to body autonomy as men or they are not equal. it is that simple.

19 Replies2439 Recommended

 

B.Kind commented January 22

B.Kind

WAJan. 22

Thank you so much for sharing these images. As someone who had difficulty maintaining pregnancies to term, I have been tortured by unspeakable guilt over the pregnancies I lost and the imagined babies I had failed. Seeing the reality has lifted the weight of sorrow and pain I have carried for many, many years.

9 Replies2190 Recommended

Can Trump Count on Evangelicals in 2024? Some Leaders Are Wavering. – The New York Times

By Maggie Haberman and Michael C. Bender

Jan. 19, 2023Updated 1:49 p.m. ET

6 MIN READ

On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.

The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.

The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.”

David Lindsay Jr.

NYT Comment:

Thank you Maggie Haberman AND Michael Bender, for this excellent report. I am confused by the comments, that pastors are breaking the law by appearing with polititicians. My guess is that you do not surrender you first ammendment rights, when you become a non-profit church. Please could someone go into this complicated subject and explain it. Are laws being broken?

David blogs at InconvenientNews.net

The Father of the Abortion Pill – Dr. Étienne-Émile Baulieu – The New York Times

By Pam Belluck

Pam Belluck, who has been writing about reproductive health for over a decade, reported this article from Paris.

• • Jan. 17, 2023

12 MIN READ

“When the idea struck him, nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Étienne-Émile Baulieu believed it could be revolutionary. Creating a pill that could abort a pregnancy would transform reproductive health care, he thought, allowing women to avoid surgery, act earlier and carry out their decisions in private.

“When science meets women’s cause, it is irresistible,” Dr. Baulieu, 96, a French endocrinologist and biochemist often called the father of the abortion pill, said on a recent Sunday afternoon in his apartment in a century-old building a short walk from the Eiffel Tower.

He had also hoped, as he wrote in a 1990 book, that by the 21st century, “paradoxically, the ‘abortion pill’ might even help eliminate abortion as an issue.”

That prospect seems as distant as ever, especially in the United States. Not only has abortion remained fiercely contentious since the pill Dr. Baulieu spearheaded, mifepristone, was approved in America in 2000, but last year’s Supreme Court decision ending the federal right to abortion has divided the country over the issue as never before.

Yet over time, some of Dr. Baulieu’s other expectations have materialized. Today, medication abortion, in which mifepristone and a second drug are taken early in pregnancy, is used in over half of pregnancy terminations in the United States. That proportion is expected to increase, even in states that have banned abortion, where growing use has put the pills at the center of legal and political battles.

For Dr. Baulieu, who continues work in his lab on the southern rim of Paris, his office overlooking a former asylum where the Marquis de Sade was held, the volatile developments are just the latest turns in an eventful life. He transported guns as a teenager in the French Resistance during World War II, changing his name and taking refuge high in the Alps. He joined the Communist Party and then quit it in 1956 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. And he socialized with the artists Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns in the 1960s, beginning a pattern of friendships with painters, sculptors, musicians and actors that he said had helped inspire his scientific work.”

Country Radio Still Won’t Play Loretta Lynn’s ‘The Pill’ | Time

BY ANDREW R. CHOW 

OCTOBER 4, 2022 5:28 PM EDT

In 1975, Loretta Lynn was one of the biggest stars in country music when she released a song that was quickly banned by many country radio stations. The song, “The Pill,” was an ode to birth control and sexual freedom that shocked the industry and many of the genre’s more conservative listeners with lyrics like:

“This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage

The clothes I’m wearing from now on won’t take up so much yardage

It was this kind of sharp-witted and fearless storytelling that made Lynn, who died on Tuesday at the age of 90, a titan of country music and an inspiration to future generations of songwriters, especially female country stars. Despite the controversy surrounding its release, “The Pill,” would become Lynn’s highest-charting pop single, peaking at #70 on the Hot 100.

But as conservative social norms have ossified around the country music establishment, “The Pill” is still forsaken nearly fifty years since it was released. According to Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music), the song was played just once by a country radio station in the U.S. in 2022, even though it’s a classic of the genre. The song—and Lynn’s career as a provocative lyricist—serve as a reminder that the conservative values touted by the country music establishment don’t always match those of their artists or listeners.

1970s Culture Divide . . . . .”

Source: Country Radio Still Won’t Play Loretta Lynn’s ‘The Pill’ | Time

Gail Collins | Politician, Thy Name Is Hypocrite – The New York Times

By Gail Collins,   Opinion Columnist

“What’s worse — politicians passing a bad law or politicians passing a bad law while attempting to make it look reasonable with meaningless window dressing?

You wind up in the same place, but I’ve gotta go with the jerks who pretend.

Let’s take, oh, I don’t know, abortion. Sure, lawmakers who vote to ban it know they’re imposing some voters’ religious beliefs on the whole nation. But maybe they can make it look kinda fair.

For instance Mark Ronchetti, who’s running for governor in New Mexico, was “strongly pro-life” until the uproar following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe. Now, his campaign website says he’s looking for a “middle ground” that would allow abortions “in cases involving rape, incest and when a mother’s life is at risk.”

That’s a very popular spin. The public’s rejection of the court’s ruling, plus the stunning vote for abortion rights in a recent statewide referendum in Kansas, has left politicians looking for some way to dodge the anti-choice label. Without, um, actually changing. “I am pro-life, and make no apologies for that. But I also understand that this is a representative democracy,” said Tim Michels, a Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor, when he embraced the rape-and-incest dodge.”

Anti-abortion leader says Bob Stefanowski ‘has heartened pro-life voters’

“Republican Bob Stefanowski’s carefully worded position on abortion won plaudits Thursday from an anti-abortion leader who sees common ground with a Connecticut gubernatorial nominee for the first time in decades.

Peter Wolfgang, the president of the Family Institute of Connecticut, was responding to a statement from Stefanowski indicating support for adding a parental notification provision to a Connecticut abortion rights law that he otherwise would not attempt to change.

“It has heartened pro-life voters. We know that Bob is not 100% with us. We’ve always suspected it. And now we know it for sure,” Wolfgang said. “But what we also know is where he does have common ground with us.”

Stefanowski, who was nominated by Republicans over the weekend for a rematch with Gov. Ned Lamont, has positioned himself to the right of the Democratic governor on abortion while not opposing Connecticut’s 32-year-old law codifying the tenets of Roe v. Wade.

His approach will test whether a candidate can appeal to social conservatives, who Wolfgang has long complained have been marginalized by the Connecticut Republican establishment, without losing more voters who support abortion rights.”

Source: Anti-abortion leader says Bob Stefanowski ‘has heartened pro-life voters’

Hugh Bailey: Stefanowski’s terrible answer on abortion rights

“It’s no secret that Republicans have to walk a tightrope in a place like Connecticut. It’s been 16 years since the state has put any of them in statewide or federal office, and they’re deeply outnumbered in voter registration.

And to be fair, nearly every state politician’s public reaction to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade focused on Connecticut law, where the right to an abortion is protected. But there was something uniquely tone deaf in gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s statement, which managed to hit every wrong note possible.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling has absolutely no impact on Connecticut residents,” Stefanowski said June 24. That’s probably why rallies and marches were held around the state protesting the decision — people often take to the streets over nothing.”

Source: Hugh Bailey: Stefanowski’s terrible answer on abortion rights

After Roe’s End, Women Surged in Signing Up to Vote in Some States – The New York Times

“In the week after the court’s decision, more than 70 percent of newly registered voters in Kansas were women, according to an analysis of the state’s registered voter list. An unusually high level of new female registrants persisted all the way until the Kansas primary this month, when a strong Democratic turnout helped defeat a referendum that would have effectively ended abortion rights in the state.

The Kansas figures are the most pronounced example of a broader increase in registration among women since the Dobbs decision, according to an Upshot analysis of 10 states with available voter registration data. On average in the month after Dobbs, 55 percent of newly registered voters in those states were women, according to the analysis, up from just under 50 percent before the decision was leaked in early May.

The increase varied greatly across the 10 states — Kansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, Idaho, Alabama, New Mexico and Maine — with some states showing a pronounced surge in the share of new registrants who were women and others showing little change at all.

The total number of women registering to vote in those states rose by about 35 percent after the decision, compared with the month before the leak. Men had an uptick of 9 percent.”

Sarah Smarsh | On Abortion, Kansas Voters Held the Line – The New York Times

TOPEKA, Kan. — Lines of Kansas voters, resolute in the August sun and 100-degree heat, stretched beyond the doors of polling sites and wrapped around buildings on Tuesday to cast ballots in a primary election. A few suffered heat exhaustion. Firefighters passed out bottles of water.

When polls closed at 7 p.m. Central time, many were still in line and legally entitled to get their turn. The Wichita Eagle reported that one Wichita woman cast the final vote at her polling site at 9:45 p.m. after waiting in line for nearly three hours. Poll workers, understaffed amid the likely record turnout, worked brutally long hours for democracy.

This inspired showing responded to a clear threat against reproductive rights. In the first state vote on abortion following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Kansans unequivocally batted down the state legislature’s proposed amendment to remove the right to an abortion from the state Constitution.

Opinion | Gretchen Whitmer: I’ll Fight Anti-Abortion Laws in Michigan if Roe Falls – The New York Times

By Gretchen Whitmer

Ms. Whitmer is the governor of Michigan.

“As I read the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, I was devastated. It was shocking to see, laid out in cold legalese, the blatant ideological reasoning gutting the constitutional right to abortion.

I understand the frustration that many are feeling. I feel it too. Roe has been the law of the land for 49 years, nearly my entire lifetime. But it may not be the law of the land for my daughters. Many of us feared this day would come, which is why last month, I filed a lawsuit and, drawing on authority granted to me as governor, asked the Michigan Supreme Court to immediately resolve whether our state constitution includes the right to access abortion.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT 4m ago

I admire Governor Whitmer and love this essay, and I recommended the comments giving her praise, but I also want the resistance to slow down, and put on the mute, like on a violin. Let this outrage become the new law of the land. Then see how easy it will be to organize. David blogs at InconvenientNews.com

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