What You Probably Didn't Know About "Partial-Birth" Abortions!

This was not written by me. It was written by a woman who is not only incredibly smart and a very talented writer, but also a good friend of one of my Tumblr followers on LiveJournal. Her name is Grace. The following is her personal reason for being pro-choice.

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Here’s the deal. I very, very likely have fertility issues. My infertility isn’t set in stone because, hey, things like that pretty much can’t be if everything is present and not super-cancerous - but I probably have a 50/50 chance of being infertile, and if I ever do conceive it’s very likely that my pregnancy will end in a miscarriage. God, even that is a stupidly passive way of saying it. What I mean is that, if I somehow manage to become pregnant, I likely have a very high chance of ending up lying on the floor of my bathtub in excruciating pain, vomiting, bleeding profusely, and suicidally depressed due to the loss of my probably wanted child in between bouts of unconsciousness when I pass out from pain, blood loss, and a high fever. If I am lucky - if I am lucky - I will pass all of the fetal tissue, in semi-recognizable chunks, along with incredible amounts of blood. That doesn’t sound traumatizing at all. If I am unlucky (which is actually pretty likely!) I will not pass all of the fetal tissue on my own. In that case, I would need to go to the hospital and seek a D&C.

A D&C is, despite not being the termination of a live pregnancy, technically considered to be “abortion” by doctors. In my case, a D&C would be the main thing standing in between me and a uterine infection that might end up fatal in the event of an incomplete miscarriage. This is especially true if the miscarriage doesn’t result in contractions on its own - something which is also extremely likely.

Long story short, abortion legality means that I get to not die bleeding and alone on my bathroom floor. Or, for that matter, anywhere, with anyone; not from a miscarriage, anyway.

Miscarriages occur in 20% of recognized pregnancies. Not all of these miscarriages end up requiring medical assistance, but many do. Do you have any idea what kind of number that is? If your answer is “huge,” then you’re getting warmer.

About ten or eleven paragraphs down this article there’s some information about “partial-birth abortion,” such as it is. Read it and come back. I’ll wait. ♫♪♫ Okay, you’re back? Great! Okay, so that procedure - ID&X - is what I would likely pursue if my hypothetical miscarriage occurred in the late second trimester or third trimester of my wanted pregnancy. It’s important to me to a) say goodbye to my child intact and b) be able to bury it. I realize this sounds like the subversive rantings of a murderer, but bear with me here. The banning of the ID&X/”partial-birth abortion” does not ban “late-term abortion” - women still are able to seek abortions following the 22nd week, but these are typically only performed for medical reasons. The banning of the ID&X procedure bans only the extraction of an intact fetus. Meaning that its banning means that, even if a woman who spontaneously miscarried due to nothing she did or did not do needed medical assistance to evacuate her uterus, her child would have to be, legally, cut up before it was removed. Gross! Thanks, crazypants pro-life contingent (and my mom :D), I really appreciate you seeking the desecration of the corpse of my hypothetical child! That’s so goddamn moral of you.

The story brought up by people with a pro-life stance is of the promiscuous woman who uses abortion as “a form of birth control” or a tool to get out of an “inconvenience.” In my case, if I were to get pregnant with an unwanted child and I considered myself for whatever reason unable to take care of it (financial issues, living situation issues, issues with abuse, instability, etc), I would probably seek an abortion, and not for convenience. For one, 1 in 5 pregnancies end in a miscarriage. As I’ve already explained, my chances of having a miscarriage are likely much, much higher. If I conceived and the pregnancy was not only unwanted but, if brought to term, would bring a child into a bad situation, I would seek to lower my chances of that whole “bleeding, vomiting, and contracting painfully in the bathtub” scenario. It would, more likely than not, be a nonviable pregnancy.

Other people’s reasons for abortion are their own. But I cannot with a clear conscience be pro-life, knowing what I know about my own situation. My situation is not uncommon, and while it is worse than some, miscarriages are bad for anybody. My issues with a pro-life stance are separate from my reasons to be pro-choice - I don’t think I’ll ever discuss them here, because a lot of my opinions are rude and stupid generalizations based on idiots waving signs on the street.