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In the past month, women in large swaths of the United States have lost their right to bodily autonomy, health, and even life. A woman in Wisconsin was forced t
by frob 4y ago
In the past month, women in large swaths of the United States have lost their right to bodily autonomy, health, and even life. A woman in Wisconsin was forced to carry her dead fetus inside her for ten days because the hospital was afraid to perform an abortion to remove the fetal tissue due to the law from 1849 being unclear about when exceptions are allowed to its complete and total ban even in the case of rape and incest. A ten-year-old girl in Ohio had to cross state lines to get an abortion after being impregnated via rape since their state's 6-week ban does not have an exception for rape. Some hospitals and pharmacists are refusing to fulfill methotrexate prescriptions for lupus because it could be used to abort an ectopic pregnancy (which is definitionally not viable). Women are being denied mifepristone and misoprostol prescriptions to evacuate miscarriages because they could be used to induce an abortion and are instead being forced to carry necrotizing flesh inside their wombs until they hopefully expel it. Cancer patients are being denied chemotherapy because no oncologist will give chemo to a pregnant woman and the doctors in their area are afraid to give these women abortions until their vital signs literally start falling because the so-called exceptions for the life of the mother are so narrow as to open them up to prosecution by a zealous force-birth DA.
And this hasn't even touched on the ground-shaking effect this is going to have on women's ability to participate fully and equally in society.
- AnnikaL 4y agoWhile I agree that harsh restrictions on reproductive healthcare are very bad policy in part for the reasons you mention, pointing this out doesn't seem like a very effective counter-argument to the idea that things are better today than in the past. Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, which came just 60 years ago, abortion was illegal in all circumstances in all states. Cancer survival rates have significantly increased thanks to advances in medical treatment. There are certainly issues currently, and the state laws against abortion are part of that, but I think the 21st century is overall better than past time periods.
- frob 4y agoI guess you all in how you define the past versus today. Compared to just a year ago, it's worse. Compared to five ago, it's worse. Compared to twenty ago, it's worse. Compared to fourty ago, it's worse. But I guess if you compare it to when we were all hanging out in trees, it's better.
- ako 4y ago40 years ago - 1981-1982 was a very bad economic recession: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-1981-82 https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-19... 20 years ago - 2001 end of the Internet bubble, many people lost their jobs. 2003 the US was waisting a lot of government money on an unjustified war in Irak blaming them for 9-11. Bush unnecessarily destroyed a positive government budget for a war that solved nothing.
- ako 4y agoAnd 40 years ago a much larger part of the world still lived in poverty, communism was still a big thing ruining the lives of many, and don’t forget the stress of the Cold War. Also pollution in big cities like London or New York was a much bigger problem than today, and overall safety in US large cities was worse than today, lots of crime.
- ako 4y agoYes, this is a big problem, but to solve it the US needs to fix its broken democratic system. Civil war will only achieve the opposite: many deaths, expect 50% of your family to die including small children, and afterwards people will no longer care about abortion: freedom, a roof over your head, income, safety are the only topics that matter coming out of a war. At the same time china, Russia and other countries will use US’s internal struggles to increase their global control, US economy crashes, everybody ends up poorer, everybody is worse off.