How the Supreme Court Could Gut Reproductive Rights Without Ruling on a Single Abortion Restriction

[BeckyDem]

Jordan Smith

February 10 2020, 6:00 a.m.


Julie Bindeman’s first pregnancy went so smoothly, and she and her husband were so enamored with their newborn son, that the couple decided to try for a second child as soon as possible. They conceived easily — just as they had the first time around — but then Bindeman miscarried. That reframed her thinking around pregnancy. “It wasn’t just, you get pregnant and have a baby, which had been my first experience,” she said. “Well, you can get pregnant and not have a baby, and that can happen really early.”

The couple decided to try again. Bindeman was anxious during the first trimester, bracing for another miscarriage. But that didn’t happen, and things seemed to be proceeding well. Then, at the 20-week mark, they received devastating news after a routine ultrasound: The fetus’s brain was not developing properly. If the fetus were to survive to term, it would never develop beyond a 2-month-old — it wouldn’t be able to walk, talk, or feed itself. “Our lives completely turned upside down,” Bindeman said.

After much conversation and reflection, and after consulting with their doctor, rabbi, and family, the Bindemans decided that they would terminate the pregnancy. Even though the couple lives in Maryland, which has scant restrictions on abortion and a relative wealth of providers, the Bindemans faced obstacles.

Just weeks earlier, in the spring of 2009, Dr. George Tiller, a world-renowned abortion provider based in Kansas who specialized in the type of later-term abortion that Julie Bindeman would need, had been assassinated in a church by an anti-abortion extremist. The killing sent a chill through providers across the nation. As a result, the closest abortion provider the Bindemans could find was in New Jersey, meaning that Julie would have to travel hundreds of miles to a state where she knew no one. That was unsettling, so in the end, she was forced to terminate her pregnancy in a local hospital via induced labor and delivery as opposed to the dilation and extraction method, which is safer, performed in a clinic, and used in 95 percent of later-term abortions.

https://theintercept.com/2020/02/10/louisiana-abortion-supreme-court-third-party-standing/

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. They are called "Anti-Abortion", NOT "Pro-Life"

Because when a fetus dies or is severely damaged while in the womb, a woman should never be forced to carry that fetus any longer than she needs to . Her own life becomes endgangered.

That happened to my Mother during the Winter of 1959-1960. She nearly bled to death from a pregnancy her doctor feared would kill her.

During that time, my Mother was into her 6th month of a pregnancy that went wrong from the beginning. Ruebella or German Measles, was a serious health concern at the time. My mother had been exposed to it before getting pregnant. Her doctor wanted to do an abortion, but it was not legal, even to save her life were she to miscarry.

At the end on January of 1960, I was a 7 1/2 year old with a 2 year old sister. My father was out of town. I was awoken tin the middle kf the night to screams of my Mother and found her on the bedroom floor in a pool of blood. She had me go next door to ask the neighbors to call for an ambulance. She barely made it to the hospital after losing 4 units of blood.

Her doctor ended up doing an abortion of sorts. The autopsy showed the boy fetus was severely deformed and it's spinal cord was outside its body. Toxins had built up in the Placenta to the point my Mother was being systematically poisoned. This was 1960.

Fast forward to now. Anti-Abortion factions eod rather see women die than expel a fetus that is killing them. Think about what I just wrote about. 60 years later, pregnancy runs a risk to any woman no matter how careful she is. The right to choose is more important now than ever before. Those who oppose abortion also oppose Birth Control. Women must VOTE their economic and social interests, that of their daughters and granddaughters.

[BeckyDem]

2. Thank you for sharing that, its a reminder of the numerous precarious

health threats that can result from pregnancy. You are right of course, they are not pro life, never were imo.

[CaptYossarian]

3. So who do we mail the wire hangers to out of protest?

Not as extreme as when I suggested sending the Sandy Hook autopsy photos to Congress, but what the hell.