sexgenderbody

fuckyeahfeminists:

On October 3, 1977, Rosaura Jiménez died in Texas of an illegal abortion, becoming the first known woman to die because of the Hyde Amendment, which eliminated federal Medicaid funding for abortion.

Congress first adopted the Hyde Amendment on September 30, 1976, but it did not go into effect until August 4, 1977. Within just two months, it had driven a woman to take desperate steps that resulted in her death.

What do we know about Rosaura Jiménez? Rosie, as she was known, was a 27 year-old Latina college student and single mother. Rosie was six months away from graduating with a teaching credential – a ticket to a better life for her and her daughter, who was just five years old at the time.

Rosie had a $700 scholarship check in her purse when she died. She went to a doctor in her hometown of McAllen, Texas to ask for an abortion, but the doctor wouldn’t provide one because Medicaid would no longer reimburse the service. So determined was she to complete her education that instead of using her scholarship money to pay for an abortion out of pocket, she crossed the border into Mexico and obtained a cheaper, illegal, and unsafe abortion there.

This is why we need to fight for abortion access for ALL people - there are many barriers that exist that are often forgotten about when we talk about abortion rights. We need to repeal Hyde. I would be happy to have my tax dollars to assist low-income people in need of abortions.

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Santiago de Chile, November 29 (Prensa Latina) - Chilean public workers will begin a 48-hour strike on Tuesday to demand job security and reject the wage adjustment presented by the government.

The protesters are members of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), the Teachers Association and the National Federation of University Professionals in the Health Services, three of the main public sector unions.

According to ANEF leader Raul de la Puente, the wage proposal of a five percent increase is still insufficient. This was announced by the government in recent hours and accepted by 11 of the 14 public associations such as the National Confederation of Municipal Health Workers.

The ANEF had requested a salary increase of 9.8 percent, while the government had proposed a four percent increase which then rose to 4.5 and finally to five percent.

Besides an increased adjustment and automatic renewal of employment contracts designed to ensure job security, the strikers also demand an adequate retirement incentive policy.

By: Susan from 29.

To all of those tea-jadist assholes at last night’s GOP debate: I don’t generally like to use profanity, but I fear that English is above your comprehension level, so in terms you might better understand, may God damn your worthless souls to hell for all eternity.

I had not planned on watching the debate because it conflicted with more important activities, like a new episode of The Closer.  But even more importantly, it was being held at a time when I had committed to posting a diary for The Grieving Room.  That diary was about the death of my brother from a very painful, uninsured struggle against metastatic cancer.

I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings.  In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object.  It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.

Steve worked 14 hours a day building beautiful guitars.  Songs will not be sung because he died and will make no more.  Thanks to the Republican Party’s theft of our national wealth, he barely eked out an existence with financial help from my husband and me. Money for health insurance?  Don’t be ridiculous.

He was 63.  He had to start Social Security early so he could afford to eat.  He was too young for Medicare and too male for Medicaid.  This nation does not recognize the years he spent working for others and making this economy grow, it only focused on the years he worked for himself, creating instruments of rare beauty.

When he had a pain in the butt, he had to wait until early in the morning of December 3rd to present himself at the ER of Highland Hospital, the Alameda County medical facility.  There are guards at Highland, and a football field full of plastic chairs for the indigent to use while they wait treatment.  He was sent home with a handful of Vicodin and a suggestion to follow up with a pulmonologist for the 3 cm spot the Xray showed on his lung.  The soonest appointment was Feb 25.

He was in so much pain that he could not stand up for more than a few seconds at a time.  He got Vicodin.  And steroid suppositories.  

His buddies came up with the $2000 a proctologist wanted to do an outpatient surgery.  But the hospital wanted $20,000 for use of the room for the brief procedure because he was uninsured.  Because the pain didn’t matter half as much as the profit.

For six weeks he suffered at home.  You bastards, you would have liked to watch that, wouldn’t you?  Too bad there were no cameras to catch him as he collapsed when he tried to microwave his oatmeal.  No microphones to catch his cries of pain or despair.

He was finally admitted to Highland after his heart started to fail in the emergency room one night early in February.  The staff there are dedicated, caring, compassionate people who work their hearts out trying to save the sickest and poorest Americans.  They have only limited resources with which to do that.  And they make every one of those resources count.

By then, of course, the cancer from his lung had spread to his buttock where it attacked the bone.  It wrapped itself into the nerves that travelled up his spine.  The pain was indescribable.  Perhaps his medical records could serve as pornography to sate your sick lust for the pain of others.

The morphine and the cancer combined to cause psychotic breaks from reality.  Worse, he knew they had occurred.  He was so intelligent, so very caring that these breaks wherein he would roundly curse the staff that cared for him, throwing whatever was handy at the walls, were incredibly shaming and emotionally devastating to him.  Cancer is so very cruel, but not half as cruel as the cheers you uttered last night.

The county nursing home where they finally had to warehouse him as the cancer weakened him to the point where chemotherapy would have killed him, looks like a minimum security prison.  Half of the staff did not understand English which further frustrated him as the morphine clouded his mind.  It was dirty and depressing and I was so grateful that he often did not even know he was there.

He hated it there and was actually glad when an infection sent him back to Highland for treatment.  He only lasted a few more days at Highland.  I was holding his hand as he drew his last breath.  Have you ever seen a man die, you bastards?  His fingertips turn grey, his breathing becomes shallow.  His grip weakens.  And he simply stops breathing.  

And all of the laughter and love goes away with that last breath.  The intelligence, the creative beauty, the caring compassion.  They all disappear.  But that probably wouldn’t matter to you since I doubt you would recognize any of it.

Love, compassion, beauty.  Laughter, intelligence.  And the ability to realize a dream.  A dream that never included cruelty or indifference to the suffering of others.  

And I cannot, for the life of me fathom why he is only ashes today and you are walking this earth.  

But then, I am not the hero my brother was.  He would have forgiven you.  He would have understood the source of your fear that caused those cheers.  I don’t want to.  

I think you are scum.

Update: Wed Sep 14, 2011 at 12:48 AM PT: First, let me make it plain that I did in fact see Wolf Blitzer’s question and heard the full response.  The question was clearly framed for deniability: “Oh, we weren’t talking about those who can’t afford health insurance, but only those who chose not to buy it.”. Nonsense.  We all know that this 30 year old, financially secure, healthy man would not refuse insurance at the bargain basement price mentioned.  These are not the 49 million Americans without health insurance.

This was all about the ongoing war on the working poor.  I, for one, am refusing to allow this sham to continue with my silence.  We know who you were talking about Wolff Blitzer, we know who you meant when you yelled out Let him die, Mr Anonymous Asshole in the crowd.  I refuse to let you pretend that you don’t.

But even if this straw man did exist and was so irresponsible as to refuse affordable healthcare insurance, how exactly does that absolve us as a community, or a nation of our responsibility to a dying man?

Secondly, and far more importantly, thank you to all of the amazingly wonderful posters here in this community.  I can’t find the words to tell you how much comfort and healing you have given me today.  If you were all a bunch of nasty tea baggers, the words would roll right off my fingertips onto my keyboard.  But because you are so warm and generous I am speechless. 

(Source: dkyubey)

bebinn:

I’ve written about the methods of legal abortion: procedures performed by licensed medical professionals in a clean, sterile environment, with clean, sterile tools. But what about illegal abortions?

Those who push for more restrictions on abortion access - really, those who push for abortion to be made illegal - seem unwilling to acknowledge the disastrous alternatives. Many who are anti-choice have no memories of what life was like before Roe v. Wade in 1973. We know abortion rates stay fairly steady, regardless of legality. How are these illegal abortions procured? What options are there for those without the money or connections to a discrete physician?

To answer these questions, I’ve compiled a list of methods of illegal, or “back-alley” abortions.

Waldo L. Fielding, M.D. wrote an article for the New York Times in 2008, describing what he saw while working as a gynecologist in New York City from 1948 to 1953.

The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.

…

Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.

Another method that I did not encounter, but heard about from colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap solution forced through the cervical canal with a syringe. This could cause almost immediate death if a bubble in the solution entered a blood vessel and was transported to the heart.

The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.

A case report from 1911 describes a self-induced abortion using aknitting needle.

In the afternoon the day before her admission she had attempted to pass into the uterus a bone knitting needle…During the attempt the needle broke off short, leaving about half of it inside her body…During the next four days the temperature gradually rose, until on the fifth day after admission it was 102.2 F, and the pulse rate 100. On the evening of this day uterine hemorrhage occurred…and at 6:30 next morning the patient aborted, a fetus some 4 in. in length…The needle had just missed the right border of the rectum, the wall of the bowel being slightly torn superficially…

A case study from 1972 goes into greater detail about the use of asoap solution.

A case report from 1964 describes a woman’s attempt to self-abort with turpentine.

Believing herself to be pregnant she had, on the afternoon preceding admission, injected into her uterus the contents of a rectal syringe filled with turpentine and water. Immediately thereafter, she experienced a sharp burning sensation which “went all through me up to my chest.” This was followed by a convulsive seizure. Two hours later she began to have paroxysms of coughing productive of a bloody sputum.

A case history from 1961 describes two women’s attempts to self-abort with Lysol. One woman survived. The other did not.

The second patient was a 26-year-old French Canadian woman, married, but separated from her husband. She was…3 1/2 months pregnant. She had used a vaginal douche of concentrated Lysol solution 25 hours before admission…On examination there was erythema of the thighs and vulva. Pieces of placental tissue were passed but the abortion remained incomplete. The day after admission renal shut-down became apparent…A full-blown picture of lower nephron nephrosis[acute renal failure] developed rapidly in this case…The patient’s condition deteriorated rapidly and she died on the sixth day inacute pulmonary edema [fluid in the lungs].

Those who got them done by others didn’t fare much better (PDF). (1964)

…this 21-year-old single girl…went to an abortionist who inserted a catheter and wire into her cervix. The wire was removed after four days when chills, fever, crampy lower abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting developed. Symptoms persisted until she came to the emergency ward with a temperature of 103 F (39.4 C) and a shaking chill…Her abdomen was rigid, with diffuse tenderness and absence of bowel sounds. There was tenderness, also, on pelvic and rectal palpation, the uterus was enlarged with necrotic [dead] tissue extruding from the cervix…She was discharged to her home after 17 days, only to return 10 days later with a temperature of 105 F (40.6 C)…Two days later…a laporotomy was done…and total hysterectomy [removal of the uterus]…She was…sterile at the age of 21.

…this 25-year-old married woman was given a soap-and-bleach douche by an abortionist. Following the douche, fever and chills developed with vaginal bleeding and crampy lower abdominal pain. On admission she had a temperature of 103 F (39.4 C), which rose to 106 F (41.4 C)…an emergency hysterectomy was done, following which she had a cardiac arrest. She was resuscitated, but arrested a second time and did not respond to resuscitation.

Some women attempted to induce miscarriage by drinking poisons such as aloe, ergot of rye, savin oil (derived from a juniper plant),teas made from tansy, pennyroyal, rue, and nightshade, high doses of vitamin C, and other natural “remedies.”

Dr. Garson Romalis, who survived two attempts on his life, gave a speech in 2008 in which he described what he saw in med school.

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in second year medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark…The young woman in our case developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy she had multiple abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen.

I have never forgotten that case.

…

I will never forget the 17-year-old girl lying on a stretcher with 6 feet of small bowel protruding from her vagina. She survived.

I will never forget the jaundiced woman in liver and kidney failure, in septic shock, with very severe anemia, whose life we were unable to save.

Some women were also told that they could induce miscarriage by undergoing physical stress, such as vigorous exercise, jumping off tables, bellyflopping onto a hard surface, receiving punches, kicks or other blows to their stomachs, or throwing themselves down the stairs.

None of these methods were guaranteed to work. Women would be left injured, ill, sterile, or dead.

Was that hard to read? It should be. That was the reality of pre-Roe America, and for some, it is still their reality. Those who can’t afford abortions, can’t get to clinics, or can’t tell anyone about their situation, turn to these methods, and worse. In countries where abortion is illegal, this is what people are offered.

Lysol, carbonic acid, coat hangers, stairs, and fists are not surgical instruments. Back alleys, kitchens, and motel rooms are not operating rooms.

Regardless of your opinion on abortion, this is what happens when abortion is no longer available. Keeping abortion legal is the only moral option.