In fact, a women’s rights group loves women’s bodies so much that they believe clinics which provide services exclusively for women shouldn’t have any of the regulations applying to other outpatient facilities applied to them. Because safety and sanitation, those are things only men deserve, right?
Pardon me as I step away from the main topic of this blog and ponder an issue that baffles me as a modern women who actually does consider herself a feminist – at least one who doesn’t hate men.
I can’t fathom exactly how pro-choice groups oppose regulating abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers. While I understand their goal is to make abortion as accessible as possible, it is still a fairly major procedure that can have a long-term impact on the reproductive health of a woman. Shouldn’t they be in favor of making sure that such facilities have the same kind of oversight and safety requirements as similar medical centers that provide services for men?
I’m not even getting into the moral issue of abortion, this is a matter of looking at it strictly as a legal medical procedure – which it currently is right now. After the horrors in Philadelphia with agencies in dispute over who controls what in the process, why is there opposition to providing a clear regulation structure that can allow abortion clinics to remain open, but also require the same quality of treatment and safety conditions required for clinics that also serve the needs of men? Instead, a woman’s group calls on such equitable standards as a “public health crisis.”
Even beyond the question of whether abortion should be legal, the fact remains that it is legal. But I’m really shocked when proposals that ultimately do protect the lives and health of the women who seek abortions are actually opposed by women’s groups on the grounds that it will somehow cut off all access to the procedure. This isn’t a notification law, it’s not a mandate to get an ultrasound with a waiting period imposed afterwards, or any of the medically-dubious types of rules that many pro-life lawmakers try to push around the country. It’s regulating an abortion clinic for what it is – an outpatient surgical center.
I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on tv. I also don’t follow the abortion debate or politics very closely because it’s not an issue that’s ever going to change in any substantial manner. But, I am a woman. And when I hear groups that are supposedly all for equality getting their panties in a twist over regulating surgical services for women the same way that men’s medical services are treated, it doesn’t really add up on how this advances feminism if the current structure allowed a clinic that killed live babies and a woman. That seems very anti-woman to me.
I have a hunch that their opposition is not unlike our opposition to seemingly reasonable changes in the law: We know that our opponents will take those reasonable compromises and use them in the most unreasonable fashion. For example, I don’t think anyone would disagree that an individual has a responsibility to be competent with a firearm they choose to carry in public. Mandated training/testing of competence is not, by itself, a bad idea until you see what Chicago has done. By agreeing to mandated training, the other side said “Fine-you need training but we’re going to make it as onerous as possible to get that training you agreed is reasonable.”
In that case, then they need to make a political decision. Right now, the Republicans control the House, Senate, and Governor’s Office. From what I have read, this is the most middle-of-the-road proposal that still pushes a clear oversight so that the clinics women use aren’t filthy and dangerous – a goal that I would hope feminist groups would support. Using such “end of the line” rhetoric on what seems to be a reasonable compromise when your guys aren’t in power seems like a very silly move on their part. They should be in Harrisburg working to make sure that any new regulations are simply focused on the health & safety standards.
Your title said it best, “Feminists Love Their Bodies,” and I am gonna add what’s missing: “but liberal feminists can care shit about other women’s body.”
See the out cry from feminists due to that PA abortion clinic with 8 murder charges? The treatment toward those women were horrendous and, well, murderous, literally.
But there was none from these so-called pro-choice groups.
Having been exposed to the fanaticism of the “pro-choice” crowd through commenting on another site, they believe that any, ANY, regulation is just a ruse to restrict access to “women’s healthcare” and that this will cause thousands, if not millions, of unwanted babies to be born because said women will no long be able to get cheap contraception.
This will happen because these “health” centers will close because of the additional costs.
Of course, said babies will all be a “drain” on the system and be expensive. And we conservatives will be heartless because we won’t provide for them. “If conservatives want to restrict abortions then they should increase financing of these centers so that women can get better contraception.”, is a quote from them.
That’s why they fear increased safety regs.
I can understand concerns about regulations that make the cost of services too high. I think that’s a fair topic to tackle. But why say that women’s services should have different standards than men’s services? And is there a feminist movement I’ve missed to tackle the many issues with the overall drug discovery & approval process? Because having more options for birth control would be quite nice. Or how about tort reform so that makers of birth control options aren’t targeted by unreasonable lawsuits?
I know that most of you who are making these points probably don’t agree with them. I’m just so curious about this line of thinking. I stopped working with the formal feminist groups in college when they decided that it was better for a woman to call upon a man to protect her rather than encouraging women to take more self-defense courses (not just guns) so that they could protect themselves. I was raised to believe in equality. We may have differences in the genders, but we should be fair in how we deal with those issues. In the women’s college environment, I found that fair didn’t really mean what I was taught it meant.
From the perspective of politics, imagine that the NRA didn’t have lobbying a activity, and that SAF was the public face of RTLBA movements.
That appears to be the case here, in the sense that the extreme elements want as little oversight as possible, and there isn’t a mainstream group that can step in and offer a workable legislative proposal.
As to why…there are women out there who see abortion as a sacrament (to paraphrase Limbaugh). Apparently, there is a larger number who agree with you, Bitter, but have no lobbying-group that serves as a voice.
We both know how easy it is to use ‘common-sense’ regulations to destroy a right (express or implied). But would you defend the ATF over Project Gunwalker? That’s roughly what’s happening here.
Correction…RTKBA. stupid DROID kbd.
For a more accurate comparison, imagine a border-town dealer who knowingly sold to Mexicans, and the ATF ignored it.
Would anyone oppose better enforcement, or an ATF overhaul, in that situation? That is what these feminists are doing
I agree, they are more leftist than feminist. And they hurt the cause.
Good explanation of it through the SAF/NRA perspective. I guess I just see the times that gun groups that actually work with lawmakers have been able to take bad legislation and make better laws for gun owners. It seems absurd that similar groups on other issues wouldn’t work in the same way to advance their goals.
Instead, a woman’s group calls on such equitable standards as a “public health crisis.â€
Crises get donations and political power, for one.
Crises also let the people “fighting the crisis” feel Awesome And Special.
So, that’s a big part of it (and is of course independent of the actual cause or the direction of political leaning related to it).
An abortion is basically a GYN surgery. I don’t see why they were not classified as ASCs before this incident. There is risk from anesthesia, surgical site infection, and general screw ups by ob/gyn’s/fp’s (who are looked at with disdain for poor surgical performance by actual surgeons). It looks like this FP decided to further provide proof that if you’re not a surgeon, don’t pretend to be one.
According to this story from USA today, http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41154527/ns/today-today_news/ this guy deserves jail time for a long time. Not only was he violating abortion law, the level of medical malpractice is astounding.
Also “State regulators ignored complaints about Gosnell and the 46 lawsuits filed against him, and made just five annual inspections, most satisfactory, since the clinic opened in 1979.”
Not only that but his wife, a cosmetologist, was performing abortions too.
Abortion is a big business, and highly profitable for those who do it on the cheap (like not sterilizing instruments and the rest of the house of horrors in Philly). While money isn’t the only motivation for political activity, it is certainly a reliable one.
So one of the big arguments used by the pro-choice side is that it prevents women from dying in back alley abortions.
But now safe, sanitary abortions are taking too long and cost too much so we need to allow ‘back alley’ style abortions in order to allow everyone equal access to same?
Yup, insanity come full circle.
This has been a rallying cry for years from the anti-abortion side to make abortion providers ASCs. The problem is “gun nuts” tend to be anti-abortion so they commit the same errors that the anti-gun or just non-gun public does when they hear this.
“Oh, that seems reasonable” goes the refrain.
If I told you I was going to ban FTF sales, this would not seem reasonable to you, correct? Of course not. ASCs is the pro-choice version of FTF sales.
ASCs where set up to do invasive but semi-surgical procedures like orthroscopic surgery, plastic surgery, etc. They are specialty centers with tramua care on site which is capable of doing more than just stabilizing a paitient if something goes wrong but they have a pipeline into the major trauma center near them when something goes wrong. It’s a step up from “just calling the ambulance”.
You all know what abortions entail. Now, is that the same in your mind (honestly now) as numbing a limb, cutting open a 2″ incision and shoving a camera up into the back of a person’s knee cap? Because orthroscopic surgery is a common ASC procedure. It’s not involved enough to warrant a large hospital’s resources so it can be done more efficiently in an ASC settting. Same with liposuction, that’s a procedure that an ASC type facility would be set up for.
Knowledgeable people say that this procedure doesn’t have the statistical risk to warrant the increase in status of the provider and I will believe that.
Just like the anti-gun or non-gun public should believe our experts when we say xyz. Yeah, and that’s the problem. We would rather get our way than believe other people who are experts or to inviestigate on their own. Not a single person here has asked what an ASC is or what it does or questioned why it would be needed.
BTW: The philly clinic issue is SO far off the mark here as an example of what an ASC would do. This dude in philly was breaking so many laws I seriously doubt he would have bothered making himself an ASC.
This is like saying the gangbanger moving 200 lorcins a month through his mamma’s kitchen would be fixed by requiring all sales to go through FFLs. It’s an absurd comparison.
“We would rather get our way than believe other people who are experts or to inviestigate on their own. Not a single person here has asked what an ASC is or what it does or questioned why it would be needed.”
Maybe we already know, or decided to “investigate on our own” rather than ask some person on the internet?
Don’t assume ignorance or incompetence.
I do consider abortion to be a medical procedure – one I’m not looking to ban. In fact, assuming that a lot of the folks here are pro-life and looking to get in the way of abortions is assuming a lot, and you’re likely off target. Many of the readers are libertarians of various stripes and have different views on the life issue than many other gun owners.
I explained that I am not a doctor, and I don’t follow the issue that closely. Hence why I opened the discussion. I don’t suggest getting snippy because you assume that everyone else is just trying to make abortions really hard to get, make your case so that the people who are pro-choice can weigh why this may or may not be a bad thing.
But, on the political front, I still see room to criticize their response. Take the gun issue. Let’s say we suddenly found out about a massive rouge dealer knowingly supplying guns to criminals and the ATF had been ignoring him, even in light of complaints. If we had a Congress & President who were mostly (or nearly mostly) in the hands of anti-gunners, a political person would assume that more regulation is coming down the pike. Gun owners will not like it.
However, the smart solution would be for gun groups to insert themselves into that debate from the very beginning with an eye towards a compromise solution that may even improve things for gun owners in the long term. It may include ATF reform that we don’t love, but we get a lot of other issues in the agency cleaned up, too. Rather than screaming that it is a crisis when the bills are already moving towards passage, they could save themselves a lot of headaches by being part of the process. Fine, an ambulatory surgical center isn’t the answer, then what proposals did they bring to the table to prevent an oversight problem like Philadelphia while also keeping things easy to access for women? Screaming crisis isn’t that solution.
And, actually, I do consider abortions to be a pretty big medical procedure – something that can certainly be on an outpatient and without needing a full team of trauma staff and specialists around, but the questions about how else to regulate them seem to apply. Even though I’m not using my reproductive organs, that doesn’t mean I believe that such procedures should be disregarded as unimportant.
I think the phrasing is wrong. If someone would just explain to these chicks that we need “common-sense” regulations, then they’ll probably agree. I mean, who doesn’t want “common sense” regulations? Why, they’d have to be unreasonable!
“In fact, assuming that a lot of the folks here are pro-life and looking to get in the way of abortions is assuming a lot, and you’re likely off target.”
Funny thing about that. I never understood why some conservatives are so opposed to the very procedure, performed voluntarily, that keeps the size of the entitlement class ever slightly more manageable. Geez, I think we should give a free trip to Disney World with every abortion!
“I never understood why some conservatives are so opposed to the very procedure, performed voluntarily, that keeps the size of the entitlement class ever slightly more manageable.”
As a pro-life conservative libertarian, I can tell you! Human life is sacred, even unborn human life; if we can’t defend the lives of the unborn, who are innocent, how can we defend the life of those who have been born? Indeed in the extreme case, though rare, there are those who believe that abortion rights should be extended to infants less than two years of age!
As you can probably guess, though, my view on the matter is rather schizophrenic, and complicated: I believe that there should be no laws, except those agreed upon by two individuals. Murder should be “legal”, but if you kill my relative, I can sue you via private judge, perhaps even obtain the right to kill you. Abortions should be handled in a similar manner.
Having said all that, I would have to agree that if we’re going to have laws regulating the safety of health institutions, by all means, we should have laws regulating the safety of abortion clinics!
“Funny thing about that. I never understood why some conservatives are so opposed to the very procedure, performed voluntarily, that keeps the size of the entitlement class ever slightly more manageable.”
It has something to do with the Judeo-Christian emphasis on the sanctity of human life. Compare this to other systems of thought and how they devalued human life.
There are also pragmatic aspects as well. In the first century BC, the Roman Republic developed a very serious problem: a failure to make enough little Romans. The causes were widespread use of abortion, non-vaginal forms of intercourse (to be delicate), prostitution, and homosexuality. As a result, the Romans were forced to start importing barbarians to do work that Romans would not do, such as farming. Over time, Rome developed a population that did not share Roman cultural values, and saw no reason to defend either the political or cultural values that had made Rome great. These lead to the final collapse of Rome. (Not that any of this could describe the situation today.)
There’s all sorts of non-religious sound philosophical supports for a “pro-life” position. In the end it all comes down to ones definition of “human” and/or “person”, the latter of which at least is not scientifically definable.
For instance, you can also support a “pro-life” perspective with the NAP if you start with the reasonable presumption that an implanted embryo (I use that as my personal standard as many, if not most embryos, never implant but once they have they can only develop, die of natural causes or be killed) is a distinct human organism that cannot be harmed (aggressed against) unjustifiably.
In the case of a pregnancy with a risk to the mother’s health or life that meets the standard justification for lethal self-defense, using defensive deadly force against the embryo could easily be legally and morally justified. There are few moral codes of which I’m aware that would consider such a killing unjust. (yes, intent would not technically be there, but once the attacker starts the harm, intent is no longer necessary for justification)
In cases of rape or child incest, where the sex was not a voluntary choice by two competent autonomous individuals, there is a case to be made that, although the resulting embryo is absolutely innocent, a balancing test is morally allowable by the mother (or her competent guardians) and her decision can be considered morally excusable if not actually justified.
Conversely, if the sex that led to pregnancy was willing activity between autonomous persons, the reasonably foreseeable and easily preventable result of that voluntary action, the viable embryo, is a complete innocent and cannot be morally justifiably killed or harmed.
So, in my Opinion, not based on my religious beliefs, competent autonomous persons cannot morally justify abortion as birth control, as that is unjustifiable killing. Choosing to have sex, a voluntary activity, has consequences and the life of an innocent human cannot be outweighed by what is, in the end, the mere convenience of the individuals who chose to engage in that activity. Sucking it up for 9 months, even if that interferes with ones’ plans for the future, and then adopting the innocent human out is a small and temporary price to pay, comparatively.
More on topic…
I have little patience with “slippery slope” defenses of different standards for medical facilities that provide abortions. Let’s go back to capital-E ethics in the professional sense.
For a health care provider to use political considerations to justify ethical violations, including violating their oath to do no harm, which obviously includes maintaining facilities in a proper manner, and to not put money above the health of the patient, again, maintaining the exact same standards as for other invasive outpatient procedures is abhorrent. If that takes a set of uniform regs, no more restrictive on abortion providers than any other outpatient surgery, to enforce then that is just due process.
add a “by not” between “again,” and “maintaining…” in the last paragraph.
Again, the above is my opinion, not a claim to moral authority against competing well-thought out positions.
Clayton Cramer,
Over time, Rome developed a population that did not share Roman cultural values, and saw no reason to defend either the political or cultural values that had made Rome great. These lead to the final collapse of Rome. (Not that any of this could describe the situation today.)
I was with you until that.
I believe you have described our situation extremely well.