Josseli Barnica

Then maybe you can explain to me why I keep reading about women in multiple states who are coming in to the ER with complications but are being told to go home, sometimes multiple times, only to end up nearly bleeding out or winding up with sepsis or some other horrible, preventable situation? Could it be because the so-called exceptions are so vaguely worded that the hospitals and medical professionals feel their hands are tied until someone is so gravely ill they might actually die?

This is what happens when people who aren’t medical professionals step in to write laws regarding medical situations that they clearly know nothing about.

It wasn’t that I thought my doctor wouldn’t do a C-section. My point was, you don’t know when a potential situation will happen to you UNTIL IT HAPPENS TO YOU. Especially with something like pregnancy and childbirth which can go sideways in a thousand different directions. I had very good prenatal care. I had a wanted pregnancy. I did everything “right” and did all the recommended tests and scans and I certainly didn’t plan on having a C-section. I also didn’t plan on having a kid with a giant head that I would never have been able to deliver without a C-section. But yet there I was.

I’d be willing to bet that very few of these women I’ve read about recently who have had these serious pregnancy complications but were denied timely, necessary care had ever really considered that they would find themselves in that situation. Until they were in that situation. Especially the ones who really wanted to be pregnant and who had normal pregnancies prior. That was my whole point.

No.  Facts.  Planned Parenthood had a clinic near the convention, but they were not a sponsor or part of the convention.

apnews.com/article/democratic-national-convention-fact-focus-8d0c2455e47bfea7be5d00cf9a21281d

www.politifact.com/article/2024/aug/21/ask-politifact-are-democrats-offering-free-abortio/

The Democratic National Convention is not offering free abortions.

A Planned Parenthood branch is providing free medication abortion and vasectomies by appointment only through a mobile health clinic in Chicago at the same time as the convention. But it’s not part of the DNC’s program.

The DNC website does not list Planned Parenthood as a partner, sponsor or vendor for the event. Planned Parenthood also did not mention the DNC in its press release about the mobile health clinic.


www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-check-is-the-dnc-offering-free-abortions-to-attendees

“Meeting patients where they are by offering the mobile clinic’s services in busy areas is yet another continuation of Planned Parenthood’s unending efforts to improve accessibility and expand services for Illinois residents,” the release said, adding that the mobile clinic would also address “the influx of patients” going to Illinois for care as surrounding states restricted reproductive care.

And without all the damn LIES. I live in Missouri, which has very restrictive abortion laws. I am so tired of the "Vote NO on Amendment 3, end forced abortion!" or, "Vote NO on Amendment three and say NO to child transgender surgeries!" signs that are everywhere in my very conservative, very Catholic, area. NONE of those things are true, they are trying to trick people into voting no. If it's truly up to the people of states, put it on all state ballots and let the people vote.



Stories like this disgust me. One of my dear friends is a NICU nurse at a large children's hospital in Texas. She told me a story not long after Roe v Wade was overturned about a family she and her team worked with who found out early in the pregnancy that their baby had
several severe genetic defects. She was not allowed to terminate her pregnancy. They were a low income family that had no health insurance. Their baby lived a few weeks, in the NICU. They ran up so much in medical costs. Which of course, it's SOCIALISM to cover health care for a baby that the state forced the mom to carry full term. The dad ended up losing his job because of taking too much time off work. And guess what? The baby died anyway. Who exactly won in that scenario??

I guess it's because of the field I work in, (I work for an organization that supports parents who lose a baby during pregnancy or as a newborn). I hear horror stories weekly of terrible things moms who were pregnant with a baby they wanted went through because in our state, abortion is illegal. Yes, there are exceptions for the life of the mother, but the mother has to be septic or near death before their doctor is allowed to do anything. These are not anecdotal "propaganda." These are moms I personally talk to on the phone and sit in front of in support group meetings. Heartbreaking stories that I wish every person who is happy that roe v wade was overturned had to listen to. Stories of moms who are experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, yet the baby still has a heartbeat so the ethics committee has to get involved to determine whether or not the doctor can do surgery. Stories about how they lay in the ER in agony for 6, 8, 10 or more hours while the ethics committee decides. Even though there is no way a baby in a tube is going to survive.

It's truly disgusting how many people cannot see that this is not a black and white issue. There is lots of gray area, and in that gray area, women are needlessly suffering and even dying.

Did you see the letters that Pastors are sending to their congregation stating that dental hygienists will be able to perform abortions? Fucking atrocious.

Shit like this is why I'm now having to research the church bringing lunch to my son's class tomorrow. They're there to "support the students during this hard time". I appreciate that, because his classmate died, but having to wonder at their ulterior motives is the problem with the rampant dishonesty.



I'm sorry for what you deal with in your field. I can't imagine the toll it takes. It is very gray and, once again, none of anyone's business.

That's your opinion.  I made my opinion clear. I am against abortion except in cases of rape or incest.  Health of the mother is something that is a case by case basis and would be deemed as such by medical professionals. 

Pro-Choice is NOT pro-abortion!
Pro-Choice is pro health care!

So, in other words, you are okay with women suffering and possibly dying while they wait to know if it is deemed necessary? Gotcha. 

From an obstetrician

www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/opinion/abortion-pills-us-roe.html?searchResultPosition=1

Patients presenting with complications related to pregnancy terminations are now being excluded from the care that the medical establishment is supposed to provide.

In Georgia, Amber Thurman died in a hospital after doctors waited more than 20 hours to perform a D and C. She had taken abortion pills, but her body failed to expel all of the tissue from the pregnancy. Candi Miller died at home days after taking abortion pills she obtained online and suffering similar complications; an investigating committee found that her death was in part attributable to the fear that prevented her from seeking care.

We don’t know all the details of these cases, but there are emerging patterns in multiple states of hospitals delaying or denying standard reproductive care, and of women unwilling to risk going to those hospitals, for fear of legal trouble, including possible criminal charges. The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, paved the way for anti-abortion laws in many states. This created an environment in which most abortion is now not just illegal in many instances, it’s also more dangerous than that. Reproductive health care in some states is no longer treated as fundamental medical care. And that makes even a safe treatment, such as a medication abortion — that is, an abortion induced by pills — into something lonelier and riskier than it should be.

This situation is upsettingly close to where we were more than half a century ago. Before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, pregnancy termination was illegal in many states. Women still ended pregnancies, but they did so outside the medical system in a variety of ways, some more dangerous than others. This was the era of coat-hanger abortions and women found bleeding to death in back alleys.

Roe v. Wade gave abortion patients the advantages of being part of a medical system — sterile equipment, trained personnel, pain management. Being within the medical system also meant that doctors could do research on these procedures, assess their safety and create better technologies. At this time, complications from abortion decreased markedly.

Many state anti-abortion laws are vague, with severe but unclear punishments for anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion, including the doctor who cares for her. Because hospitals and doctors may be reluctant to touch these patients, care will be delayed or patients will no longer trust that they can safely access that care. Women who need help are increasingly on their own.

This is going to get worse. As abortion has become more geographically restricted, more people are using medication abortion far from the supervision of qualified medical providers. Some of the medication comes from abortion aid organizations; others may be from black market sellers. They are offering these drugs to patients, many of whom are desperate and who plan to take them by themselves, without support — what’s known as a self-managed abortion. Sometimes people use these pills in ways that are different from the ways they were studied. Research on self-managed abortion and its impressive safety is growing, but those studies presume that someone who gets into real trouble can access basic medical care. That assumption no longer holds for large parts of our country, as Ms. Thurman and Ms. Miller discovered.

What’s killing women isn’t the increasing use of medication abortion; it’s the laws and leaders who have created a situation in which those patients are denied basic care. What’s killing these women is not abortion; it’s the isolation, the absence of care, the ejection of reproductive health care from the systems that should provide it.

Here's my question, which stems from a TikTok creator asking it:

WHY are people putting the life of a fetus that may or may not survive, BEFORE that of a living, breathing, healthy adult? Who is ALIVE already. They are putting her life at risk for a fetus that may or may not survive to be born. Why??? I don't care the circumstances.

You have your beliefs - that's great for YOU. But YOU do not get to decide MY beliefs for me. Don't want to have an abortion? DON'T GET ONE

But government officials who have NO idea what is going on with me and my body (that is between me and my doctor) DO NOT get to decide what I do with it.

Why do their (and your) beliefs get to come before mine? Sure, mine believe in allowing a woman the right to choose. Your's don't. Having the law that they are legal does not mean you have to have one EVER. Nobody is forcing you to have one. But having the law on the books means I can choose to if need be. And you can choose to never use that law. 

Maybe you could justify this if voters could actually have a voice and an opportunity to vote.  Many states do not have the option for voter sponsored ballot initiatives.  Even in states where there is a system to vote on abortion, Republicans are putting up roadblocks at every opportunity, rain the threshold required to pass, raising the number of signatures required, deliberately making the wording confusing etc. Many states are heavily gerrymandered and people do not have a voice.

Furthermore, reproductive care should be a federally protected right.  We have seen the tragic consequences of leaving it to the states.