abortionanonymous

[abortionanonymous]

hey guess who got an IUD on this fine tuesday?

THIS BITCH.

and it went great! way better than i expected. i’ve assisted so many IUD insertions at work but i was terrified getting one done myself for some reason. but it was way less painful than i expected both during and after.

and the internet tends to be full of horror stories about all medical procedures, so it’s nice to balance it out with some run-of-the-mill stories too. so that’s mine!

and insurance fully covered it WOOOOOO

[abortionanonymous]

Even if you think consent to sex is consent to pregnancy - consent is voluntary and can be revoked.

[abortionanonymous]

look, here’s the simplest way i can explain this: there is no way you can give a fetus rights without taking rights away from the person carrying it. so, you are forced to choose: do you care more about a living, breathing, human being, or about a clump of cells inside them? and if you say you care more about the cells, then, well, thats all i need to know before staying as fucking far away from you as possible.

[abortionanonymous]

Love of life.

Reproduction is fun. ;)

[abortionanonymous]

FYI if you’re ever in need of pads/tampons, you can always try Planned Parenthood. My local PP will give you a bag of pads and/or tampons for free if you just stop in and ask. Not sure if that’s true everywhere, but you can always call or stop in to find out!

[abortionanonymous]

Things that reduce abortion:

Livable wages

Affordable/free healthcare

Affordable housing

Affordable education

Sex education

Access to contraception

[abortionanonymous]

Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. Even if a person is seeking pregnancy when having sex, that can be revoked at any time, because that’s an inherent part of how consent works: it has to be ongoing. If someone consents to a medical procedure and then half-way through changes their mind, the provider has to stop the procedure, because consent is no longer given.

This is about the fact that pregnant people don’t have any less right to autonomy than anyone else, and fetuses don’t have special rights to use someone else’s body against their will. Forced pregnancy is torture.

Anyway, a lot of what you said is patently untrue, but I have to respond to this point in particular: “Abortion is a traumatizing and scarring procedure that is often more dangerous than child birth.” Abortions is literally never more dangerous than childbirth. Even if a pregnant person has an underlying condition that makes abortion riskier than usual, continuing the pregnancy and giving birth will ALWAYS be far more dangerous.

I agree with the statement,"Abortion is the taking of a life," because the embryo or fetus is alive before the procedure and isn't after the procedure. However, that doesn't make me support safe, legal abortion less, because people have the right to deny other people the use of their organs, blood, plasma, and/or bone marrow, and people die from needing donations of organs, blood, plasma, and/or bone marrow every day.

I wholeheartedly agree! The fact that I consider an embryo and fetus to be living beings doesn’t mean I think they should have special rights to use another person’s body without consent or against their will. The anti-choice movement has done a good job of refocusing the issue on “life” to stir people’s emotions when that’s never been the crux of the issue at all.

[abortionanonymous]

I've heard many anti-abortion people say that a dilation and evacuation procedure is a "dismemberment" abortion that dismembers and decapitates the fetus. As someone who works in an abortion clinic, is this true?

Well, I wouldn’t use purposefully emotive words like “dismemberment” or “decapitation.” But with most surgical abortions of any type, the embryo or fetus is not removed intact. Forceps are sometimes used in a D&E, though not always (they’re not often needed in procedures that happen early in the second trimester). That’s probably what anti-choicers are referring to as “dismemberment,” even though it’s not a consistent component of D&Es. The biggest difference, actually, between a D&E and a D&C is the amount of cervical dilation that has to take place, but antis don’t talk about that as much since it can’t be as easily used for emotional manipulation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[abortionanonymous]

I agree with the statement,"Abortion is the taking of a life," because the embryo or fetus is alive before the procedure and isn't after the procedure. However, that doesn't make me support safe, legal abortion less, because people have the right to deny other people the use of their organs, blood, plasma, and/or bone marrow, and people die from needing donations of organs, blood, plasma, and/or bone marrow every day.

I wholeheartedly agree! The fact that I consider an embryo and fetus to be living beings doesn’t mean I think they should have special rights to use another person’s body without consent or against their will. The anti-choice movement has done a good job of refocusing the issue on “life” to stir people’s emotions when that’s never been the crux of the issue at all.

[abortionanonymous]

We did a values clarification exercise at work recently. We were given a variety of value statements about abortion, and we had to anonymously agree or disagree, and then we had the opportunity to discuss it as a group.

The most interesting one to me was “abortion is the taking of a life.” And what was interesting were the responses - they were about evenly split. Half of us agreed and half disagreed. And yet we all choose to work at an abortion clinic and devote our working lives (in part) to helping people have abortions.

It just really hit me, then, that we talk about abortion so wrong so much of the time. Like, literally HALF of my coworkers believe that abortion is the taking of a life, and show up every day to provide abortions! And do it with care and expertise and wide open hearts! Because abortion is about the rights and autonomy and dignity of pregnant people, full stop. And debates about “life” are just distractions.

[abortionanonymous]

Hey, so this is completely incorrect! The “half a billion taxpayer dollars” that we “give” to Planned Parenthood are Medicaid reimbursements and Title X family planning grants, so none of that money is used for political donations. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood Action Fund are two separate organizations - PP is the healthcare provider (who receives that $500 million from Medicaid/Title X), and PPAF is the (explicitly non-partisan) lobbying and advocacy group (who receives none of that $500 million from Medicaid/Title X). Both, however, are nonprofits.

@plannedparenthood @cecilerichards

[abortionanonymous]

We did it! 🇮🇪

[abortionanonymous]

Actually, they enrolled me in emergency Medicaid, so I paid them $0.

In honor of another 40 Days for Life campaign starting, I’ll just say this:

I’ve never felt more shamed and alone than when I had to walk by protesters to get to my abortion appointment at Planned Parenthood.

I’ve never felt more loved than when I was inside Planned Parenthood, lying on an exam table, tears rolling down my face, while a nurse held my hand and another stroked my hair and told me that I was strong.

[abortionanonymous]

So the thing about this gag rule is that it doesn’t actually ban providers from providing or referring for abortions, it means that by doing so they will be disqualified from Title X federal family planning funding.

So providers can’t just not comply with the gag rule without losing that essential funding.

And here’s the thing about losing that funding: it’s not really about the providers. Because what Title X does is it allows providers to use a sliding fee scale for family planning services. So patients who are getting family planning services (birth control, emergency contraception, STI testing and treatment, Pap smears, breast exams, pelvic exams, etc etc) are charged based on their financial situation. Meaning that patients who are near or at or below the poverty line pay little to nothing. THOSE are the people who get screwed over by this. Because the providers can continue to operate if they lose that funding - but it means they can no longer use sliding fee scales. Meaning those patients can no longer afford services. Meaning those patients no longer get health care (and for a lot of those patients, that was their only health care).

TLDR: providers ignore the gag rule and continue to provider and/or refer for abortion, thus losing their family planning funding, thus essentially blocking their family planning patients from care. OR providers comply with the gag rule and keep their family planning funding, but can no longer provide and/or refer for abortion, thus blocking abortion patients from care.

There’s no way to win. Patients lose their health care no matter what.

[abortionanonymous]

Most Planned Parenthoods use informed consent for HRT, so the clinicians at PP will go over, in great detail, the risks, benefits, and short- and long-term side effects of hormones. They will not just prescribe HRT without an in-depth consenting process. It doesn’t require letters or referrals from other providers, but in no way does an informed consent process allow medication to be prescribed to an uninformed patient.

I’m seeing a Planned Parenthood post about them offering HRT going around where they apparently don’t require letters/ pre-required doctor visits/ etc. and I suppose that’s a good resource for an educated individual trans person who can’t afford HRT on their own or because of their insurance.

But for the love of God don’t go straight to Planned Parenthood for HRT if you haven’t talked to a doctor about what Testosterone could do to your body or doing your own damn research or just talking to someone (cough an educated therapist cough) about being trans. This is how you end up with de-transitioners who wanted the soft trans boi look but didn’t bother thinking about or looking up the actual effects a life-changing hormone would have on their body

[abortionanonymous]

There’s this odd little section in that new Iowa abortion law (SF359):

“In testing for a detectable fetal heartbeat, the physician shall perform an abdominal ultrasound, necessary to detect a fetal heartbeat according to standard medical practice...” (full text 146C.2, section 1a)

The fact that they specify an abdominal ultrasound is what’s standing out to me as odd. Abdominal ultrasounds are almost never used that early in pregnancy (~6 weeks), and frequently not at all in the first trimester. Transvaginal ultrasounds are typically used, as they can provide a more accurate image in early pregnancy.

I don’t usually read the actual language of these types of bills, so I’m not sure if there’s something I’m just missing, but this seems like it could be a case of people not knowing the subject that they’re legislating.

[abortionanonymous]

hey so planned parenthood does not do “women’s health.” there is not one single service that planned parenthood provides that is only for women. pp is for nonbinary people, it is for genderqueer people, it is for men, and it is for women. if you are a person and you need a service that pp provides, then pp is for you.

this post brought to you by the fact that I saw 6 patients this afternoon and not a singe one of them was a woman.