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Experience at a pregnancy crisis center

(I’m not the author! Shared to reddit r/prochoice 10/10/22 by u/redlemur. I’ve made some small edits for clarity and emboldened some sentences.)

I had an abortion 3 weeks ago. Before, my mom took me to a pregnancy crisis center to try and change my mind. I knew pretty much immediately after I realized I was pregnant that I wanted to get an abortion. I'm 16 and just don't want this for my life and wanted everything to be over and just want to go to college and have a normal life, and I am doing really well in school and just want to have a normal social life and normal life. 

But my mom kept saying that she thought I hadn't thought it through, was rushing into a decision and that I would regret it. She also thought that my [boyfriend] was pressurizing me which wasn't true. She said that she wanted me to go somewhere to get "unbiased advice" and to talk through my options to make sure I wasn't making a mistake. Before this she was trying to talk me out of it basically all the time and I wanted her to stop and now I regret telling her at all in the first place.

She said if I went to this place with an open mind and discussed it properly then she would accept my decision (this was not true as it happened). I thought this seemed reasonable and going there seemed harmless and I just wanted to get her off my back basically. I didn't know exactly what it was and didn't look closely but from a 30 second look on their website they looked like professional and unbiased. 

Fortunately I'm in a state where abortion is not banned or anything and before this I was kinda like didn't care about it or know much.

It was kinda weird in that it was a medical place but like it didn't seem like basically it felt like someone's living room. I talked to 2 women there who were like one was about 25 and apparently was a teen mom and the other was like 50 I think. 

To start with they like where convinced that my [boyfriend] was pressurizing me and they kept saying things like it was wrong to do it just as he wanted. …like most women who get an abortion only do it because of the dad. They were convinced it was because of him and they kept saying that most women who get an abortion break up with their bfs soon after. I kept saying this wasn't why but they wouldn't believe me. And then they asked me what I would do if he were "100% supportive" and would support me fully keeping the baby and like I got pissed off at this point with them. 

When I should have calmly said, like “I would still want to get an abortion” but then they took my getting annoyed as me being in denial or something and started being even more convinced but eventually they sorta gave up on that.

They got a video of a supposed fetus in the womb up on the tv screen and they said that this was what my baby looked like [at the moment]. And they also got like a doll of a fetus that age and they gave it to me to hold and also they gave me an ultrasound and they showed this to me but like to me it was just black and white lines but they kept asking me "how does this all make you feel" and they thought I was lying. And they were like how does it make you feel to know you have that growing inside of you?

Like then they started talking about how great my parents was and how some girls would be kicked out for being pregnant and it was great that they weren't doing that and were supportive. And they kept saying we see girls in your situation with non supportive parents and they do great as moms and if they can do it then you 100% can. 

And like one of them was telling me about how she got pregnant and got kicked out and had to go to a maternity home at 17 and she was like because of my "super supportive mom" it would be so much easier for me. And they kept saying how being a mom would make my life complete and would be such a blessing and amazing for me. And then I was like, I don't want this. 

I just want to not worry about all this and I also said at one point I don't want to have to look after a baby all the time and be tired all the time. And they literally told me that was a "myth" and that it would all be fine as my mom would support me and I would be able to do school and college no problem. And they also told me that I wouldn't be able to get an abortion without parental consent as I was a minor which was a blatant lie but fortunately I knew this before and made me realize more that they were just misleading on everything. 

And they kept asking me "how do you think you would feel about this in 5 years time" or "what do you think your life would be in 5 years time" or "if in the future you want to have a baby and you can't how do you think you would feel about this now." And I kept saying “I’m 16, I'm too young for this” and they were like "you are too young for this but not too young to have sex" and "if you have sex which is an adult thing you have to deal with the adult consequences." And they kept saying things like "do you think that sometimes things happen for a reason" or something like that.

Eventually I got pissed off again and tried to walk away and leave and they literally blocked my exit and stopped me from leaving. And then I got a bit more frustrated and upset and then I kinda burst into tears and they then took this as a sign I was having doubts and was unsure and that I was in denial and trying not to think about it. 

And they then started asking me about the abortion procedure and I said I was planning to get a medical abortion. They said the first pill stops a hormone that the baby needs and effectively "poisons" it. And they were like asking me how it makes me feel thinking about what would happen to the fetus and how the fetus would feel. And they were like “don't you think it deserves a chance of life”. And then they massively overplayed the second pill and they said it would induce a "constant agonizing throbbing" and that the side effects would continue for weeks afterwards. And they also said that I would be able to make out the fetus and see the baby shape after it comes out and would definitely be able to make out what it was and that I would probably be having nightmares about it forever. 

And that they speak to women who regret an abortion even 30 years after. And they also said that it would greatly reduce my chance of having a baby in the future and also that it was better to have a baby younger as our bodies are "more designed for it."

They also tried to talk me into adoption and they kept saying "don't you think your baby deserves life" and how there are loads of people who are adopted who do amazing and like I said I don't want to put my body through that and I don't want to go through all that and obviously it would be hard with hormones and bonding as well and they were like “yes, if you have a baby you would be so emotionally bonded you would never regret it” and like I don't know exactly. And they then got some website of like couples who want to adopt and they were like your baby could be a blessing to any of these couples and I could choose which one and be able to see it sometimes. Eventually they sorta gave up on me I think and they also had another appointment but this all lasted about an hour. 

But it was like I felt a bit sick at times afterwards and I don't know. And I think this all has just completely ruined my relationship with my mom.

Sorry if this is badly written. Basically I didn't really know anything about this but now I have been reading a lot more. I want to share my story and maybe for people to use it to try and get more awareness about this all but I don't think I want everyone to know I had an abortion and to do it in my name. But if you think it would be helpful then please screenshot and share this if you want. 

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Non-Binary in Genesis

Twitter thread by Michaela Atencio@michaelaatencio

i'm nonbinary. 

how does this reconcile with the verse, "male and female he created them," you may ask?

the variety in God's creation emphasizes God's creativity as an artist. 

Genesis gives us several examples of this.God made "day and night." this sounds like a binary, similar to "male and female," right?

that isn't quite all we experience in 24 hours. sunrises and sunsets do not fit into the binary of day or night. yet God paints the skies with these too.

On the second day God separated the sky from water. seems like another binary. yet the clouds hold water for us in the sky, the condensation and rain cycle refreshing our earth constantly. the sky, separate from water, contains and releases water. 

God also said "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." that isn't the full story, either. consider marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens. not fully land, not fully waters. there is such glorious variety in God's creation.

We see another binary in the celestial bodies God made: "the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night." and then, almost as a footnote, "and the stars." there is more than just sun and moon in outer space. planets, asteroids, black holes, supernovae.

side note: these magnificent stars hundreds of times more massive than our sun, as simple as that to God. "and the stars." I marvel. Hallelujah.

God created the great sea monsters" and "every winged bird of every kind." a split again between water and sky. yet we see creatures like penguins that are definitely a "winged bird," but do not fly and instead walk and swim. 

and finally "male and female he created them."first off, intersex people exist. but, and perhaps more importantly, friends, look around. listen. do you have friends or family that say they don't fall under "male" or "female?" if so, honor that.

does all this variety invalidate God as creator? of course not! I believe that this instead is an example of how authors weave words to tell a story. we see the author in Genesis give examples of the extremes that God creates. It doesn't exclude the possibility of more.and so we worship the God of more. 

The God of the marsh, the penguin, the God of the sunrise, the cloud, the supernovae. The God of the nonbinary. 

you are loved.

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(text version for reading access.)

Shirley Exception

Alexandra Erin (She/Her)

@AlexandraErin

The Shirley Exception is a bit of mental sleight of hand that allows people to support a policy they profess to disagree with. It's called the Shirley Exception because... well, I mean, *surely* there must be exceptions, right?

Let's imagine that in response to suspicions about overbroad use of service animal rules, a city somewhere decides to just swing the pendulum 100% in the other direction. Restaurants, public accommodations, etc., no longer have to recognize any service animals.

And in the aftermath of the change, existing rules about where animals may and may not go apply full force.

A lot of people would back the change because Obviously Some People Take Advantage. (Positing that someone, somewhere is taking advantage is a great way to get the masses on your side in our politics, sadly.)

Now if you point out the existence of a blind person or an epileptic person who has a service dog for everyday navigation of life or for life-saving purposes, the Good People who just don't want anyone to take advantage will tell you:

"No one's talking about legitimate cases."

And if you point out that the rule that they're backing would affect what they call "legitimate cases", the response will be:

"But surely there will be an exception."

If you back up an anti-abortion activist to the point where they actually have to grapple with a case where the parent would 100% die delivering a 100% non-viable fetus, you'll get the same answers: "No one is talking about those cases." and "But surely there will be exceptions."

All of those studies of people in Trump Country USA who were shocked, shocked, that the kind man next door who is a good father and a great neighbor and a real part of the community was dragged away by ICE?

They all thought that surely he'd be an exception.

If you point out that the laws/policies they're talking about *don't* offer such exceptions and in some cases explicitly forbid them, if you say "So let's put those exceptions in writing."... well, then you're back to Surely People Will Take Advantage.

See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They've always had teachers, bosses, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.

I mean, if Officer Smalltown von Cul-De-Sac could give them a warning when they were caught with recreational amounts of pot as kids because it was harmless and they Had Futures, then Surely there must be similar exceptions for everyone?

That post about "I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobbed woman who voted for Face-Eating Leopards Party" is very true, and it goes farther than personal immunity to a very generalized and broad Just World Fallacy.

Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don't deserve that.

But if we try to lay out rules to protect faces from being eaten by leopards, people will take advantage. Best to keep it simple and count on decency and reason to rule the day.

So moderate conservatives, what we might call "everyday conservatives", the ones who don't wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don't actually agree with...

...because in their mind the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing it as written! Not when that would be bad!

And then they are confused, shocked, and even insulted when people hold them accountable for their support of the monstrous policy.

"I didn't vote for leopards to eat *your* face! I just thought we needed some face-eating leopards generally. Surely you can't blame me for that!"

The old "Defense of Marriage" laws are another textbook example of this. 

Many of them included language that expressly forbade giving similar benefits (like hospital visitation) to same-sex relationships.

Yet the people who voted for them, in many cases, wanted it to be known that No One Is Talking About Stopping You From Visiting Your Loved One In The Hospital. And Surely There Will Be An Exception.

The Shirley Exception is how people who are only mundanely monstrous, moderately monstrous, wind up supporting policies that are completely monstrous.

And when they do, they always want credit for their good intentions towards those they see as deserving, not the outcomes.

I'm describing a phenomenon here and I don't have a solution to its existence. While convincing people that laws that don't specify exceptions functionally *don't have them* might work sometimes on (ironically) a case-by-case basis, what is really needed is a broader shift.

People need to get used to thinking about the harm policies will do as a real part of the policy, not a hypothetical that Reasonable People of Good Will Can Surely Work Around.

Maybe the tack of saying, "If it was your life on the line, wouldn't you want that to be in writing?" would work. I don't know. Like I said, I don't have a solution here. This is just a thing that happens.

This thread is going viral again. I don't have a SoundCloud to promote because Twitter is my SoundCloud. Tweeting this kind of explanation/analysis is one of the main things I do (when I'm not at a con). If you get some value from it, feel free to tip. https://paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=RR84V5CDS9UP4 

I believe abortion should be free, on demand, and no questions asked because you can debate philosophically all you want but at the end of the day, there is no way to restrict and regulate abortion that does not result in humiliating, traumatizing, harming the health of, and even killing people who are pregnant on a mass scale. There are very real, tangible, measurable harms abortion restrictions do to vulnerable populations and the only possible benefit in return is to placate the palate of the morally squeamish.

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I understand if you want to ignore this ask or block me for it, but I hope you see it as a good faith question. You expressed disdain toward Christians who observe Jewish festivals. Like we are stealing something from you, from your culture, desecrating it. I defiantly agree in regard to those who do it as a fad, without striving for deep understanding. In your opinion, is it possible for those of other religions to observe the Jewish festivals with respect, with empathy?

In your opinion, is it possible for those of other religions to observe the Jewish festivals with respect, with empathy?

Yes.  By accepting invitations by Jews to be guests at our festivals when we celebrate them.  Period.  

Any other method is stealing our culture and desecrating it.  Period.

To paraphrase a quote I’ve seen elsewhere, my heritage is not a sandbox for outsiders to play in, not after the number of bodies that you’ve buried in it.  

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Abortion Stories

from Facebook, Susanna Roesel September 3, 2021 

I was 30 years old.

I was married.

We were happy.

We were established.

Our 401k runneth over. 

We decided to start a family. 

I got pregnant right away.

Like right away.

We were over the moon.

I kept a journal of every day of the magic.

I got a bump.

I felt our baby kick.

I embraced it fully.

I rejected tests because "it won't change our path"

Emily sent out baby shower invitations.

The nursery was under way. 

And then.

I'm almost halfway there! 

I'm 18 and a half weeks pregnant.

The doctor called.

It was 7pm.

I was out at dinner with my friend Deb.

I stepped outside.

The day before on a whim I agreed to a blood test.

"There's probably nothing to worry about but we need you to come in. There's a 1 in 36 chance something is wrong"

I called Liza sobbing.

My sister told me to lay out 36 straws and see that there's still such a good chance that everything is fine.

I didn't sleep.

We drove up to Forsyth because that was the first available amniocentesis. 

The needle was long.

The room was dark.

The news was really bad.

I changed in that moment forever.

It's a girl! 

We had named her Audrey.

Audrey Roesel -- the girl who will make me a mom.

She was missing her nasal bone.

Her kidneys were tiny.

Her heart was missing a chamber.

She had an extra chromosome.

Part of her brain wasn't formed.

Her head was growing at a rate 4x faster than her limbs.

I want to be a mom.

This is my girl.

This situation could really hurt my body.

She will be in immeasurable pain.

I didn't understand "incompatible with life"

I cried.

I cried some more.

I was already a mom.

Moms keep their children from pain.

Time is ticking. 

I'm 19.5 weeks now.

We are in Georgia.

There's a time limit, you know.

It's Labor Day now.

Doctors go on vacation.

Somehow the world around us keeps on.

Not for me.

In the interest of time...

They sent me to an abortion clinic. 

Me. At an abortion clinic. 

After 20 weeks, it's illegal, you know.

It's the night before.

I ran a bath.

I said goodbye to my daughter in that tub. 

Just the two of us before the world turned upside down.

Did you know...

You have to go 2 days in a row?

1 to dilate

1 for a D&E

It was brutal emotionally.

It hurt physically. 

I begged to be put under.

A kind doctor took my hand.

His hands were large and warm.

He told me I would be a mom one day.

He was an angel.

I woke up in a group recovery room.

In a recliner. 

Next to a young girl. Maybe 13. 

She was also recovering. 

I took her hand.

My milk came in.

Nobody told me.

It hurt in my body and my soul.

I grieved. Hard. 

For months and months. 

I held onto a teddy bear the size of a newborn.

I ached everywhere inside and out.

It was a fluke they said. 

Fast forward four months.

Pregnant again.

Scared.

Excited.

First ultrasound. 

Baby’s gone.

Go to the hospital for D&C.

This is also considered abortion.

They tested the tissue.

it was a boy!

Chromosomes were normal.

Isn’t that good news?

Grief ensued.

So did genetic testing B and me.

I’m not ashamed.

I never was.

I’m what abortion looks like.

So is the 13 year old girl in that recovery room.

In Texas we’d be criminals. [And Oklahoma as of 4/14/22]

Access to safe abortion is a woman’s right.

And abortion is a decision to be made between a woman, her doctor, her family, and her god. ...Not a majority white male cohort of politicians with a false sense of morality.

And your judgement? It matters not.

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Bah, Humbug! Behind every billionaire hoarding wealth are underpaid and exploited workers. Let’s explore some issues of workers past, present and future.

☕ In 2021, when workers at three separate Starbucks locations in and around Buffalo NY, started organizing to unionize, company executives swooped in with anti-union efforts. Workers are fighting for higher wages as Starbucks claims record profits in 2021.

📦 In 2019, Amazon withheld a third of its driver’s tips before being ordered to pay the $61.4 million back in a federal lawsuit. Warehouse workers across the country have also experienced grueling working conditions that include: too few bathroom breaks, excessive productivity goals, & unsafe working conditions. Amazon saw record profits in 2021.

🍟 In 2018, McDonald’s workers walked off the job for what would be the first of many multi-state strikes to demand an end to the rampant sexual harassment in their restaurants. Despite McDonald’s promises, they have failed to adequately address continued sexual violence at their stores. McDonald’s saw record profits in 2021.

❤️ Created in collaboration with @FightFor15.

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“Herein lies the impossible irony of suggesting that vaccine skeptics talk to their doctors and of assuming that this patient-physician bond represents a durable and valued connection between individuals and the larger institutions of health and medicine. No such bonds exist anymore. Like so many other stories of the “declining trust in institutions,” the real story is not the decline in trust per se, but rather the failure of the institution. The increasingly expensive, arcane, and impersonal US health care system, with its harried practitioners, shock billing, impenetrable insurance coverages, and regionally monopolistic consolidation, leaves no room for trust, and certainly has no time for conversation. Is it really so surprising then that millions of Americans are more trusting of their favorite local radio personality, who talks to them for three or four hours every day (at least until he, too, dies of preventable Covid), or of the friends in their Facebook groups, than they are of a strange doctor whom they might see for three uncomfortable minutes once a year — often after an enraging two hours in a waiting room for an appointment made months prior?”

— Jacob Bacharach, Talk to Your Doctor

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Like, people who identify as Queer know the word is used like a slur. Trust me, we know.

So when we say “queer is a slur” was started by terfs, maybe use some critical thinking and try to understand what we mean. That is, if you actually care about queer people and the damage terfs do, rather that just screaming “queer is a slur!” and ignoring the actual point.

Terfs did not like that queer was reclaimed. End of. This is a fact. Queer was too broad, too accepting, and embraced all the people they wanted gone. And I know y'all exclusionists feel the same but get pissed when we point it out so you deny it, but sit down and listen for a minute.

Queer was the preferred term for poc. For bisexuals. For trans people. For people with multiple identities. It neatly encapsulated everything, and was a friendly community to those who felt thrown under the bus by mainstream LGBT activism. It was a political and social statement, “you treated my like I was different and weird, and guess what? I am and that’s something to be proud of.”

So the response? “You can’t use that word. Its bad. Its a slur.”

And at the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes. Everyone knew why they didn’t like the word and brushed that off. It was fine.

So they started more subtly. “Just so you know this word is very harmful and is a slur so be careful how you use it :))) in case you didn’t know :)))) its a slur :))) friendly reminder :))) for the sake of other people of course :))))” type shit on every post involving the word, including and especially posts simply mentioning self identification.

Always worded in friendly, concerned ways, like the derailment was meant to be nice and considerate, and not about normalizing their rhetoric.

And what happened because of that was a younger generation of community kids growing up with these statements being thrown at them and absorbed on every. Single. Post. That. Mentionioned. Queer.

The result? That same generation of kids cutting it all short, removing the meant-to-be-palatable niceness, to just say “queer is a slur.”

Exactly how it was originally intended. “Queer is a slur.” People drop on posts where young queer people talk about it being a self identifier that actually fits them. “Its a slur,” they comment, with nothing else, on posts they clearly didn’t read past that word, written by people twice their age who had reclaimed it before they were even born.

Its nasty. Its disgusting. It’s plain old bigotry, whether the people saying know it or not. It is a terf tactic, plain and simple.

And no one wants to deny that it is indeed used as a slur (right along with all the rest of our identities.) No one wants to be insensitive and force it on people who haven’t reclaimed it.

But invading queer people’s posts to spit “queer is a slur” is flat out queerphobic. You do the dirty work of terfs, of cis straight oppressors, by saying in one simple sentence: “its a dirty word, there is no pride in it, you haven’t/can’t reclaim(ed) it.”

And regardless of your actual intentions, when you do this, that is EXACTLY what you are communicating and doing.

“Queer is a slur” is a terf movement. Stop fucking supporting terfs just because you want to pretend like it isn’t.

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Today’s fighting Christian hegemony factoid:

“Charity” and “tzedakah” are not synonymous. To many Jews this is relatively clear, but I have seen gentiles struggle to understand the difference. So let’s look at each of these concepts.

Charity, the predominant word used to describe “giving money to people/entities to help make the world a better place” in the west, is a Christian term. And at its root it means giving out of the good of your heart to a person/entity/cause for the betterment of mankind. The word itself is derived from caritas, a Latin word for love. When we speak of charity in the west, we talk about wanting to help people, and then giving our time or money to someone or to some entity for that purpose. If you’re giving money to a good cause but you don’t want to, it’s forced upon you or you’re doing it for social cache, we treat it as a lesser form of giving, because you didn’t mean it. It’s not “real charity.” Charity is giving to your fellow because you love him as you love yourself.

Tzedakah is not at all like that. It too refers to the concept of giving money or other aid to those in need, but it has nothing to do with loving other people or wanting to help people. No, the root of tzedakah is “Tzedek,” which means justice. Giving aid to those in need (or to organizations that will help those in need) is doing justice, and though it’s nice if someone “means it” that is in no way required. Tzedakah is a recognition that it is unjust to have more than you need while denying help to those who don’t have their needs met yet. You can help them begrudgingly, or angrily. You can hate every second of it. But if you give to those in need it is still tzedakah. Because personal feelings, though very relevant to the “love” at the root of charity, are irrelevant to justice.

Related factoid: because giving tzedakah is a mitzvah, it is common for people panhandling for money in Israel to do so in heavily Orthodox neighborhoods. Because halacha dictates that if someone asks for tzedakah, you must provide it if you are able.

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it’s only when you get older that you realize how much your average american childhood resembled being a cult

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tonight’s twitter discourse:

this thread (all their takes after the initial tweet are bad too)

https://twitter.com/benedict_rs/status/1349954211358924800

i don’t know if they wanted to become a more popular writer or podcaster but they’re getting ratioed by the minute. 

i’ve been finding new authors to follow by digging in the quote-retweets

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Happy International Women’s Day, everyone! Here are a few groovy reminders 🌈✨

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“they” (1 word) is shorter than “he or she” (3 words)

“they” is more inclusive than “he/she”

“themself” flows more naturally than “him or herself”

“they” is less clunky than “(s)he”

it’s time to replace the awkward “she or he”

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you know what’s even better than a guilty pleasure?

a smug indulgence. tell yourself, “i’m gonna do this thing because i like it, and there’s nothing you can do to make me feel bad about it!” eat that cake! read that romance novel! be free!!!

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by actrvist on instagram