And, with those lists in hand, they will -- for the first time -- probably start going directly after women.
And what will they do when they see the names of their fellow protesters on those lists? Or the names of their friends down at the megachurch? Several diaries on dailykos by abortion clinic workers have reported women who sneak their pregnant daughters into clinics, call the doctor a murderer on the way out, and are back the next week screaming at women on their way in. I imagine at least some of those stories are true.
They are absolutely true.
My last college roommate was earning her MS in Social Work. Her thesis project involved spending a lot of time in abortion clinics; and she saw this almost monthly. The typical story was: "Oh, I do believe in abortion -- for emergencies like this one!"
In other words: when MY kid gets pregnant, it's an emergency. The rest of those girls are just sluts.
Since one in three American women will terminate a pregnancy in their lifetimes, it's a fair bet that those lists will indeed include many familiar names. And though it will be traumatizing in the short run for the women involved, in the long run that, too, will be a normalizing experience for people -- in the same way that knowing openly gay people normalizes homosexuality.
Pro-choice groups have occasionally attempted one-day education campaigns in which women who've had abortions wear a T-shirt declaring that fact. The stigma is still so great that they have few takers. Which is too bad, because if even 10% of women did it, all on one day, it would blow open a whole new dimension to this conversation.
AIDS brought homosexuals to the point where they could no longer escape the fact that secrecy equals death. The closet was no longer an option. In this case, secrecy equals loss of a hard-won right. We are entitled to our privacy -- but I suspect there's going to be another long and noisy season of public discussion before people finally realize, once and for all, that this is something nobody has a right to butt in on.
Still, with RU-486, it's going to be a different conversation. And I think we're all ready for that.
A great read and update on the issues for this Larue, thanks Mrs. Robinson. I'm happy dancing for women's rights like I haven't been able to do for a long, long time. My wife's comment: "Bout time." WRT RU-486 and it's spread.
I suppose this is why they are anti-science.
Damn technological workarounds!
Of course, they freely consume antibiotics, which wouldn't work if evolution was a mere "theory."
But if they thought, they wouldn't do the things they do.
In the future, that same logic may lead them to bring the gasoline and bombs to the new "abortion chambers" -- that is, our own private homes --a nd direct their rage at the new "murderers," now recognized as women themselves.
Point defense.
Somebody breaks into your home with violent intent?
They catch a couple of loads of 00 buckshot.
That'll make even someone using an effective vest sit up and take notice. Of course, if they stop the load with their unarmored head, said notice will be taken while they're checking at the front desk in Hell.
Most places, arson of an occupied structure is considered grounds for justifiable homicide as well.
After the first few times this happens, the "small lunatic fringe" will get even smaller. Much smaller. Because the news will get around. And everyone who fails a gut check will leave.
Thanks for another great post, Mrs. R.
As I recall, one of the goals of founding women's health clinics in the 70s (not necessarily PP) was to provide some autonomy from the medical profession, which had far fewer women in those days.
And now RU 486 will allow reproductive rights to shelter, metaphorically, under the 'doctor patient' umbrella.
Interesting and thoughtful post Mrs. R. It will be _interesting_ to see how this plays out over the next few years. And Stormcrow is right, because pulling the personalized level of terrorism in states with castle doctrine laws could be really bad for the health of the terrorist.
One more thing - the emergence of these trends and the increasing use of electronic health records and wireless networks in doctors' offices. While I doubt most of these folks would be sophisticated (or patient) enough to crack a secured network, they may find an unsecured network with poor password protection easy meat.
The same lunatic bunch, dragging a big wooden cross, still pickets the abortion clinic in Pensacola FL where that divinely-inspired former Presbyterian minister (executed in 2003) decided to shoot down a doctor and his volunteer escort more than a decade ago. This had followed several clinic bombings in the city during the 1980s.
Don't make any mistake about it, the nuts are still out there.
That's the interesting thing here, Stormcrow. They don't want to go there, which is precisely why they haven't gone there (at least, not in large numbers) yet.
It's easy to pick on a big national organization like Planned Parenthood, or a free-standing clinic that provides specialized care to women. It's all sort of abstract, and I'm sure these folks feel like David taking on a national Goliath.
But it's a much different ball game when you're picking on directly on family doctors and regular moms and wives. To do that, you have to be willing to break all kinds of very old laws regarding the personal property, safety, and boundaries of private citizens. As you say: you have to risk getting your ass shot off, and nobody -- not even fellow conservatives -- is going to say you were in the right. Even so: RU-486 may be leaving them no choice.
Which will, indeed, thin the ranks considerably over time, as people get shot and convicted and sued and put away for years. As those cases mount, it's easy to imagine that a Schiavo-type backlash would form up, too. Even ostensibly anti-choice people would be repelled by their willingness to violate people's rights.
Trey, that's a good point. Data security is flimsy everywhere, and we're trusting doctors' offices with a hell of a lot -- in this case, perhaps, not only or privacy, but also our jobs, our reputations, and our lives.
wondering... are medical abortions counted as "abortions"? i mean, do the new numbers which show a decline in abortions include these? is it possible that it has finally and really become a private matter between a woman and her doctor?! wouldn't it be nice if the doctor could also dispense birth control to ensure greater privacy?
Overall abortion levels are declining, and have been for some years. It's counterintuitive -- but RU-486 has not increased them; and Plan B has not decreased them. Still, one does wonder if the decline may be related to the overall slide in the number of providers. The stats do count them as abortions, so it's not all that "private" yet.
And yes: as I said in the post, if the pharmacists can't get their act together, it makes perfect sense to give doctors the job of dispensing birth control. Furthermore: pharmacists everywhere should regard that as a wake-up call as to what happens when you let a few crazies interfere with your professional standards. We license these people to do a very serious task on our behalf. When a few of them shirk their public duty and are allowed to get away with it, it erodes confidence in the whole profession -- and people will find reasons to take some of those tasks away from them, since they've shown they can't be counted on to perform.
It's a real hit on the prestige of the profession if they let these people continue to set the terms by which women receive medical care. In humoring these "conscientious objectors," they're essentially telling us that that pharmacists can't be trusted to put the needs of half the population ahead of the whining of a few people who can't accept the terms of the job.
If I were a pharmacist, I'd be furious about this. And if I were a doctor serving women, I'd be doing whatever it took to make sure my decisions were being end-runned by some clown on the night shift down at Walgreen's -- including dispensing whatever I could myself.
I would not take the theocrats too lightly though. Remember, there is at least one US Senator that has said that doctors that perform abortions should be subject to the death penalty, and I am sure many others in the Republican Party that are willing to carry it out. Eric Rudolph was a folk hero out in the North Carolina sticks and many people supported his flight from the law even after he bombed nurses and doctors(with one bomb being timed to go off in time to take out the first responders to the first one). These terrorists are not going to go away, and governmental support of them certainly helps the movement make "safe abortions" a thing of the past. Hell, a lot of Democrats crossed over and voted to ban the dialation and extraction procedure simply because it was termed "partial-birth" abortion by the media. So the safest late term option to remove a fetus that is killing the mother, already dead or non-viable is now banned due to to proclivities of non-health officials.
Abortion at its base form is always going to be an issue of class. Rich people can always get abortions whether by crossing state lines or jetting off to another country. Poor people are stuck trying to scrounge up the 300 bucks and the ride to the nearest abortion clinic, and then when there are subjected to the shit proscribed by their state laws- 24 hour waiting periods, crap about them being idiots and bad people, adoption service lectures, and finally someone who quickly disposes of the problem that they came in for a day or so ago.
Abortion is not a pretty issue, but if this country didn't subscribe to a government-backed theocratic view on sexual health it would be a helluva lot easier to deal with. I have a very short fuse with self-described "baby savers" and their self-righteous bullshit that they peddle. That includes some big boys like the Catholic Church, but as we have seen they have their own issues to pretend to solve.
I thought that you can only do medical abortions in the early stages of a pregnancy so if a woman does not know she is pregnant very early or use the morning after pill all the time isn't it possible that she will still need to get a traditional abortion?
RU-486 is effective through the ninth week of pregnancy. Since pregancies are typically detected as early as the fourth or fifth week these days, that gives a woman a month or so to get her act together. (A woman who doesn't know she's pregnant by the ninth week has bigger problems than merely being pregnant.)
The vast majority of surgical abortions (upwards of 90%) are done before the 12th week, so there's a bit bigger window there. But, as noted: there's also a far bigger hassle. It costs a lot more, because it's surgery. You have to go to a special clinic, sometimes in the next state. You may have to visit it twice. Or three times. You have to do it on the day they do them, which usually means missing work or school -- and maybe arousing suspicions.
With the drug, you go to your own doctor for a single visit, bring home some pills, and take them at your own convenience -- say, over the weekend. A couple weeks later, you go back for a follow-up. They're not cheap, but nothing like surgery. It's just a whole different thing.
RU-486 is not the same as Plan B, which is the morning-after pill. Plan B must be taken within 72 hours (48 is better) of unprotected sex.
Yeah, it's possible to mess up, miss the nine-week window, and need to get a surgical abortion. But if RU-486 wasn't available, that's exactly what you'd be doing anyway.
The good news is that more and more women will have the option of doing it the easier way.
excellent, prescient overview, Mrs. R. thank you.
blogz rule!
Great post Mrs R, as one commenter above said 'prescient' and timely. This is the kind of topic and writing I'm starving for from a MSM outlet, but instead they soft serve triple helpings of Britney!Paris!Lyndsy!
Its simply one of the best articles/OpEd pieces I've read, anywhere! Although I'm sure others are noting this paradigm shift, this is the first cohesive piece I've come across - thank you for your work!
So they will be attacking a home where a single abortion might have been committed? After the fact? How will this prevent a chemically induced abortion in some other home somewhere? I can understand the logic of attacking a place where abortion is an everyday occurrence. Destroy the place you succeed in stopping several days to several months worth of abortions. Murder doctors who give abortions, again standard counter-insurgency tactics. Lopping of the heads of the tall poppies, encourages other poppies not to raise their heads. Militarily sound.
Stopping RU-486 production or distribution and any information pertaining to the production of RU-486, again militarily sound.
It will be easier to refocus on the distribution points for RU-486, the pharmacies, the distributors, the big drug chains than to go attacking retail one time users, one at a time, after the fact. The best they could hope for would be that RU-486 becomes like Hillbilly heroin, readily available without perscription on any street corner. Unlike Hillbilly heroin, not many repeat customers.
Now all this is assuming that the opposition really wishes to stop abortions. I have never been that convinced that they wish to stop them.
Imagine a world with absolutely no need for abortions, none performed, what does the opposition have to cavil and wail about? Demon Rum? Bingo? Pain Killers? Comic Books, Dungeons and Dragons? Grand Theft Auto? Holidays in Aruba?
To my own sadly evil way of thinking, being against abortion is just the loudest and crudest way of "But think of the children." And as with patriotism, thinking of the children is mostly just cheap pandering and the last recources of the scoundrel elite.
Great thought-provoking post, Mrs. R.
Mrs. D. was one of those girls who "took a trip to New York" back around 1970. I'll be sure to have her read this, and the comments, where you make clear the difference between 486 and Plan B. Think I'll see about having our daughter read it, too.
Thanks again.
Very good post Mrs R. Another possibility is that if breaches in privacy result in some woman "getting outed", then maybe a black or grey market will develop for the drug. That is the doctor might say she or he can't absolutely guarantee the privacy of the records to hackers but, there is a person I know who will give you the drug, no questions asked.
My late father was a big fan of RU-486, since he firmly believed that abortion was NOBODY's business. Consequently, if you could go to your doctor for help, the nuts who picket clinics wouldn't know....
The anti-choice idiots really made him crazy. It was their invasion of PRIVACY, of sticking their noses in other people's business, that just horrified him. For him, abortion wasn't a feminist issue (and he'd was not even close on that point), but a privacy issue.
He would have LOVED this data.
There actually is a black market in RU-486 here in Canada, and also in Mexico, China, and other countries where it hasn't yet been approved. (This is one of the things Canadians typically come south across the border for.)
CK: Nice strategic analysis. I think violence against homes is plausible because they've already shown a willingness to bring it into doctors' homes: everything I suggested is already being done to harass docs, and Dr. Bernard Slepian was in fact assassinated by a sniper while sitting at his dinner table.
This is what they're willing to do to people they see as the responsible agent. If/when that list expands to include women themselves -- and especially if they get lists of women who've aborted, and a campaign of harassment is allowed to flourish -- it could easily escalate to where they'd direct these same old tactics against women as well.
I agree that drug factories and the offices of drug makers and reps would also make likely targets. They'd almost certainly go after the drug companies legally and financially, too.
Thanks for the numbers.
Very eye opening.
Mrs. R:
Killing a doctor who does clinical abortions stops him from aborting many more in the future.
Killing a woman who has had a plan-b or used RU-486 does not stop another woman from doing the same and being more circumspect about it. Retail murder is also a tougher sell religiously.
Wholesale murder is just helping Caesar.
I despise the HIPAA laws. Another orwellian misnaming for a privacy compromising set of intrusions.
With the drug, you go to your own doctor for a single visit, bring home some pills, and take them at your own convenience -- say, over the weekend. A couple weeks later, you go back for a follow-up. They're not cheap, but nothing like surgery. It's just a whole different thing.
Good point and great post.
However, my friend who is a provider is concerned about another issue that is down the road from the increasing use of RU-486 for early termination: She learned how to do a D&C from a master, this old doc who had done thousands of them in CA in the 60s and 70s. Her worries are twofold: As fewer women get that early D&C, which is the easiest one to learn on, fewer doctors will have a shot at 'live fire exercise'. So, should the abortion pill become hard to get in the future, there will be dozens not hundreds of surgically-experienced providers around.
Also, some % of medical abortions require surgical followup in the form of a D&C. We will always need trained surgeons if we intend to give every woman a choice.
My friend uses all the anti-stalking techniques permitted by her home state plus a couple of others we don't talk about (shh!) and won't allow her name or face to be used by the media, but her family have accepted that one of these days the car following her through the backwoods of Appalachia to her twice-a-month 'clinic day' is going to do more than run her off the road.
They'd almost certainly go after the drug companies legally and financially, too.
Oh, man. Going after the drug companies? Sorry, you just lost half the Republican Party (and eighty percent of the Republican piggy bank) there.
In the future, that same logic may lead them to bring the gasoline and bombs to the new "abortion chambers" -- that is, our own private homes --and direct their rage at the new "murderers," now recognized as women themselves.
I wish they would try that shit in Florida. Wacko anti-abortionist, meet Castle Doctrine...
Trey, you beat me to it.
Yayyy for Castle Doctrine! Let's see how many of these fascists are willing to become martyrs for their "holy" cause.
My guess is, very damn few. 
What others have said RE Castle Doctrine.
FWIW, NY and NYC are both "no duty to warn" states. Meaning that if you are in YOUR home and under circumstances where you wouldn't expect another person to be in your home, and you hear them, you are permitted to shoot them in the back without any warning.
I betcha that if the Fetus Fethishists tried this in my 'hood, they would find themselves getting capped by more than one off-duty Roman Catholic cop.
Jen-
I know you're a lawyer, but can you confirm for me the "No Duty to Warn" business wrt NYS? --I looked for NY on the Castle Doctrine list on (IIRC) Wikipedia, but found no mention of it at all.
Just would like to make sure, if/when the revolution comes...
Seitan,
I am 99% sure that's the local law in NYC. IIRC from my bar exam days--however it's not called "castle doctrine" in NYC. I forgot what legalese it is; let me see if I can dig anything up under "duty to warn."
I remember that specifically though was one of the questions on the bar that I last took...
WereBear said: "I suppose this is why they are anti-science."
Yes, indeedy. These are the same folks whose disapproval of Gardasil (the anti-HPV vaccine) has nothing to do with its possible risks or side effects (which concern me, too), and everything to do with the fear that girls would think it was okay to have sex if they didn't have to worry about catching HPV.
Oh, and I forgot to say--Mrs. Robinson, this post, and so many others by you and your colleagues here at the GNB, is sooo impressive. I am a writer myself, and I teach writing, so I can claim some small level of expertise in the subject.
Here is my expert opinion: I love you guys!
FWIW, NY and NYC are both "no duty to warn" states. Meaning that if you are in YOUR home and under circumstances where you wouldn't expect another person to be in your home, and you hear them, you are permitted to shoot them in the back without any warning. - Jen
NYC is a separate state from NY? You from upstate?
Seriously, though -- and pardon me for sounding like a Rabbi from the Talmud, if you are allowed to use deadly force against another person whom you wouldn't expect to be in your home, are you not that much more so allowed to use, without warning, deadly force against a non-person (a fetus) who is inside your very body and certainly stealing from you (nutrients from your blood itself) un-expectedly?
In my experience the overlap between the "my home is my castle" crowd and the "oh noes, we must prevent the murder of feti" crowd is non-neglegible. I wonder how they survive the cognitive dissonance?
I thought HIPA tore away at privacy rights, but I may not fully understand it. I think that these anti-abortion fanatics will lose in the end. Because people in general, particularly those with diabilities and diseases that want to stop discrimination by employers and insurance companies, are going to fight for privacy rights.
In my experience the overlap between the "my home is my castle" crowd and the "oh noes, we must prevent the murder of feti" crowd is non-neglegible. I wonder how they survive the cognitive dissonance?
Probably because they don't use quite the same quote you do... I think the one they prefer is "A man's home is his castle", and how many men do you know of who may find themselves unexpectedly pregnant and therefore forced to examine their cognative dissonance?
Thanks, Jen!
Actually you can add another fire to that total.
Back in the late 1990s, my dad's medical building suddenly burst into flames on Christmas Eve. It was right after the Planned Parenthood in Independence, Mo had been vandalized. I made the connection right away, though it made so sense on one level. I mean, my Dad's office didn't even have a ob/gyn on staff at that time. Turns out that the arsonists were teenager boys who had apparently meant to torch the ob/gyn's office across the street. Who as a matter of fact, didn't do abortions either, but why let the facts stand in the way of a good fire? I hear the kids were never connected to any organization. They just "did it on their own." Which of course is BS. What teenage boys care about burning down ob/gyn offices when they could be playing football, looking for girls, looking for a few beers?
Trey, back in the '80s (long before a doctor's office could have had a wireless network, or networked computers at all) I spent several years as an office machine tech, working in other peoples' offices, most of which were doctors and lawyers offices.
What I observed back then was that the average American office worker had nothing that bore even a vague family resemblance to a first-order approximation of an estimate of a clue about securing confidential data.
I couldn't count the number of times that I had to ask some secretary to remove the open patient/client files from her desk just so that I could have a level surface on which to fix her transcribing machine.
I was exposed to a lot of stuff that absolutely should not have been accessible to anyone outside that professional practice.
Unless the Great American Office Dweeb has gotten a whole lot more serious and knowledgable about confidential data security since then, what you point out could be a real problem.
And that doesn't even consider the possibility that one of the office staff at your doctor's office might be a fundie fanatic...
Your Islamic analogy is misguided. I think it would be more appropriate to say that people would be horrified if Christians strapped bombs to themselves and blew up abortion clinics, or took a plane and flew it into an abortion clinic, killing 3,000 people.
Also, your hysteria about this issue parallels Christian hysteria about abortion.
I've been waiting a while to say this: Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson!
Seriously, good post.
It's rare to see people who are so unapologetically pro-choice, especially in this day and age.
Golly, you pro-choicers are such victims. Last time I saw pro-lifers at a clinic, there were about 15 Catholic teenagers praying the rosary, "faced off" against about six "escorts." The pro-lifers were cheerful and bright; the "escorts" had a heavy, self-righteous spirit about them.
There really is no intellectually sustainable argument in favor of abortion -- from any perspective. The pro-choicers lost the argument, so they're left now with denial, power games, and appeals to emotional victimhood.
But I guess there are a few dead-enders left.
Ktesibios,
HIPAA has changed a lot of this. Trust me. Leaving anything visible with a patient's name or identifying information in public or while away from your desk can be a firing offense at my place of business.
well, IB Bill, maybe if you're so against abortion, perhaps you shouldn't one.
that's a slogan, not an argument. but i'm not here for an argument, just to remind you that not everyone agrees with your genocidal sentiments.
and not everyone agrees that abortion=genocide
There actually is a black market in RU-486 here in Canada, and also in Mexico, China, and other countries where it hasn't yet been approved. (This is one of the things Canadians typically come south across the border for.)
It is true that RU-486 is not yet approved for use in Canada, but the combination of methotrexate and misoprostal is used for medical abortions. However, not all provinces cover medical abortion under provincial health plans. Uneven access to abortion services and variations in coverage are an issue here.
See http://www.prochoice.org/canada/...a/
regional.html
I had a colleague a long, long time ago who belonged to a certain ethnic group. We got on the subject of having children and somehow that got to birth control and abortions. She had already had two abortions, one very recent, and showed me what the doctor had written on her bill for for the second--she still had it in her purse. He had written "D & C, Endomitriosis". He belonged to her ethnicity and her neighborhood. I suspect this was a service he provided very discreetly in order to keep the neighborhood peace, both for himself and for the women whose pregnancies would have put them in danger from fathers, husbands, boyfriends.
I suspect that a good number of abortions have always been performed this way, and that the statistics nationwide are lower than they actually should be.
RU-486 puts discretion and hypocrisy right back on the side of women, and the fundies will not be able to stand it.
Oh drat, that was me at Anon 11:22 am, and I forgot the second half of my point. Doctors would be able to prescribe RU-486 for off-label uses, leaving the word "abortion" off the billing just as my colleague's doctor had done. I don't think the fundies are sophisticated enough to follow up on that kind of thing.
Interesting post... my major concern, besides the crazies, from someone who had two abortions in the 70's, neither was a fun experience and also worked for a brief time at an abortion clinic, is what these drugs, RU486 and Plan B (is that a drug?) does to women??? not a big fan of pharma solutions to ANY problem... perhaps there are safer, natural alternatives, that women can get from nutritionists, health food stores, herbalists as well as naturopathic, integrative and complementary doctors???
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