Dear Planned Parenthood: I should have thanked you long ago for all you have given me. When I saw you in the news taking such a beating, I knew I had to write. While politicians slur you, spread false information about your services and funding, and try to take away women's access to you, I offer you my testimony with gratitude for the good life you have enabled me and countless other women.
Thank you for the birth control pills you gave me when I was 17. I didn't get much information at my Catholic school, but you explained everything I needed to know to avoid getting pregnant or diseased. I loved my high school boyfriend, and continued to date him through most of college, but he was not "the one." I thank you for keeping me from being a teen mother, for the fact that my first boyfriend is not the father of my children, and for allowing me to focus on my studies, run cross country for my university, and graduate with a double major.
Thank you for the birth control pills you gave me through my years in law school. I still remember your welcoming office in an old house near the campus. I met the love of my life in October of my first year, and I was glad to be protected from getting pregnant. My sweetheart and I graduated cum laude together -- just the two of us, no babies yet. We married four years later. I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to be new parents during law school. I might not have made it through. I am so grateful for my education, and for the fact that my relationship with my husband had time to grow and mature before we had children. I am thankful that we both had good jobs and a house before we welcomed the first of two children who were very much planned and wanted. I am grateful that our education allowed for salaries that have kept our children well fed, clothed and educated. They are now amazing teenagers, soon to embark on their own lives of love and career.
But I also want to thank you for something that social conservatives have been trying to make illegal because they can't separate church from state, not even for the health, welfare and future of women like me.
Thank you for legal abortion. When I was 42, I desperately wanted to have one more child to add to our family of 4. I got pregnant immediately, and soon discovered that I had two heartbeats in my belly, not just one. I was overwhelmed and scared, but thrilled. Unfortunately, in my third month, one heartbeat stopped. Then the other one stopped. I was devastated. I did not have a miscarriage, so I was scheduled for a D&C, which is known as an abortion when it terminates a pregnancy. Literally, it was the most painful thing I have experienced. For me, it was worse than childbirth. When people suggest that women use abortions as birth control, I know that nobody would choose this procedure routinely. The doctor sent some of the fetal tissue in to a lab to determine the cause of the failed pregnancy. I was shocked to learn that I had been carrying fetuses with severe genetic impairments that would have prevented them from living long or well outside the womb. Nature had done its job in stopping their tiny hearts. But what if their hearts kept beating into my second trimester? What if I had made it to the amniocentesis appointment that was scheduled for the next week? I would have chosen to terminate that pregnancy for the good of everyone concerned. Therefore, I am thankful to you, Planned Parenthood, for fighting all these years to maintain the right to safe, legal abortion.
Truly, words are not enough to express my gratitude. I joined other thankful Americans in the March for Women's Lives in our nation's capitol to express my support for you. I send you checks. I am sending you another contribution now. But I'll say it once more: Thank you, Planned Parenthood: for my health and happiness, my planned family, and for giving me access to a career so I can help others.
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Sadly, I have also seen some abortion clinics that encourage their use for flippant, convenient birth control, and late into pregnancy (16, 20 weeks and beyond). Please note that they are NOT associated with Planned Parenthood. I so, so wish that this were not the case. We need to keep abortion legal, yes, but I wonder sometimes if these late procedures belong not in a clinic but in a hospital with real professionals. But, money talks, and when a provider can collect $1000+ for a later term abortion, apparently sometimes the ethics of humane treatment of a mother and baby become negligible factors.
Someday I hope all of this becomes less and less common... we need access to birth control even more readily, and women need the option to terminate EARLY and easily so that as few mothers as possible have to terminate so late (when their decision to terminate is based upon lack of convenience, not a medical necessity as yours was). It seems so simple... if we all truly want fewer and less gruesome abortions, why wouldn't we all want increased access to birth control?
I'm happy for you too. I'm so glad that you got to have sex with anyone you wanted, anywhere you wanted. It's just not right that women should be denied to right to screw anyone and be 'punished' as our wonderful president has said, with a child. Sorry, I mean embryo. No, no, wait a minute, zygote? Oh well, whatever you want to call that blob of cells is cool. Anyway, here's to you and the fight to enable all women to has sex anytime, anywhere, with anyone. Congrats.
Should any man present this notion to a woman he wants to "screw" I hope she would tell him to go "screw" himself.
And for the record, the right to birth control and family planning does not make women into sex-crazed monsters, if that is what you are suggesting. Just like men, we have a lot of other things on our minds, like our educations, our jobs, and our families. Here's to equality, health and yes, even happiness for all.
"I didn't get much information at my Catholic school"
I'm sorry did you think you would have received MORE info at a public school????
Since I attended both I can assure you you wouldn't have and besides wasn't that something you should have gotten from an adult/parent/caregiver in YOUR family. While my mom couldn't talk to me she did give me several books.One was the book the Church gave her in the 50's while she and my father were going through their pre nuptual classes. Not saying they were great BUT I defiantly knew how NOT to get pregnant and frankly that's ALL that mattered back then.
It just seems like a back handed insult.
In 1968 I was entering 8th grade in a Catholic grade school in the South. The nuns wanted to bring in an MD to teach a two week sex ed class, the parish priests said it was up to the parents. They sent out letters to every parent and the general consensus was thanks but no thanks I'll teach my kids what I want them to know and that was that. My mother was one of the few who checked the YES box. So it's not always the schools fault.
I encourage you to read my post again and address the issue I had with your article. My disagreement was with your touting Planned Parenthood as a solution to all of your personal problems, and ignoring the importance of strong families. I encourage you to do everything you can to promote the importance of personal responsibility. I encourage you to use your bully pulpit to address young women about their personal value as individuals who have much more to offer than just a body. I encourage you to take a stab at getting to the root of the problem and help eliminate the dead end street so many women find themselves on. As I said, you have no idea who I am or what I do, but if you feel “entitled” to judge me and my life, go for it. You have an exceptional opportunity. I hope in future articles you'll suggest some ways to promote strong families and self worth. Planned Parenthood isn't the solution for changing the baseline.
We who use family planning to time pregnancy for the most auspicious moment are the ones being responsible. You who act like Love can be demanded, forced, or dictated is the one being irresponsible.
You can't be responsible ( personally or otherwise ) if you make your choices based on wishful thinking and fantasy. You have to deal with the world as it is and human nature as it is.
You are, frankly, acting like a communist. They too had an awesome idea of how things should be that would work really really will IF ONLY everyone would feel and act a certain way. And indeed you can build communist groups that are very successful (like churches) so long as you limit membership to people who will work hard for the good of the group without expectation of riches in return.
But you can't apply these simpleminded models to a country because membership to a country comes with birth, not meeting a personality profile, so a country has to be governed in a manner that handles EVERYONE.
Now almost every woman will eventually choose to have children if she isn't forced to bear before her time (which can damage her forever like my mother). So if you just dig up a little humility and patience and WAIT till shes ready to embark on that journey with enthusiasm and passion you set the stage for healthy families.
I, meanwhile, like most people have a rubric for Choice. And if you come to me for advice I will look at what I would do in your situation and advocate for that. I have an opinion and I will share it. Advocating one way or the other.
I Judge. You Judge. BRut Judges.
But Planned Parenthood doesn't judge.
They just help.
Taking advice or a bit of assistance from PP or anyone else WHOSE JOB IT IS TO HELP YOUNG PEOPLE is not giving up personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is not about going it all on your own. It includes taking the steps to get the education, advice and encouragement that one needs to succeed.
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What mother wouldn't - give her loving support, regardless?
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Mine wouldn't. My mother was abusive and hateful. I eventually found out that she had cause to be.
I am an abortion survivor.
I don't really have a mother. I have an unwilling gestational carrier. I was conceived in the marriage bed as the result of a sabotaged condom. You see, she'd devoted her entire life to becoming one of the first wave of female lawyers and a woman could get fired for becoming pregnant back then.
Dad suddenly wanted a child because he knew that next year an executive at his company was retiring and he had a shot at the job. But the CEO had taken him golfing to let him know that only "stable family men" would be considered for the spot. So his path to advancement was being thwarted by her dreams.
She foolishly told him her plans to abort and he drained their joint account (theft of her money) so she couldn't pay then let her know that if she didn't keep me he'd divorce her ... and tell EVERYONE. Which would also get her fired from the scandal and make her a penniless, homeless, pariah.
His betrayal destroyed her mind. She'd loved and trusted him.
Every time people like you declare that a Mother's Love is an entitlement you just make my lack of it hurt more. And it angers me that you take yours so much for granted.
I can't even think of something comforting to say. If I could, I'd offer a hug, at least.
I knew I'd be OK when I found out the truth of my conception.
Much of my pain came from the simple knowledge that my Mother didn't like me. Child-me was surrounded by a culture that insisted a mother's love is guaranteed no matter what.
But mine doesn't even like me.
How horrible must I be that My Own Mother doesn't like me? What did I do? How can I fix it? TELL ME!!
Then I grew older and became aware of gender roles and how I didn't fit them. Did she hate me for being a tom boy? She was a girly girl. All into clothes and hair and socializing.
HOW DARE SHE!!! SHE'S SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME FOR WHO I AM!!!
But even as rage sustained me I still yearned for that love, imagined it was possible if one of us changed.
When I discovered the horrible truth of my conception I realized
1) She would never love me.
2) It wasn't either of our faults.
My creation had been profaned by force making me a weapon first and a child second.
It would take a saint to look past that.
Nothing *I* had done caused her dislike and nothing I could do could repair it.
So I was free. Like Buddha says, suffering comes from wanting that which we can't have. I needed to accept that I couldn't have maternal love and stop wanting it.
Took about a decade.
Thank you Planned Parenthood for the happiness and health of the mothers of my god-daughter and nephew. They are triply blessed in finding love, learning a craft they take pride in, and having happy/healthy children for whom they can provide a secure future.
I know there are people who would destroy those children. People who draw arbitrary religious lines in the sand to choose between potential children. These people arrogantly demand the right to choose which potential children are quickened.
Now I too have a criteria for choosing between potentials. One that says it is proper and right to abort when you are not emotionally or financially ready for the trials and costs of gestation (never-mind parenthood).
But at the end of the day it is wrong for us to fight over those women's wombs like feral dogs snarling over a contested bone because neither one of us is giving so much as a drop of our blood to quicken either child.
New life is payed for in blood, pain, and the risk of your own death. Those who pay have the right to choose when, where, and how. Right or wrong, wisely or foolishly.
First of all, Hospitals in the US are not required to report maternal mortality by the federal government at all and state mandates vary. And its not always obvious that the death is pregnancy related. So we aren't getting the full count.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2409165/
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A recent article in a major obstetrical journal revealed a 93% underreporting rate of maternal death in Massachusetts
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we literally have no idea how many U.S. women die from pregnancy- or birth-related causes every year. The CDC's most recent guess is that they could be missing as much as 2/3 of the maternal deaths.
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When a woman is discharged from a hospital after giving birth and later dies from causes directly related to her birth or the care she got, she may die in a different hospital.
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Secondly, If you focus on specific minority groups its much much worse. For example, black women in New York:
http://www.lifeformothers.org/topics-in-focus/16/topic/new-york-city-s-rising-black-maternal-mortality-unexplained
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In 2008, black women in New York City experienced 79 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
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That is a worse mortality rate than soldiers fighting in Iraq/Afghanistan. A lot worse.
And that is just the ones we know about.
Its a national disgrace.