The absolutely vile replies...FFS

If she had chosen abortion like she was pressured to do many times by her drs, I bet the majority of the people telling Sarah "well yeah aren't you glad you had that ChOiCe 🥴" would be showing her compassion, sympathy, and empathy.
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https://twitter.com/She_Brings_Joy/status/1653635645997293569

Parents of dead children don't deserve respect and compassion *just* when they make a decision you agree with or you think is morally or legally superior.

Additionally, for those who truly care about choice and aren't just trying to score points on Sarah:

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In a convo on abortion, Mary brought up a paper that stated after some states enacted strict abortion laws, 60% of women with dangerous pregnancies got delayed treatment and severe complications.
ajog.org/article/S0002-…

Let's break this down, because this is a bold claim
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https://twitter.com/MaryLouGrier1/status/1598759809225981960

The paper Mary also draws from this paper to compare women who had severe complications w/ expectant management (EM) vs induce abortion/labor induction (IA/LI) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34736914/

So for the OG paper, the inclusion criteria weren't bad:
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So interesting.
I hear all the time places providing abortions *do other things, too.* When PL ppl counter with, abortions are most of their services or are the money-makers, we get scoffed at.

This WP article confirms everything we've been saying about abortion clinics.
1/

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1533118328239161344

A "women's clinic" that provided other services + abortion *before* the TX law went into place went into overdrive, it seems, providing almost exclusively abortion services when the TX law passed:

"Before Texas enacted its abortion law, Trust Women offered other...
2/

So this man tells me this long convoluted story with a bunch of details. About 2 sentences in, I know what his dilemma is: his girl is pregnant, and he doesn't want to be the dad. He's seeking someone to tell him, "Nope, you're not it! Must be some other dude's kid."

2/ Now, this may seem uncharitable. But you talk to enough people, and you get a feel for the flow of a lot of conversations. You can begin to very accurately guess the ultimate question the person doesn't want to just come right out and ask. I've been wrong. I have even noted...
3/

#pregnancyhelpline
"Can I just trauma dump?" a sobbing girl asks me.
You know, I am actually really, really not good with feelings. I don't like to see others' pain. I am uncomfortable sitting with people in it. Because I want to fix it. I want them to be happy.

1/ I want them to not hurt. And when I can't DO anything to help, I just feel like a useless lump of coal. So emotional calls make me uncomfortable. But I can't tell her no, either. Like, this is my job. I just feel so bad at it sometimes.

2/

#pregnancyhelpline
#pregnancyhelpline
This woman told me her man was trying to say he was not the baby's father. "He told me he is sure he pulls out every time, so he is trying to make it seem like he is not the factor here, but I know because he is the only man I see."

1/ Oooooh boy. These are always fun conversations. So we talk about pregnancy and sperm and the pullout/withdrawal method and she's like, "Yeah. Yeah, I know all this. I just needed to make sure, you know? Because he is saying all sorts of things right now, like how he has...

2/

#pregnancyhelpline
I talked to a young woman this week who thought she was maybe 5 mo. along. We chatted a bit, she asked what services the center she was wondering about offered. I let her know. She understood they did not do or refer for abortions, but she still wanted...

1/ ...to get an ultrasound done.

Then she asked, "What if I wanted...to, you know...terminate?" Very quiet voice. I don't know if she was scared or ashamed or both or neither or something else. We generally discussed state laws, exceptions and she seemed to be following along.

2/

I've been doing hotline work quite a bit the past few weeks. You ready for several #pregnancyhelpline stories? I don't care. You're getting them. I find this work gives me a glimpse of reality not seen on Twitter, the news, or any other public outlet. First story:

1/ The weeks since New Year's have been filled with women seeking abortion. I don't know if data backs up higher numbers of abortions done in January as opposed to December, but anecdotally, it seems that way.

2/

#Science time, nerds. 🤓👩‍🔬👨‍🔬

To understand if medical #abortion — aka chemical, at-home, self-managed abortions — are reversible, we need to know how they work; to know how medical abortion works, we need to understand a bit about how #pregnancy works.

1/

https://twitter.com/StupidRock/status/1338624147384131586

Citations at the end of the thread! All but 2 are free full access, all but 2 are journal articles (& 1 of those 2 is a textbook).

Progesterone (prog) is known as the “pregnancy hormone.” Until ~10 weeks post-fertilization, prog is produced by the woman’s corpus luteum...

2/

1. Abortion kills a human. It is not safe for those humans. Abortion can harm or kill women, and on consent forms for abortion, it states after 18 weeks, abortion becomes riskier than carrying to term.
In actual fact, that 14x stat is actual trash.
(sources below)

https://twitter.com/RHAVote/status/1308776434052280321

2. You're going to be disingenuous and pretend you haven't heard of c-sections? Ok. That will make me take you seriously.
Yet you don't deny later abortion DO take >24 hours. Interesting. 🧐
3. Save you from what? Killing a viable baby....?

I finally listened to the whole of this debate between 2 libertarians on the issue of abortion, specifically on the view of evictionism. It's long, but worth the listen, even if just to add to your own understanding of how/what people think. My thoughts:
1. I think there's one aspect of the pro-life viewpoint they don't accurately portray, which is that we require women to carry to term. However, they clarify at different points this is the "traditional/conservative" pro-life viewpoint. So maybe I'm just not that pro-lifer. 😅

Defining words used in a discussion is not pedantic when it is known people use the same word differently.

This is a great podcast episode on what people could mean when they use the word "#abortion":
equippedforlife.libsyn.com/49-defining-th…

@EqualRightsInst @DankProLifeMeme Pro-lifers often say something like, "It is never medically necessary to do an abortion to save a woman's life."

Pro-choicers often say something like, "Sometimes abortions are medically necessary to save a woman's life."

Who is right?
Well, how are you defining "abortion"?

#pregnancyhelpline
When a woman has an abortion then has unprotected PIV sex 2 days later & wants to know if it's possible she could get pregnant, that indicates parents and society are doing their children a great disservice by not educating them about fertility & pregnancy.
1/4 Unfortunately, working at a pregnancy helpline means I see the worst sides of issues at hand, like pregnancy, abortion, BC, EC, STIs, etc.
I can tell you abortion is done as birth control sometimes. I can tell you not every women gave informed consent for her abortion.
2/4

This is a book review and another look at what the term "pro-life" means, particularly in relation to the ideas of whole-life, pro-abundant life, consistent life ethic, etc.
Does the term pro-life *need* to be expanded to include other issues besides abortion?

https://twitter.com/HumanDefenseINI/status/1284179650500071424

IMO (I am not the author of the article), the term "pro-life" doesn't need to be expanded, but there IS room for discussion on why certain terms are used to denote certain ideas and movements and beliefs, and what their relationship is to each other, instead of arguing about

Had a lady call me the other day who did see a doctor, and was STILL given the meds when she was past 10 weeks (70 days) since LMP.
She wanted to try the reversal bc she didn't take the 2nd set of meds & the next day, she got an u/s done and the baby's heart was still beating.

https://twitter.com/aaplog/status/1282820012382793732

After about week 8, it starts getting iffy that the mifeprex/mifepristone/RU-486 will effectively block progesterone enough to kill the baby, bc the placenta is starting to take over producing the progesterone needed to sustain pregnancy by then.
REMS are important.

#pregnancyhelpline longer story, but worth reading every part! A positive outcome we don't normally get to see at the helpline bc we just don't normally get this kind of follow-up.

A young woman called last Thursday. She had started a surgical abortion procedure.
1/ She is only 17, about 5-5.5 months along, and her bf who threatened to leave her if she did not get an abortion had actually already left her, even though she agreed to finally get the abortion. But she wanted to to reverse it (she never wanted it to begin with).
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"It’s ok if these human beings are experimented on without their consent, given away like property, and killed and discarded like any other biological lab waste.”

https://twitter.com/HumanDefenseINI/status/1275104871071584259

"Would we dare say we would be content to live in a society where parents could sign over their 4 year old child to a research lab as long as they gave informed consent, for that child to be genetically modified, and then for that child to be killed and placed in a biohazard...

Here’s another little thread on misconceptions pro-choice people seem to have about pro-life arguments.

Pro-life person: consent does not apply to pregnancy for x, y, z reasons. For this reason, abortion cannot be argued for on the basis of revocation of consent.
1/ Pro-choice person’s response may include: calling you a literal rape apologist, asserting #Consentalwaysapplies, and showing of outrage and anger for the idea of consent not applying to a situation it logically cannot apply to.
2/

I have come across a very common type of conversation between pro-life and pro-choice people, and I think it is worth addressing to clear up some misconceptions.
#prolife #prochoice
1/ The conversation usually goes like:
> Pro-choice person calls pro-life person a forced-birther, or states they're forcing women to remain pregnant if abortion becomes illegal.
> Pro-life person responds by saying pregnancy, as a natural biological process, logically cannot
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#pregnancyhelpline
So many pregnant women simply need someone to listen to their story and to remind them they are capable, they are strong, and there is support for them.

A teen mama called, already had a 4 month old and is pregnant again. I don't think she was actually
1/ seriously considering abortion, but she was freaking out and thinking about how bad her last pregnancy was.
Birth (natural) was very painful. Baby daddy had left her when she was 7 months along. Mom had to scrape together what she could to help her get ready for the baby.
2/

#pregnancyhelpline post abortion regret
These calls are more common in the late night and early morning hours.
A young woman near my age called, sobbing. Her abortion was a trauma no one understands or is willing to listen to her about.
She had an abortion a year ago.
1/ She had been with the father for 5 years at that point. She said he thought he was supporting her but all actually offered to do was to call the abortion clinic for her. 🙄

He wanted kids. She still wants kids. He left her 1 month after she got the abortion.
2/