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March 16, 2006

How to do abortion at home! Fun! Profit! Entertainment! All yours in ten easy lessons from a feminist!

Not for the squeamish, or anyone that takes the whole issue of sexual responsibility seriously, here's little Molly fancying herself the Harriet Tubman of Oppressed by the Patriarchy.

For under $2000, any person with the inclination to learn could create a fully functioning abortion setup allowing for both vacuum aspiration and dilation/curettage abortions. If you are careful and diligent, and have a good grasp of a woman's anatomy you will not put anyone's health or life in danger [ahem..anyone?...ed.], even if you have not seen one of these procedures performed.
Miz Molly By Golly gives a list of equipment, how to prepare the "patient" then gets right down to the nitty-gritty
The first step is to break the membrane holding the fetus inside. You can feel around with the forceps for it. To get an idea of what each part looks like -- and to see the texture so that you understand better how it will feel -- I recommend looking at books with photographs of first trimester fetuses (personal recommendation for its astonishing photographs: A Child is Born), The membrane should be easily broken with the forceps. Depending on how far along the pregnancy is, varying quantities of clear or pinkish fluid may come from the vagina. As you grasp the sac with your forceps, twist it away so that it detaches. You will now need to remove small pieces of fetal material and membrane from the uterus with the forceps. Some of these pieces will be distinctly identifiable as fetal material. Save the material until the end of the procedure on a piece of plastic, so that you can be sure the entire fetus has been removed. If doing this sounds too ethically challenging, remember that fetuses do not have the capacity to feel actual pain until the third trimester. You are not "hurting" it, and it has no awareness, nor the capacity for awareness, that you are extracting it.
Note Miz Molly is no doctor or scientist but she is fully confident in proclaiming that a fetus "feels no pain" until after 24 weeks gestation.

Of course, the fun begins in Miz Molly's comment section. And the general attitude of the gung-ho let's get those gals up in the stirrups with shaved pubes and scrape away crowd is summed up by Everybody's Easy Lay Megan (at 3:24)

To my main point- Sex feels good. I'm going to have sex whenever and wherever I want. Human beings have evolved to this luxury, and I'm going to take advantage of it. I do everything I can to make sure I don't get pregnant, but if I do, you can bet your Bibles that I would get an abortion. And don't you dare tell me that if I got pregnant it was my own fault.
Here I spend the last week or so arguing for males and females to grow up and exercise both sexual responsibility and a little wisdom where it concerns children (aka as "fetal material") and Miz Molly proves me engaged in a Sisyphean debate.

Stick with the phone sex, Golly Molly. Faking reality seems to be your forte.

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Posted by Darleen at March 16, 2006 09:57 PM

Comments

Thats really really sick.

Posted by: Jane at March 17, 2006 04:20 AM

Oh.My.God.

I'm almost speechless.

That's horrid.

Posted by: Beth Donovan at March 17, 2006 06:33 AM

I thought they were afraid of "back alley abortions?" Sounds like they're encouraging them now.

Posted by: annika at March 17, 2006 07:07 AM

Her cavalier attitude towards safety is shocking.

Posted by: Mieke at March 17, 2006 09:05 AM

You know, I'd really like to say that I'm shocked, shocked and appalled, but I can't really muster up much indignation. Just a deep sadness.

Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at March 17, 2006 09:53 AM

I smell a ruse.

Posted by: Xrlq at March 17, 2006 11:50 AM

The point was that women in South Dakota who don't have enough money to travel elsewhere for abortions might want to do it at home. If they're going to, they might as well have information about how to do it with minimal risk. I don't know how these kinds of procedures stack up against childbirth.

Molly's contention that a fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks is supported by recent work in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf at March 17, 2006 12:46 PM

That's funny...the message I get from that review is: There's no evidence, we don't know.

It's telling also that the last line is "Anesthetic techniques currently used during fetal surgery are not directly applicable to abortion procedures."

If the fetus doesn't feel pain, why is anesthesia with it's inheirent risks used at all? And why aren't they applicable to abortion which is a nothing but surgery involving the fetus.

Posted by: gahrie at March 17, 2006 12:56 PM

The point was that women in South Dakota who don't have enough money to travel elsewhere for abortions might want to do it at home.

But yet they can afford $2000 to do it themselves at home? I can't imagine an abortion in another state costing that much. And gas is expensive, but not that expensive. Her reasoning for doing this is completely flawed.

Posted by: ratan at March 18, 2006 10:09 AM

gahrie, the research suggests that a fetus after 7 months probably feels pain. So that's when anesthesia would be needed. Not before, though.

Ratan, I don't know where her $2000 figure comes from. I suppose it is under that number, but probably way under, if you look at the list of equipment required.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf at March 18, 2006 07:36 PM

Neil: According to your previous link, the best the AMA could say in Aug 2005, is the fetus probably feels no pain, and that the reacions that a fetus makes that appears to show pain can be explained explained in other ways. It comes nowhere near proving either point. Some of us feel that when dealing with possibilities of this type, you must err on the side of caution.

Posted by: gahrie at March 18, 2006 08:10 PM

Those modifiers apply at 29-30 weeks. So at 20 weeks, the case would be a lot stronger.

Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf at March 20, 2006 01:35 AM

Neil

I don't believe even the AMA journal is making any claim to fetal development with regard to consciousness.

Pain perception requires conscious recognition or awareness of a noxious stimulus. Neither withdrawal reflexes nor hormonal stress responses to invasive procedures prove the existence of fetal pain, because they can be elicited by nonpainful stimuli and occur without conscious cortical processing. Fetal awareness of noxious stimuli requires functional thalamocortical connections. Thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, while electroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in preterm neonates probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks.
Pain managment is very much more art than science at this point, even among us born beings. Pain managment in infants and children has always been controversial. Take circumcision -- non-religious cicumcision was regularly done without any sedative or anethesia because it was believed the infant couldn't "really" feel pain or would never remember it.

My daughter went into early labor with her twins... 31 weeks... she was in the hospital 3 weeks while they delayed the labor and the boys were born at 34 weeks. Nik was the smallest, at 2 lbs 14 oz and that tiny little being in the incubator knew after a very short time what was coming when the nurse pulled out his foot and swabbed his heal with alcohol (endless blood tests).

Abortion in this country is advertised in the Yellow pages up to 24 weeks, no questions asked, and after 24 weeks it can be had with little trouble.

Posted by: Darleen at March 20, 2006 06:32 AM

Nice site!

Posted by: Nick at April 7, 2006 05:20 AM

Often times I read a great post, but have nothing to add. Maybe we need to add a button for “I read your post”.

Posted by: Mike at April 7, 2006 10:29 AM