Why isn't Planned Parenthood funding the travel and procedure expenses for the women who would otherwise be using their clinics. If they can't open clinics use the money to help get them to facilities out of their states.
Sorry about that 🤣😂 for some reason I thought you said you were a man. I prefer the old message of people on the left which was that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. Todays message is whenever a woman wants to for whatever reason.. it is a very extreme message.I have 4 children and no one can tell me they were without humanity before birth. At some point, the fetuses interests should matter. We care if a mom drinks or does drugs which seems inconsistent with my body my choice. Even if a woman does not know she is pregnant at 6 weeks, she knows she had unprotected sex. This is not morality police, it is respecting different choices that other Americans make. In all the States that will limit Abortion, women have the vote.
It is understandable that the author sympathizes with the other 27 year olds circumstances but, these pregnancies did not just happen. Adults need to own the choices they make and the consequences of those choices. Her children had no choice. Kaitlin made choices and now her life is not her own anymore it is about her children. They have no voice and they have no choice.
Haha, that's your problem: the New York Times. I don't think they've ever been a reliable source for news. The fact that this newsletter exists is proof of that.
Something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand.... I’m in my 27th year as an L&D nurse on a high risk OB unit in a large city. As far as I can tell, 99 percent of my coworkers are enraged by the overturning of R v W. They talk about it constantly and absolutely assume that everyone around them feels the same way. Prior to the announcement of the ruling many of the physicians I work with have been traveling to cities in red states to perform abortion procedures on babies up to 24 weeks. I think they view this as community service. Local newspapers wrote stories on these local “heroes “. They fly back home, come to work, and talk about the “community service” they performed. Then they deliver another woman’s 24 week baby born very early due, usually, to preterm labor that can’t be stopped. The NICU team pulls out all the stops to resuscitate and care for this baby. They are referred to as the “million dollar babies”. Very often the baby survives and goes home to their family. Usually the only difference is that one of the babies was wanted and the other wasn’t. Why does a baby have to be wanted to be able to be allowed to live? How do those doctors do both of those things? So far I have found no way to understand. Very privately, when the Supreme Court decision was announced when I was circulating in the operating room and heard yet again the cry of a newborn, relief washed over me.
Interesting article. I see Suzi working hard to try to draw parallels between she and Kaitlyn, but there really aren’t many. As a result, her conclusion is unconvincing and the article falls flat for me. I take serious issue with this line, in particular:
“Because this woman who could be me lacks the few hundred dollars for transport, childcare, and the abortion itself, she may end up having a child she doesn’t want and doesn’t feel she can care for.”
Wrong. Because this woman didn’t have the opportunity to learn (perhaps she was never taught, or she chose to reject any wisdom given to her by friends or elders), she continued to have unprotected sex and repeat the same choices that led to her having her first child. Then second. Now possibly, third. These are living human beings she is now responsible for, and we’re supposed to believe that she’s in this predicament because of a low paying job, high gas prices, the town she lives in. While all of those factors expose the stark differences between Kaitlyn and Suzi — and with it, class differences — those are not the reasons this young woman is now pregnant again, unmarried to the father of the child, stuck, and overwhelmed. Regrettably, it’s more likely lack of self control, not much hope for a different future in the long term, lack of intelligence, an unwillingness to put personal or sexual desires on hold until she betters her life for herself and current children, etc.
Suzi shows compassion for Kaitlyn, and likely that makes her feel good. But she also shows what a bubble she lives in by not thinking too deeply about the real differences between herself and Kaitlyn.
I'm pro-choice but have zero sympathy for women who put themselves in these situations because they willingly refuse to use birth control while continuing to be sexually active. I'm sorry, Kaitlyn had not one, but TWO IUDs removed, then chose to have unprotected sex with some bro who lied about having a vasectomy?
When she got pregnant and decided to abort the pregnancy she essentially used abortion as a form of birth control. There's no other way to see it. She was not on birth control that "failed," she didn't need an abortion for medical reasons. She needed an abortion to get her out of the mess she made by not taking responsibility for her reproductive health. She even notes that she had postpartum depression as a justification for not wanting to endure another pregnancy/birth. I would think this, plus already having two kids she cannot afford to feed, would be motivation enough for an adult women to do everything within her power to avoid becoming pregnant. And yet, she wasn't even trying to use birth control. She just acted on faith that her casual sex partner was being forthcoming, which is not exercising autonomy over one's life.
50% of women who have an abortion aren't on any form on birth control (according to the Guttmacher institute) and 1/4 of women having abortions have previously had one. Most have already had a child, too, so they should have a basic understanding of the female reproductive system.
Women need to stop acting like victims who have no agency, stop "hooking up" unless you have an IUD, and take advantage of the limitless free and effective birth control options that are available through non-profits like Planned Parenthood. Abortion should be safe, legal, and RARE.
If you're looking to persuade the gettable, you probably missed both.
If you're looking for a piece that will be emotive, (not reasoned) for some, OK.
First, how persuaded would you be by a title "The babies who live and those who are killed" ? Probably not much, right? Yours is the mirror image of that.
Second, framing it as the pregnant woman being a victim of a male is pretty unoriginal. And not very representative. And gonna lose some people. But, I understand the framing works for some people. But, you're gonna lose a lot of us with that.
Third, my understanding is the vast majority of abortions are underclass women who either don't use BC or don't use it well. And use abortion as a backstop. Your story would be more accurate if the mother was one of these, but it would certainly lack it's emotive power, no? Facts tend to do that.
Your story is pretty typical of the rhetoric used to whip up young white women. Who generally use BC, and use it well. And if that's what you want to turn out, hey it's yours and Bari's substack. But, if you're trying to help persuade people or solve the problem, you'll have to accurately portray things. I get it that any criticism (or even advice) of underclass black women is fraught these days. But, if that's where the bulk of abortions are, then that's where the discussion needs to be too.
Then abortion will have to be an option but not more than twelve weeks, if the children were siblings not sure if they were twins but if siblings tell u the history of the mother there in lies the problem but Democrats don’t want this problem solved they want us to throw federal dollars at these clinics which we do instead of better prevention laws which probably won’t receive as much money why would the Democrats rock the boat who would want to stop the $$$ pouring in
Ok. Worried about sharing nude photos? She’s a single mother of 2 children. One with very special needs. What is she thinking? How about focusing on her children and putting her sexuality on hold for a while? I am not falling for her story of being a victim. If women want the right to be in charge of their bodies, then she is not their poster child.
After George Floyd's murder we had very much needed national conversation, even a convulsion, over police misconduct in this country. It didn't matter that the number of unarmed Black men killed by police that year was 18, every life is precious. A year earlier I watched an exchange between Pete Buttigieg and a pro-life Democrat primary voter in Iowa. She was pressing him on his position on third term abortions performed in this country without a medical necessity, i.e., for the social, family or emotional health of the mother. Buttigieg was very put off by this line of questioning, finally whining "well, it's only 6,000 abortions a year and you don't know what that woman is going through. Any one who has felt an infant give happy kicks when you hum to them through the mommy's tummy wall knows there is another person who's voice is not being heard in Buttigieg's moral universe.
I think what is going on for Kaitlyn is tragic, but not as tragic as the alternative for the thousands of seven or eighth month babies that will not be snuffed out because their mom broke up with her boyfriend or was a habitual procrastinator or wanted to run off to be a death row groupie.
Let me expand a little. I think access to health care, especially contraceptive care, should be fundamentally improved in this country. I think the amount of research done on finding a male contraceptive should be tripled at least. I do not support restrictions on abortion at seven weeks or eleven weeks. But women like Kaitlyn are the only "victims" the MSM, even this blog, will ever consider. If we were living in 1854 debating abolition on this forum the only victims would be the poor persecuted slave owners being treated as an oppressed minority - there would be another group of people who's voice would not be heard.
I get where you’re going, I think. On my part, there was nothing meant about sterilization, which is a completely personal decision. I simply made the point that such a personal decision should not have anything to do with whether the nation’s fertility rate is rising or falling. It is the individual’s decision, end of story. If we are a nation of free individuals (as conservatives so often remind us), that freedom is threatened by every law that tells us what we can and cannot do, whether those laws have to do with, for example, limiting the amount of carbon a corporation (given individual status by the court) allowed in the air or whether or not an individual may or may not obtain an abortion or contraceptives or how many and what types of guns we may possess. But our individual freedom is ultimately limited by the fact that we cannot do anything that infringes in someone else’s freedom. When it comes to abortion, the crux of the problem lies with one question: what constitutes a person, an individual? Until we can answer that question, we cannot resolve the great abortion debates.
I have never understood why abortion is such an uber-holy, sacrosanct, untouchable icon for the political Left. It's the hill they have chosen to die on. I would love to have a conversation with a confirmed abortion advocate about this, but it would have to be honest and rational, and I despair of that possibility. Their most public voices are universally dishonest and disingenuous.
The governor of Minnesota has declared that his state will always defend women's “reproductive rights”. What does that mean? Does overturning Roe prevent women from reproducing if they want to? Does it compel any woman to reproduce if she doesn't want to? Ridiculous notion, but it sounds righteous, and that's really the point, isn't it?
Some link abortion to “reproductive health”. If a woman is pregnant, her reproductive health is in good shape. How will having an abortion improve her “reproductive health”? Another ridiculous notion.
Then there are the signs that say “Abortion is Health Care”. What?! Is a pregnant woman ill, to be cured by having an abortion? All dishonest, all disingenuous, all lies.
They call themselves “pro-choice”, but the issue is not and never has been about choice. It is and always had been a matter of life and death. All human life begins in the womb. No one really disputes that. It's true. Abortion advocates simply believe that some lives ought to end in the womb, and they further believe that they are just the people who are best qualified to decide whose.
Abortion advocates hate it when pro-life folks say that abortion is murder, and who can blame them? No one wants to be associated with murder, especially murder of the defenseless and innocent. But the only way they can distance themselves from that connection is to define the precise moment at which life does begin. In the womb, remember?
But they can't do that. Yet, the burden of proof is still on them. Until they can, the only truth that remains is that abortion is murder.
That's the problem with so many people who support outlawing abortion; they're fine with it because they don't think they'll ever need it - hell, there's plenty of that sentiment right here in the comments. Thank you for sharing this story to give some people (at least, those with a shred of empathy) at least a sense of how trapped millions of women are feeling right now (and in a country they're told is "free").
Re: J6, when there is no cross examination, the key "witness" wasn't there and is reporting hearsay--not admissible in a court--and the entire story is refuted by several individuals that were actually there during the alleged encounter, it might be a nefarious narrative rather than a revelation. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/29/secret-service-agent-testify-trump-wheel-jan-6
Why isn't Planned Parenthood funding the travel and procedure expenses for the women who would otherwise be using their clinics. If they can't open clinics use the money to help get them to facilities out of their states.
Sorry about that 🤣😂 for some reason I thought you said you were a man. I prefer the old message of people on the left which was that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. Todays message is whenever a woman wants to for whatever reason.. it is a very extreme message.I have 4 children and no one can tell me they were without humanity before birth. At some point, the fetuses interests should matter. We care if a mom drinks or does drugs which seems inconsistent with my body my choice. Even if a woman does not know she is pregnant at 6 weeks, she knows she had unprotected sex. This is not morality police, it is respecting different choices that other Americans make. In all the States that will limit Abortion, women have the vote.
It is understandable that the author sympathizes with the other 27 year olds circumstances but, these pregnancies did not just happen. Adults need to own the choices they make and the consequences of those choices. Her children had no choice. Kaitlin made choices and now her life is not her own anymore it is about her children. They have no voice and they have no choice.
Haha, that's your problem: the New York Times. I don't think they've ever been a reliable source for news. The fact that this newsletter exists is proof of that.
Something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand.... I’m in my 27th year as an L&D nurse on a high risk OB unit in a large city. As far as I can tell, 99 percent of my coworkers are enraged by the overturning of R v W. They talk about it constantly and absolutely assume that everyone around them feels the same way. Prior to the announcement of the ruling many of the physicians I work with have been traveling to cities in red states to perform abortion procedures on babies up to 24 weeks. I think they view this as community service. Local newspapers wrote stories on these local “heroes “. They fly back home, come to work, and talk about the “community service” they performed. Then they deliver another woman’s 24 week baby born very early due, usually, to preterm labor that can’t be stopped. The NICU team pulls out all the stops to resuscitate and care for this baby. They are referred to as the “million dollar babies”. Very often the baby survives and goes home to their family. Usually the only difference is that one of the babies was wanted and the other wasn’t. Why does a baby have to be wanted to be able to be allowed to live? How do those doctors do both of those things? So far I have found no way to understand. Very privately, when the Supreme Court decision was announced when I was circulating in the operating room and heard yet again the cry of a newborn, relief washed over me.
Interesting article. I see Suzi working hard to try to draw parallels between she and Kaitlyn, but there really aren’t many. As a result, her conclusion is unconvincing and the article falls flat for me. I take serious issue with this line, in particular:
“Because this woman who could be me lacks the few hundred dollars for transport, childcare, and the abortion itself, she may end up having a child she doesn’t want and doesn’t feel she can care for.”
Wrong. Because this woman didn’t have the opportunity to learn (perhaps she was never taught, or she chose to reject any wisdom given to her by friends or elders), she continued to have unprotected sex and repeat the same choices that led to her having her first child. Then second. Now possibly, third. These are living human beings she is now responsible for, and we’re supposed to believe that she’s in this predicament because of a low paying job, high gas prices, the town she lives in. While all of those factors expose the stark differences between Kaitlyn and Suzi — and with it, class differences — those are not the reasons this young woman is now pregnant again, unmarried to the father of the child, stuck, and overwhelmed. Regrettably, it’s more likely lack of self control, not much hope for a different future in the long term, lack of intelligence, an unwillingness to put personal or sexual desires on hold until she betters her life for herself and current children, etc.
Suzi shows compassion for Kaitlyn, and likely that makes her feel good. But she also shows what a bubble she lives in by not thinking too deeply about the real differences between herself and Kaitlyn.
I'm pro-choice but have zero sympathy for women who put themselves in these situations because they willingly refuse to use birth control while continuing to be sexually active. I'm sorry, Kaitlyn had not one, but TWO IUDs removed, then chose to have unprotected sex with some bro who lied about having a vasectomy?
When she got pregnant and decided to abort the pregnancy she essentially used abortion as a form of birth control. There's no other way to see it. She was not on birth control that "failed," she didn't need an abortion for medical reasons. She needed an abortion to get her out of the mess she made by not taking responsibility for her reproductive health. She even notes that she had postpartum depression as a justification for not wanting to endure another pregnancy/birth. I would think this, plus already having two kids she cannot afford to feed, would be motivation enough for an adult women to do everything within her power to avoid becoming pregnant. And yet, she wasn't even trying to use birth control. She just acted on faith that her casual sex partner was being forthcoming, which is not exercising autonomy over one's life.
50% of women who have an abortion aren't on any form on birth control (according to the Guttmacher institute) and 1/4 of women having abortions have previously had one. Most have already had a child, too, so they should have a basic understanding of the female reproductive system.
Women need to stop acting like victims who have no agency, stop "hooking up" unless you have an IUD, and take advantage of the limitless free and effective birth control options that are available through non-profits like Planned Parenthood. Abortion should be safe, legal, and RARE.
Belated constructive criticism.
If you're looking to persuade the gettable, you probably missed both.
If you're looking for a piece that will be emotive, (not reasoned) for some, OK.
First, how persuaded would you be by a title "The babies who live and those who are killed" ? Probably not much, right? Yours is the mirror image of that.
Second, framing it as the pregnant woman being a victim of a male is pretty unoriginal. And not very representative. And gonna lose some people. But, I understand the framing works for some people. But, you're gonna lose a lot of us with that.
Third, my understanding is the vast majority of abortions are underclass women who either don't use BC or don't use it well. And use abortion as a backstop. Your story would be more accurate if the mother was one of these, but it would certainly lack it's emotive power, no? Facts tend to do that.
Your story is pretty typical of the rhetoric used to whip up young white women. Who generally use BC, and use it well. And if that's what you want to turn out, hey it's yours and Bari's substack. But, if you're trying to help persuade people or solve the problem, you'll have to accurately portray things. I get it that any criticism (or even advice) of underclass black women is fraught these days. But, if that's where the bulk of abortions are, then that's where the discussion needs to be too.
Feedback welcome.
Then abortion will have to be an option but not more than twelve weeks, if the children were siblings not sure if they were twins but if siblings tell u the history of the mother there in lies the problem but Democrats don’t want this problem solved they want us to throw federal dollars at these clinics which we do instead of better prevention laws which probably won’t receive as much money why would the Democrats rock the boat who would want to stop the $$$ pouring in
Ok. Worried about sharing nude photos? She’s a single mother of 2 children. One with very special needs. What is she thinking? How about focusing on her children and putting her sexuality on hold for a while? I am not falling for her story of being a victim. If women want the right to be in charge of their bodies, then she is not their poster child.
After George Floyd's murder we had very much needed national conversation, even a convulsion, over police misconduct in this country. It didn't matter that the number of unarmed Black men killed by police that year was 18, every life is precious. A year earlier I watched an exchange between Pete Buttigieg and a pro-life Democrat primary voter in Iowa. She was pressing him on his position on third term abortions performed in this country without a medical necessity, i.e., for the social, family or emotional health of the mother. Buttigieg was very put off by this line of questioning, finally whining "well, it's only 6,000 abortions a year and you don't know what that woman is going through. Any one who has felt an infant give happy kicks when you hum to them through the mommy's tummy wall knows there is another person who's voice is not being heard in Buttigieg's moral universe.
I think what is going on for Kaitlyn is tragic, but not as tragic as the alternative for the thousands of seven or eighth month babies that will not be snuffed out because their mom broke up with her boyfriend or was a habitual procrastinator or wanted to run off to be a death row groupie.
Let me expand a little. I think access to health care, especially contraceptive care, should be fundamentally improved in this country. I think the amount of research done on finding a male contraceptive should be tripled at least. I do not support restrictions on abortion at seven weeks or eleven weeks. But women like Kaitlyn are the only "victims" the MSM, even this blog, will ever consider. If we were living in 1854 debating abolition on this forum the only victims would be the poor persecuted slave owners being treated as an oppressed minority - there would be another group of people who's voice would not be heard.
You are quite correct …. Money is a very limiting factor in how much freedom we have.
I get where you’re going, I think. On my part, there was nothing meant about sterilization, which is a completely personal decision. I simply made the point that such a personal decision should not have anything to do with whether the nation’s fertility rate is rising or falling. It is the individual’s decision, end of story. If we are a nation of free individuals (as conservatives so often remind us), that freedom is threatened by every law that tells us what we can and cannot do, whether those laws have to do with, for example, limiting the amount of carbon a corporation (given individual status by the court) allowed in the air or whether or not an individual may or may not obtain an abortion or contraceptives or how many and what types of guns we may possess. But our individual freedom is ultimately limited by the fact that we cannot do anything that infringes in someone else’s freedom. When it comes to abortion, the crux of the problem lies with one question: what constitutes a person, an individual? Until we can answer that question, we cannot resolve the great abortion debates.
I have never understood why abortion is such an uber-holy, sacrosanct, untouchable icon for the political Left. It's the hill they have chosen to die on. I would love to have a conversation with a confirmed abortion advocate about this, but it would have to be honest and rational, and I despair of that possibility. Their most public voices are universally dishonest and disingenuous.
The governor of Minnesota has declared that his state will always defend women's “reproductive rights”. What does that mean? Does overturning Roe prevent women from reproducing if they want to? Does it compel any woman to reproduce if she doesn't want to? Ridiculous notion, but it sounds righteous, and that's really the point, isn't it?
Some link abortion to “reproductive health”. If a woman is pregnant, her reproductive health is in good shape. How will having an abortion improve her “reproductive health”? Another ridiculous notion.
Then there are the signs that say “Abortion is Health Care”. What?! Is a pregnant woman ill, to be cured by having an abortion? All dishonest, all disingenuous, all lies.
They call themselves “pro-choice”, but the issue is not and never has been about choice. It is and always had been a matter of life and death. All human life begins in the womb. No one really disputes that. It's true. Abortion advocates simply believe that some lives ought to end in the womb, and they further believe that they are just the people who are best qualified to decide whose.
Abortion advocates hate it when pro-life folks say that abortion is murder, and who can blame them? No one wants to be associated with murder, especially murder of the defenseless and innocent. But the only way they can distance themselves from that connection is to define the precise moment at which life does begin. In the womb, remember?
But they can't do that. Yet, the burden of proof is still on them. Until they can, the only truth that remains is that abortion is murder.
It's. Just. That. Simple.
That's the problem with so many people who support outlawing abortion; they're fine with it because they don't think they'll ever need it - hell, there's plenty of that sentiment right here in the comments. Thank you for sharing this story to give some people (at least, those with a shred of empathy) at least a sense of how trapped millions of women are feeling right now (and in a country they're told is "free").
Re: J6, when there is no cross examination, the key "witness" wasn't there and is reporting hearsay--not admissible in a court--and the entire story is refuted by several individuals that were actually there during the alleged encounter, it might be a nefarious narrative rather than a revelation. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/29/secret-service-agent-testify-trump-wheel-jan-6