Abortions when they were illegal -- "The world of Vera Drake"

[DELUSIONAL]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4285081.stm

Mike Leigh's Oscar-nominated film about a backstreet abortionist called Vera Drake has opened the eyes of a modern audience to the dilemmas facing pregnant women before abortion became legal in 1967. Some of those women talk about what it was like.

Barbara had three abortions as a young student in 1965 and 1966. The first was performed lawfully by doctors because her mental health was thought to be at risk.

But it cost between £100 and £150, so Barbara used money she borrowed from a friend.

This was more traumatic than her later two "home-made" abortions, she says, partly due to the disdain of doctors which left her a mental wreck. The only advice she says she was given was to stop having sex because "no respectable girl does".

For you young-uns -- you might want a peek into the world that bush is forcing you BACKwards into.

[Red_Viking]

1. Powerful film

Saw it this week, and took my 14-year-old daughter with me. She's never known a world where women can't choose what happens to their bodies. She was horrified.

I thought this film brilliantly juxtaposed the choices a rich woman had as opposed to a poor woman. If you were rich, you just "went away for the weekend." If you were poor, well, not so many nice options. Plus, there was the duplicitous sister-in-law who either engineered a pregnancy to ensure her place socially, or used the "I've gotta have sex NOW" evening to cover up a pregnancy from an outside indiscretion. Either way, she had more choices as a married woman with some money.

My daughter even picked up on the fact that all the people making decisions about what was to happen to Vera were men. Honey, it ain't all that different now!

I hope people see this film with horror, knowing what we could be racing backward toward. Great movie--I highly recommend it.

RV

[DELUSIONAL]

2. Thanks for the review -- I plan to get the DVD

when it comes out.

[Fovea]

3. I was working in a Kansas Emergency room

in 1977, and watched a young woman bleed out from a back room abortion.

Later, my late brother accused me of working at an abortion mill.
I used his head to destroy my sister's living room table.
Still not mellow on the subject.

[Sal Minella]

5. "Bleed out" means "die" -- from unstoppable hemorrhaging

due to internal damage (punctured uterus, ?punctured bowel, who knows.....)

I grew up with two boys whose mother died of a fatal illegal abortion.

The boys turned out to be fine young men, but how much better their younger lives might have been if their mother had been with them.

It's worth the struggle to keep safe,legal abortion available to those who need it.

I'm not mellow on the subject either. The idea that a woman becomes nothing but a fetus jug the minute her life runs crossways to a sperm -- somebody please bring me an aspirin.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

4. I guess it has been long enough now

that most people no longer remember those days but the fact is many young women died. Then again moralists never have spent much time contemplating what the full ramifications of their actions are.

[MiniMe]

6. The fundies think it is OK for women to die by back alley

abortions because they are sinning and shouldn't be getting abortions in the first place. Just wait until their kids find themselves pregnant at 15 or 16, the kid would probably be so scared to tell their parents (because of the parents beliefs) that they would go to a back alley abortionist. Then lets see how they feel about it.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

8. And you have that dead on

If you die from a back-ally aboration, well as we all know the wages of sin is death."

It's scary to watch what we a turning into.

[DELUSIONAL]

9. They do indeed --

A retired MD friend of mine still remembers clearly and is still pissed when she tells the case she attended in an ER.

The woman was bleeding badly from an illegal abortion -- and her husband and father REFUSED to allow her to have a blood transfusion to save her life, because it was "God's will".

[KaliTracy]

7. I'm glad that this movie is out, and that it is educating others -- my

mother (who happened to be an OB nurse) -- had an RH negative blood factor and after she had me (in 1965), she was sensitized.

in 1967-8 (before Rogam or R-v-W) she became pregnant again. At 5 or 6 months gestation the fetus died.

1. When she called her doctor on Friday, he told her to wait 'til Monday (days may be off, but he tried to brush her off for at least 24 hours, even though she *knew* the fetus was dead, and what this could do to HER. She demanded that he deal with the situation, that it "wasn't all in her head".)

2. Afterward, she tried the pill, but it made her sick, and she did not want to attempt a 1 in 4 chance in having a live birth (remember, this was before Rogam). She attempted to get a tubal, but was told that she needed two psychiatrist's signatures stating that she would be "mentally instable" if she had another still-born in order to get the tubal (again Before R -v- W -- and at a time when this type of medical information could get you fired from your job). (This was pretty common then.) She refused.

3. My father did not have any problems getting a vasectomy, nor did my mother have to sign any papers in order for him to receive one (even today, many hospitals will not give a woman a tubal unless there is spousal consent, even if the woman is estranged from her spouse).

Young girls (people even just 5 years younger than me (I'll be 40 this year) ) have NO CLUE what it was like. They hear things about pharmacists denying to fill BCP orders and think that it's about the morning after pill -- when it's not -- it's about regular birth control http://www.prevention.com/article/0,,s1-1-93-35-4130-1,00.html

They don't know about how already people are looking for ways to ban contraception if there is any inkling that it might "destroy" a fertilized egg and that legislation could be introduced to make it criminal if a woman doesn't report a miscarriage within 12 hours (such in the case of Virginia -- http://democracyforvirginia.typepad.com/democracy_for_virginia/2005/01/legislative_sen.html

I'm glad movies like this are coming out. I think the Handmaid's Tale should be re-released, too....

it scares me that we are going backward so quickly....

on edit..clarity