#Women's Healthcare

[razorroy]

#Vote Blue

[nightmarish-fallen-angel]

I just watched a news video about new guidelines regarding pain with IUD insertions.

The entire video framed this as a "women's rights" or "women's healthcare" video.

I am a trans nonbinary guy who had an IUD insertion. Using gendered language regarding reproductive rights and healthcare is so frustrating because I need these health guidelines and laws to apply to me too. And the more people stay in the habit of framing it as a "women's issue" the more likely I am to get denied the care I need.

Trans, nonbinary, and intersex people deserve to have a voice in these things as well. We deserve to have gender neutral language surrounding the procedures we might undergo at the very least.

I want the health codes and guidelines that may be written to protect me and my trans siblings if they pursue this kind of birth control or any other reproductive healthcare.

[shinobicyrus]

Obviously, the Alabama Supreme Court actually putting fetal personhood into law is another victory for creeping Christian Authoritarianism and yet another attack on health care, womens' rights, and bodily autonomy....but watching the Republicans flip their shit now that IVF clinics are in danger of closing is hilarious in a "the clown car is on fire" kind of way.

Because of course this was going to happen. Fetal personhood and anti-surrogacy (especially in the context of same-sex parents) has been bouncing around in conservative religious and legal circles (but what's the difference?) for decades, with those pesky liberals warning about it for just as long. Anyone with an inkling of awareness of the issue could have seen it coming.

So the fact that they were caught so off guard is myopic enough. And they're panicking for a very good reason, because yanno who generally goes to IVF clinics?

The people who can afford it.

Certainly the abortion bans in various states were bad, but if you had a lot of disposable income you could just...go to another state. Extremely inconvenient, yes, but not insurmountable. But this?

Oh my god, now the far-right pro-life politics that you've been cultivating for going on fifty years is now in a position to affect people with money? People that matter? Now you have to try and contend with the very extremist judges you installed that don't have to worry about getting elected and whose decisions are now putting you on the political chopping block?

Join us the in misery you're created for everyone else, assholes.

[radykalny-feminizm]

Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska (1854–1918) was the second Polish woman to become a medical doctor, and the first female Polish medical doctor to practice in Poland. She obtained her medical degree in 1877 in Zurich.

She knew that she wanted to be a doctor since she was a little girl, which was something unheard of at the time.

After obtaining her medical degree, she worked in Berlin and Vienna for a short time. However, she was not allowed to pass the state exam, which would have given her the right to practice medicine in Poland, and she was refused as a member of the Polish Society of Medicine because she was a woman.

She faced a huge amount of pure, disgusting misogyny for a simple fact that she was a female doctor.

She was called a whore. Men were claiming that she should stick to her womanly role and be only a wife and a mother. They also said that she would never be able to perform a successful surgery, because women couldn't stand a sight of blood. One man (whose name doesn't deserve to be mentioned) wrote a story about a female medical student who went to the university for a sole purpose of finding a husband.

Many highly respected doctors, writers, politicians and other important figures ridiculed her and did everything they could to make her miserable.

But she didn't give up.

She moved to St. Petersburg and passed the state exam there. This allowed her to practice women's health and pediatric medicine within the Polish Kingdom and Russia. In 1882 an epidemic of infection during childbirth broke out in Warsaw, and a few maternity shelters were opened; one of it was given to Anna to lead.

The number of deaths during and after childbirth was significantly lower under her lead than in any other place led by men.

She was one of the first doctors who recognized the importance of antiseptics (doctors simply washing their hands before a surgery wasn't so common back then). She was also empathetic towards her patients, which was something revolutionary at the time as well.

In 1896 she became the first person to perform a Caesarean section in Warsaw.

She's one of the many examples of women who fought for themselves despite men doing everything they could to break and humiliate her. She's truly a huge inspiration and deserves utter respect.

[mcspocky]

Statement from Vice President Harris on Trump Endorsing Florida’s Extreme Abortion Ban

From the Inbox:

> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

>

> August 30, 2024

>

> **Statement from Vice President Harris on Trump Endorsing Florida’s Extreme Abortion Ban**

>

> *The following is a statement from* ***Vice President Kamala Harris*** *on Trump endorsing Florida’s near-total abortion ban:*

>

>

> “Donald Trump just made his position on abortion very clear: He will vote to uphold an abortion ban so extreme it applies before many women even know they are pregnant. Trump proudly brags about the role that he played in overturning *Roe v. Wade* and said there should be punishment for women who have an abortion. So, of course he thinks it’s a ‘beautiful thing’ that women in Florida and across the country are being turned away from emergency rooms, face life-threatening situations, and are forced to travel hundreds of miles for the care they need.

>

> “And, understand: he is not done. As a part of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control, threaten access to fertility treatments and ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress.

>

>

> “I trust women to make their own health care decisions and believe the government should never come between a woman and her doctor. When I’m President and Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, I will proudly sign it into law. The choice in this election is clear.”

>

> \###

[she-is-ovarit]

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The streets of cities across Latin America were bathed in green Thursday as tens of thousands of women marched to commemorate International Safe Abortion Day.

Latin American feminists have spent decades fighting to roll back strict prohibitions, although there are still few countries with a total ban, like El Salvador and Dominican Republic.

In Mexico, marchers celebrated the recent decision by Mexico’s Supreme Court to decriminalize abortions at the federal level. In Argentina, marchers had a more somber tone, worrying that the strength of a populist far-right presidential candidate going into elections in October could signal peril after years of work by feminists.

[mintaikk]

[claraameliapond]

Here's Why Abortion Is Essential Health Care

[sickofthis666]

The french government having the fucking Audacity of complaining about France's low birth rate when the medical care for women before, during and after birth, has been heavily deteriorating for the past 20 years??

How the fuck can it be more dangerous for me to give birth in 2024 than it was for my mom in the late 90s/early 2000s!? Why the fuck are we going backwards!?

How the fuck can we be one of the wealthiest country on the planet and yet have among the highest infant mortality in Europe!? Are we a fucking joke??

[neil-perrys-suicidal-tendencies]

My dad refuses to believe healthcare has gender inequality in healthcare.

His evidence - there are so many maternity and childcare hospitals and there has been so much research doe for breast and cervical cancer.

Privilege fucking goes hard man. Like, when I talk about my pain, even he doesn't believe me. Why would doctors💀💀.

And maternity and childcare hospitals exist so women don't fucking die in childbirth or from its complications.

Gonna pull out the statistics.

What's a man gonna tell about medical gaslighting?

[lenbryant]

Roe Rage. Vote Blue, all the way down your ballot. This is America, not Gilead.

[razorroy]

Need More Proof He's Unfit For President?

[tomorrowusa]

Billboards supporting women seeking abortions are popping up along I-55 heading north

"People make mistakes," says Queen, a Memphis hairstylist whose clients often confide those mistakes in her. [ ... ] Today, Queen says distance has become the biggest hurdle to getting the procedure in the southern United States. Hundreds of miles and multiple state lines can separate women from providers, which is why she's an enthusiastic proponent of a new abortion-rights billboard campaign along one stretch of rural Interstate 55 running across eastern Arkansas from Memphis, Tenn., to Southern Illinois. "Yes!" she shouts when she sees the first billboard, which reads "GOD'S PLAN INCLUDES ABORTION." [ ... ] The new billboard is one of six paid for by Seattle-based Shout Your Abortion. Its founder Amelia Bonow says this route in particular — leading to the only legal providers within hundreds of miles — needed a counterpoint to the billboards opposing abortion. "I-55 is just covered with these hateful, judgmental, shaming, intentionally traumatizing anti-abortion billboards," says Bonow of why the group focused on this segment of highway. Some anti-abortion rights billboards invoke the Bible. Others, like those placed by Minnesota-based Pro-Life Across America, have pictures of smiling babies and a phone number. [ ... ] "That's what these laws do," contends Bonow. "They don't actually stop people from having abortions, but they make people struggle in order to have abortions." Other Shout Your Abortion billboards say "Abortion is okay," and "Abortion is normal, you are loved." Some former abortion providers now offer what are called "navigational services." Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, says for some young clients living in poverty it's their first time ever traveling beyond the city limits. "We're handing out gas cards," she says. "We're making hotel arrangements. We're buying plane tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, whatever works best for the individual. We're meeting them where they are."

In the days of slavery Illinois was a North Star of freedom and featured many stops along the Underground Railroad. Since the Dobbs decision it has assumed a somewhat similar role for reproductive freedom.

Interstate 55 runs from New Orleans to Chicago. Illinois is the only state along I-55 which offers reproductive freedom.

Of course it's not necessary to go all the way up to Chicago for healthcare. If you are driving north on I-55, get on I-57 at Sikeston, Missouri and then exit I-57 at Illinois Route 13 westbound to Carbondale. Carbondale is the largest town in the southern tip of Illinois. It has several women's health clinics and a fully staffed hospital. It's also home to Southern Illinois University.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The political earthquake in Florida.

On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court issued three decisions that will reshape the landscape of personal liberties in Florida. In the process, a state supreme court dominated by DeSantis appointees may have put Florida in play in the presidential and US Senate elections.

In brief, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a six-week abortion ban signed by Ron DeSantis, approved a reproductive liberty amendment to the Florida constitution to appear on the November ballot, and approved an initiative legalizing marijuana to appear on the November ballot.

The ruling approving the six-week ban is effectively a replay of the reasoning in Dobbs—except worse. Five DeSantis appointees overruled a 35-year-old precedent that held the privacy clause in the Florida constitution protected reproductive liberty. What changed under Florida law to justify overturning decades of precedent?

Nothing.

Except that the members of the Florida Supreme Court changed by gubernatorial appointment. If the law is entirely dependent on the personal political views of the justices, there is no certainty, predictability, or rationality in jurisprudence. As Mark Joseph Stern writes in Slate,

“What’s exasperating about the Florida Supreme Court’s decision is that, unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Florida constitution explicitly guarantees a right to privacy.”

The decision is devasting for the women (and men) of Florida. It will become effective in 30 days. Although SB 300 says that abortions are prohibited “after the gestational age of 6 weeks,” an earlier law states that gestation is calculated “from the first day of the pregnant woman’s last menstrual period.”

In effect, the ruling prohibits terminations of pregnancy only two weeks after most women recognize they have not started menstruating “on schedule” (in parenthesis to recognize that there is no single “schedule” for all women).  

For a discussion of the Florida Supreme Court’s decision, see Chris Geidner, Law Dork, Florida high court upholds abortion ban — and puts abortion on the ballot. As usual, Chris takes a deep dive into the majority opinion by the Florida Supreme Court—and some of the objections in the dissenting opinions.

But the decision may be short-lived. The same court approved a voter-led initiative to amend the Florida constitution to enshrine reproductive liberty—setting up an epic battle between a DeSantis-packed court and the people of Florida. See Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, Florida will now be ground zero for the abortion wars in 2024.

Stern writes,

But a bare majority [of the Florida Supreme Court] also let Florida voters have the final say on reproductive freedom, teeing up a momentous battle over personal liberty in a presidential election year. If that were not enough, the majority also defied DeSantis’ crusade to prevent marijuana legalization from going to the voters, giving residents the chance to greenlight recreational sales long after many other states have made the move.

Florida remains a red state dominated by Republican lawmakers and judges. And the consequences for women in Florida and the surrounding area will be horrific in the coming months. But Democrats could not have asked for a better set of issues to campaign on.

Indeed, within hours of the Florida Supreme Court’s trio of rulings, the Biden-Harris campaign released a memo saying that it believes it can win in Florida. See NBC News,  Biden campaign says it sees Florida as 'winnable' in 2024.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[mcspocky]

𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝘀𝗲 by 56% in Texas after 2021 abortion ban, analysis finds

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-ban-deaths-pregnant-women-sb8-analysis-rcna171631

[spooky-mikki]

when I see a post about a fat person's death, and it is being used as proof that being fat makes someone completely unhealthy, i-

people of colour, neurodivergent people, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people who are overweight and obese face stigma, and it's especially often that doctors refuse to offer equal checkups and medical solutions to fat people, rendering them extra vulnerable to treatable illnesses because the assumption is that once you lose weight, all your problems will be solved

Idk what's going on through their heads other than some willful helplessness and resignation. a fat person can and often does have legitimate health problems that, if they want to, makes reaching an optimal weight significantly more difficult, and shaming and dehumanising them leads to the opposite of desired results. women who struggle with hormonal issues (PCOS) and other marginalised groups aren't collectively scheming to make up medical heresy