Today in Women's History: Redstockings organized a public hearing on abortion, called an abortion speak-out, to air women's views on abortion in...

todayinwomenshistory:

The Fight to Make Abortion Legal

The abortion speak-out took place during the pre-

Roe v. Wade era, when abortion was illegal in the United States. Each state had its own laws about reproductive matters. It was rare if not unheard of to hear any woman speak publicly about her experience with illegal abortion.

Prior to the radical feminists’ fight, the movement to change U.S. abortion laws was more focused on reforming existing laws than repealing them. Legislative hearings on the issue featured medical experts and others who wanted to finesse the exceptions to abortion prohibitions. These “experts” talked about cases of rape and incest, or a threat to the life or health of a mother. Feminists shifted the debate to a discussion of a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body.

Disruption

In February of 1969, Redstockings members disrupted a New York legistlative hearing about abortion. They roundly condemned the hearing because the speakers were a dozen men and a Catholic nun. Of all women to speak, they thought a nun would be the least likely to have contended with the abortion issue, other than from her possible religious bias. The Redstockings members shouted and called for the legislators to hear from women instead. Eventually that hearing had to be moved to another room behind closed doors.

Who Gets to Speak Out?

The members of Redstockings had previously participated in 

consciousness-raising discussions. They had also drawn attention to women’s issues with protests and demonstrations. Several hundred people attended their abortion speak-out in the West Village on March 21, 1969. Some women spoke about what they suffered during illegal “back-alley abortions.” Other women spoke about being unable to get an abortion and having to carry a baby to term, then have the child taken away when it was adopted.

More abortion speak-outs followed in other U.S. cities, as well as speak-outs on other issues in the subsequent decade. Four years after the 1969 abortion speak-out, the Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape by repealing most abortion laws then in effect and striking down restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Fetuses "Testify" In Support of Anti-Abortion Bill

The “testimony” of two fetuses at a congressional hearing in Ohio Wednesday wasn’t quite as robust as abortion opponents had hoped. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the fifteen-week-old fetus in attendance had a strong heartbeat, but the nine-week-old fetus’ heartbeat was “only faintly audible and far from distinct.” The unborn were there in support of a proposed “heartbeat” bill that bans abortions after a fetus’ heart starts beating. Their “testimony” consisted of ultrasound audio and images projected on a video screen at a hearing of Ohio’s House Health and Aging Committee. (Both fetuses were accompanied by their mothers.) Though abortion rights groups have dismissed the hearing as “an absolute circus,” it may have serious implications: The “heartbeat” bill is the first of its kind and appears poised to pass the Ohio legislature. “It would be among the earliest stages that a state has tried to ban abortions,” the Plain Dealer says, and other states are paying attention. Some anti-abortion activists put it more plainly: “It will be an arrow in the heart of Roe vs. Wade,” said Janet Porter, who heads up Faith2Action.

This article is amazing in two ways: first that such ridiculousness is occurring in the world, and secondly because it writes that mothers “accompanied” the fetuses. I know this was an attempt at humor (hopefully), but it also is just another example of the status of women in this whole debate. It’s NOT about the mothers or women and protecting THEIR lives, safety, and well-being.

The DIY Abortion Two new studies on how American women end their own pregnancies.

Since we hear about do-it-yourself abortions only when they end badly, it’s hard to know how common they are. But thanks to two recent studies, we now know a little more about the usually silent group of American women who try to end their own pregnancies. Both studies found that a small fraction of the women surveyed had attempted to abort without the help of traditional medical practitioners. The first one, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, surveyed 9,493 women at health care facilities that provide abortions and found that more than 2 percent had tried to induce abortions on their own. Meanwhile, a smaller study, published in the current issue of Reproductive Health Matters, surveyed 1,425 women in clinic waiting rooms and found that 4.6 percent had tried to induce their own abortions.

Both groups of researchers say it’s hard to know how many people self-induce: As private as women are about abortion generally, those who try it on their own are likely to be downright secretive. It’s also worth noting that both studies drew their participants from medical settings, precisely the environment that women who self-induce might be trying to avoid. But whatever their true numbers, the Reproductive Health Matters study offers a glimpse at these women’s motivations via in-depth interviews with 30 women who admitted trying to induce their own abortions.

One 16-year-old said she had tried to self-abort because she didn’t want her mother to know. Other women said they avoided clinics because of previous bad experiences. Still others couldn’t get to a clinic. One-third of the women cited financial concerns. (The study’s authors note that, as of 2005, an abortion at 10 weeks averaged more than $400.) One woman who hemorrhaged and wound up in the hospital after taking misoprostol every day for 45 days said: “If I knew all this would happen, I probably still would do it. … I didn’t have the money.” Another group of women simply found self-induction preferable to a clinic abortion—easier, faster, more in keeping with religious views. (Some said self-induction was, morally speaking, closer to getting one’s period than to an “abortion.”) Others suggested that it was “more natural.”

This read is eye-opening.