4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

[teaberryblue]

1) I saw this movie tonight. I know I'm preaching to the choir and I don't know if I have anyone on my friendslist who believes in outright banning of abortions, but this film, for those of you who don't know it, is about a young woman in Communist Romania and what she goes through to help her friend get an illegal abortion. I just can't stress enough the importance of films like this both to educate young people about their sexual choices, and to illuminate the reasons why we need to have accessible and safe methods of termination regardless of whether we think it is immoral, amoral, or otherwise. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone curious about the risks and methods involved in black market abortions.

--My grandmother died due to complications from a pregnancy that should have been terminated in a time when that was not a legal option.

--I went with my mother, and my mother said that this movie was eerily reminiscent of the experiences some of her friends had here in this country, in the 1960s.

--We talked at length of the difference of the portrayal of abortion in this movie vs. Juno.

2) On a lighter note, my father= only man in the world who buys his wife smoke detectors for Valentine's Day and doesn't understand why she doesn't find this an AMAZING gift.

Now, to work!

Comments

[abhor.livejournal.com]

This is why I love Roberta Gregory. In one of her comics, she drew about the risks of illegal abortions and it really, REALLY freaked me out. I can't imagine having that done in the conditions she described... I think the story she wrote about took place in the 60's as well. Scary stuff.

And of course, new-born babies being tossed in dumpsters is another reason to support abortion. Just my two cents.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

I think newborn babies being tossed in dumpsters is also a reason to support no-fault abandonment laws if a mother leaves a child at a hospital or women's clinic, since a lot of the time those result when women don't realize they're pregnant until it's too late to get a safe abortion, or get ditched by husbands/boyfriends late in a pregnancy.

[keladry.livejournal.com]

Do you have "baby claps" in the US?

In Germany, many hospitals have a non-supervised backdoor with a sort of door clap that allows desperate mothers to anonymously leave their babies in a heated, padded box behind it. The box has an alarm that rings when something is put into it, and hospital staff are going to wait for a couple of minutes when they hear it, then come check.

I think that's a good solution. The baby is safe, the mother knows that it won't freeze or starve... And as long as this is an easily available solution, hopefully less women will feel driven to more desperate measures.

I'm actually not sure what the laws are, though, but I can't imagine that hospitals would be allowed to offer and even advertise this if it was illegal.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

There has been heated debate about allowing these in the US, especially since they've become more popular in China and Japan lately. Right now, there are certain locations in some states where a woman is allowed to leave her baby without being charged with abandonment-- usually hospitals or police stations. But not everywhere.

[abhor.livejournal.com]

I think no-fault abandonment laws are a good idea too... the more options, the better.