Doctors talk about real patients who are the real victims of Stupak-Pitts.

Maybe it is a good thing this happened, this idiotic religion-based amendment that was pushed by the Catholic Bishops and allowed by our Democratic majority.

I remember pre-Roe times all too clearly. There was not only a deep shame to getting pregnant pre-marriage....there was no legal way to do anything about it. Oh, and there were not the effective means of birth control, either.

So pardon me if I wonder why women are so compliant as our party is willing to take away their rights.

From RH Reality Check:

The Real Victims of Stupak-Pitts




The doctors present their stories, you need to read them all. Here is just one.



Men in suits plus a few women joining them...are making life changing decisions for women under the direction of religious groups. They only consider the death of a woman before they will "permit" the procedure.

The mental or physical health of a woman does not matter.

I watched cheery smiley Amy Klobuchar on Rachel's show tonight for about a minute or so. She avoided the tough issues that need to be dealt with. I notice that no men are speaking out on this issue, not even ones who were strongly pro-choice when they were active party leaders.

It is as though we as women are expected to take one for the team and be careful not to gripe too much.

"From Nancy Stanwood, MD, MPH:

My patient Carol was excited to give birth to her first child. Her husband was a Marine serving in Afghanistan. Sadly, in her second trimester, Carol learned that her baby had a lethal anomaly. She and her husband made the difficult decision to have an abortion.

That’s when they learned that the military health insurance they relied on wouldn’t cover the abortion unless Carol’s life was in danger.

Her husband was outraged. He had just flown back from Afghanistan to be with her, and he angrily asked me, “I’m over there defending my country, and they won’t even take care of my family?”

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/11/20/the-real-victims-stupakpitts

No woman should EVER have to face such a choice such as this....

Fuck every one of the politicians who use a woman's body as a bargaining chip.

Yes, it is time to fight back.

That is my point and the doctors' point.

Even though we have the majority, it would never occur to the party to try to overturn Hyde. They should though.

And I really don't see Congress making any effort in the near future to overturn Hyde.

made to overturn Hyde. Why not? There were times there was a pro-choice majority of both parties, and yet, nothing was done.

Unfortunately.

bargaining chips or subject to someone's --usually a man's-- twisted views on morality. This shit has got to stop.

I am also sick-to-fucking-death of the "we think abortion is murder" pigfuckers. Women's lives, their health, their family's health is at risk.

And quite frankly, I'd like to take a baseball bat to the fucker that murdered Dr. Tiller. Oh yeah, and a few swings at O'LIEly.

They think oh it's ok the women will understand we need to get this bill done even though we have a majority we must compromise with the right.

it were men's health in jeapordy.

There needs to be a massive mustering of women to re-align the healthcare debate and fight. Women need to take the lead on this.

Like we don't want to be bothered.

...in regard to reproductive matters is gone. Today the theofacists are chipping away at abortion. Tomorrow it will be contraception. And it may sound alarmist, but a government that can tell you that you cannot terminate a pregnancy can also tell you MUST terminate a pregnancy or mandate you must conceive. How long before we see forced sterilization of "undesirables"?

I believe Stupak would not be able to hold his seat unless a majority of women in his district who go to the polls voted for him. Looking at local news reports, I don't see any controversy regarding his amendment. There is alot of debate about health care reform itself but little is said about his amendment.

Kinda like slavery being unable to be resolved because the house slaves are duking it out with the field slaves.

complaining how they feel that women's rights are being trampled--particularly in the health field. It was some 40 years ago that women won many of the rights they enjoy today, but which are rapidly disappearing. That fight will have to restart if women want/choose to maintain what they won at such tremendous cost all those years ago.

Health choices denied and/or cancelled. Choice all but stopped cold. The list of attacks on women's health care(Pap smears, mammograms and the like)lengthen daily. It is really sad to see what is being allowed.

The current crop of young women who seem not to realize that they are being returned to a commodity-status will have to be trained to begin standing up for their rights as equal members of society.

Women callers to KGO are directly calling this current mess an outright attack on their independence(ref: John Rothman's show on KGO).

I'm not surprized there is anger about this in more liberal sections of the nation.

not just the women in his conservative area.

I am so doggone glad he is so loved in his state.

There is nothing on ANY news anywhere about his amendment. It was briefly mentioned on two cable news shows, then forgotten.

Beloved Stupak.

affecting women in California who DO NOT get to vote for him. Yet again, this is not what I voted for last November.

They have had such a long battle for health care. I'm afraid after the long battle, they haven't brought themselves to having to kill this health care bill just because of that amendment.

Frankly speaking, though, more women are going to have to become pro-choice. Women are divided on the issue, women in sects such as Catholicism, who are basically given propaganda that is in no way Christian. However, it's mostly not due to religion but due to this: an abortion is something that a woman will usually need to have available once in her lifetime, if even that. It's too easy for women to think they will never need it, and therefore, that it isn't important. This is especially true of young women mis-educated by abstinence only programs.

After all these years, women are evenly divided on the issue of choice. It has to be much higher than that for women's rights to go anywhere. Right now, people appear to be abandoning pro-choice, too, especially liberals, according to a Pew Research Poll, and 61 percent actually support passing the bill with this amendment.

http://people-press.org/report/549/support-for-abortion-slips

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/18/abortion.poll/index.html

It's happening at a worrying rate.

Why? The bad economy looks like the reason. In hardship people are re-examining their spiritual values, and unfortunately, coming to some wrong conclusions. Moreover, the bad economy has also pushed reproductive rights down in priority.

As a result, 61 percent of people favor the abortion funding ban.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/18/abortion.poll/index.html

More women are going to have to become pro-choice AND actively oppose the Stupak-Pitts Amendment along with the Hyde Amendment. It doesn't do much good to say one is pro-choice and then do nothing more.

These people mixing religion with politics frighten me!

which is the Hyde amendment.

Why are we so happy about that? It's better than Stupak in that it does not keep women from having private insurance...but to be so thankful so grateful?

It is just weird how far backward we have gone.

Which is why I despise religion as anti-woman garbage.

Lot of people expressing outrage over the Stupak-Pitts Amendment which isn't law but barely a peep about the Hyde Amendment, of which examples have been shown earlier the effect it can have, which is the law.

The title of your post "Doctors talk about real patients who are the real victims of Stupak-Pitts." ought to read "Doctors talk about real patients who are the real victims of the Hyde Amendment."

with a good Democratic majority. It goes further than Hyde, affecting private coverage.

We quietly lived with Hyde, and that is why they just went ahead and pushed for more.

Because they could.

The doctors were writing about Stupak Pitts, so I did. It could just as well have been Hyde.

Our party sold women out.

wish I could administer a less friendly one to all those who cherish zygotes over women.

over women. Interesting comments...

many of them struck me...

one interesting truth, (or, it feels true to me) was the remark that foetus fetishists don't view women as human beings, (something I've been saying consistently.....wait, let me amend that --women who are not a part of their tribe, and therefore, are non-entities to them), but as OBSTACLES to be coerced, overcome in the pursuit of their agenda.

you know, let the rhetoric analysis go wherever it will, but to me, the critical mass is, in reality-world, anti-woman (I won't call it choice/anti-choice, since to my mind, 'choice' is a term that conveys none of the life-threatening ramifications of blocking abortion and women's health access) rulings kill women (and children). Legislation should proceed in response to that prime fact. The El Salvador article made very clear the twisted world and egregious suffering created by such zealotry.

difficult a woman's choices can be. I support Sarah Palin in her choice to keep her Downs Syndrome baby. Sarah Palin, however, is in an economically secure position and can afford to provide for her child. In contrast, many women are unable to provide for a severely disabled child who will be dependent for life on a parent, perhaps an older, working mother. A woman in that situation deserves to be permitted to make her own choice about what she can do. It's difficult to place a severely disabled child for adoption. Not all adoptive homes are safe for a child with special needs.

I have a friend who chose to have her baby who had spina bifida. My friend's experience was mixed. On the one hand, she had the great joy of mothering her baby who was absolutely lovable and who remained an infant much longer than most babies. On the other hand, the stress was enormous. Due to her illness, the baby became seriously ill repeatedly, frequently. My friend could not work. All of her life was involved in taking care of her baby. Eventually, nature took its course. The baby died. My friend's husband left her. She focused on making a career for herself. Her choice was hers. I've never heard her complain about it. But it was her choice. And she was able to make it because she and her husband could afford a modest lifestyle and keep the baby. Had she been in a different situation, she could not have made her choice.

Each woman's situation is different. Each is entitled to make her own choice. As Sandra Day O'Connor acknowledged in her Supreme Court decision on this issue (I think it was Casey), bearing children is a great responsibility, sometimes a painful one. Sometimes women die in childbirth -- still -- today. Thus, a woman must be able to make her own choice about whether she carries a baby to term or not. Only she knows what is in her heart, what her life, including her spiritual life, requires.

When that bastard Stupak begins menstruating, he can tell me what I can or cannot do with my reproductive system.

I can only hope for a strong progressive challenger in the next election. In the meantime, these stories should be told and retold. Those who would sentence a woman to carrying a non-viable pregnancy for their own religious beliefs should not be in this party. Period.