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"Unsavory practice"? Check your bias, Bill. The only reason people think that is because anti-abortion Republican lunatics and the Catholic Church have been regularly lying and spreading outrageous propaganda about abortion and the people who need them for the last few decades. All while not giving a single shit about "life" in any other context, I might add.

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I'm sorry...what "lies" did we Catholics spread about abortion? .And we Catholics don't care about "life in any other context?" You clearly don't know anything about Catholicism.

I find it interesting that bigotry is perfectly fine when it's aimed at we Catholics.

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My entire family is Catholic and they did their best to raise me Catholic. My mother had several miscarriages in an abusive relationship and received no support from the church. She needed an abortion during one pregnancy after testing came back that it would not survive. It still haunts her because of the associated stigma perpetuated by the Catholic Church.

I have no problem with Catholicism. I love my family. Also, it's legal to make up fantasy pictures of "fetuses" and call women who need abortion 'murderers'. I'm extremely fine with someone deciding NOT to have an abortion for whatever reason. Pro-choice doesn't mean MY choice. I'm NOT fine with the Catholic Church trying to make that choice for ALL women, and driving the bus to legislate away reproductive freedom.

Then there's this:

https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/ascension-has-cut-a-quarter-of-its-labor-and-delivery-departments-in-the-past-decade

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For example, the same pro-lifers that infest the Florida legislature banned last week banned local rules to provide water and shade breaks for outdoor workers: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/08/florida-bill-extreme-heat-worker-protection

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I SO despise the FL GOP.

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Florida stole that from Texas. ItтАЩs obviously a race to the bottom.

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ItтАЩs the frog in the pot as the heat is slowly turned up. The residents of FL & TX donтАЩt realize how theyтАЩre getting boiled until itтАЩs too late.

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Thank you! I was looking in the comments first before I said exactly that. Abortion is a part of women's healthcare. Personally, I look at first trimester abortions the same way I look at women having a period. Both are the loss of a potential human, but it's just potential and nobody else's business except the woman involved.

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Susan and Victoria, thank you for this. I was incensed when reading "unsavory practice" and wanted to see if someone else responded before I did. This unsavory practice save lives.

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What you said! Also, miscarriage is abortion. The medical term is literally 'spontaneous abortion'. Miscarriage care and abortion care is the same healthcare. Women in abortion-banned states are finding that there are nearly as few distinctions between both kinds legally as there is practically. It's not great!

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It really shouldn't take this, but hopefully the countless numbers of conversations being had that boil down to a doctor telling a woman (and often her husband), "Go home and suffer, and if you might DIE, come back." start to have an impact.

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Right? I was so confused and irritated by the pundits who said this issue would lose salience. How on earth did they figure? This was always going to snowball as more and more horrific care-denied stories come out every day, as OBGYNS leave red states, as clinics that provide other types of care shut down, etc. These bans affect all kinds of pregnancy care, and pregnancy is uhhhh, pretty common.

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This is why I kept writing reproductive freedom would be the biggest salient factor in the Trump/Biden race when all the pundits were bed wetting. Who cares how old Biden is if you are facing a catastrophic pregnancy and can't get the care you need until you're on death's door in the parking lot of the hospital ER.

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You can't even leave the parking lot, because sepsis can kill you FAST. So can ecclampsia. I even read an article yesterday about a Texas woman needing to go to North Carolina to remove an ectopic pregnancy after a week and a half of Texas doctors wringing their hands because they didn't feel safe giving her the drug she needed.

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Agree completely. Add in the words, "or your wife or daughter" and the message is now universal.

And to be clear, it isn't about the men, but they need reached too.

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I think it is because most people don't really have the whole issue thought through. May well be successful marketing by pro-life forces for years. My wife had two miscarriages, both resulting in D&C's. I've been pro-choice pretty much my whole life, but ask me 5 years ago if my wife ever had an abortion and I'd have said no. I think she would have too. She had the acronym that stood for taking care of a miscarriage. That that care that was needed to make her healthy again, keep her from getting sicker, and allow us to keep trying was technically an abortion (scary music) really never entered my mind.

Short version, people are learning that what they are banning isn't elective abortion, it is a whole lot more.

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I met Charlie Sykes in DC at a live show and one of the things I wanted to tell him about the framing of abortion vs the economy is that deciding if/when/how to have a baby is one of the biggest economic decisions a woman/family can make. They are inextricably linked.

Sidenote: I miss Charlie terribly. Most of the Bulwark talkers are really evolving on this issue and I'm proud of them.

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It would be hard for any person who really thinks about it and understands what is now happening with the laws we have not to evolve. At the very least, I'd think they'd have to say, "Well, I'm still pro-life, but this isn't what I meant."

Of course, once you start down the road of nuance you start to realize how tough policy crafting between what is medically necessary and what is choice can be. And if you're honest at all, you (not you, a pro-life person) start to see how zealous, unthinking, and duplicitous your own side has been.

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Like you were saying earlier about 'I wish it hadn't taken this', but I think the IVF ruling is really helping to illustrate just how extreme the anti-abortion activists are. They are actually running ads against Republicans who came out against the ruling.

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Mar 15
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Most abortions come in a pill form, but that doesn't generate any ick factor so the anti abortion crowd doesn't mention that very much...other than to get their hand picked judge in Texas to ban it's use. The use of ED drugs have killed far more men than mifepristone has killed women. https://www.livescience.com/16824-erectile-dysfunction-drugs-linked-2200-deaths.html#:~:text=Drugs%20to%20treat%20erectile%20dysfunction%20were%20linked%20to,effects%20over%20the%20last%20decade%2C%20a%20study%20says.

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I don't think I agree with that. Abortion is a topic that the right has absolutely loved to bring up and malign incessantly since I can remember. If people actually minded their own business like they do with pooping, it wouldn't be in danger.

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Mar 15
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To be clear, this is what we're actually talking about.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/18/pregnancy-weeks-abortion-tissue

It doesn't exactly look like what the propagandists would have you believe. I agree with you that people have the right to do all kinds of things that not everyone cares for, that's what living in a free society is all about. However, the anti-abortion drive to lie to women truly cannot be ignored, because it's causing women all over the country to be tortured, jailed and even killed. That, to me, is unsavory.

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"it's causing women all over the country to be tortured, jailed and even killed." Good, Lord. Talk about lies.

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Still want to call us liars, Paul? I donтАЩt expect you to like abortion. But I do expect you to face the reality of the post-Dobbs legal landscape where 1) women ARE being denied necessary healthcare, and 2) some states are definitely considering charging women for some form of fetal death.

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How many stories do we have to hear about women going into sepsis late during nonviable pregnancies before you accept the reality on the ground?

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Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/15/abortion-high-risk-pregnancy-yeni-glick

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/health/abortion-hearing-texas-senators-amanda-zurawski/index.html

Woman says she carried dead fetus for 2 weeks after Texas abortion ban

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/20/abortion-miscarriage-texas-fetus-stell/

These are some of the stories that keep me up at night. Mary had a choice. Why shouldn't every woman?

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Mar 15
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I thought I was actually doing a good job being civil, considering the Dobbs decision has made me have to learn all kinds of cursed knowledge about pregnancy complications (especially child pregnancy complications, definitely don't look it up). To say nothing of my own life experience. I'm not actually trying to alienate anyone, I'm trying to help people understand why this issue is a winning issue for democracy, why it's so important to women and the people who love them, and that it deserves respect.

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But тАФ if your supposition is true, and you both & Andrew in fact agree тАФ Andrew, and many (most?) journalists who write about abortion are already policing their language. They have been intimidated into using negative words to describe a value-neutral medical procedure that actually saves lives.

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