(no subject)

A lot of people have been asking me how I feel about the passing around of this, which is the Molly blog detailing how to perform a D&C procedure. I originally saw it on wtf_inc (I think the post has since been deleted). And honestly? I'm a bit torn about what how I feel about this.

On one hand, yes, I agree with the information being passed around, in the event that it is needed. However, what is being passed around is not a complete manual, by any means. One would need significantly more items and medical equipment to safely perform a surgical abortion.

You may notice my emphasis was on safety. Certainly, an untrained amateur could use these directions to abort, but there are so many more things involved, so many things that aren't even spoken of in the manual. It's mind-boggling.

For instance, there is not a single mention of administering Rhogam to the woman. What if she is RH negative? She needs to have Rhogam shots, not having them puts the lives of any future pregnancies quite on the line.

Secondly, how are these amateur abortionists concluding gestational age of the pregnancy without an ultrasound? Yes, gestation can be figured out through use of a pregnancy wheel (using the first day of one's last menstrual period can give an indication of when the probable date of conception was, thusly indicating the gestational or menstrual age of the pregnancy). However, that's not always an accurate way of doing it. One's menstrual cycles could be irregular, which throws the whole thing off. An ultrasound, while still not an exact science and is only accurate give or take a week, gives a far better idea of how far along the pregnancy is, if there's anything wrong with the fetus that the abortion provider needs to know, etc.

Furthermore, what happens if the person performing the abortion perforates the woman's bowels, her uterus, or anything else? And how exactly is an untrained person to tell the difference between 'acceptable amounts of bleeding' and hemorrhaging?

This manual makes it out to seem like this is a perfectly safe procedure with absolutely no risks involved, that anybody could perform one. It even talks about the Jane organization in the 60s and 70s as an example of untrained people performing these procedures. Sure, the Jane organization only lost one patient out of thirteen thousand, but what were the statistics on non-fatal incidents? This is performing a surgical procedure on something that one, ultimately, can not see and need far more than a 'good grasp of the female anatomy' to safely perform.

There are so many more factors that should be taken into consideration that this Molly woman doesn't even mention in her writing. Things that women should know about the procedure they may get, things that the people performing the procedure should know. I don't trust it, the idea that anyone with access to the instruments listed and a good grasp of female anatomy is perfectly capable of performing this surgery. And it is a surgery, no matter how minor one may think it is. Performing a medical abortion (like with methotrexate and misoprostal) is far safer for someone untrained because at least then, in the event of a complication, the patient can go to the ER and be treated under the guise of having a miscarriage. In the event of abortion becoming restricted, patients undergoing illegal surgical abortions will not have that at their disposal if something goes wrong.

I agree that something needs to be in place to protect our rights to abortion should anything dire happen to the laws currently in place (however, contrary to popular belief, if Roe V. Wade is overturned, abortion will not suddenly become illegal everywhere in the US, it will only revert to the individual states' decisions in which many of them held it to be perfectly legal). But, I don't think this is the way to do it. I believe that abortion, above all other things, needs to be safe. The procedure, as detailed in this manual, is not safe. There is already the risk of complications if performed by a trained professional, but the likelihood of complications arising is increased several times over, if performed by someone untrained or unfamiliar with what they're doing.

My distaste for this is obviously not a case of someone being against abortion in general. As any of my friends know, I am adamantly pro-choice and have been working for an abortion provider for the past two years. I have personally helped hundreds of women to get abortions and have even almost been fired quite a few times (and also been at risk for being fired, if I'd been found out) for the lengths I have gone to in helping patients (referring women to other clinics is basically frowned on, I have no problems with doing it, especially if they are unable to use our services because we don't accept their insurance or unable to reach one of our offices). I want women to have access to this, but this is not the way of doing it, passing out some half-assed pamphlet online that anyone can read and convince themselves they're competant enough to carry out the instructions.

I'd be more inclined to support this undertaking if it were being done properly and written by a medical professional, one who details all the risks involved and goes more into the safety precautions necessary. Not written by an individual who seems to think anyone could perform an abortion (and by the way, this information isn't something that's been kept from women for decades in an attempt to keep them ignorant. It's been freely accessible, in medical texts) and who is apparently using information that is thirty years out of date.

This is a procedure that needs to be performed by someone trained and qualified. We haven't been out of the back alleys for all that long a time, passing off information such as this manual as safe isn't going to do us any favours.