Personal Stories

In the wake of Dr. Tiller's assassination, I've been hearing a lot of questions about what it means to get an abortion in the late second or third trimester of your pregnancy, and why women would seek them.

To anyone who hasn't had to think about this issue before, or who's only heard about it from anti-choice groups' rhetoric, the question makes sense. Jodi Jacobson has a great piece up at RH Reality Check about the specifics of the procedure -- namely that they constitute about 0.2% of all abortion procedures conducted in the U.S., that they're severely restricted by law under Roe v. Wade and are performed when the continuation of the pregnancy poses serious risks to the woman's life or health and could cause irreparable harm to the woman.

The heartbreaking part is that often times the women who elect to have this procedure done do so under dire circumstances, with pregnancies that were wanted yet for the woman's own safety simply cannot continue. And to that effect, I thought it would be worth sharing some of their stories.

• Gretchen Voss has a powerful first person story in the Boston Globe which won a Maggie. Her piece also appeared in Marie Claire.




• The site A Hearbreaking Choice has a collection of personal stories posted by women who traveled to Kansas to see Dr. Tiller.



• Self Magazine has a great piece on the tragic pregnancies at the center of late-term abortion debate.



• MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has an amazing piece on 'Who is Dr. Tiller'


And these two powerful editorials are also worth a read:



• USA Today editorial: Our view on death in Wichita: Activists mount militant assault on abortion rights



• Washington Post editorial: Clinics in the Cross Hairs

Monday Morning News Dump

Good morning! Here are a few key repro-rights related news stories from this weekend:

- California budget cuts are threatening the state’s family planning funding
- All hail Obama! Washington Post reports that our President-Elect is planning on rolling back as many regulations in place for “overtly political reasons” as possible, including ones related to stem-cell research and reproductive health!
- But, as the Houston Chronicle reminds us, that won’t stop the Bush administration from trying to sneak through as many last-minute changes as possible.
- And, in the news of the horrific department, the AP reports on a Tusla abortion clinic, the main such facility in the state, fighting a state law that would have required women seeking an abortion to not only get an ultrasound beforehand but to listen to the doctors describe to her what the fetus looks like.