'I'm Pro-Choice But...'
Excavating my mentions after a South Carolina woman was arrested for a second trimester self-managed abortion.
Welcome to my weekly roundup for people leaving Twitter or spending less time there. You can also find me on Mastodon at @SusanRinkunas@journa.host.
What did I say last week? “Don't Put Abortion Pills in Your Vag If You're Self-Managing.” Why did I say that? Because pills can leave residue in the vagina and the risk of healthcare workers turning people in to the cops is very real. How real? Here’s a Jezebel story I published on March 2: South Carolina Woman Arrested for Allegedly Taking Abortion Pills.
A woman went to a (Catholic) hospital in October 2021 at age 33 and allegedly told healthcare workers that she’d taken abortion pills to end her pregnancy. South Carolina is one of two states—the other is Nevada—that explicitly bans self-managed abortion, and considers it a misdemeanor. No one knows yet whether she used the pills vaginally or orally, but regardless, it appears the hospital employees either told the county coroner or the Greenville police directly because the police got a warrant for her arrest in September 2022 and arrested her last week (it’s not clear why there were such delays).
The woman, who was mercifully not named by the local outlet that broke the story and who Jezebel also didn’t name, was released after paying a $2,500 bond and awaits trial. I obtained the police report and redacted her name, but left in the detail that she is identified as Black as Black women and other people of color have been disproportionately criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes for decades. The police report said the fetus was stillborn at about 25 weeks and four days’ gestation.
Understandably, the story went viral.
I stupidly didn’t mute the conversation which means that, for days, I’ve been seeing people in my mentions saying things like “I support abortion rights but” and “I don’t think she should have been arrested but” or “I don’t think abortion should be illegal but” and then harping on how she was allegedly 25 weeks along when she went to the hospital.
I don’t know the particulars of this woman’s situation, but I do know that it’s not easy to get an abortion in the U.S., let alone in a conservative state like South Carolina. The state bans abortion via telehealth (meaning people have to go to a clinic), it has an unnecessary 24-hour waiting period (meaning people have to go twice), and even though abortion is available on paper through 20 weeks post-fertilization/22 weeks gestation, clinics in the state only offer abortions through 14 weeks.
When the next person is arrested for a self-managed abortion later in pregnancy, our collective response should be that they deserved accessible healthcare, not criminalization. Pointing out the gestational age as if it’s a ‘gotcha’ is doing anti-abortion activists’ work for them.
People have later abortions because of not only the usual barriers like state restrictions, lack of insurance coverage, lack of paid time off work, but also because they may have discovered their pregnancy late and then were confronted with an even more expensive procedure. Some people will self-manage those later abortions for similar reasons, and they were doing so even while Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Self-managed abortion later in pregnancy only stands to become more common post-Roe, now that blue state clinics—including the very few that do later abortions—are backed up with traveling patients.
When (not if) the next person is arrested for a self-managed abortion later in their pregnancy, our collective response should be that they deserved accessible healthcare, not criminalization. No one should be arrested for their pregnancy outcomes, be it abortion, miscarriage, or stillbirth. Pointing out the gestational age as if it’s a ‘gotcha’ is doing anti-abortion activists’ work for them. That’s one level of brain expansion for folks. The next level is: Advocates and politicians need to think beyond simply “restoring” Roe, because many such arrests happened under Roe. All politically imposed abortion restrictions and bans are harmful and can and do lead to people being thrown in jail. Roe let states ban abortion after fetal viability (about 24 weeks but different for every pregnancy). That is a ban and it’s bad.
I will never stop thinking about my May 2022 conversation with activist Erika Christensen who herself had an abortion at 32 weeks. “I think that if you have certain values about abortion—that abortion is health care, that pregnant people are people, and that we should have bans off our bodies—if all of those slogans include an imaginary viability line in your head, they are not values, they are slogans. I would even go so far as to suggest that you might be pro-life with exceptions,” she told me. “Either you support pregnant people and you think abortion is health care or you don’t.”
The NEXT next level is realizing that part of the reason why we don’t have things like a living wage an universal healthcare that covers abortion is because we as a country would prefer to throw billions of dollars at policing and everyday family separation via the child welfare system.
More things I wrote this week:
Mississippi Governor Suddenly Supports Postpartum Medicaid Now That a Democrat Is on His Tail
The Case That Could Ban the Abortion Pill Nationwide Is in the Hands of the Worst Possible Judge
Republican Politicians Went Full Fascist This Week
*record scratch* FASHION
Yes I’m also talking about politicians’ clothes now. I must once again draw your attention to Arizona’s senior senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who thought it appropriate to wear this to meet with tribal leaders in Fort Apache. There are three photos on her Instagram:
I suppose it’s infinitesimally possible that the calf-length sweater was a gift from a Native constituent, but wherever it’s from, pairing it with a chunky turquoise necklace AND cowboy boots makes it feel borderline offensive. Kind of like her Senate career!
Palate cleanser
Bye!