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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Meera Shah
Read between
July 14 - September 13, 2022
Deep down, I believe that remaining silent about providing abortion care perpetuates the stereotype that abortion is unusual or deviant or that legitimate, skilled, intelligent doctors do not perform them.
This is so hard. There is judgement at every turn but I agree that it's something we should be talking about more.
Not understanding how common it is has contributed to the belief that it is shameful and rare.
Counseling should never be mandated with scripts; it’s unethical to provide patients with anything but the truth about their care, and counseling should be tailored to the needs of the individual patient. Unfortunately, this is not the case everywhere in the United States.
an abortion is safer than carrying a pregnancy to term.
because they’ve had multiple abortions, these doctors overly stress the use of contraception to avoid having another abortion.
seven out of ten Americans support abortion access in all or most cases.
state-mandated, factually inaccurate script that told patients that there might be a link between abortion and breast cancer. To be very clear, the facts are indisputable: according to the American Cancer Society, there is no scientific evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer or any other cancer,
The percentage of people who have changed their minds because of a waiting period is consistent with the number of people who change their minds when not faced with a waiting period.
South Dakota has a seventy-two hour wait period and has the additional caveat of excluding weekends and holidays from counting towards those seventy-two hours.
This is so utterly ridiculous to me. Business hours only for thinking about your reproductive rights.
The same number of states that require minors to have some form of parental involvement in their abortion don’t require parental involvement with prenatal care or childbirth
“I didn’t know I could go to the doctor without my mom. Nobody told me this.
This is a big thing in my practice.
Adam Styles liked this
The percentage of second trimester abortions had by adolescents increased in states such as Texas, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Missouri in part because adolescents suspect pregnancy later than adults and because mandatory consent laws delay access to abortion.
No state requires parental consent or notification for a minor to continue a pregnancy and become a parent.
What I most commonly see is patients expressing situational regret.
Huge point - situational regret is not the same as regret about the decision itself.
There is also evidence to show that people are more certain about their abortion than they are about any other medical procedure they may undergo.
in Arkansas, a bill was passed in 2017 that made it so the person who impregnated an individual had to give permission for that person to obtain an abortion.
But for too long, conservative Christians have owned the conversation around the intersection of abortion and faith.
“I have no guilt, I have no shame, but if I were to share this story publicly, it would take over my identity as a rabbi.
Sometimes we want to say more than we can say, and it's ok to feel like you're holding back.
Dr. Hern has been practicing for over forty years, behind bulletproof glass,
Yeesh.
Adam Styles liked this
“I should have held her.”
A crisis pregnancy center or pregnancy resource center is in fact a fake health center that attracts patients with their “free ultrasounds” and “pregnancy options counseling.”
Some states provide fake health centers with taxpayer dollars (approximately fourteen states currently).3
that the vacuum used during an abortion was one hundred times more powerful than a household vacuum, and that Sally’s relationship with her boyfriend would surely implode following the abortion.
Imagine telling this to a patient. Or a friend. Or anyone, when it's not true.
there are about four thousand fake health centers compared to the 780 real providers of abortion care.
However, in the 2018 case National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, the Supreme Court ruled that fake health centers in California do not have to disclose exactly what services they do or do not provide. In other words, they are now not required to tell people about state-offered services, including contraception and abortion. And they no longer have to disclose with appropriate signage that they are not a state-licensed facility.
I did wish she had had that choice for her, even if it would mean that I wouldn’t exist.”
People who want an abortion don’t actively seek out these fake health centers, and when they are tricked into going to one, the centers are rarely successful in persuading the person to continue the pregnancy.
The All-Options Talkline offers free peer counseling to callers from anywhere in the United States or Canada. Simply call 1-888-493-0092
