Posted on 03/08/2006 1:08:13 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
When Lue Allen got pregnant in 1953, she was just 20 and not ready to be a parent.
"I was young," she said at a news conference this morning. "I was scared. I wanted one thing. I wanted an abortion."
Abortion was illegal at the time but Allen knew that if you could borrow $200 you could find somebody to do the procedure.
Allen did just that.
"It wasn't a back alley," she said. But it wasn't clean or safe either.
Allen said she felt a tremendous sense of relief from the abortion and went on to marry and have four children.
"All were welcome and all were wanted," she said.
Allen shared her experience at a news conference at the State Capitol where Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, and others unveiled a bill to repeal Wisconsin's 157-year-old criminal abortion ban.
"If you outlaw abortion you won't stop abortion," Allen said. "You'll just make it dangerous."
Berceau said her plan to start circulating the bill today coincides significantly with International Women's Day.
"Around the globe women continue to die from unsafe, illegal abortions," she said. It's a shame, she added, that politicians would rather women die than terminate a pregnancy.
South Dakota last week passed a law that bans virtually all abortions within its borders.
Dr. John Stevenson, who saw the harmful results of illegal abortions when he was a young medical resident at a Boston hospital, and Ann Peckham, a longtime Republican and abortion rights supporter, also spoke in favor of Berceau's bill.
Amanda Harrington, a rape victim, said she was grateful for the access to health services she had after surviving a violent sexual assault.
"Every choice made available to me proved invaluable to re-establishing the control over my life that I lost after my rape," Harrington said.
Berceau was also joined this morning by a number of her Assembly colleagues, including Monona Sen. Mark Miller and Madison Reps. Mark Pocan and Joe Parisi.
Wisconsin's ban was never removed from the books even when the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade rendered it unconstitutional.
Berceau and others are worried that a more conservative Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade. That would mean, under current Wisconsin law, that women and doctors could go to jail for performing or having an abortion.
Berceau said Wisconsin's ban is even more restrictive than the law recently passed in South Dakota.
Under Wisconsin's law, doctors who perform abortions could receive up to 15 years in prison and a $50,000 fine; women could go to jail for obtaining an abortion, even if they are rape victims or need an abortion to preserve their health.
Berceau acknowledged that her bill will not likely get far in the current Republican-controlled Legislature but said it might pick up momentum and be ready for the next session.
She said she knows there are Republican legislators who support abortion rights who are getting increasingly uncomfortable with continued attempts to restrict access to the procedure.
I wonder what her husband and children think about having their mother stand up in public and boast about having a premarital affair and aborting her baby before she got married and had a family.
Once abortion comes into the picture, the distortions and the perversions never end. If her family approves of her doing this, that's almost worse.
Not gonna touch this one, except to say I am not a conservative in all areas. 'nuff said.
Making 'em legal doesn't make 'em safe. In the USA, deaths from (legal) abortions are usually assigned other causes in order to conceal the causative link. You have to go elsewhere to get the figures that tell how dangerous abortion really is.
if you don't want to have a baby - don't make one.
When will get the story from an aborted partial birth fetus-about what is like for abortion to be legal?
Yes. Always an amazing argument: someone gets hurt in the commission of a felony and we're supposed to feel sorry for her. We don't feel sorry for robbers who accidently shoot themselves. Why are we supposed to feel sorry for women who choose illegal abortions who get hurt?
This woman was pregnant at 20 and "not ready to be a parent". Apparently she wasn't ready to use birth control or to abstain either.
I don't feel one bit sorry for her.
I know I risk getting lit up for saying this - but there is an element of truth to what this woman is saying.
If you ban it, some women will go to resort to using unqualified persons and unclean situations to have the procedure done.
Now, there's some out there that say "Well if this woman is immoral enough to have an abortion, then she's getting what she deserves if she gets sick or dies because of the procedure".
All in all, it's a bad situation either way.
There was another option in most communities. Back in my high school days, one of the doctors in my small town did a heckuva lot of D&Cs for "late or irregular periods."
Those were the words you had to use if you visited that doctor. If you mentioned the word "abortion," you were shown unceremoniously out of his office. However, if you complained of a "late period" or "irregular periods," he'd do a D&C right there in his office.
How do I know this? Because I knew several girls at my high school who had this procedure, and everyone knew the code words for it.
Doctors have done abortions for as long as there have been doctors. They didn't always call them that, but there was one doctor in most towns who took care of that sort of thing.
They can always take a trip to Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Connecticut....abortion won't be outlawed, it will be restricted.
What you say is true. I bounce back on forth on abortion. Sometimes I beleive if you are woman enough to make a baby, you ought to be woman enough to raise it. Then sometimes I believe that if you don't want your baby, you'll probably be a lousy parent anyway.
parsy, who can't decide for sure on this one.
You are correct it happened in the 60's and way before alot. That was the term because I heard my mother talk about it when was growing up. They used to call it D&C. That went on and it will still go on even if Abortion is outlawed.
And also, I think eventually the abortion pill (plan B) will render "abortions" far fewer.
The new twist this time around is the positive identification of the father through DNA. It's gonna get interesting...
As abortion-rights forces organized rallies against the bill Tuesday, they threatened a petition drive to refer the law, HB1215, to a statewide vote in the November election.
But it was still unclear who would coordinate the drive, or even if there would be one.
“Nobody has decided, from Planned Parenthood,” said Michelle Trupiano, a Planned Parenthood representative from Washington, D.C., who is working in Rapid City this week. “We’re trying to all get on the same page. To put it on the ballot actually takes a whole lot of money and a whole lot of resources.”
Political consultant Steve Hildebrand of Sioux Falls said Tuesday that a petition drive and campaign would easily require each side to spend millions of dollars.
Part of the expense would be necessary to counter large financial contributions from out-of-state forces supporting the anti-abortion movement in South Dakota, Hildebrand said.
... Hildebrand heads Common Sense South Dakota, a state political action committee formed to oppose candidates and legislation — including HB1215 — that its members consider to be wildly conservative. Hildebrand said he would support any referendum drive on HB1215 but didn’t plan on coordinating it.
She may have been young, but her baby was younger. I think she was more than young and scared. She was young and scared and ashamed and afraid of what people would say. I think she was unwilling to face up to the consequences of her actions. It was just so much easier to flush that child than deal with it all.
This woman is a gagger, omg.
The above taken from a Rapid City Journal article: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/03/08/news/top/news01.txt
Allen said she felt a tremendous sense of relief from the abortion and went on to marry and have four children.
"All were welcome and all were wanted," she said.
Not the one or more you killed before having them..
I wonder how relieved her living children are that mommy didn't have them killed.
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