Women Sign "We Had Abortions" Petition (5k + names incl. some celebrities)

[truthpusher]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/03/D8KHAKIO0.html

Women Sign "We Had Abortions" Petition
Oct 03 2:21 PM US/Eastern

By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer

NEW YORK

At a pivotal time in the abortion debate, Ms. magazine is releasing its fall issue next week with a cover story titled "We Had Abortions," accompanied by the names of thousands of women nationwide who signed a petition making that declaration.

The publication coincides with what the abortion-rights movement considers a watershed moment for its cause. Abortion access in many states is being curtailed, activists are uncertain about the stance of the U.S. Supreme Court, and South Dakotans vote Nov. 7 on a measure that would ban virtually all abortions in their state, even in cases of rape and incest.

(snip)

Ms. executive editor Katherine Spillar said more than 5,000 women have signed the petition so far _ heeding its appeal to declare they are unashamed of the choice they made. The magazine itself had room for only 1,016 names, she said Tuesday, but all of them will be viewable online as Ms. encourages other women to continue adding their signatures.

Ms. says it will send the petition to Congress, the White House and state legislators.

The signatories include Ms. founder Gloria Steinem, comedian Carol Leifer, and actresses Kathy Najimy and Amy Brenneman, but most are not famous names.

Tyffine Jones, 27, of Jackson, Miss., said she had no hesitation about signing _ although she lives in a state where restrictions on abortion are tough and all but one abortion clinic has been closed.

(snip)

"The women thanked us for doing this," Smeal said. "They wanted to tell their stories."

link: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/03/D8KHAKIO0.html

[sinkingfeeling]

1. They called me last week to verify the use of my name.

[wicket]

2. A hug for you

:hug:

[peace13]

3. Peace to you

Thank you for your bravery. Kim

[truthpusher]

4. a hug and a smile from me too. n/t

[superconnected]

5. I think this is a phenomally bad idea. I don't trust that info in the RW

hands.

I don't trust our government with it.

I don't trust MEN with it.

[sinkingfeeling]

6. LOL. If that's all the RW has on me, they're not looking very hard!

[Taverner]

7. That was my thought too...

As I remember part of the Dominionist movement is to get records of those who have had abortions and have them tried and executed.

[Ian David]

8. 5,000 names to get extra security at airports now?

We all do things that are bound to get us on the Bush Regime's shit-list.

When they declared The Siera Club to be a terrorist organization, I joined it.

I don't trust them either... but I'll be damned if I'm going to sit down and shut-up.

[customerserviceguy]

9. I'm an infant adoptee

Do I get a petition to sign that says, "I escaped being aborted"? I mean, freedom of speech should go both ways, shouldn't it?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. It's very likely some fundie group has already made something like that

Ask around in right-wing boards, they'll be happy to help you with this.

[customerserviceguy]

31. I don't hang with fundies

I just don't trust them. The biggest reason they oppose abortion is because they think pregnancy is a perfectly fine punishment for having sex. They also don't like my views on euthanasia much, either.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

11. Why not, if your mother chose to give birth to you, and wasn't forced

by someone telling her what to do with her body.

[Bunny]

12. Why don't you just go ahead and start your own petition?

:shrug:

[REP]

14. How Do You Know You Escaped?

Do you know that the woman who gave birth you ever planned to abort her pregnancy?

[customerserviceguy]

32. It wasn't legal back in those days

I'm 50, and it was in French Canada where the church and state are one (even more so than in Utah), so I can't even unlock my adoption records to have asked her.

All I know is that every time my birthday comes along, my still-Catholic adoptive mother (I left that church many decades ago) says a prayer for her...

[REP]

38. So, How Exactly Did You "Escape"?

You mother did not have access to a legal abortion, which is not to say that she would have chosen one if it were available. She may have been Catholic herself and opposed to abortion. Just because she relinquished her newborn doesn't mean she wanted an abortion; she just didn't want to (or couldn't) keep the child. Entirely different things.

[Susang]

15. Is someone stopping you?

All I see is this adminstration helping anti-choice people such as yourself. :shrug:

[customerserviceguy]

33. You're wrong

I'm anti-abortion (I despise the term "pro-life") but I am pro-choice. I just believe that the choices need to be made before we hit the sheets with Mr. or Ms. Wonderful.

By the way, I'm not opposing the Ms. petition, I just feel that all sides of the story are valid.

[REP]

37. My Choice Is: If I Get Pregnant, I'll Have An Abortion

It may not have occurred to you that many women, including me, have thought this through long before "we hit the sheets." If my birth control fails, I wil abort.

The other side of your story is that at the time, abortion was illegal and your mother (the woman who gave birth to you) either could not afford an illegal abortion or did not want one.

[stillcool]

16. I wasn't as fortunate...

I was a foster kid...so do I get a petition to sign that says..."I should have been aborted?"...and what's with the freedom of speech going both ways crap?..

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

17. It's the Evil Far Left. It oppresses Christians. -nt

[cap]

23. I can testify to that..

My mother was a foster kid during the Great Depression and had a child hood full of abuse and neglect.

It was the same sad story over and over again. Her mother couldnt support her. Pawtucket RI had 75% unemployment because the mills were shifted to the South to avoid high cost labor. Her father was blinded in an industrial accident and couldnt work because no one hired the blind. Her mom collapsed from hunger at work and lost her job. She went to the mental institution and the kids got sent to the state.

All you wonderful supporters for "escaping abortion" had the same tired old stance. Not one cent of social spending for the poor. Not one penny for meaningful job creation. Not one penny for training and enforcing the hiring of the handicapped. Not one peep out of anyone's mouth about hiring women at equal wages. Not one peep about having decent public mental health. Not one peep about adequate inspections for children in state care. Not one word about children working as slaves in other people's houses or performing unpaid labor in other people's businesses. There was a whole series in the Providence Journal about boys taken from the orphanages in the spring, kept like animals in barns, worked 15 hour days on farms, and then returned to the orphange in the fall after the harvest.

My tee-shirt for my family would read: "We escaped Republican greed and hard heartedness".

[customerserviceguy]

35. My, you've assumed a lot

I'm sorry that your mother had a hard life during the Depression. Of course, if she had been aborted, you wouldn't be here. Or, if you feel that your "spirit" would have just come down in a different body, then you wouldn't have the values she gave to you.

You've made a LOT of assumptions about my stance towards poor people and job creation. Same about my support of mental health and child welfare.

I've never had anyone come right up to me and state (after they knew I was adopted) that they wish I had been aborted, I guess I had to come here to Democratic Underground to find that.

[Samurai_Writer]

18. Just because you're an adoptee doesn't mean your mother wanted an abortion

My oldest son was surrendered to adoption as a newborn. It was 1978, and I had more than one chance to get an abortion. I didn't, and many women CHOOSE not have abortions, even if that means surrendering a child for adoption.

Even before abortion was made legal, many women had chances to get illegal abortions, and many did. Maybe you weren't aborted for the reason most of us weren't -- because our mothers chose to give birth to us?

[Lars39]

21. *Your* mother made her decision.

Other women will make their own decision.

[Der Blaue Engel]

22. You write pretty well for an infant

:eyes:

How exactly did you "escape" being aborted any more than any other human being on the planet? Last time I checked, I wasn't aborted either.

Maybe you could start a petition about how many sperm you've wasted. :boring:

[KAZ]

24. You've got close to a dozen replies.

So what say you?

[Lexingtonian]

28. maybe you could start one yourself!

Personally, I suggest the headline to be "My mother loved me enough to bear me, but I'm still a grudge-filled moron about life being imperfect for me me me me me me me."

Actually, there is a post over on DKos in which a person was in the anti-choice movement for a while and found it full of people who believed their mothers hated them enough that they would (or should) have been aborted. My only R friend is an anti-choicer and adoptee with exactly the vanity-driven, faux paranoid mental short-circuiting that you're giving us. No one has a right to have been conceived, no one has a right to have been born.

[readmoreoften]

34. I don't think you'd notice if you had been aborted.

Just like I wouldn't have noticed if my father climaxed 3 seconds earlier and a different sperm penetrated my mother's egg. Or if my mother had a miscarriage. Birth is a fluke. Get over yourself.

[supernova]

13. This is a wonderful idea

and many thanks to those women who have had the courage to sign this petition. :thumbsup:

Here's my thinking: We have always said the the right to an abortion is a privacy right. Fair enough. And I agree with this line of reasoning. But maybe, just maybe over the years we have done ourselves a disservice by not speaking out. Everyday women, famous women, all kinds of women saying that "Yes, we have had abortions... for reasons that were appropriate for us at the time." That way, it's harder for the hardline prolifers to be so prolife, if their sister, their mother, their best friend who lives across the way, all stand up and said, "Yes, I had an abortion."

It's not so easy to dismiss when it's a person you care about, versus just some abstract word that you don't like and have no intention of understanding.

edit: "no" not "know" Ugh. I'm glad it's the end of the day.

[Megahurtz]

19. The WingNuts will just have a Conniption over this one!

:rofl:

[HockeyMom]

20. I don't know how many "abortions" I had

Life from CONCEPTION on. According to the Fundies today, I may have "killed" hundreds of fertilized eggs with the "abortifacient birth control pills" over 15 years. You know what? I don't CARE. Neither does my husband. The two children we have were planned, wanted, and loved. We are not animals slave to our reproductive instincts. We are human beings with BRAINS. Use them, or lose them --in more ways than one.

[rodeodance]

25. We seldom know what we have till we lose it.

[rodeodance]

26. Needs one more RECOMMENDATION -for the brave women.

[kath]

27. Reminds me of the book "The Choices We Made:Twenty-five Women and Men

Speak Out About Abortion"

http://www.4w8w.com/bookbona1.html

Includes accounts by Anne Archer, Polly Bergen, Jill Clayburgh, Linda Ellerbee, Whoopi Goldberg, Elizabeth Janeway, Margot Kidder, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rita Moreno, Kathy Nijimy, Grace Paley, and Nora Sayre, among others


An important book.

[NanceGreggs]

29. Thanks for posting this ...

... After reading this post a few minutes ago, I went over to the MS website and signed on. Yes, I had an abortion -- and yes, your damned real you can use my name!

Thanks again for the head's-up!

[xxqqqzme]

39. Thanks for the incentive

I just went over & signed as well. I am thankful there was a choice when I needed to make one.

[NanceGreggs]

40. Me, too!

Here's to ALL women being able to make that choice should they need to!

:toast:

[xxqqqzme]

42. back atcha

:hug:

[brentspeak]

30. There are some real psychos out there who would consider

these women to be "baby murderers". I understand where the signees are coming from, but I'm not so sure it's a smart idea.

[LetsThink]

36. A Matter for the Individual Heart...........

....NOT a matter for politicians to legislate ! How can anyone make a decision like that for another person?

[Control-Z]

41. I don't like to air my dirty laundry.

Did you hear what I just said? Just saying the word abortion is like airing dirty laundry these days. That is what we have to change. The idea that abortion is dirty or wrong.

If we do not find a way to talk about this most important subject without shame and without fear of persecution or retribution we are going to lose this war on women.

If we lose this war on women we will have to go back and start over. We will have to fight the same battles our mother's fought - our daughter's and granddaughter's will die the same deaths. Lives will be destroyed... Not what I had hoped for my children.



Kick, kick , kick and recommend.