(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . All Messaging about Abortion Must Include Miscarriages + Other Risky Pregnancy Complications [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-23 Folks, many in the mainstream media keep missing easy opportunities to frame the abortion argument to include miscarriage and other life threatening pregnancy complications. It’s a cold, hollow relief that the 6-3 super conservative Supreme Court has temporarily stayed the nationwide banning and criminalization of the drug Mifepristone. For over twenty years Mifepristone, in addition to safely and effectively treating ulcers, Cushing's Syndrome and uterine leiomyomas, has been commonly used to induce first-trimester abortions (when the vast majority of abortions occur) AND is also widely used to help women suffering a miscarriage (aka: a spontaneous or natural abortion). I keep seeing the newscasters and progressive voices on MSNBC forget to add the critical parts about miscarriages and pregnancy complications into the abortion conversation. I keep screaming at the TV as I watch the people they bring on their shows to discuss the alarming, dystopian news, about Mifepristone and other bans on abortion, like Florida’s six-week abortion ban, miss the opportunity to loop miscarriages and other dangerous pregnancy complications into the conversation. We all need to beat the damn drum every time we speak of abortion care to add miscarriages. Many of our fellow Americans, particularly Republicans, Independents, and the alarming number of disengaged non-voters, need to wake the hell up and realize this is as serious as it gets. This drug is used not just for “evil, demonic abortions” but it’s also for miscarriages*. You medically need this drug to make sure if you have a miscarriage, you don’t go septic and lose your fertility or even die. Statistically, one in four pregnancies (if not more) terminates naturally via miscarriage. These include both planned and unplanned, wanted and unwanted pregnancies. If all pregnancy tissue doesn’t clear your uterus, it can quickly get infected, go septic, and destroy your uterus rendering you infertile, or it can kill you. This can happen to any women, regardless of her political affiliation and regardless if she desperately wanted a baby or was relieved the miscarriage occurred. There are a wide range of other complications that can happen to any pregnancy. Many people, particularly men, are grossly unaware of the risks women take to have children. Even with the very best medical care legally and readily available, pregnancy complications are more common than people realize and can become very dangerous very quickly. This danger applies to all women who get pregnant. Even married Christian Republican women growing her family “as God commands” with zero birth control, popping out babies yearly like cattle, she too is now at grave risk. Even for a good Christian wife who prays hourly, things can go wrong, pregnancy complications happen, and like most Republicans, they don’t care about bad things happening to other people, but they do begin to care when it personally happens to them. We must leverage their selfish, selective caring when they realize they will be impacted. We and the media must do better to remind everyone that these extreme, radical laws put Republicans and their wives’ lives in danger too. These sweeping laws don’t just target inner city women of color “who use abortion as birth control” as they claim, but this effects white Christian Republicans too. And no, not every Republican is rich enough, has the resources to get to NY or CA to secure an abortion for their miscarriage that’s going septic. We must repeat like a broken record, that these draconian abortion bans apply to anyone who gets pregnant and applies to miscarriages too. These laws have gone way to far. They are a danger to living in a free society. Hopefully it will help unite and mobilize people for the Democrats. How anyone is still a Republican or a non-voter is beyond my comprehension. As an American how can Republicans be doing this? I don’t get it. We must loop in miscarriages + pregnancy complications into every conversation about abortion. As we engage this fight for our lives, for our rights over our own bodies, for freedom of our society, we need to speak more to the abortion/miscarriage issues as one issue. Say the word “miscarriage” to sound the alarms for people who otherwise think this issue won’t impact them. It does impact them. We are all in danger. We need to move the needle and use every tool we can. * “Miscarriage” is also an abortion and is most accurately called a spontaneous abortion. Miscarriage is a more common, neutral, “non-offensive” and “less triggering” word than abortion, that a wide majority see as appropriate to provide all medical care needed upon having a miscarriage. If you don’t the mother goes septic and could die. Most Republicans don’t want to take medical care away for miscarriages as they can see themselves potentially needing that care so we must leverage that language to get them to wake up. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/23/2165451/-All-Messaging-about-Abortion-Must-Include-Miscarriages-Other-Risky-Pregnancy-Complications Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/