Tuesday, February 11, 2014

NPR host shares the story of her almost fatal illegal abortion before Roe vs Wade rescued millions of women from a similar fate.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Dee Dee Bridgewater, an award-winning jazz singer who hosts a syndicated NPR show, is publicly sharing the story of having an illegal abortion. Bridgewater describes the harrowing experience in a new video for the Center for Reproductive Rights’ “Draw The Line” campaign, which is mobilizing Americans to fight back against the mounting attacks on abortion access. 

“I remember being very humiliated, to the point that today, I haven’t thought about this for years. Thinking about it makes me want to cry,” Bridgewater says about the illegal procedure she had in 1968, before Roe v. Wade guaranteed women’s right to choose. 

Bridgewater describes going to a hotel room to meet a friend of hers who was a nurse. Her friend inserted a rubber hose into her body and told her to leave it there for the next several days. Two days later, Bridewater started to hemorrhage and was rushed to an emergency room. 

“I just remember this excruciating pain,” she says. “I am appalled that they are trying to take away the rights we fought so hard for…I am saying to all women, stand up for your rights. You are the one who should decide what you will do with your body. To take away our reproductive choice can hurt you.”

You know that's part of the problem. Today's young women have no memory of experiences that were commonplace in the times of their mothers and grandmothers.

The farther we get away from those times the easier it is for the conservatives to pass legislation that  will help usher in a future just as humiliating and oppressive as the one so many decades past.

We need more women like Dee Dee Bridgewater to share their stories so that the young women of today can be educated as to what they are in danger of losing.

16 comments:

  1. Sally in MI4:12 AM

    I think the RW WANTS women to die. After all, we are sluts if we dare to want contraception. We are sluts if we get pregnant . We are killers if we get [regnant, something goes wrong, and we have to have the pregnancy aborted to save our lives. In the eyes of the white male RW, women are to be used as they please, and the woman suffers the consequences, just like before Roe. How they get any women to go along with this crap is beyond me. And of they were truly anti-abortion, they would be all for contraception and education, which is shown to lower abortion rates (of course..if the woman isn't pregnant, she doesn't even think about abortion...there we go again, FACTS.)
    But it isn't about bringing more kids into this overcrowded world...it is about control. Control those uppity women. Take away their choices. Make sure they never set foot in a university where they might use their brains and take away sonny's job. The GOP is sick. Just disgusting and sick.

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  2. Anonymous4:19 AM

    I remember hearing the statement "History repeats itself!" and think it so true in our day - abortion rights, racism and hate at the maximum! Sad, sad, sad!

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  3. Some women fell off ladders in order to end an unwanted pregnancy.

    In the case of my maternal grandmother, she simply killed the surplus girls after they were born (she had seven girls before she started doing that). They were desperately poor and needed the labor of boys. People gossiped, but no one took action. Years later, my cousins tried to lie about it, but Dad verified that the story was true.

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    1. Anonymous10:27 AM

      She had no control over the numerous pregnancies and that alone is totally sad since the GOP wants to ensure that lack of contraception is the rule of the day again. Damn those men to hell!

      Delete
  4. Anonymous5:07 AM

    When I was 8 years old my Mom got divorced and went to work full time at night, leaving me with a babysitter. One of them was 17 years old and a bit "wild" (she would have boys over, drink, smoke etc. right in front of me) Of course, I never "told" on her because she was "fun". I was 8 years old! One night after I went to bed (Mom worked 3rd shift, gone until morning) I went to bed and woke up to someone sobbing, crying then screaming. I walked down the hall to the bathroom and my sitter came out and tried to get me back to bed but I heard another scream, saw a lady I didn't know rush out the door and then got into the bathroom to see one of my sitter's friends laying in the tub with blood EVERYWHERE. They used my Mom's house as the "abortion" location, knowing they would have privacy for several hours. My 8 year old self turned into the adult in the room and called for help. (without my sitter knowing, she would have stopped me I am CERTAIN of that) This girl, who was 16 years old was taken to the emergency room for a botched illegal abortion and ended up losing her uterus. A few years later Roe vs Wade passed and I have always been a supporter of the right to choose. My Mom as well. We WILL see more illegal procedures if abortion is banned. It's something you never want to see, trust me on this.

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    1. You sound like a strong person. Good for you.

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    2. Anonymous1:52 PM

      Repealing Roe vs. Wade would not end abortions.

      It would just end SAFE abortions.

      But the right wing does not place any value on women's lives, so they're okay with that.

      Delete
  5. Randall5:39 AM

    Roe vs. Wade SAVED tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of lives.

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    1. In 1943 my aunt Margret died from a botched abortion. My father never spoke of his sister. Growing up I never knew she existed. I was about ten years old when I discovered her "funeral book" hidden in the floor joists of our house basement. When I presented this discovery to my dad, he explained his sister died of "appendicitis". There was always a shadow over aunt Margret's death. It took years to gather information from my fractured family to piece together the true cause of how my aunt died. Her death pretty much destroyed my dads family.
      To think as a society we could go back to those dark days of "back room abortions" sickens me.

      Delete
  6. Anonymous5:40 AM

    I was beyond blessed to have as my first ob-gyn an ancient Manhattan woman doctor who had, as a Jewish inmate, performed secret abortions on women who'd been raped by Nazis at Auschwitz.
    It ended up that I didn't need a procedure, but her matter-of-fact advice, in a sterile, medical setting, was my introduction to "illegal" abortions.
    She was a doctor, and passed no judgment. She was a caring, compassionate, skilled physician. She let me make the choice of what might need to be done.
    That was extraordinarily comforting for a twenty-year-old with a fractured family and nowhere else to turn.
    She prescribed birth control pills (a new invention!) and let me go on to live my life.
    I think, most often, about her fearlessness in the face of male-dominated laws.
    A woman lives in her own body; what she chooses to do to choose life -- possibly her own life -- is hers to make all on her own.

    Do Rand Paul and the other anti-abortionists draw no lines for abortion? Rape, rape as a tool of warfare worldwide? Horrifying violent incest?
    If God wanted that child, did he also want the rape? Does he forgive the child abuser but condemn the girl who he abused?

    The "pro-lifers" must answer what God's plan is, before they refuse a woman -- or a girl -- to bring into the world the product of violence and evil.

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    1. Anonymous6:16 AM

      NO! Anti-choicers/forced-birthers can worry about how to incorporate their idea of God's plan in their own lives. Our Constitution was exceptional primarily because it established a separation of church and state. Even if some new evidence was discovered that proved the existence of God beyond a shadow of a doubt, all should be free to live by their own conscience.

      And the cause of pregnancy doesn't matter. Even if the fetus is considered a 'person,' it's potential for life doesn't trump that of the pregnant woman.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:23 AM

      Exactly right, 6:16. This is about women having absolute control over their bodies and reproduction.

      Delete
  7. Anonymous6:26 AM

    It's all about control of women. Control their options. Have so many children they can't get a job because of the cost of child care. Keep women in their place , So they won't have to have as many jobs. Only jobs for men. Then the threat of taking away women's children, or having women die and the men trying to raise multiple children. The end game cheaper labor (child labor, corporations owning children). Women should be screaming, how they want every pregnancy to go forth,, but complain about the cost on their companies insurance. The hypocrites want no regulations for clean water or food for those children , or care about the birth or pregnancy problems this causes, or even if you can bath the children.

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  8. Rich, old men know best. That's why Jeebus put them in charge.

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  9. Anonymous10:11 AM

    I LOVE THIS! What a great thing to be doing for women. And BONUS for who's behind it!

    A UFO cult is behind Africa’s first clitoral restoration hospital in Burkina Faso, set to open in March, which will offer a controversial surgery to victims of female genital mutilation.

    The Raelian sect believes that humans were created by extra-terrestrials to experience joy. It promotes world peace, democracy — and sexual satisfaction.

    This mission has led them to actively campaign against female genital mutilation (FGM), and to back a clinic in San Francisco, offering a controversial reconstructive surgery for victims.

    Its surgeons claim they can restore sexual feeling and orgasms to victims, although the results remain contested by some doctors.

    Now the movement is bringing their work to Burkina Faso, with a new centre in the southern town of Bobo-Dioulasso due to open on March 7.

    The centre is called the Kamkazo, or “the house for women”, but is nicknamed “the Pleasure Hospital”.

    It has been built by Clitoraid, an NGO set up by Raelians to campaign for an end to FGM. It says it has financed the hospital with donations from private individuals. The total cost has not been revealed.

    “The idea comes from the Raelian movement, but they are not the financiers. Clitoraid is a non-profit association in which both Raelians and non-Raelians work,” Abibata Sanon, who is part of the project team, told AFP.

    Nadine Gary, communications director at Clitoraid, as well as being a Raelian and a surgeon at the San Francisco clinic, said the operations “will restore their dignity as women as well as their ability to experience physical pleasure, which was taken from them against their will.”

    The operations, which last about 45 minutes, will be free of charge.

    There are already 300 women on the waiting list, coming from Kenya, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast — “everywhere that female genital mutilation is practised,” Sanon said.

    The Raelian movement was founded in the 1970s by Claude Vorilhon following his “encounter” with extra-terrestrials.

    The movement found several followers in Canada, and made headlines in 2002 when it claimed to have cloned a human being.

    The World Health Organisation estimates that between 100 million and 140 million women have been victims of genital mutilation worldwide.

    It is most prevalent in northeast and west Africa, particularly “excision”, in which the clitoris and labia are removed.

    The number of victims has fallen in Burkina Faso since genital mutilation was banned in 1996, but a study in 2010 found that 58 percent are girls have suffered from the practice.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/10/hedonistic-ufo-cult-the-raelians-behind-africas-first-restoration-hospital/

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  10. Anita Winecooler4:55 PM

    Dee Dee's Story is everywoman's story for women of her age in pre Roe vs Wade America (and possibly the world, for that matter). I'm sure if all of us look far back enough in our ancestry, we're related to women who've had the same experience, or worse.
    I was fortunate to have a mother (Roman Catholic) who insisted on teaching me and my siblings the facts of life, the birds and bees, and even about human sexuality, menstruation, where babies come from and birth control. I received "Our Bodies, Our Selves", "everything you ever wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask" and other books and sources of information on sexuality and health.
    We desperately need these stories to be told and passed down. It took Dee Dee a long time to gain the courage and unburden herself of her secret.

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