Liberal feminists want paid leave for pregnant moms on bed rest but not prevention of need
On September 17, Amie Newman, managing editor of the pro-abortion site RH Reality Check, wrote a piece focusing on an underdiscussed pregnancy complication: bed rest.
Newman never went there, but I suspect her underlying interest in writing such a piece was to reinforce the pro-abort notion that pregnancy is problematic. On that note Newman did quote a source stating, “having a baby is currently a leading cause of ‘poverty spells’ in this country.'”
Newman’s solution was for the federal government to force employers to offer paid maternity leave. Currently the Family & Medical Leave Act mandates that companies with 50+ employees allow “12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year.”
Financial times in America being as they are, I pointed out in a comment that a better focus of Newman’s article would have been prevention.
In fact, preventing the need for bed rest while pregnant would be good in all regards, no? – not only for the pregnant mother but also her husband, children, employer, family, friends, neighbors, hospital, and most of all baby.
Newman listed 3 reasons pregnant mothers are placed on bed rest: “premature labor, premature rupture of membranes and elevated blood pressure.” Specifically, according to the Cleveland Clinic, these are the pregnancy complications that most often result in the recommendation of bed rest:
- Preeclampsia—a potentially dangerous condition that includes swelling, increased blood pressure, and protein in the urine
- Vaginal bleeding—may be due to placenta previa (low-lying placenta) or abruption placenta (premature separation of the placenta)
- Premature labor—labor that begins before the baby is considered full term
- Incompetent cervix—a weak cervix that may open prematurely
- Cervical effacement—thinning of the cervix
- Multiple pregnancy—carrying two or more babies
- Previous pregnancy complications—can include fetal loss, stillbirth, or premature birth
- Poor fetal development
- A test or procedure that indicates a medical complication]
I have highlighted the complications where abortion is implicated.
About premature labor/incompetent cervix/thinning cervix I linked in my comment to Amie the August American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists article citing abortion as a risk of preterm birth. That article cited a British Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists study concluding 1 induced abortion increases this risk by 36% and more than 1 increases the risk by 60-90%.
I wrote that aside from studies and statistics it is only logical to conclude forcibly dilating the cervix for an abortion may weaken it for the next go-around. It does not just snap back into place.
I commended Amie for her concern for low-income pregnant mothers who are put on bed rest, reminding her that according to Guttmacher a disproportionate number of poor women abort:
In addition, I wrote, a disproportionate number of African-American women experience preterm labor (2x whites) – because a disproportionate number of African-American women get abortions (5x whites).
Abortion and promiscuous sex are also implicated in the rising number of mothers pregnant with multiples, another reason for bed rest. This phenomenon is due to the increase in fertility treatments, which is often due to a history of STDs, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, and abortion. Ways to prevent these would be to practice abstinence/fidelity and avoid abortions.
I didn’t write this but found the risk of placental abruption increases 2x with a history of medical abortions.
I knew my comment would be unwelcome. They always are at RH. But I post for any with ears to hear. And I appreciate that despite our differences RH doesn’t censor me.
But anyway, despite the fact I was careful to substantiate my comments with links to sources pro-aborts would respect, next came this comment from Jodi Jacobson, RH’s editor-in-chief:
A note about Jill Stanek
Readers,
The Editors note that Ms. Stanek’s claims and her misuse of data are regularly contested and refuted by well-recognized medical and public health associations, experts in the field, individual clinicians, and research findings.
Just two examples here are her misuse and misrepresentation of data on the accessibility of reproductive health services in low-income areas, and associations between a past abortion and the need for bed rest for reasons she is attempting to present above. There is no valid relationship between having had an abortion and the risk of or need for bed rest in a subsequent pregnancy.
As I said, I expect these sorts of blow-offs from RH. But I still think it’s important that we engage. We can only pray that what we say sinks in with someone, even Amie and Jodi eventually.
[Top photo via Baby Zone]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Unlikely to sink in, I’m afraid.
I think that the psychological compulsion of the militant abortionist activist to support prenatal homicide is so overwhelming that they just probably cannot ever be reached through reason and evidence.
OBs know that abortion increases the risk of preterm labor. This is no secret, and it’s common sense.
The fact that they feel the need to cover it up is, as usual, a complete disservice to women. We do not help women by lying to them and by covering up the risks of abortion to their own well-being and that of their future children.
They live in a “consequence-free” fantasy land, where birth control never fails and if it does, they have a “consequence-free back-up plan” in abortion. Since their sex must continue to be wholly consequence-free and “libertine” -whoops, I mean “liberating,” it follows that anything resulting from that sex must also be consequence-free and pure as the driven snow.
Why, hormonal contraception itself is consequence-free, too. (No risks with the Pill, no sir; just ignore those warnings on the package insert, please…)
And with every abortion, you also get a free PONY and a TIARA!
Well, maybe not, but they sure make it seem like that sometimes.
I’m always happy to see someone engaging the pro-abortion-choice folks, but I’m not sure that this argument is a winner.
Let’s see:
Abortion can increase the risk of certain pregnancy complications.
Those complications can increase the chance of a pregnant woman being recommended to go on bed rest.
Feminists want to help pregnant women on bed rest.
Therefore, feminists should oppose abortion.
The logic chain seems pretty tenuous to me. Surely, there are many ways to support pregnant women. Paid maternity leave would certainly qualify as a support for pregnant women! (Until the Law of Unintended Consequences comes into play, and women can’t get hired anymore … but that’s another argument for another time.) Increased support for pregnancy resource centers would be another alternative. Opposing abortion as a means to help pregnant women seems like more of a logical stretch.
On the other hand, opposing abortion because it kills innocent human beings is a slam-dunk.
First of all note that Jill sources her comments but her critics do not. They just say she is wrong…no sourcing.
Next, yes Family Medical Leave Act talks of unpaid leave but most companies have short term disability leave that affords at least some pay. Bed rest during pregnancy qualifies as they are off work due to doctor’s statement. Maternity leave is now just called short term disability. They can also use vacation and PTO days to cover this. And in some occupations, you can work from home and in even bed with a laptop and phone. So Jill you could be on bed rest and blog.
Thank you for providing this forum for all women — and men. While I have always tended to support a woman’s right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy, it is unfortunate that the laws allowing this choice also allow for extreme carelessness by women who treat abortion as a routine procedure, and for the continuation of unbelievable practices such as live birth abortion.
Obviously it is preferable to avoid becoming pregnant at all if you do not have the intention or resources to care for a child, however no situation is the same as the next and many are far from ideal, including victims of rape, women too young and under-informed to keep from becoming pregnant, or even couples who have practised safe sex as closely as is possible but still become pregnant.
To my knowledge, I have never been pregnant, and I cannot genuinely imagine the emotional consequences of miscarriage or stillbirth — or abortion; I can believe that they are deep and enduring. While my current circumstances mean that I would be happy to become pregnant, there have been many preceding periods when it would have been disastrous, both for myself and the child, and for my family. Even now, the medication I take to control bipolar disorder means that a child conceived whilst those chemicals are in my system would be at extreme risk of spina bifida and other birth defects. We are very careful to not become pregnant, but if it happened, the decision of whether or not to continue the pregnancy would be excruciating. I realise that none of these reasons necessarily wholly justifies the termination of another life — that even if the scenario became worst-case, at least the child would experience life — but I do feel that the ramifications of continuing a life can sometimes be as difficult to reconcile as those of terminating one.
I believe that abortion should be legal, but avoiding abuse of that requires a level of moral judgment and personal insight that is perhaps more important to cultivate in young women than forcing them to choose a side in this debate.
These views are not intended to offend or be inflammatory — I am very interested in understanding all perspectives in this issue.
Welcome anonymous! Please choose a moniker as anonymous comments are not allowed.
Actually, Jill, they have censored you on their site. I saw last week that your comment had been deleted from the post where they made a bar graph for you.
Where is their data/proof that there is no valid relationship between having had an abortion and the risk of need for bedrest in a subsequent pregnancy? Hmmm??
Stanek & co:
Your argument should be compelling enough to include the whole picture. I see you haven’t mentioned obesity in your discussion about preterm birth, although it’s a known risk factor. Also, what about the epidemiology of obesity? Nearly 50% of black women in the United States are obese-to-morbidly obese. Surely weight can complicate pregnancy as much as you purport that abortion can?
Let me help:
http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life_style/nutrition/documents/iotf_en.pdf
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/5/1242S
Opposing abortion as a means to help pregnant women seems like more of a logical stretch.
On the other hand, opposing abortion because it kills innocent human beings is a slam-dunk.
(Naaman,September 20th, 2010 at 10:42 am)
While I do agree that opposing abortion because it kills innocent human beings is the main reason to oppose it (and would, in fact, be compelling all on its own even if there were no other reasons), I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to look at other negative effects abortion has, which are many. And given that some of those negative consequences are to increase the risk and difficulty of future pregnancies, I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to oppose abortion because it hurts pregnant women as a secondary (or tertiary, or quaternary, etc., etc.) reason. It is a more complex and difficult subject to canvas, though, and is probably not one that would be helpful in a debate.
Soooo typical of the pro-aborts. They always delete our comments cause they can’t handle the truth.
Bett, if abortion does not kill a human being then why can’t women treat it as a casual procedure? Why can’t they? If abortion makes you uncomfortable enough that you don’t want to see it be treated casually then maybe you shouldn’t be tolerating it as an option to some women.
Nagem/Megan
What does obesity have to do with the abortion risk factor??
That might be why it is not included??
I was working when I had 5 of my seven children. I never had a paid maternity leave, nor did I ever collect any short term disability. I always managed to pay my bills. Why do these feminists constantly want someone else to take care of them?
Kristen, so while you were off giving birth you never had any paid leave?? Typically companies treat the medical portion of the leave as paid short term disability with at least a partial pay.
Carla:
If you were to conduct a study analyzing all the different phenomena Jill listed, weight or BMI should be included as a potential confounder, since weight has a huge influence on pregnancy outcomes. By eliding discussion of obesity, Jill makes the immediate abortion–poor pregnancy outcome correlation even stronger, without consideration for factors that could actually be accounting for the pregnancy risk.
Jill wrote:
“In addition, I wrote, a disproportionate number of African-American women experience preterm labor (2x whites) – because a disproportionate number of African-American women get abortions”
…without considering that 50% of African American women are overweight. That’s an important factor she should have noted.
Newman should have attended to the causes of bed rest, but Stanek’s corrections are very incomplete, and continue to mislead people with low biomedical literacy/desire to read the science itself.
Susie,
No, I didn’t get any paid leave. I used my vacation time. I worked for small companies who let me take as much time as I needed, but there was no short term disability. My last company did start to give a 60% paid leave (for 8 weeks) after I had my 6th child but I left before my 7th was born.
The bosses were great but they had to hire a temp when I was gone, and that temp (or really the company that provided the temp) was paid more than I was. The company just could not afford to pay my leave. It wasn’t their decision for me to have a baby and they shouldn’t be required to pay my leave while I take care of him/her. It is great when companies do provide that benefit, but it is a burden for the small companies that employ so many of us.
PS. I should say that I never had to take leave for medically necessary bed rest.
Sydney – I don’t think it’s possible for me to have a fixed stance on what is a very murky debate, and I don’t claim to be “right”. I’m interested in trying to understand all possible perspectives, so thank you for this one. I support a woman’s right to have an abortion because, while I completely accept your argument, I also understand the factors that might contribute to a woman’s decision to abort. Is it unacceptable to be undecided on what is an extremely complex and variable issue? Major factors that often lead to abortion are fear, selfishness and irresponsibility — not admirable or defensible, but human. We all do things every day that are selfish and irresponsible and lead to the suffering or death of other humans, species and the planet overall, but because they are not direct, they are easier to dismiss. I am not excusing abortion, but we can’t blindly deny human weakness either. Women will have abortions whether they are legal or not. Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to go on so long…
Bett welcome. Always glad to have someone willing to have a respectful discourse on this blog. I hope and pray that what is posted here will fully open your eyes to the critical importance of the prolife message but even if you do not change your mind completely, I am so glad you are here. Thank you for the respectful tone.
Nagem,
So is it Nagem then, Megan??
You can email Jill directly and ask her why she posts what she posts whenever you would like. You know, it is her blog and all.
jillstanek@jillstanek.com
Bett September 20th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Major factors that often lead to abortion are fear, selfishness and irresponsibility — not admirable or defensible, but human. We all do things every day that are selfish and irresponsible and lead to the suffering or death of other humans, species and the planet overall, but because they are not direct, they are easier to dismiss. I am not excusing abortion, but we can’t blindly deny human weakness either. Women will have abortions whether they are legal or not.
Bett, you admit that abortion directly causes the death of another human being. Think about it this way: fear, selfishness, and irresponsibility are also factors when someone kills a newborn, a 20 yr old, or an 80 yr old – would this person not still be charged with murder? Does the fact that those reasons are ‘human’ prevent any of them from going to jail? If murdering someone outside the womb is illegal, why shouldn’t those inside the womb get the same treatment?
The abortion rates in this country skyrocketed after Roe v. Wade was decided, so one can reasonably assert that, if abortion became illegal, the rates would plummet. And really, when it comes to human lives, isn’t even saving most of them worth fighting for?
Ms. Stanek,
While I can appreciate your stance on abortion, I work with women who are on bed rest. Over the past year, I can honestly say that none of the women that I have worked with had had an abortion. The reason for their bed rest ranged from hyperemesis gravidarum to preterm labor with multiple gestation. There is also increased risk of pregnancy complications in older women having children and I see that being a risk factor for pregnancy complications requiring bed rest far more often than women having prior abortions.
For some women, their bodies are not well conditioned to manage pregnancy; be it due to rapid increase in weight, the increased strain on the vasculature leading to high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia or uterine problems (which was my issue, having had previous surgery for uterine fibroids). Yes, prior instrumentation due to abortion may in fact lead to preterm labor in subsequent pregnancies, but it has been my experience that pregnancy complications resulting in bed rest are not at all related to abortion.
As for the issue of paid maternity leave, I am a proponent. The United States says that it cares for its women and children yet we have the worst rates of infant and maternal mortality among the industrialized nations as well as among many “developing” nations. Providing paid maternity leave for a faithful, hard working employee is not too much to ask. We provide paid medical leave for bypasses, hip replacements and other medical problems, why not maternity leave? Current employee benefit packages are not reflective of the current employee culture. At one time, few women were in the workforce and once they started their families, they left the work force. This is not the case now, where women make up 50% or more of the work force. Given this dramatic shift, it only makes sense that work place practices reflect the current work force.
Darline,
I would just like to say your post was well written but I have to disagree with your support of businesses being required to pay maternity leave. It is simple too high a burden for many businesses.
My father owned a small business and was a great boss. In order to keep his insurance costs down he kept a $1000 deductible for his employees. The employee would pay the first $500 and he would pay the second $500. He had a total of 7 employees, each one had a total of 3 weeks vacation but he simply could not afford to pay maternity leave AND a temp to have his business run. We grew up very middle class and my parents only had one car through the 70s and 80s so while he provided a living for himself and his employees he was hardly making money hand over fist.
Carla,
With all due respect, I am very bothered by your need to point out Megan’s name change time and time again.
When Patricia changed her moniker to TooStunnedToLaugh, and then Angel, no one mentioned it. Her desire to not post by her given name was respected. Why do you feel the need to call out Megan, over and over again, for changing the name by which she posts here? It seems like a big double standard that the pro-lifer’s privacy is respected while the pro-choice poster’s previous identity is revealed, over and over again, by a moderator.
len,
I wasn’t aware that you were posting here then. That’s interesting…
Point #1, we weren’t aware of the moniker change. Point #2: The case you bring up was over a year ago. Your rehashing it causes me to think perhaps you aren’t who you say you are. One person and one person ONLY had issue with P’s name change, and stalked her on EVERY THREAD, even continuing to post after being banned. Repeatedly. Point #3: Changing a moniker is fine if you want to be known by a different name AND you let people KNOW you’re changing it, but changing it and pretending to be a wholly different individual is another. I am not aware of any pro-lifers currently doing any such thing. We have an open forum here, unlike most other sites (ex: RH Reality Check, who disallows almost every comment by the opposing view). It’s a matter of integrity, and frankly, those who post under multiple monikers are being dishonest with everyone. End of discussion.
Oh, hello. My name change resulted from a day-long inability to post. Hmmm.
Remembers, I’m at a university, and I have looots of computers and addresses at my disposal…
1. I wasn’t posting here then. Only reading, or lurking if you will. I don’t post on websites often, but I read several frequently. Why is this so interesting to you?
2. I have no idea which moniker change you weren’t aware of.
3. A person had an issue with Patricia posting under a different name. Yes, I remember. It is why the incident is memorable. Carla seems to have an issue with Megan posting under a new name, as well.
4. I have in the past posted, and to be honest I am not sure if I used Len (a nickname in real life) or not, it was so long ago and only a few times. I am not trying to be dishonest or ruin the integrity of this blog. I was never a frequent poster, for sure. Are you accusing me of something I should be aware of?
5. It doesn’t look to me like Megan was trying to pretend to be a different person. Maybe just not wanting to use her real name, but making it obvious to “regulars” who she is? I mean, it’s not that hard to figure out.
1) Thanks for clarifying, len. Only interesting because you felt the need to bring it up.
2) Unaware of Patricia’s moniker change until all of the hubbub transpired.
3) Yes, and both were dishonest and will not be tolerated on this site, which is why we make it a point to call people out on it now when we learn of it.
4)If you weren’t a regular poster, then we wouldn’t have noticed, nor would we likely think it to be intentional. Thanks for your honesty. It’s important.
5)Megan chose not to respond when asked if it was her. That is being dishonest.
Megan, no clue why you would have trouble posting, other than the fact that many of us had the same issues due to the site switchover. Lots of wonky things happening, even now, unfortunately. No one banned you. We always notify people if they’ve been banned, and why. Are you able to use your original moniker and email now?
Remembers, I’m at a university, and I have looots of computers and addresses at my disposal…
This makes you sound more psycho than you realize.
Len,
Sorry, didn’t see your comments until today.
Kel,
Thank you for your explanations to Len. :)