{"id":235326,"date":"2020-11-29T15:40:17","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T21:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=235326"},"modified":"2020-11-29T17:32:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T23:32:43","slug":"activists-volunteer-willingness-risk-womans-ilfe-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/activists-volunteer-willingness-risk-womans-ilfe-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Activists hail volunteer’s willingness to risk a woman’s life to get her an abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A recent talk called “Abortion Rights 2020 and Beyond: Threats and Resistance”<\/a> hosted by University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Right Wing Studies included a presentation by Carole Joffe<\/a>, a pro-abortion sociologist and professor at Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health – ANSIRH<\/a>) at the University of California-San Francisco. In the event, Joffe recounted one story of an abortion facility volunteer named Pat, whose specific task was to assist women in obtaining transportation to and from their abortion appointments. In the process, Pat was willing to risk the life of a woman to make sure she obtained an abortion. Joffe said:<\/p>\n

Pat received a call from Keisha, an African American woman of about 30 with two children. By the time she reached out to Pat, Keisha believed she was 20 weeks pregnant, as her history of irregular periods delayed her discovery of the pregnancy. Working with a caseworker at a national organization, Pat was able to arrange funding for Keisha\u2019s procedure and agreed to pick her up and drive her to her appointment and then return to her home afterwards. Since Keisha was scheduled for a two-day procedure and lived over an hour from the clinic, Pat also arranged a hotel room for her.<\/em><\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Facility owner refused to fire abortionists who risked women\u2019s lives<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Joffe made clear that she believed Pat’s actions were altruistic, with no mention of the significantly increased rate of morbidity and mortality<\/a> for women undergoing gruesome<\/a>\u00a0second trimester abortions<\/a>. The risk of death following a second trimester abortion<\/a> is reportedly\u00a020 times higher<\/a> than after a first trimester abortion. While second trimester abortions<\/a> comprise a minority of all abortions \u2014 somewhere between 10 and 15%<\/a>, as stated by one study\u00a0\u2014\u00a0they account for roughly 2\/3 of all serious abortion complications (Hammond and Chasen, 179). The dramatic rise in complications following second trimester dilation and extraction (D&E) abortions<\/a> is related to both the need for adequate cervical dilation before the abortion and the cervix’s natural resistance to the abortionist’s interventions to produce that dilation. Simply put, a woman’s body isn’t meant to dilate in the second trimester, and forcing that process to happen, combined with the increased blood flow to the uterus at that gestational age, places her at risk for serious complications like uterine perforation, hemorrhage, and cervical injury impacting her ability to successfully maintain future pregnancies.<\/p>\n