Abortion, Miscarriage, Birth: Don't Be Confused

"Abortion" is a word used to indicate the expulsion or removal of the contents of the uterus in early pregnancy. Historically, "spontaneous abortion" was the term used when this happened naturally or due to a medical condition, and "induced abortion" referred to performing an abortion intentionally. At some time during the 20th century, it became customary to call a spontaneous abortion a miscarriage, and to refer to an induced abortion simply as an abortion. No matter what terminology is used, this is a situation in which a pregnancy ends without a birth.

Birth is the process by which an infant is expelled from the uterus. This may occur when a pregnant woman undergoes "labor", a series of contractions that enable her to push the infant out. It may also occur surgically, in a process called "Caesarian section", typically shortened to "C-section", during which the surgeon cuts open the uterus and extracts the infant. In some cases, doctors may determine that it is necessary to induce labor medically rather than wait for it to occur naturally. Once a birth occurs, the pregnancy is over.

In recent times, some people have invented the term "post birth abortion" to refer to something that is physically impossible. Abortion ends a pregnancy, as does birth. Once a pregnancy has ended, there cannot be an abortion, just as there cannot be an additional birth.

A typical pregnancy is expected to last about 280 days (40 weeks). An infant born at 39-40 weeks is "full term". An infant born earlier than 37 weeks is considered "premature" or "preterm". Babies born very prematurely are likely to have health problems. The earlier the birth, the greater the risk of severe problems or death. At 28 weeks, a birth is extremely preterm. Successful birth before 28 weeks is not viable; this will be considered a miscarriage.

We now know that more than 30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, most so early that the woman may not even realize she was pregnant. In some cases of miscarriage, the contents of the uterus are not fully expelled. To avoid infection or other health risks, medical treatment is needed to remove all the tissue. This may involved a procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and extraction (D&E). Sometimes medication is used. Occasionally, some people get confused and think that the treatment following a miscarriage is the same as an abortion. It is not. A miscarriage ends the pregnancy; at that point an abortion is impossible.

Click this link to see the March of Dimes explanation of miscarriage.

Click this link to see the Britannica explanation of birth.

Click this link to see an NIH discussion of termnology.

 

Blah blah blah

Some people wonder why trump's followers accept his incoherent, nonsensical speeches. It's because they can't distinguish between intelligent speech and the ravings of a lunatic.

Perhaps you've had the experience of trying to explain something of moderate complexity to a person like that. They tend to just stare dully or else they snap, "Speak English!" because they don't know the words you are using. To them, complex sentences and words of three or more syllables are impossible to understand. So they don't expect to be able to make sense of a leader's speeches.

When trump's speeches veer off into word salad, they can't tell the difference, since, for them, most English discourse is like a secret code. All he has to do is use occasional baby talk, make smug faces, and throw in a few buzzwords -- border, babies, Christian, communists, Democrats, unfair, veterans -- and they think he's on their side. They really can't tell when he is incoherent. And even when he speaks in complete sentences that follow each other, they don't notice how ridiculous his claims are, because they lack critical thinking skills and don't have the broader knowledge needed to evaluate such statements.

 

America is Already Great

Whenever I walk around in an American supermarket, I am nearly overwhelmed by the abundance. I can choose from a truly amazing selection of fruit and vegetables, meats, canned goods of every kind, snacks and treats. Thanks to refrigeration and modern transportation, I have access to products from all over the country, and all over the world. Look how many varieties of milk there are! Try to count all the flavors of yogurt! The breakfast cereal aisle is astonishing. And there is a special deli section where salads, main dishes, and casseroles have been prepared for people to take home. There are beautiful pastries and fancy cakes in the bakery. There are also departments for housewares, beauty products, health supplies, and more. How lucky we are! ^@realrkwest
 

It Will Happen to You

Maybe you don't care if Republicans pass laws that let county clerks refuse marriage licenses to gay couples, because you're not gay, don't know many gay people, and tend to think being gay is kind of icky. And maybe you won't care when they decide to extend refusal to interracial couples, because you're a little more comfortable when people "stick with their own kind." But eventually, it will reach you or someone you actually care about.

They could decide to refuse marriage to couples of different religious backgrounds. Or they might decide you can't remarry if your first spouse is still alive. Remember, they won't actually pass a law that says adulterers can't marry their mistresses or that infertile women can't marry. They'll leave it up to the "conscience" and "sincere beliefs" of the county clerk, who attends a church you've never heard of but nevertheless gets to tell you their church controls your life.

And maybe you really don't care if a restaurant refuses to serve Black people, because you're not Black, and you'd rather just be around people who look like you.

Sooner or later, there will be something about you that someone else doesn't like, and you'll be the one who can't shop, can't eat out, can't get married, can't rent an apartment, can't get a good job, can't live a full life being respected as a human being. Be ready to comply.

 

I've Looked At Arsenic From Both Sides Now

Imagine there are two or three people who, for unknown reasons, think arsenic is good food for babies. In the meantime, there are at least 99,763 chemists, 1,567,984 doctors, 258,000 professors of chemistry, and 701,422 nutritionists who know that arsenic is poisonous. The pro-arsenic guys are very busy, writing letters, making podcasts, self-publishing books, and posting all over social media about how great arsenic is. They manage to convince another eight people to join them. One works in a health food store.

The online arguments get the attention of a news network, which decides to explore "both sides of the arsenic issue". Out of the roughly 2,628,169 experts who know that arsenic is poison, they invite one doctor, and out of the twelve arsenic lovers, they invite the store clerk. The interview with these two makes it look as though the pro-arsenic and anti-arsenic groups are equal.

After a few of these interviews, more viewers start to think that maybe arsenic isn't so bad after all. Conspiracy theories arise, claiming that "they" don't want you to have access to healthy, clean arsenic because "it's all about control." More people become convinced, and even a few of the anti-arsenic experts (who are disgruntled because they couldn't get tenure) change sides.

The controversy heats up on social media, fueled by people who claim their children died or suffered permanent brain damage because they were denied access to arsenic. When shown evidence that arsenic sickens and kills, they call it fake news and come up with documents purporting to show that anti-arsenic studies were falsified. One of their doctors writes a book claiming that pharmaceutical companies want to suppress arsenic because it's a natural substance and not profitable.

By now, hospitalizations for arsenic poisoning have tripled. The pro-arsenic faction claims the statistics have been manipulated; all those people got sick or died for other reasons. Many people are afraid to go to Thanksgiving dinner because they suspect Grandma will slip some arsenic into the turkey. Others refuse to attend because their hosts have declared the kitchen an arsenic-free zone. A few mass poisonings occur at church picnics and political rallies. The people most likely to succumb to arsenic poisoning are the elderly, infants, and people with pre-existing conditions. The arsenic lovers say those people were weak and would have died anyway. Portable arsenic test kits become popular. Restaurants lose business. Politicians claim that immigrants are bringing arsenic across the border. China is blamed.

The news media continue both-sidesing the issue.

 

Work Until You Die?

Think about the people who want to raise the retirement age. What kind of jobs do they have? Most have what I call think-talk jobs, jobs that require very little physical exertion, but rely on talking about situations, thinking about problems, attending meetings, applying learned information to situations, reading documents, occasionally writing documents, expressing opinions.

These think-talk jobs are held by Congresspeople, business executives, bankers, some TV personalities, and others whose work is mostly not physical. As long as people retain their mental faculties (and sometimes even when they don't), they can continue doing this kind of work well into old age. People with this kind of work often consider it a big part of their personal identity, and are therefore not interested in retiring. All or most of the people they know do the same kind of work; their contact with other kinds of workers tends to be superficial. It is easy for them to imagine a world in which no one retires before age 80, and maybe not even then.

Compare them to people who have body-using jobs: Construction workers, gardeners, janitors, garbage collectors, farmers, warehouse workers, food servers, and many others. Some jobs that may not look physically demanding really are, because they require the worker to stand for hours. Think of grocery cashiers, hairdressers, department store clerks, and others who are on their feet all day.

People lose strength and stamina as they age. A person at 65, even if healthy, is not as strong as they were at 45. Physically demanding jobs can be hard on the body over time and are often not practical for older people. Yet the people with think-talk jobs often fail to understand the challenges of body-using jobs. A lot of these people ignore the fact that older people are often let go by their employers, sometimes because they are at a higher pay grade, sometimes because they are physically outperformed by younger workers. It is very difficult for people over 50 to get hired anywhere (although it sometimes happens), and it is a rare employer indeed who wants to hire someone over 65.

If we imagine that every person who reaches age 65 has the option of keeping their current job or getting a new one, we are kidding ourselves. Besides, having 75-year-olds on the roof laying shingles or operating a steam press all day doesn't seem like a good idea. Who would feel good about making a great-grandmother clean public restrooms until the day she drops dead from exhaustion? People who have paid into Social Security or some other retirement plan for decades deserve the chance to finally relax and get what they paid for.

 

Other People's Problems

The worst problem you have is the worst problem you have.

If someone is crying over a hangnail, it is easy to say their problem is meaningless when compared to the guy whose arm was blown off. At the same time, it is not right to get into the habit of dismissing and invalidating other people's experiences or demanding that they can't have a feeling or a reaction to something unless it meets certain standards.

There are people who think it is silly to grieve the death of a pet, because it is not a human being. There are people whose first reaction to anything someone else worries or complains about is to sneer at "first world problems". Some people seem to think that if they don't know anyone with a particular problem, that problem doesn't really exist. And there are those who minimize everything that happens to others because "it could have been worse". Imagining a worse scenario doesn't magically make this one acceptable.

If there were a truly objective scale for measuring tragedy, it might show that the worst thing that ever happened to my neighbor isn't nearly as bad as the thing that happened to me. But it is still the worst thing that ever happened to him, and he has the right to see it that way. His experience is just as real as mine.

 

They Want it All, And They'll Take it From You

The oligarchs have more wealth than they can possibly use, and even if they never made another dime, they, their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren would still be incomprehensibly wealthy.

They can have anything they want or need: Big houses, big vacation houses, spare apartments in cities around the world, nice cars, designer clothes, the best food cooked by private chefs, whatever medical care they need at top hospitals with famous doctors, multiple yachts, private hunting ranches, hairdressers who travel with them on their private jets, secret bunkers (underground mansions) in case of nuclear war, their own private security force, private schools and top-notch universities for their kids, lawyers on retainer, ownership of TV stations, newspapers, and tech companies, and the hired help needed to acquire and maintain all their possessions. In summary, they have everything. ^@themrswest

Yet, somehow, that isn't enough. Not only do they constantly want more, they want to make sure that everyone else has nothing. They crave a world where they have absolutely everything, whether they need it or not: All the power, all the means of production, all the necessities, all the luxuries. And they want that world to be populated by impoverished serfs who have nothing and live short lives of sickness and pain. Why? I truly don't know why. It's very hard to get into a mindset where other people's misery is perceived as making your life better. But there it is.

Link: The Koch brothers' political activism and its damage to America - "The Kochs' Ayn Rand–inspired hellscape has yet to completely come to fruition, but the ideas the duo promoted are now part of the regular discourse—and have been for a while."

Link: While the Planet Burns: Billionaires Are Busy Hunkering Down for the Apocalypse - "Many of the wealthiest people in the world have decided that Earth is a Titanic heading for an iceberg. As a result, they have decided to create luxury lifeboats for themselves."

Link: The Koch Brothers Are Even Worse Than You Think - "Koch was found guilty of criminal conduct in many cases.... The workplace is becoming more dangerous under this constant pressure to produce profits."

Link: Robbing the poor to pay the rich - "Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is increasingly popular as we leave the 20th century, especially in this country"

 

Rallies

There are people who think that holding rallies with enthusiastic crowds somehow proves that a candidate is great in some way. Yet we know that evil dictators throughout history have had big rallies. All kinds of charlatans, crooks, fraudsters, and destroyers started with rallies, tent meetings, well-attended lectures, and parades. It is obvious to mention Mussolini and Hitler, or even Jim Jones, well-known examples of people who used rallies and mass meetings to lure followers into belief systems that would prove disastrous.

A hundred years ago, Benito Mussolini used to travel across Italy, holding huge rallies for fans of his Fascist Party. In October 1922, speaking to a crowd of around 40,000, he urged his followers to march on Rome. Fascist militias began driving toward the capital.

Elected officials wanted to declare a state of emergency and defend the city. The poorly-trained militias probably would have lost any battle with the military, but the King refused to declare martial law. Government officials resigned in protest. The King decided to accept the Fascists, and made Mussolini prime minister.

Mussolini soon became a total dictator, rescinding civil rights, replacing the press with propaganda, and invading Corfu and Ethiopia. Mussolini's career inspired Adolf Hitler, and eventually Italy was aligned with Nazi Germany in World War II. At least 8,500 Italians were murdered in the Holocaust. ^@realrkwest

In 1943, the King, who had had enough, convinced Mussolini's close associates to turn against him, and he was arrested. He escaped and attempted to set up a new government, but in 1945 he realized that defeat was near, and tried to flee the country. He was recognized and shot. A crowd mutilated his corpse and hung it up in the public square. It was eventually buried in an unmarked grave.

 

Do We Need a Dictator to Just Step in and Fix Things?

Dictatorship does not lead to prosperity for the average citizen.

For example, under Mussolini (Italy 1925 - 1945), both imports and exports decreased, and unemployment increased.

Mussolini established bureaucracies and appointed many officials, but very little was ever accomplished. He was mostly concerned with making sure the newspapers reported what he wanted them to say. There were food shortages throughout the country. The national debt skyrocketed. Mussolini's spending on infrastructure and public works was extravagant. Banks and big corporations were given government support. Interest rates went up. In many cases, the rich got richer, but in the meantime, workers got poorer.

Italy was hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Eventually, the state took over ownership of the banks and most industries. Mussolini focused on increasing his own political power, rather than providing assistance to citizens.

Mussolini was eventually killed by an angry mob.

Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania 1967-1989) used a secret police force for mass surveillance and suppression of civil rights. He controlled the media.

In an attempt to increase the population, he outlawed all abortions and contraception. This led to the proliferation of overcrowded, dirty orphanages; many neglected and abused children from these institutions had lifelong physical and mental health problems. Thousands of women died from illegal abortions.

Ceaușescu's policy of moving from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy seemed successful at first, but led to unemployment, food shortages, and an energy crisis. Without electricity, people died of the cold in their homes. Prices were high while wages were low. Ceaușescu spent money on big projects and personal luxuries while citizens were freezing and starving.

When anti-government protests began, he ordered the military to fire upon protesters, causing many injuries and deaths. Violent protests spread across the country, and the military defected. Ceaușescu and his wife tried to flee, but they were captured, tried, convicted, and executed. The country was left with a very weak economy that still has not recovered.

Under Hitler (Germany 1933-1945), hourly wages were very low, while most people worked more hours, creating the illusion that individual income had increased.

Germany increased military spending until it became the majority of the economy. Hitler believed that war was the best way for a country to make progress. Prisoners of war and inmates from concentration camps were used as slave labor to support corporations. By 1944, slave labor made up 1/4 of the work force. Even so, unemployment was low. The government used price controls to avoid inflation, and also introduced wage and rent controls.

The military buildup was financed largely through deficit spending. The national debt was enormous. Industries that had been state-owned were privatized, yet subjected to a great deal of government control. Business leaders were expected to fund the Nazi party, and in return, benefited from policies that froze wages and provided slave labor. Profits for big businesses increased, and tax policies were designed to benefit wealthy people. Real wages decreased substantially. Workers could not strike, and could not change jobs without the current employer's consent.

During World War II, imports were harder to get. Rationing was implemented. The government took the property of wealthy Jews and plundered whatever it could in the countries it invaded. Wartime destruction and the British blockade led to the collapse of supply chains. People in occupied territories were used as slave labor, and their children were killed. As the war progressed, Allied bombs destroyed factories and cities. There were catastrophic food and fuel shortages. As defeat loomed, Hitler committed suicide.

Is Miscarriage a Crime?

We know that many pregnancies end naturally in spontaneous abortion, aka miscarriage, before the pregnancy is known or even suspected. A typical scenario: Your period is a week or two late (if you are normally irregular, you probably won't notice). Then when it finally comes, it may seem a little heavier than usual. The blood that is discharged will be disposed of on a tampon or pad. Even if you suspect this was a miscarriage (most women don't), you will likely not consider having a funeral for your tampon.

In another common scenario, you realize you are pregnant, and may have already received prenatal care. Then one day, you experience cramps, bleeding, and an urge to push (similar in feeling to a difficult bowel movement). Most women go into the bathroom at this point, where they are likely to bleed onto the floor, in the bathtub, or into the toilet. A few will save the bloody mess to be analyzed by a medical lab, but most will just clean it up, washing everything down the drain or flushing it down the toilet. In some cases, it may be necessary to have a "D&C" procedure to remove tissue that was not expelled. The flushed or removed material is not perceived as a "body" or a "corpse".

Many Republicans now want to arrest women for doing the normal thing during and after a miscarriage. Simply seeking medical help during a miscarriage is often viewed with suspicion, or treated as a potential crime. Medical providers report being afraid to treat women undergoing miscarriage, because state laws will lead to accusations of performing an illegal abortion.

• This woman is being prosecuted because she flushed blood and tissue: https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2023/12/08/miscarriage/

• In Alabama, women risk bleeding to death because doctors will not help them when they miscarry: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/roe-dobbs-abortion-ban-reproductive-medicine-alabama.html

• This woman spent 19 days having a miscarriage because doctors refused to help her: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/idaho-woman-shares-19-day-miscarriage-tiktok-states/story?id=96363578

• A woman with a cancerous condition was told to go sit in the parking lot and wait for a heart attack: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/25/1171851775/oklahoma-woman-abortion-ban-study-shows-confusion-at-hospitals