War and Peace

"War and peace," my guest said, as he looked at the Catalan and Swiss flags flying over our entrance.

Our second home is in the Catalonia part of southern France. I am Swiss. We put up the flags when we (or the dog and his housesitters are in residence).

I had just told my guest the story (apocryphal) of the Catalan flag which first appeared in 1551.

War
Guifré el Pilos was the last count of Barcelona owing allegiance of the Frankish king. In a battle with the Normans, el Pilos was killed. The Frankish king dipped his hand in the blood of el Pilos and ran them down the yellow Barcelona flag, thus creating, the four-red stripes. A variation of the flag is used by the Catalonians in Barcelona who want to separate from Spain.

Peace
Switzerland does not fight in wars, although it has a self-protection army. Since the Battle of Marignano in 1515, which it lost, there have been a number of treaties over the years including in 1516 with a peace treaty with France, confirming its neutrality. However, the country is heavily armed. All young men are expected to do military service or make some other contribution to the country.

Mamies

When I first bought my place in Argelès, I was fascinated by the mamies. They were the older women maybe in their sixties and up who formed almost a subculture. They had lived in the same neighborhood since they were in diapers.

On good days, their chairs would be dragged in front of their houses on the narrow street and they would talk and talk. Beans were snapped, grandchildren watched, sewing and knitting done. They were clothed in what my own New England Yankee grandmother wore when she didn't leave her home, house dresses, multi colored and shapeless. They often wear aprons too, again like my grandmother.

Some 30 year later, there are few of the mamies left. One uses a walker to go a few feet from her house. She has dialysis three times a week. Another still makes it about town, but is often found sitting on her front step knitting. A third, whom I thought died, sometimes makes it as far as the corner. I remember the day she told me the history of each of the houses: this one was fisherman, that one had an olive grove.

The village has lost some of its fabric with the deaths of these women. Their daughters are more modern, busy with jobs and children. They will never bring their chairs and chores to the street and share their daily events with each other.

I am old enough to be mamie. My life has been different from theirs. I try and talk with them, but their Catalan-laden French is difficult for me to understand. They never mined repeating when my eyes show total incomprehension. I am accepted as someone who they will share with as they did their departed friends, but in passing, not while sitting in chairs.

I am lucky to have been a little part of their lives to see into a bygone world.

Abortion can't be stopped

There always will be abortion on demand as the film, From Danger of Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion https://vimeo.com/24810848, points out.

If a woman is wealthy she can find a doctor, even go to another country, to have a safe abortion. If she is poor, she will find a back-alley abortionist. If she has no money, she can do it to herself with whatever poison she can swallow or find a pointed tool to shove up her vagina.

No law will ever stop this.

Dorothy Fadiman’s documentary is filled with stories and statistics on what it was like to need and get an abortion before it was legal. The numbers are staggering. The number of women filling hospital beds and dying will be repeated if abortion becomes illegal.

After more than a century of back-alley tragedies, a national movement to decriminalize abortion took root. The documentary combines rare archival footage with present-day interviews to weave together two parallel stories:

·       The evolution of underground networks to help women find safe abortions outside the law

·       The intensive efforts of activists and legislators who broke the silence to change the laws

Some of The Testimonies

        “In 1962 I was 22 years old. I was rushed to the emergency room with a fever of 105 and blood poisoning. I had had an illegal abortion, blind folded and without anesthetic. I never saw the face of the abortionist…I survived…many women died.” A woman who lived after an illegal abortion.

         “This was a time when it was illegal to counsel a woman about abortion. A $1000 fine, a year in jail.” Howard Moody, founder of the Clergy Consultation Service.



         “From 1961 until 1973 the struggle for abortion rights became the fastest growing social movements in the history of the United States… People were willing to challenge the law and if necessary break the law.” The announcer:

         “Historians estimate for more than a century at least 500,000 clandestine illegal abortions were taking place each year…most faced the back alleys. Every day hospitals admitted women infected and bleeding.” The announcer.
  
           “The human costs behind the headlines were suppressed. This 1913 film which dramatized an illegal abortion escaped the censors. It dared to criticize the law at a time when even information about contraception was illegal.” The announcer.
 

“When I became pregnant, I was totally desperate. At that time poor women many of whom were a woman of color didn’t have the connections in that sense and access to safe abortions…I was living with an aunt… I was sitting on the bedroom figuring out what I should do. She had these plastic flowers…and I thought, well, you know, I could use this because it had a long piece of wire…that is what I did. I had to go to the hospital emergency because I was hemorrhaging and it wouldn’t stop.” Diana, who lived after self-induced abortion.

“CA Assemblyman John Knox heard about a woman who was raped and forced by law to bear the child. In 1961 he introduced a bill for abortion reform to the state legislature…it died in committee. It inspired one of the nation’s first abortion rights activists.” The announcer

“Some 100,000 women every year, California women alone, subject themselves to improperly or illegal abortions. I think that in itself is a rather staggering figure and I feel great indignation as a woman to think that women have to subject themselves to a second-rate medical for a safe surgical procedure.” Patricia Theresa Maginnis, The Society for Humane Abortion and a medical technologist in a San Francisco hospital.

“As I traveled up and down the state women would come up to me after my talks and tell me about their own personal involvement in abortion either they themselves had one at one time or another always, of course, an illegal one or their sister had, or their mother had or their grandmother had or their college roommate had, but everyone knew of some other woman, if not herself, had suffered through an illegal abortion … many million American women each year who were having abortions, every single one of them was a criminal, every single one of them was a potential felon.” California Assemblyman Anthony Beillsenson

“Real law and medical questions is whether women should have abortions humanely and safely in our hospitals or whether we should continue our degrading system of unwanted pregnancies and criminal abortions. I am tired of having half the world tell the other half what to do with our bodies…Well-to-do women could always go to Canada…they could arrange it but it was absolutely impossible for the young and poor.” Gynecologist Dr. Jane Hogdson speaking  at a conference.

“Everywhere she turned she was refused but what had enraged her the most was that is in one of the interviews the daughter was asked why she didn’t want to be a mother. You don’t do that to a 10, to a 11-year- old kid.” A welfare mother whose 11-year-old daughter had been raped by a babysitter

Doctors who took referrals from clergy could face criminal charges and lose their medical license. Despite of these risks they were moved to act by what they had seen.

“The hospital would have bed after bed of women with abortion complications. We were supposed to report these and I had one that I did report. The police came. They harassed the woman. They threatened her told she was going to die, frightened her into telling who had done the abortion. A very bad experience for her. I made a decision that I would never report that again.” Dr. Curtis Boyd

Women from all over the country came to Dr. Boyd’s office in a small Texas town after he joined the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS). “To have the service available safe and have it done with respect the dignity and to know that your work is needed and appreciated and to get that reaffirmation every day from patients who (sic) you never met before. To have a patient look up and say, ‘thank you, doctor I don’t know what I would done if you hadn’t been here.’” Dr. Boyd (See Chapter 21)

“In Mexico illegal abortion was a thriving industry with no controls. Two levels of abortion providers those that were in sanitized so that the wealthy could go and have an abortion …the doctor was trained…Dangers were terrible…young women could be intercepted at the airport. Cab drivers knew why they were there and they would go to so and so and he would take them elsewhere and he would get a kickback.” Society for Humane Abortion, which compiled a list of places women could get safe abortion, said, “It was better than picking them up in garbage cans.”

“Some of us felt very strongly…I think we ought to break the law I think we ought to counsel women and help women get abortions even if it against law.” Howard Moody, with a group of 21 clergy, organized help for women with unintended pregnancies. “I felt I could make a case to be there for her whatever her decision not just for abortion, having the child and giving it up or having the child and not giving it up…  there was no way we could do that without caring for their bodies.” (See Chapter 25)

“Women were using Lysol they would drink it or they would douche with it, anything caustic. They would stick needles anything they would poke in the direction of their uterus in an effort to dislodge this pregnancy.” Lana Phelan said. She worked with Jane, an organization that went on to perform  more than 11,000 safe abortions mainly in the Chicago area.

 From my book Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles. Buy a copy and send it to a pro-life person, legislator, judge, governor. I make no money from this and have already sent copies to the Supreme Court Justices, and congress people who are prolife. 

Abortion

Abortion will never be stopped. In researching my book Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles, I learned that desperate women will do anything from inserting crocodile dung into their vaginas to rupturing their inner organs.

The Southern U.S. states are now passing restrictive abortion laws. States like Vermont and Oregon are affirming a woman's right to choose.

As a result, pregnant women with resource, who feel they cannot bring a child into the world, will get on a plane and go to where they can get abortions.

I am sure groups like Jane and the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion will rise again to find safe abortions for desperate women. In just a few years they helped almost half a million women to get safe abortions.

Once again hospitals will need 20-30 beds for women who had unsafe abortions and are dying. In some southern states they will not be able to even seek these solutions out of fear of prosecutions.

There has been this posting on Facebook.

I suggest women follow it. I would like them to buy my book (I do not make any profit on it) and send it to a pro-lifer and the governor. I have already sent copies to Supreme Court Justices and members of congress that will vote against women.

Women should not have to go back to a coat hanger.

Imagine

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us5h2HNbCuo

March 2003

My daughter had just landed in Geneva to start looking for work after receiving her degree. While she was over the Atlantic, the pilot had announced that the US had attacked Iraq.

"You have a choice, I told her. You can come with me to the Peace March in Bern or be disinherited."

As she was setting up the kitty litter for her accompanying cats, Morgana and Lady Gwen, she said, "Under the law, you can't disinherit me, but I'm coming." From the time she was little, she'd been on marches from the Equal Rights Amendment to pro-choice with me. 

On the train we ran into one of my co-workers.

The size of the crowd kept growing. Some started singing Lennon's "Imagine" and although most of the crowd had English as a second language, all knew the words.

We were right. The reasons for the attack were bogus.

Today there are similar mutterings growing in volume for a war against Iraq. Making up a reason for war, is nothing new.

The video has world leaders allegedly singing "Imagine." It is fake but if only it could be true.

Imagine.