On this momentous day in the United States, as we witness the blatant evil heaped on American women by the Supreme Court action to end the protection of abortion access, it is time to renew our commitment as a discipline to the optimum health and well-being of all. The U.S. now joins Russia, North Korea and Iran among the minorities of countries around the world now banning or limiting abortion access. I know that Nursology.net viewers hold a wide range of opinions and beliefs related to this issue and it is one of the most difficult issues that women and families face in the course of their reproductive lives. So I invite all of us to consider the wide ranging implications of this on the lives of women and families, and consider the consequences of removing rights that so intimately relate to health and well being.
Two of Nursology.net’s explicit mission statements declare our intention related to health and wellbeing for all:
- Nursology is a distinct discipline that is vital to the health and wellbeing of people worldwide, our families, communities and nations.
- Nursology intersects with other healthcare disciplines, draws on knowledge from other disciplines, and functions in cooperation and collaboration with other disciplines, but remains distinct and autonomous because of particular perspectives arising from the experience of caring for those who are sick or injured, and from the experience of promoting health and wellbeing for individuals, families, communities and the environments in which they reside.
In accord with this mission, I am sharing with Nursology.net viewers the words delivered on September 5, 1995, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing – words that have had powerful and lasting effects on the health of women worldwide.
The anger and sadness I feel today has no words. This will impact all women, victims, pregnant people with fetuses who will not survive, contraceptive failures and those people who do not want to be pregnant, no matter what the reason. I fear it is just the start of the chipping away of reproductive rights. Abortion is healthcare
Thank you, Peggy for sharing this powerful and fundamental message.
My mother was a devout Catholic public health and public school nurse, who took me to see the movie in which a teenager, played by Natalie Wood, died following a back room abortion. I was 13 or 14 year’s old circa 1955. When I left the theater, I was still crying. Sobbing, I asked my mother, “Why did you take me to see this movie?” My mother responded something like. “You need to know what is happening. You see, the Bishops are wrong. There has to be a medically safe way to care for teenagers like Natalie Wood in this movie. Back room abortions have to stop. The medical profession needs to be allowed to come up with a medically safe solution.” Today, more than 65 years after that conversation with my mother and 50 years after Roe v Wade and x years after the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference said that what happens in the interaction between a physician and a patient is sacrosanct, the US Supreme Court overruled them all.
This week the Supreme Court has said it’s ok to kill kids in schools and others on the streets with guns but not ok to protect a woman’s life and well being regarding decisions she makes for her reproductive and total health. They say they support life at all costs but support capital punishment— what happened to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.I am devastated and sickened by both decisions. We’re starting to live the Handmaids Tale.
Thank you, Peggy, for the blog, the video and all the comments about a woman’s right to abortion being a human right.
It was years ago that a diaphram failed and I became pregnant, choosing to have a therapeutic abortion. After the TA, I awoke, briefly wept, then went home to my work as a nurse and mother to my son, a pre-schooler. Subsequently, I have as a public health nurse referred women for abortions and for the reversal of a tubal ligation. I believe that it’s a woman’s right to choose to become a parent.
Dorothea Fox Jakob