A nice thought, but what I could really have used was a DentistMobile
Published by Kyso Kisaen August 28th, 2007 in Edumakashun, Fetii, For the ladies, Godbaggery, Reproductive RightsWe’re barely into the first week of classes and already a thrilling novelty gas-guzzling vehicle is on it’s way and the air is crackling with excitement. Can you guess who?
Pfft, I wish! The Weinermobile, how cool would that be? No, our visitor is more controversial.
No, they usually show up right before break, and stick to the bars off campus. Come on, guess!
It’s the Busybody ‘Christian’ Ultrasoundmobile! Squeeeee!
That’s right, my school is one of three (count ‘em!) universities to be on the Ultrasoundmobile’s exciting three-county, semester long tour! I can’t wait to get my unnecessary ultrasound! Girls from all over campus will flock to get free quasi-medical attention from the inside of an RV, which would save them the arduous walk to the student clinic or the even more torturous journey to the local Planned Parenthood.
I might go and get mine this week, since things should be quiet at the begining of the semester before the girls have had a chance to get their bearings and start slutting around. Another month or two and they’ll be mobbed so I’d best get mine while the getting is good.
The Fetus Pictures RV’s website promises a comprehensive set of services:
* free limited ultrasounds performed by a registered diagnostic medical ultrasonographer
* free urine self administered pregnancy tests
* pregnancy options consulting
* information on abortion, adoption & parenting
* referrals as necessary
Wow! A real live RDMU! This means they’re legit, not like that pick-up truck driven by that shady unemployed ex-military guy. That was a disaster. Plus he charged the girls for their pregnancy tests. Let’s go to the parent site and get some information on abortion, adoption and parenting!
We’ve designed this section of our website to show you how baby develops in the first nine months of his/her life.
…Week 2: This is the time when the baby’s mother will notice that she’s missed menstruation.
Important fact: the medical community uses the mother’s last menstrual period to determine length of pregnancy. This means that, at the time of conception, the unborn baby is actually considered two weeks old.
This is because the medical establishment agrees that 14 days before conception is when the angels begin to prepare your baby’s soul for it’s earthly journey. Or, it’s a convenient technicality. Whichever.
Those were some nice fetus pictures in that Pre-Born Development page. But what about me, what is the rest of the pregnancy like? Let’s look for answers in the seperate “Pregnancy” page:
Finding out that you’re pregnant …
… can be scary, exciting, and overwhelming all at the same time. We want you to be informed before you make a decision about your pregnancy.
You have three basic choices.
You can carry the baby to term and parent (see pregnancy information), carry the baby to term and have an adoption plan in place, or you can have an abortion. You are the one person who will be most deeply affected by this choice.
Want to see your baby?
Visit our pre-born development section for pictures and descriptions of how your baby is developing.
Contact us for a free pregnancy test or a free limited ultrasound. Visit our services page to see what we can offer you - all of our services are confidential and free of charge.
That’s it, that’s the whole page. I guess there’s nothing I need to know about the time between when I’m cooing over ultrasounds and when the little zygote spawns off. Must not be that big a deal. Let’s focus on the future - will I parent, adopt or abort?
Adoption sounds good:
Adoption agencies have long waiting lists of couple who are unable to have children and who are ready to love and raise a child. It’s estimated that at least 15-20 couples wait for every healthy infant available. Many families are also waiting to adopt babies who are born with handicaps.
Wait, I found a little mistake, let me help you:
Adoption agencies have long waiting lists of couple who are unable to have children and who are ready to love and raise a child. It’s estimated that at least 15-20 couples wait for every healthy [white] infant available. Many families are also waiting to adopt [white] babies who are born with handicaps.
That’s a lot of commitment, maybe I should abort:
You think it’s just a “blob of tissue” and you don’t think it will matter.
Did you know that after just six weeks, your baby’s heart is beating? Around 20 weeks, you can feel your baby move and find out if it’s a boy or girl. Check out our pre-born development section for pictures of what your baby looks like right now.Physical Health Risks of Abortion
If you’ve been told that abortion is safe because it’s legal, please consider the following complications that may occur with abortion:- ripping or perforation of the uterus
- excessive bleeding
- infection
- hemorrhage
- cervical injury
- fever
- endotoxic shock
- second degree burns
- vomiting
- chronic abdominal pain
- increase of risk of ectopic (tubal) pregnancy
- increase of risk of breast cancer
- increase of risk of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (P.I.D.)Mental Health Risks of Abortion
Studies of women after they’ve chosen abortion have found that:28% attempted suicide
31% experienced suicidal feelings
60% commented that the decision to abort made their lives worse
94% regretted their decision
Oh, woe! That’s so awful I barely have the heart to scroll through the whole separate page on the gory details of abortion procedures. Clearly pregnancy and birth are the safer, easier route! After all, if there were risks associated with either of these things, the nice people in the fetus foto RV would tell me!
Also, they’ll help me with free advice after the baby is born, and access to a thrift store. They’ll give me the phone number I can call when I need to get help on my utility bills, and the names and locations of several food banks, temp agencies and counseling centers. But it could be worse - I’d had the abortion, I’d most certainly die of breast cancer.
Ok, back in reality, this is the dumbest shit thing I’ve seen since last year’s aborto-plane. I understand the Navigators have a mission to get all in everybody’s business for the Lord, which is why they’ve helped promote the Fetus Foto RV, and I understand the logic of including college campuses on the tour, but it’s really not a great idea to combine misleading scare tactics with the college crowd, since for every Fetus Foto RV Certified Registered Real Live Trained Medical Type Person there’s a real nurse, a real friend or a real feminist lurking on campus and speaking out against this crap at every opportunity.
Abortions are not linked to cancer, pregnancy itself can be a dangerous undertaking - more so than an early-trimester abortion, actually - and there are many reasons that a woman who has terminated a pregnancy would feel bad but in our crazy, complicated lives it doesn’t necessarily follow that having the baby would have made everything all better.
The scare tactics and pseudo-medical trappings distract from any useful service they might be providing. And the services I see on their site - a mix of Salvation Army-style charity and compiling a slightly more convenient list of readily available, secular services - do not justify the deception they’re giving to scared college students, or worse, desperate and scared poor women who might not have the access to better information or family resources the college girls generally have, and may be more likely to mistake the happy pink ultrasoundmobile for a trip to the doctor, web-based disclaimer notwithstanding. Of the 11 stops on the Fetus Foto tour, 3 are colleges (Wooster being home to two things - their University and a sizable Amish population) and the rest are public areas in an area of the state not known for high levels of education or information.
It’s things like this that make me hope there actually is a God. Lying to vulnerable women seems like the sort of thing you’d have to answer for when you’re dead. I just hope to be in line behind one of these guys, so I when I’m cast to hell with all the rest of you godless sinners, I can amuse myself on the way down thinking about the shocked reaction of the guy falling in front of me. Come on, the looks on their faces are going to be priceless.
Oh no, their chosen deity won’t let them go to hell. Only us degenerate sinners who actually *gasp* think we should have control over our own personal uterus are going down there.
I wonder if the fetus mobile can become the daycare mobile for all the babies after they are born. Oh yeah, I forgot, people don’t matter after birth. Silly me!!
Access to thrift stores, my [suitably crude extremity and/or orifice]. No, they won’t help you like that. They’ll help you, let you get diapers and formula and stuff like that that you need and can’t afford, but not unless you’re willing to submit to religious indoctrination.
Oh my sweet fetus-mobile, I miss good ol’ Akron.
Second degree burns from abortion? What do they do, use a flamethrower?
Interesting that they completely neglect to mention that the chance of any of those nasty health risks occurring is greatly increased if you don’t have access to a legal abortion performed by a qualified doctor.
I guess I must be one of the 6% of women who had an abortion and hasn’t ever regretted it.
Man, if that thing showed up to my school, I’d be there every day, using up their resources. “I know I’ve been here everyday for the last two weeks, but maybe this time I’m really pregnant!” I’d also make my boyfriend get in line for an ultrasound just to see the shit hit the fan.
Another thing: I work in a clinic that does abortions up to 13.9 weeks, and I think those pictures are a bit misleading. Let’s just say that none of them accurately reflect what I’m used to seeing.
Okay, is there anyone here in The Real World ™ who can explain that logic to me? The more I try to make sense out of it, the more my brain tries to explode. And there ain’t no RV coming to town to help me with that.
Also, indeed, Sabrina, it’s only the “pre-born” children that really seem to matter to these types, and kxo, right on re: using up their resources, having men try to get ultrasounds, etc.
What, the convention of dating a pregnancy to the last date of your last period, or that this is somehow an “important fact” about your pregnancy? I would imagine they do it that way because asking women what the last day of their last period is more accurate than asking them to estimate their ovulation.
In math, we’d call that an “additive constant” and they frequently don’t matter a whit. If that’s the convention doctors and nurses use, then clearly it works out all right for them. It’s built into the formula they use to estimate your due date, and whether they date it from your last menstrual cycle or the wednesday after the first full moon before your last menstrual cycle doesn’t matter as long as each estimate spits out the same date.
Why this is important I don’t know.
Maybe it’s part of that whole “life starts before implantation” thing they’re always going on about?
Maybe it’s part of that whole “life starts before implantation” thing they’re always going on about?
Or in this case, life starts before the sex even happens!
I would imagine they do it that way because asking women what the last day of their last period is more accurate than asking them to estimate their ovulation.
That is what my midwife said. Most women don’t track their ovulation so it’s easier to use the first day of the last period.
Damn, it didn’t do the quotes the way I wanted! Stupid self with lack of posting skills.
Probably the site is using this technicality to imply what Andrew said. They’re not very clear on it, but that’s what I think they’re trying, lamely, to hint.
Yeah, I meant that, if you read the phrase literally, “at the time of conception, the unborn baby is actually considered two weeks old” doesn’t quite make sense to me. I knew that they date pregnancies according to the last period, at least early on (I think they can get a bit more accurate after the first ultrasound, but that’s just based on vague recollections of friends’ pregnancies). There’s a difference, theoretically speaking, of two weeks between menstruation and ovulation, so I see where they’re getting the idea of two weeks between the actual conception and what doctors might call the conception date. I guess I get bogged down in thinking of all the variances in women’s menstrual cycles, and the fact that it’s possible to get pregnant at any point during one’s cycle (profoundly unlikely at some points, but still possible) — in short, the reasons for which, I suspect, doctors base the conception date on the last period in the first place. (Er, in other words, what N1Nj4G1r1 said.)
So, in short, yeah, I think Andrew’s right, too, and I think it might also be an attempt to cast doubt on how much of a handle “liberal” medicine really has on the whole process.
O.T., I tried to talk the kid into buying an Oscar Meyer Weiner car — “Don’t you think it would be cool?” “We could totally drive it around everywhere!” “I’d let you sit up front!” — but she wouldn’t go for it. She thinks it’s, and I’m quoting, the “stupidest car ever.”
Hmpf.
What a wonderful way to reduce the number of women successfully finishing college than to guilt them into keeping their pregnancies to term. This assault on reason, truth and women’s reproductive rights shouldn’t be allowed to go unchecked.
If I had the funds, I’d fight them myself, but I don’t as I had a pregnancy long ago that kept me out of school and I succumbed to the right’s guilt parade and married the jack-ass father. But the wingnuts weren’t there when the prick wouldn’t pay child support for his own children to keep them out of poverty.
I’d really like to pummel these people hard. I wish to hell someone would.
Their entire agenda is to ruin women’s lives and put them back fifty years or more forever.