Last month, the undergraduate student senate at UC-Berkeley passed a resolution demanding the student health center provide medication abortions on-site. Students have also launched a petition.
The resolution lacked transparency and was full of one-sided views and pro-abortion talking points. As for the cost of the procedure, students suggested that university administrators take a pay cut in favor of “investing in students’ health and safety needs.”
The graduate student senate has passed a similar resolution, the Daily Californian reported, with the senior editorial board claiming the university “needs” to provide abortions…
Seeing as women between the ages of 18 and 24 account for 44 percent of all abortions, it is clear that making this service more accessible would benefit students on a college campus.
The petition, which is linked to in an op-ed also published by the Daily Californian, only continues to propagate dangerous pro-abortion points. Considering that the authors are directors of Students United for Reproductive Justice at Berkeley, this is not surprising. Abortion is portrayed as “a common reproductive health care decision,” rather than as ending the life of one’s own preborn child:
… Medication abortion, an option available to pregnant women before ten weeks, is a simple, safe process that can be done in the woman’s home. This form of abortion usually feels like a very heavy period. Some women report feeling empowered by having control over the process. But when a student seeks this common option, they are faced with confusing and unnecessary hurdles.
For many women, a medication abortion isn’t just “a simple, safe procedure.” And the FDA only just recently changed the time frame of seven weeks to ten weeks, which may have been done for political reasons.
Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino discusses the procedure in a video series from Live Action. As the video notes at the end, risks range from mild to fatal:
- Abdominal pain
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Headache
- Heavy Bleeding
- Maternal death
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOjhK5hfEhU]
Those symptoms don’t sound like “a very heavy period.” A woman goes through not just cramps, but contractions, to expel her preborn child. Also unlike a “very heavy period,” a woman may have spotting and bleeding for weeks.
But don’t just take the word of a former abortionist. Abby Johnson, a pro-life advocate and former director of Planned Parenthood, went through a medication abortion herself. She has described it in both her books, and her accounts of the harrowing experience can be read online.
Countless women have had horrific experiences, including those who support abortion. Another mother thought she was doing her disabled son a favor by having a medication abortion, and while undergoing the procedure, didn’t feel so thrilled with her decision.
Unfortunately, the Berkeley students don’t stop at claims of “empowering women,” desiring instantaneous access to abortion – without any waiting or counseling:
Because Tang does not offer abortion services, students with SHIP have to pay the $300 deductible and 10 percent of the overall cost for an out-of-house procedure. Some pregnant women, such as Anuva, are told they must visit Social Services to talk about their options before getting a referral, even if they are certain of their decision. This practice shows that Tang doubts a woman’s ability to make her own medical decisions, forcing her to talk with professionals at Tang and at the clinic about her decision. After visiting Tang twice — once for the pregnancy test and once for the Social Services counseling appointment — she can book an appointment at a nearby clinic. After one visit to that clinic, among a full schedule of classes, she can return again to terminate the pregnancy.
The editorial reads similarly, casually noting that “medication abortions… have been legal for many years… and are not invasive.” They also bemoan the process as “jump[ing] through insurmountable hurdles to get a legal abortion.” Really? Discussing other options and requiring a waiting period is “insurmountable”?
The editors continue:
But by providing the service itself, the Tang Center would save women who want an abortion from the agony of hacking through a jungle of referrals and bureaucracy that only serve to complicate an already difficult decision. An op-ed recently published in The Daily Californian correctly points out that these complications significantly affect a woman’s emotional and mental health. At an institution where students and administrators have championed the importance of mental health to academic success, any process that harms the emotional well-being of students should be reformed.
“An already difficult decision”? I guess the editors haven’t heard that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards thinks abortion is really no big deal.
While much is made of these obstacles affecting a woman’s “emotional and mental health,” what isn’t pointed out is that having the abortion affects a woman’s emotional and mental health as well. Even if a woman is fortunate enough to not require hospitalization after undergoing a medication abortion, and while her bleeding eventually stops, she may suffer from the abortion in other ways.
It is obvious that the radically pro-abortion group at Berkeley prefers to ignore these facts.
