Abortion rights, an issue that has long been at the center of the feminist struggle, has been utterly transformed by today’s realities. Government is no longer an institution that guarantees this basic human right.
Today, the main guarantor of abortion rights is the website cheapairtickets.com.
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Am I missing something? What does cheapairtickets.com have to do with abortion rights?
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You have to go to a state or country that allows abortion or where it is available in a format that will not kill you and authorities do or at least can look the other way. It’s effectively blocked where I live, for instance, and next there will surely be restrictions that include most people; if one really does all the arithmetic it is cheaper/easier to go elsewhere, at least as far as Houston. People my age used to travel to England from Spain for abortions. My mother went from US to Mexico for one and US to France for another. In Brazil, you had to be able to get to Rio, which for many people was far away. In Mexico now, you have to get to DF to do it legally, and I am guessing that would be the closest place for most of Central America as well.
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Oh that makes sense. Thanks for explaining. Apparently I’m dense today. :) Yes. In some parts of the country, abortion is essentially illegal and would require a plane tickets/hotel stay. Monstrous erosion of a necessary freedom.
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“You have to go to a state or country that allows abortion or where it is available in a format that will not kill you and authorities do or at least can look the other way. It’s effectively blocked where I live, for instance, and next there will surely be restrictions that include most people; if one really does all the arithmetic it is cheaper/easier to go elsewhere”
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The larger point of the post is that the efforts that the current Congress is making to curtail abortion rights are not really about abortion. Not only does almost nobody have abortions after 20 weeks (1,5%, is it?) but access to abortion is all about financial resources now.
Question: why does Congress pay so much attention to something that is such an obvious non-issue and is of such little interest to the very voters who elected these congress people? There is an answer here and it’s a very crucial one. This is something I want us to think about before the next elections.
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This is a way to start curtailing abortion generally, though, and maternity rights (someone is in jail now in TN for having smoked marijuana or something like that while pregnant, they arrested her right after she gave birth and took child away), and women’s rights, and things about sex, etc. … and distracting atention from other things, and so on, and so forth.
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I don’t really agree with your statement. Abortion rights may be changed for a number of women, but unfortunately I think that those who have to face unwanted pregnancies are disproportionately the poor (education, access to health care, all that). And while this 20 week stuff is mostly just hurting women who have wanted pregnancies and find out about horrible medical conditions for them/their future child, I do worry about slippery slopes… While the declining nation state won’t effect me too much in this regard, I do think it’s important for us feminists to continue spending some of their energy looking out for the rights of those who can’t devote their time to much beyond subsistence. Maybe it will be moot eventually, but there are people who are/will be affected by this before the nation state is defunct.
I don’t have a good answer to your question in the comments though, at least not beyond your idea of death flails of the Republicans grasping for their former glory.
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The main guarantor of quality health care in the US is also cheapairtickets.com :-)
Cheap whole-body/whole-system diagnostic check-ups? Bangkok, Thailand.
Reliable first-rate procedural care and attention to details? Tokyo, Japan.
Impressive body restoration/alteration work? México DF, México.
Affordable dental work with happy smiles? San José, Costa Rica.
Above-average risks of medical-related bankruptcy? Anytown, USA.
Yes yes yes, ha ha ha, except …
My travel insurer offers me two package rates for international travel health insurance coverage, one that includes the US and one that doesn’t.
The typical rate for non-US coverage with rather high policy limits is about 70 to 75 GBP per month, with a policy maximum of at least 500 000 GBP.
The typical rate for US coverage included with those same policy limits (which are highly justified in the case of the US) is about 230 GBP per month, and the company still places special emphasis on medevac and emergency repatriation coverage.
Wasn’t Obama’s health overhaul supposed to fix this?
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