one of the women in back rooms discusses having sent a friend to see Dr. Harvey Lothringer to have her situation remedied

I took someone to a doctor on long Island named Lothringer. Does that sound familiar? It was in The New York Times. Remember that? This was the one who did an abortion on someone who was five and a half months pregnant and she died on the operating table, he chopped her up into little pieces and flushed her down in toilet. Let’s see. He was arrested in the summer of 1961. He came to trial during the great newspaper strike in New York which lasted for nine months. There was no real coverage. I looked at Time and Life and in the Long Island papers, and they had a file on him, but it wasn’t as much as there would have been.

[…]

It was maybe two weeks to a month later, she phoned me at work. She started to scream; I thought she’d had some kind of breakdown. She said, “Go get the newspaper!” So indeed I went out, and the newsstand people were yelling, “Dismembered body found on Long Island,” and I knew in a minute that was Dr. Lothringer. Later at his trial, friends, neighbors, patients came in and said what a wonderful man he was and that he’d been a bulwark in the community, and if he had done this they thought it was just a fluke. They seemed to want to excuse him. When he had done was—the parents of the very young girl, a convent student, had come to him, and he had said that she was too advanced. And then they came back and offered more money and he had said okay. Well, as I understand it, you can’t do an abortion at that stage, so she died, and he did what I said—chopped her up and put her in the toilet. Then—get this—he decided that his goose was cooked, so he and his nurse, who was apparently his mistress, took off for Switzerland. He’d had these plans—Swiss accounts and all kinds of arrangements in case this happened. They went to the airport, and he made a phone call to some kind of company—what we cal it is Roto-Rooter—the folks that clean out drains. He called and told them he was leaving the country, but that he had noticed that his toilet seemed to be clogged, and would they mind pumping it out and that he would send them a check. So he got on the plane, and they came, but someone noticed a—you can imagine—something was surfacing.

anyway, i googled him to see what happened after. convicted of second degree manslaughter, 2-8yrs, served four and was released on parole in 1968. had his license revoked.. until after roe v wade where it was then reinstated. he continued to work until 1996 when a prisoner under his care committed suicide:

[tw suicide] Lothringer practiced psychiatry with no disciplinary actions or trouble until 1996, when he was working as a prison doctor. He ordered that the antidepressent 17-year-old Nancy Blumenthal was taking be disconintued, on the ground that the girl complained that the medication made her violent. Despite pleas by Nancy’s mother, Nancy was not put on any other medication to address her depression. A month later, she hanged herself in her cell.

apparently this old piece of shit is still alive. i hope he kicks it. 

anyway. i like to try to remember the victims and give them a name or a face. they were people with hopes and dreams, and they didn’t deserve it. RIP Barbara Lofrumento & Nancy Blumenthal.

i also found a website that memorializes some of the women who died from illegal abortions. you can check it out here.

tw for description of rape, forced pregnancy

does anyone want a copy of naomi wolf’s the beauty myth? i have an extra one taking up space. just pay shipping! should be abt $2-3

ohmygollygarsh:

gyzym:

First, a story. 

So, my first semester of my freshman year of college, I took this Intro to Women’s Studies class. The class met for five hours a week, one two hour session and one three hour session, and the breakdown of students was what I eventually discovered to be the typical sampling in any Women’s Studies class with no pre-recs at my mid-sized, southern Ohio state school. There were a number of girls who would become, or were already part of, the feminist advocacy groups on campus; there were a number of girls who would prove themselves to be opposed to feminism in both concept and practice, one of whom I distinctly recall giving a presentation on the merits of the “Mrs. Degree,” while my professor’s eye twitched in muted horror; there were a handful of girls and at least one guy I’d come to know later through assorted campus queer groups; and there were, of course, the three to six dudebros, self-admittedly there to “meet chicks,” all but one or two of whom would drop the class after the first midterm. At eighteen, I was myself a feminist in name but not in practice—I believed in the idea behind feminism (which is, for the record, that people should be on equal footing regardless of gender, not that we should CRUSH ALL MEN BENEATH THE VICIOUS HEELS OF OUR DOC MARTENS GLORY HALLELUJAH), but I didn’t actually know anything about it. I could not identify the waves of feminism. Intersectionality and how the movement is crap at it were not things of which I was aware. Never had I ever encountered the writings of bell hooks. In a lucky break, you do not need to know about the waves of feminism, or know what intersectionality is, or have read bell hooks to read this essay! (But you should read bell hooks. Everyone should read bell hooks. bell hooks is FUCKING AWESOME.) 

The first couple of weeks of this class were about what you’d expect. The professor was fun and engaging, but she was not exactly pulling out the eye-opening stops on our wide-eyed freshman asses. There were handouts. There were selections of the textbook for reading. There was a very depressing class about domestic violence, abuse, and rape that was the typical rattling off of terms and horrific statistics that everyone winced at, but that nobody really internalized. The dudebros snickered in the back corner, grouped together like they would be infested by cooties if they spread out, occasionally chiming in with helpful comments like, “Dude, the lady on the back of this book is smoking,” and getting turned down by each girl in the class, on whom they were hitting in what I can only assume was a pre-determined descending order of hotness. The queer kids, myself included, huddled in the other corner making pithy comments. The up-and-coming active feminists glared at the bros, who leered back, and the Mrs. Degree-friendly crowd mostly texted under their desks and made it very clear that they were only there for humanities credit. Again, it was a fairly typical southern Ohio state school class full of fairly typical southern Ohio state school freshmen. Nobody was super engaged, is what I am saying here. Nobody, myself included, was really eating it up with a spoon. 

And then one day, my professor opened the class with, “So, who here has seen Beauty and the Beast?” 

Read More

Yeah that was long but READ IT. Read it all.

(via ohmygollygarsh)

did i mention we saw looper the other day? i was kind of into it up until the end which was just… really… stupid but you know whatever

i previously read someone’s ~thoughts~ on looper & women and just like, i think i’ve reached a point in my own personal feminism where some things just don’t matter as much anymore. like, idk. i still care about women and representation in film and looper definitely fucking blew on that level—there were no lady lady loopers; tracie thoms had a couple of lines, qing xu did not have any lines (and bruce willis was like “SHE WILL SAVE YOU YOU DRUG ADDLED JUNKIE SHE WILL DO IT EVEN THOUGH THERE’S NO POINT U SUCK DUDE”), and white lady stripper/prostitute spoke but she was also a stripper/prostitute?? which isn’t a bad thing but uh i don’t really expect a nuanced thoughtful portrayal of a stripper/prostitute from most movies.

ANYWAY my point is this person watched that movie and it bothered them, and it makes sense and they have every right to be bothered, but god, it’s a dime a fucking dozen. 95% of films are like this. i cannot bother being that bothered every fucking movie i watch. and that’s totally why i don’t watch many movies anymore, but when i do, unless it’s glaringly bad, i just don’t care if there are no real lady characters. what’s the point, you know?  

but it also makes sense when i watch something like excision which i am still going on about, and i get super excited because weird lady i like weird ladies they are great IDENTIFYING WITH THE WEIRD GIRL etc. (should i say i really identify with her?? i mean i don’t really, but kindred spirits), and i typically do appreciate female-centric films on a different, far more natural level

but i still don’t bother to give a shit if a film doesn’t do that, because most films don’t

remember that post that was going around a billion years ago full of bell hooks pdfs? the files were all wonky and shit in calibre so i fixed them

@mediafire pw is bellhooks

this is a list of stuff in the file: We Real Cool: Black Men and Musculinity, Selling Hot Pussy, Remembered Rapture: Dancing with Words, Outlaw Culture, Love as the Practice of Freedom, Is Paris Burning, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Cultural Criticism & Transformation, Breaking Bread - Insurgent Black Intellectual Life, Black Looks: Race and Representation, Art on My Mind, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Where We Stand: Class Matters, Understanding Patriarchy, The Oppositional Gaze, Teaching to Transgress