Saturday, June 02, 2007

Ambulance-chasing

Woman Goes to Hospital in Washington State After Botched Abortion

1. Let's not jump the gun. For all we know the woman in question was a diabetic who was so frazzled by her pregnancy and the attendant stress that she forgot to take her insulin. Or some other medical problem totally unrelated to PP and/or anything they did or failed to do.

2. A medical facility calling an ambulance to transfer a patient is a responsible thing. I'm an EMT. We got frequent calls to take patients from outpatient facilities to the hospital. It's often just a precautionary measure. It could well be that during the pre-abortion exam (if the woman was indeed there for an abortion in the first place) the doctor discovered that something was amiss and very sensibly and appropriately braved bad publicity to call an ambulance.

3. Ambulance chasing is in poor taste. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer hoping for a client or an activist hoping for a sordid story. This woman, regardless of her situation, is entitled to her privacy and she doesn't need vultures circling. Yeah, show up and see if she needs help. Prolifers have stepped forward to pay medical bills, to care for children while mom was hospitalized, to bring groceries to a woman who ended up a multiple amputee, to help with funeral expenses. This is appropriate. But "We want to pry and use your situaation for political fodder" is at the very least tacky and thoughtless.

11 comments:

JacqueFromTexas said...

My thoughts were not that the facility was being cautious, but that the patient must have been in really bad shape.

Abortionists hate ambulances, so much that they'll transport dying women in the cars of office managers sooner than they'll call one to come to their clinic (at least, that's what Carol Everett has said.) And Tiller's "please please please, no lights and no sirens" also comes to mind.

Maybe they were providing proper care. I hope so. I just find it very hard to believe.

Christina Dunigan said...

On the other hand, when Vanessa Preston stopped breathing, Curtis Stover and his staff did every responsible thing to try to help her. Includng prompty calling an ambulance.

The odds may be that she had to be in awful shape for them to be desperate enough to call an ambulance, but that's no proof. We're supposed to try to think the best of people, and there is the very real -- however unlikely -- possibility that these people were behaving responsibly and not guilty of any sort of neglect or malpractice.

JacqueFromTexas said...

Indeed, there is a very real, very, very, very slim chance that these people that kill unborn people for money actually showed some concern for the born one. I just think it is a slim chance.

By the way, I enjoyed this post.

Christina Dunigan said...

Jacque, some of them really do think they're helping. They see themselves as doing a necessary but very distasteful task. As it's been said, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

JacqueFromTexas said...

That's true. I'm throwing a baby shower for a former (and still unrepentent) late-term abortion mill counselor and I know that her guest list will include all her former co-workers. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to get through that...

Anyway, she told me that she took the job because when she aborted they didn't tell her all the facts and wouldn't let her see her ultrasound, so she wanted to give women that information. She felt like she was doing women a favor by making sure they were fully informed. I still don't understand this: She's doing women a favor by making sure they were completely culpable for the evil they were about to commit? Her goal wasn't turning women away, just making sure they were fully aware about what they were doing. She worked with me to leave the clinic because she couldn't stand being assaulted and the stigma with her job and other periphery issues, but she's yet to acknowledge that she played a role in the murders of thousands of babies.

Deception is powerful.

Christina Dunigan said...

Jacque, in a perverse way, she went into the abortion business to stand up for truth. And Who is Truth?

God is working in her. He takes people at their own pace.

When I first became a Christian, I was involved in an affair. My best friend was very distressed that this particular sin lingered, and she'd pray for the words to chastise me for it. And she'd always get the same answer, that God would deal with it Himself in His time.

Philippians 4:8
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.


Look at what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable in this woman and her friends. And let them know that you see it. That's how I got loved into the Kingdom to begin with. Not that I got preached to about it, but that I could tell by the behavior of the Christians around me that they were seeing something in me worth loving, even as I was flaunting my sin.

We have women's fellowship tomorrow night and I'll add you, this woman, and her friends to the list.

Christina Dunigan said...

PRAYER list. I re-read my post and realized I'd forgotten a crucial word in the last sentence!

JacqueFromTexas said...

Well, I see a lot of her now that she's home from school---and how we met (me a sidewalk counselor and she an abortion mill counselor) is the elephant in the room. We don't talk about it at all-period. It's an understood thing.

Occaisionally, she'll bring up abortion cavalierly. Like when she became pregnant and make it clear that she's still okay with the whole thing- although she wasn't going to do it herself this time. Case in point- it was the late term clinic where she worked that she went to for her pregnancy test and first ultrasound. She mentioned, giddy, about how all of her co-workers there were so happy for her. She also said, "They all love babies." This does not seem the least ironic to her. Then again, I know I can not point out the irony. My job is to love her, that way, if/when it does hit her, I can give her the help she needs.

She mentioned once that when she finishes her M.Div, she might go back to "minister" at the clinic. To which I reminded her of why she left in the first place, and that ended that discussion.

When I first met her, I expected blood to drip from her hands. I was surprised at how sweet she was and just how deceived she is. It's a deception. That's it.

God is working in her. I don't want to do anything to hinder Him.

JacqueFromTexas said...

By the way, I have a special love and burden for her beyond all understanding. I am a little scared about how I will handle celebrating an unborn baby in a room full of people that kill 40 of them everyday.

I'll need supernatural strength enough to keep quiet. I hope I can develop relationships with those women like I did with her.

Christina Dunigan said...

Jacque, just as you were surprised not to find blood dripping from the woman's hands, she and her friends are equally astonished not to find you chaining pregnant women in your basement to enslave them.

We'll keep you in our prayers!

Christina Dunigan said...

Occaisionally, she'll bring up abortion cavalierly.

Like how I kept bringing up my affair, back in my pre-Christian days? And nobody would take the bait! I was so bewildered! My head was screaming, "I know you think I'm mired in sin! Why aren't you lecturing me about it?" It drove me crazy! I wanted to know what they had that allowed them to keep their mouths shut and just keep loving me anyway!