In "Bumping Into Geniuses," ... Danny Goldberg ... reveals how he and a group of [Courtney] Love's inner circle -worried about her heroin use during pregnancy - plotted an intervention.
During a meeting with a doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's chemical dependency program, the doctor "tried to give clinical advice, suggesting to Courtney that it was not a great idea to have a baby while dealing with addiction," writes Goldberg. That didn't sit well with Love, who exploded.
" 'You're not telling me to have a [bleep]-ing abortion, are you?' asked Courtney, her voice rising with her trademark hostile whine. 'I mean I'm pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that anyone has the right to tell me to have a [bleep]ing abortion.'
"[He] suggested that it might not be safe for the baby, and Courtney, who was only six weeks pregnant, went into a confrontational mode. 'Is that a medical fact, or is that just your opinion? I want to see it in a medical book.' She was interested in medical facts, not a sermon. [He] sheepishly acknowledged that at this early stage of pregnancy a woman could discontinue heroin use with no physical or psychological damage to the fetus. Courtney looked triumphant as she towered over the doctor seated at his desk."
A NASA spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Mars and successfully landed in the Red Planet's northern polar region on Sunday, where it will begin 90 days of digging in the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.
This fellow, Harvey Karman (pictured), wasn't a doctor, killed a woman doing an abortion on her in a motel room with a nutcracker, nearly killed roughly a dozen minority women on Mother's Day of 1972, and left rape victims in Bangladesh with infections and hemorrhage from pieces of plastic springs and balsa wood stuck through the walls of their wombs. Yet the prochoicers' words in obituaries and blogs were all filled with adoration for this fellow, and all that he supposedly did for women.
Some will rely on religious convictions to guide their decisions. But, although I was brought up a Roman Catholic, any religious beliefs I ever had have left me. Instead, in urging MPs to reduce dramatically the time limit, I look to more than 30 years’ experience in abortion services for the NHS and private clinics, to my time as medical director of one of Britain’s largest abortion services....So this isn't some nutcase right-to-lifer speaking. It's somebody who thinks highly enough of abortion as a practice to have devoted 30 years of his life to actually bloodying his hands with it.
[…]When it comes to abortion, a lot of the debate is somewhat euphemistic; the pro-lobby prefer to talk about “terminations” of “foetuses”.Even that is too straightforward for the United States, where it's all about "terminating" or even "interrupting" "pregnancies". ("Interrupting". As if you just hit the "Pause" button and can resume it at any time.)
But if an IVF clinic shows you the first scan of your baby in the womb, you won’t find them using the word foetus to describe it. We are killing babies far older than that, and if we are going to have an honest debate then we have got to be straight about that.This isn't the first time an abortion has referred to abortion as killing a baby. Anybody want to contribute some quotes on that?
The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries is campaigning to reduce the limit to 20 weeks. In the full knowledge of what is involved in late abortions, and the widespread distaste for them among the medical profession, I would go further, and support an amendment proposing 16 weeks. I am not alone. Within the NHS, the majority of doctors are refusing to carry out late abortions. Three quarters of late procedures are now carried out by private clinics. At Eastbourne Hospital, where I worked for 19 years, the medical staff eventually decided we would perform no abortions on social grounds after 14 weeks.There are a lot of developmental milestones where it would make some sort of sense to draw the line. The beating heart at 18 days. Brain waves at 42 days. All organ systems in place at 8 weeks. All structures in place at 12 weeks. But there are really no developmental milestones between 12 weeks and whenever the lungs become mature enough to support the baby outside the womb, somewhere after about 20 weeks. There is no logical reason to draw the line anywhere between 12 and 20 weeks. The only real difference is size. Size does matter, it seems, to the point where if you're a few grams heavier suddenly it's no longer an inalienable right for your mom to kill you.
Most people do not realize just how distressing late abortions can be.Distressing to whom? The mother? The doctor? The nurses?
The procedure remains the last taboo. While heart and brain surgery are regularly shown on television, the reality of a late abortion has never been seen on British screens.But they've come close:
There are two main types of procedure; the medical type, which kills the baby via medication, meaning that the woman miscarries a stillborn.She delivers it. She doesn't miscarry it. A miscarriage is when the baby dies of natural causes or accidental injury. This is an abortion, the deliberate killing -- something that even this seasoned abortionist can't quite bring himself to say.
Alternatively the surgical procedure uses instruments to remove parts of the dismembered body from the uterus, limb by limb. It is hard to describe how it feels to pull out parts of a baby, to see arms, and bits of leg, and finally the head.Warren Hern said "the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current."
Given the nature of this experience, it greatly concerns me how lightly some of these decisions are made. For every woman who comes late to the clinic because she did not realise she was pregnant, there will be another who feels it is simply their right to have an abortion whenever they like, and feels no need to explain herself at all.I've heard this before -- abortion staff getting sometimes downright angry that some women act as if the world owes it to them to dismantle their babies on request. Again, does anybody have some quotes they'd like to contribute?
Recently, one woman came to me at the age of 42. After years of IVF treatment, she had finally conceived for the first time. Yet, when she found out she was carrying twins she wanted to have one aborted. For me, that is the ultimate illustration of a throwaway society.
Harvey Karman, 84; invented device for safer, easier abortions"Harvey Karman did more for safe abortion around the world than practically any other person in the world," said Dr. Malcolm Potts, Bixby professor of Population, Family Planning and Maternal Health at UC Berkeley, who accompanied Karman to Bangladesh 35 years ago.
The counselor sat me down in a chair and was very straightforward the whole time. I’m sure everything she asked was required, because she did it with no emotion whatsoever.
“Now you understand that taking these pills will cause an abortion and this is the decision you’ve decided to make?”
She had such a monotone voice, no sympathy, not even in her face.
When my name was called again, I was led to a room in the back of the hallway known as the “Recovery Room”. It’s a little weird for a recovery room. There aren’t any beds; instead they have these really comfortable leather recliners. I mean, they are comfortable, and they recline to about the length of a twin-sized bed. These are probably the only good things about this room. In the far corner, there were 4 of these recliners with women lying on them. Curtains were drawn around each one, and I could only see their feet hanging out. They were all shaking, crying, and moaning. I wanted to walk up to one and hold her hand and ask her how she was feeling, and if there was anything I could do. It was so awful to sit there and hear all of it.
It felt like someone was stabbing me in the stomach over and over again. And at that moment, I really did want someone to do that.
When I stood up I felt dizzy. I grabbed the door to balance myself, and my vision began to blur and go black around the tips of my eyes. I began to freak out, thinking something was seriously wrong and that I would have to go to the hospital and tell my parents and everything was just all down hill from there. I got to my room, and literally fell on my bed. I had broken out into a cold sweat, but by 5 minutes, the dizziness and sweat had subsided, and I passed out again.
He explained that since I had thrown up some of the medication, it most likely caused the procedure to not work as it should have. At this point, I was pretty much freaking out. I KNEW what the next step was, and that was surgery. ACTUAL surgery. The vacuum surgery. I asked him what the sound I heard coming from the ultra-sound was, and he said it was the heartbeat. I began to cry.
He went on to explain that although the child was still living, there was an extreme possibility of deformity, and that surgery was my best option. My appointment was set up for the following Monday.
I wanted everything to be over. I was tired of coming to Planned Parenthood, and reliving that first day. I wanted it all to end.
When it was over, they wheeled me into the recovery room, and I lay just like those 4 women I saw on the first day, with my feet hanging out, and shaking all over.
I was sore over the next few days, and felt miserable not just about that situation, but about everything else going on in my life too. I sat down and opened up a google webpage, this time I googled “ways to commit suicide.”
I prayed. I got on my knees and said, “God, take my life, or please show me your will. I do not want to live any longer.” Everyday after that, I began to pray for God to remove me of that pain, and from all the insanity going on in my life at the time.
Animal studies have demonstrated that almost half of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus; of those that do implant, some are lost to spontaneous abortion (miscarriage). The "pro-life" contingent, which insists that life begins at fertilization, are either ignorant of these facts or choose to ignore them.
I carried Zachariah in my womb for almost nine full months. He was killed in my womb, only five days from his delivery date. The first time I ever held him in my arms, he was already dead. ....
There is no way that I can really tell you about the pain I feel when I visit my son’s grave site in Milwaukee, and at other times, thinking of all that we missed together. But that pain was greater because the man who killed Zachariah got away with murder.
....
I know that some lawmakers and some groups insist that there is no such thing as an unborn victim, and that crimes like this only have a single victim – but that is callous and it is wrong. Please don’t tell me that my son was not a real victim of a real crime.
As a fetus I would have gladly given up my chance to enter the world and become Frances Kissling to have given my mother a better chance at happiness. Far too much is made of a mother's obligations to her children and far too little of what a child's love for her mother means. If fetuses could love, I think they would be as passionate in defense of their mothers as born children become.
Georgette Forney, co-founder of Silence No More Awareness Campaign, a group of women and men who speak publicly about the suffering abortion has caused in their lives, also found irony in Planned Parenthood using motherhood as a marketing tool.
Forney told Cybercast News Service that her organization also sent e-mails to thousands of women she called "childless mothers," or those whose only pregnancy was ended by abortion.
"They are looking at Mother's Day with such a heart of pain," Forney said. "We wanted them to know they are not alone."
Dear Friend:
Celebrate the Buddy Walk's 14th anniversary by entering the Times Square Video Contest. The video, which showcases individuals with Down syndrome from all over the world, will air on the Panasonic News Corporation Astrovision screen in Times Square on September 28 at 10:30 a.m. The New York City Buddy Walk™ will immediately follow the video at the Great Hill in Central Park.
Each year, NDSS receives thousands of photo submissions for the Times Square Video Contest. Because the Buddy Walk™ promotes acceptance and inclusion of individuals with Down syndrome, the winning photographs feature children, teens and adults with Down syndrome working, playing and learning with friends and family. Please limit photos to no more than three per individual with Down syndrome. If more than three pictures are received, only the first three will be considered.
Vivian Campbell
December 12, 1925 - May 6, 1950
Vivian Campbell was the mother of two children ages five and three. She was newly separated from her husband when she realized she was pregnant. Sending her children to stay with her parents, she sought and obtained an illegal abortion. She sent for her husband, but by the time he arrived at the hospital it was too late. She died in agony of peritonitis.
