Prochoice hero kills young abortion patient: Benjamin Munson had what it takes to be a hero to the prochoice movement: he paid his dues as a "back-alley butcher", scraping out fetuses in those dark days when women's lives were of ever so much less value. Once abortion was legalized, and the threat of prison was gone, Munson started leaving bits of baby behind after abortions. Which, of course, in no way diminished prochoice admiration for him.
A flukey thing? Or malpractice? LIke Munson's dead patients, "Sara" died from retained tissue. But the source material doesn't indicate if the abortionist left behind large chunks of fetus that anybody who could count to four would have known were still in there, or if the infection sprang from little bits of placenta or fetal internal organs. While Sara wound up just as dead either way, there's a lot more culpability in leaving behind a mangled fetus missing only a few parts, and leaving behind baby bits too small to grab with your forceps anyway.
For the benefit of the troll: If abortion is all about getting the fetus out of the mother's body because she doesn't want it there, doesn't the abortionist have the obligation to remove the entire fetus? Munson only took a leg, an arm, a bit of skull and a bit of torso, but left the bulk of Linda Padfield's fetus still where she didn't want it.
Has he discharged his duty when he achieves the death of the fetus, or does he need to get the entire unwanted fetus out?
17 comments:
Dear RealChoice/Christine, I thought you might find this interesting:
http://heresy-hunter.blogspot.com/2010/06/pro-life-blogger-home-vandalized.html#links
and here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=9673280&postID=7194380437740666047
This is a non-issue. In the overwhelmingly large majority of cases, anything you leave behind passes out of the woman all by itself, usually unnoticed.
GG, I am willing to respond on behalf of 'the troll' because, as we know, trolls are those who obfuscate the truth, misrepresent reality and refuse to acknowledge or allow any evidence which harms their cause.
Yes, this appalling man should have done his job properly. He needs to face the full consequences of his actions. Abortion is removal of the fetus, not just its death. Any medical practitioner who is negligent in their duty needs to be dealt with appropriately. None of this negates the fact that abortion is nine times safer than full term delivery though.
I find it interesting that you said '...those dark days when women's lives were of ever so much less value.' Does this mean that you recognize the reduction of misogyny, patriarchal control and hypocrisy which has occurred since women have been given a choice?
Lola, I hope that whoever perpetrated this act is duly caught and punished, whatever their cause may be. At least the victim in this case wasn't shot dead in their church!
Rupert, you have a faulty sarcasm detector. Back in the "bad old days" people actually gave a rat's ass if some quack killed a woman. Now it's dismissed as just the price you pay for "choice". Nobody but the prolifers and the woman's family cares. The prochoicers yawn and go about their business.
Which makes me wonder if it ever WAS about "women's lives". I think it was -- and remains -- about abortionists' freedom.
Facts GG, facts.
Abortion has always occurred and always will.
Legal abortion is safer than illegal abortion.
Abortion is safer than full-term delivery.
Pro-choicers are not nonchalant about abortion deaths, anymore than they are about any other medical death.
No GG, it's about womens' right to freely choose what is best for them. Without being controlled by men or the church. The 'abortionists' freedom' element only applies in regard to not being penalized for providing what some women want.
OperationCounterstrike, just FYI, tissue left behind -- even small amounts often does NOT pass by itself, and often leads to major blood loss. This is why doctors frequently peform D&C procedures after natural miscarriages, to make sure every little bit is gone.
(When I miscarried, my doctor was upset that I flushed everything down the toilet -- she said I should have saved it in a jar, to show her, so she could be sure it was all gone. Um.....ICK!)
L., you are mistaken. Situations such as you describe, where retained tissue gets infected and becomes a problem, are quite rare. It's difficult to say HOW rare because retained tissue usually passes unnoticed, so we cannot say how often it occurs.
In the uterus, the natural flow of things is OUTWARD.
Rupert Sez: Abortion has always occurred and always will.
Your point being? Rape has always occurred. Does that mean we should facilitate it?
Rupert Sez: Legal abortion is safer than illegal abortion.
Tell that to the families of the women killed by erstwhile "back alley butchers" like Munson, or Jesse Ketchum or Milan Vuitch. These guys had clean records as criminal abortionists, but went on to kill women after legalization took away the risk of prison in their minds. These women would have been far safer in these guys' criminal practices.
Rupert Sez: Abortion is safer than full-term delivery.
1. The CDC generates supposed abortion mortality rates based on bogus numbers. They miss plenty of deaths because they're not looking for them. They're trying to generate numbers that make abortion look good.
2. If abortion is so much safer than childbirth, how come women aren't dying from going to prolife pregnancy care centers? You know it'd be all over the news and NARAL and other abortion lovers would be screaming from the housetops. They're always trying to make prolife centers look bad. If they had a single dead woman, they'd be dragging her corpse all over the country.
3. If somehow abortion really was safer than childbirth, it would still be irrelevant. If the airlines and FAA acted like the abortion industry does, nobody would bother to investigate plane crashes because of all the pouting about how much safer airline travel is than driving. That's no excuse for not cleaning up your act.
Rupert Sez: Pro-choicers are not nonchalant about abortion deaths, anymore than they are about any other medical death.
I'd like to see some evidence of that.
Marriage has always been with us, eating food has always been with us. So have race or religious based conflicts, or taxes. Your point being? Your comparison is fatuous.
'Back alley butchers' should be dealt with appropriately. The same as the myriad of medical practitioners of all types and levels and in all fields who are found to have caused harm through negligence, laziness, ineptitude or stupidity.
1. So there are a large number of women who have died in abortion clinics and vanished? The CNC and numerous other independant organizations all have statistical data which demonstrates that abortion is significantly safer than full-term delivery. Or is every single body which is not anti-abortion involved in a conspiracy? Yet you cite case after case of deaths from abortion as if they are the only cause of death during gestation. The methodology described in your link is both questionable in practice as well as biased.
2. Abortion is much safer. Its a fact, not an 'if'. How many deliveries do pregnancy care centers perform? The chances of death by counselling are minimal. What happens after women leave with misinformation may be another matter however.
3. Again, abortion really is safer than childbirth. What a false comparison you purport. No-one is saying deaths should not be investigated, no-one. Investigations aren't avoided because abortion is safer than child birth! What a ludicrous thing to say! That is one of your weakest analogies yet! And that does not alter the statistics. Any investigation will make things even safer.
I'd like to see some evidence which says otherwise.
I mostly agree with OC on this one -- as in, that most bits of retained tissue would be passed out with the natural bleeding that ensues after birth, a miscarriage or an abortion.
However, infection can set up if any pieces of the baby or placenta remain in the uterus, despite "the natural flow of things" being outward. I don't think it happens often, but it does happen. Plus, if there is a piece of placenta retained, the body continues to act as if it is pregnant, which means that blood flow continues to the placental site, and if there is no placenta there, the woman just bleeds and bleeds.
When I had a miscarriage, my midwife friend suggested a "wait and see" approach -- namely, that if I bled for longer than a week, that I should seek care. I think doctors overreact a bit with the D&Cs with miscarriages -- sure, sometimes they're warranted, but usually not. Still, it seems that doctors are trained to "do something" even when they really don't need to.
Rupert, the women don't have to die then vanish. The CDC just has to fail to notice and count them. You need look only at the death of Latachie Veal to see how lackadaisical the CDC's abortion mortality tracking is. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the CDC failed to notice this highly-publicized death, discussed openly at an event attended by two of their abortion surveillance staffers, exactly what does it take to get them to notice an abortion death? And how can we even pretend to believe that any serious attempt to accurately count abortion deaths was being made?
Prolife pregnancy centers stay involved with their clients even after the birth of the child. Surely at some point, if women really do drop dead like flies from pregnancy complications, SOME family in this litigious society would have raised hell that their beloved sister, daughter, wife, niece, mother, whatever was "talked out of" her "lifesaving" abortion by the CPC. Every few months there's another whining campaign by abortion advocates, trying to get prolife centers shut down, but all they ever trot out as proof that these places are dangerous to women are whining but perfectly alive women who are pissed off that they didn't get their fetuses scraped out and had to make an appointment elsewhere to achieve the desired death. Never has anybody trotted out a woman crying that she suffered some grievous real injury, or a family lamenting the death of their pregnancy-center-visiting loved one. Prolifers are able to find plenty of women who suffer and die because they trust abortionists; abortion advocates can't find any woman who suffered anything worse than annoyance because she visited a prolife pregnancy center.
And every time there's an abortion death, there's no spokesperson from NAF or NARAL or the CDC saying, "We're gonna get to the bottom of why this happened and prevent any further deaths." You can't even get the place where the woman died to do a preventability study and take corrective action! Once Willard Cates and David Grimes left the Abortion Surveillance Unit at the CDC, the only two prochoicers in American who seemed to really give a rat's ass if the woman survived the abortion or not vanished from the public scene. Show me ONE LEGAL ABORTION DEATH where there was any sort of procohice outcry. You won't find one after Cates and Grimes. There's nothing but apologetics after that.
Kathy, if I read OC right, he's justifying even Munson leaving the bulk of the mangled fetus behind, on the grounds that it's bound to fall out sooner or later.
I was reading OC's comments as referring to the unknown (to us) amount, quantity, and type of fetal remains in this abortion, not the other Munson case you cited in which the abortionist only removed a few pieces of what should have been considered a whole fetus unless proven otherwise. OC -- you can clarify if you wish.
It all depends how far along the pregnancy is.
Obviously, you TRY not to leave tissue behind. BUT if you do, it's almost always not a big deal. Passes unnoticed.
Sure, if it's a big pregnancy, further along, retained tissue is more likely to cause a problem.
I could see if it were a first-trimester pregnancy, maybe less than eight weeks, I wouldn't worry about getting the whole thing; anything you leave is likely too small to cause a problem.
Most docs wait until after twelve weeks to do a surgical abortion precisely because before twelve weeks teh pregnancy is too small to take stock of, too small even to see if you've left stuff behind.
Bottom line: retained tissue sounds scary but in the real world it's seldom a problem.
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