With the help of then-Christian Humor Guide Greg Hartman, I once put together a series of articles on Scriptures and abortion. Here they are for your perusal:
Exodus 21 and Abortion explores the scripture that gets batted about most by abortion supporters.
Scriptures on the Unborn Apply to Abortion looks at specific scriptural references to prenatal life.
Assorted Scriptures and Abortion looks at scriptures on justice and on dealing with crises.
Then a visitor on my forum made a post that led to Hebrew Words Give Biblical Reflection on Abortion, looking at the Hebrew words for "compassion" and "womb." Hebrew Words and Abortion Part II looks at the Hebrew words denoting violence. Then I moved to the New Testament and looked into Greek Words and Abortion.
I also looked at Biblical reflections on Who is the Enemy?
And, for something that people who hate obnoxious holy-roller prolifers can sink their teeth into: God's Instructions to His People.
Go to town, kids!
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Lest we forget ... Dorothy Brant
The survivors of 22-year-old Dorothy Brant filed suit against Dr. Robert Prince in her death.
The suit claims that Prince failed to perform a proper pre-operative evaluation before performing an abortion on Dorothy at Dallas Medical Ladies Clinic on May 27, 1986. Dorothy hemorrhaged during the procedure. In the lawsuit, her family said that Prince was negligent in his administration of drugs, anesthesia, and in his administration of a blood transfusion.
Dorothy was transferred to a hospital, where she died four days later, May 31, of pulmonary fibrosis.
Prince is quoted by NARAL as saying: "[Before Roe], I would see at least one criminal abortion a night, at least one, and often ten on weekends. All were infected... Most required surgery... and many required blood replacement. If these unfortunate women survived, they were often sterile as a result of infection..." So he how does he fix this problem? By becoming an abortionist himself, and becoming the one who does the damage. Prince even sued the state of Texas, trying to force taxpayers to pay for his services.
The prolife activists who obtained and photographed "Baby Malachi" (WARNING: Graphic!) note that Prince was the abortionist who dismembered him. Baby Malachi was obtained from North Central Medical Facility in Dallas in February of 1993.
The suit claims that Prince failed to perform a proper pre-operative evaluation before performing an abortion on Dorothy at Dallas Medical Ladies Clinic on May 27, 1986. Dorothy hemorrhaged during the procedure. In the lawsuit, her family said that Prince was negligent in his administration of drugs, anesthesia, and in his administration of a blood transfusion.
Dorothy was transferred to a hospital, where she died four days later, May 31, of pulmonary fibrosis.
Prince is quoted by NARAL as saying: "[Before Roe], I would see at least one criminal abortion a night, at least one, and often ten on weekends. All were infected... Most required surgery... and many required blood replacement. If these unfortunate women survived, they were often sterile as a result of infection..." So he how does he fix this problem? By becoming an abortionist himself, and becoming the one who does the damage. Prince even sued the state of Texas, trying to force taxpayers to pay for his services.
The prolife activists who obtained and photographed "Baby Malachi" (WARNING: Graphic!) note that Prince was the abortionist who dismembered him. Baby Malachi was obtained from North Central Medical Facility in Dallas in February of 1993.
Well, is it her choice or not?
There's been controversy for years about pro-anorexia sites on the internet. The women who maintain these sites encourage one another to starve themselves, exercise, and waste themselves away to nothing.
Now, is this a mental health issue? Is it about allowing women to do whatever they want with their bodies? I mean, does the "Trust Women" slogan apply? They don't see what they're doing as sick or problematic. Is anorexia, as they claim, another valid lifestyle choice? Like, say, abortion? Sure, a lot of them regret it later. Sure, many of them die. But you can say that about abortion, too. Plenty of women regret it later. Plenty of women end up permanently injured or even dead. But hey, it's a lifestyle choice. Why shouldn't anorexia be?
Not that I"m applauding anorexia or the pro-anorexia sites. I just see a lot of parallels that I don't think the abortion lobby can satisfactorily deal with.
Now, is this a mental health issue? Is it about allowing women to do whatever they want with their bodies? I mean, does the "Trust Women" slogan apply? They don't see what they're doing as sick or problematic. Is anorexia, as they claim, another valid lifestyle choice? Like, say, abortion? Sure, a lot of them regret it later. Sure, many of them die. But you can say that about abortion, too. Plenty of women regret it later. Plenty of women end up permanently injured or even dead. But hey, it's a lifestyle choice. Why shouldn't anorexia be?
Not that I"m applauding anorexia or the pro-anorexia sites. I just see a lot of parallels that I don't think the abortion lobby can satisfactorily deal with.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Blog roundup
This title takes the cake: Michigan Bill Would Force Offer of Ultrasounds to Abortion Patients. You can't post at the blog in question, you can just go to the headlined article, which laments
As if there's any relationship between a woman and her abortionist! Puh-LEASE! One might as well whine that requiring taxi drivers to tell people the fare rates before a ride interferes in a professional relationship.
*****
LefemineForLife calls the Bush administration on the carpet for increasing Title X funding, which tends to go straight to the coffers of the likes of Planned Parenthood.
*****
Papa Familias notes that Amnesty International is still tracking forced sterilization and forced abortion in China. Where's the prochoice outrage over this?
*****
Hidden is hurting over a lot of painful things going on in her life, including trying to come to terms with an abortion three years earlier. Let's give her some cyberhugs and support.
*****
For those who claim that nobody laments a low abortion rate, check out this blog, quoting an article whining about how a lack of abortionists "might explain why the abortion rate among women in small towns and rural areas is half that of women in metropolitan areas. " A low abortion rate! Perish the thought! The snippet goes on to complain:
Wait a minute! I thought that when women couldn't just drive to the corner clinic to get vacuumed out, they impaled themselves with coathangers! If the abortion-lobby myth were true, these women would all be in the ground, and their scarred and mangled uteruses would be preserved in formaldehyde at the coroner's office. Instead, they're alive and mothering their kids. Who but a rabid abortion enthusiast could complain about that?
*****
This blogger is still complaining about the religious services performed for aborted fetuses in Colorado. Tell me, why all the outrage when the fetuses are given a decent burial, but none when they're run down the garbage disposal or put through a meat grinder, tossed in a dumpster, or otherwise disturbingly disposed of by abortionists?
House Bill 4446, which passed by a vote of 69 to 37, would force medical clinics to offer women considering abortion an opportunity to view an ultrasound image of the fetus. .... Shelli Weisberg of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan said the measure inserts lawmakers into a medical decision that "should be between a woman and her doctor."
As if there's any relationship between a woman and her abortionist! Puh-LEASE! One might as well whine that requiring taxi drivers to tell people the fare rates before a ride interferes in a professional relationship.
*****
LefemineForLife calls the Bush administration on the carpet for increasing Title X funding, which tends to go straight to the coffers of the likes of Planned Parenthood.
*****
Papa Familias notes that Amnesty International is still tracking forced sterilization and forced abortion in China. Where's the prochoice outrage over this?
*****
Hidden is hurting over a lot of painful things going on in her life, including trying to come to terms with an abortion three years earlier. Let's give her some cyberhugs and support.
*****
For those who claim that nobody laments a low abortion rate, check out this blog, quoting an article whining about how a lack of abortionists "might explain why the abortion rate among women in small towns and rural areas is half that of women in metropolitan areas. " A low abortion rate! Perish the thought! The snippet goes on to complain:
State restrictions almost certainly have caused some women, perhaps thousands a year, to forgo abortions. Research suggests that Wisconsin’s two-day waiting period might have contributed to a 21-percent decline in abortions there. Shawn Towey, spokeswoman for the National Network of Abortion Funds, a group comprising 102 organizations that provides money and support for low-income women seeking abortions, estimates that 60,000 women a year find the restrictions so onerous that they carry their babies to term. The Guttmacher Institute stated in a 2001 report that between 18 percent and 35 percent of Medicaid-eligible women who want to have abortions continue their pregnancies if public funding isn’t available.
Wait a minute! I thought that when women couldn't just drive to the corner clinic to get vacuumed out, they impaled themselves with coathangers! If the abortion-lobby myth were true, these women would all be in the ground, and their scarred and mangled uteruses would be preserved in formaldehyde at the coroner's office. Instead, they're alive and mothering their kids. Who but a rabid abortion enthusiast could complain about that?
*****
This blogger is still complaining about the religious services performed for aborted fetuses in Colorado. Tell me, why all the outrage when the fetuses are given a decent burial, but none when they're run down the garbage disposal or put through a meat grinder, tossed in a dumpster, or otherwise disturbingly disposed of by abortionists?
Yes, they died before Roe
Nineteen-year-old Annette Camorato was an aspiring actress with the stage name of Toni Morgan. Some time in May of 1934, Annette died of abortion complications. Annette's brother-in-law, Dr. Harry A. Felice, was charged with homicide in Annette's death, but was later released due to lack of evidence.
Yes, women died of illegal abortions. And they died from the occasional legal abortion a doctor arranged prior to widespread legalization. Now it's more common to die from legal abortions, and the illegal abortion deaths are unusual. The common thread is the obvious one: each of these women died at the hands of somebody who considered abortion to be an appropriate action to take.
As long as people are promoting abortion as a solution to women's problems, many women will believe that abortion truly is a solution, and some of them will die as a result. So if you don't want women to die from botched abortions, quit promoting abortion.
Yes, women died of illegal abortions. And they died from the occasional legal abortion a doctor arranged prior to widespread legalization. Now it's more common to die from legal abortions, and the illegal abortion deaths are unusual. The common thread is the obvious one: each of these women died at the hands of somebody who considered abortion to be an appropriate action to take.
As long as people are promoting abortion as a solution to women's problems, many women will believe that abortion truly is a solution, and some of them will die as a result. So if you don't want women to die from botched abortions, quit promoting abortion.
Parental involvement in abortion
Now, when the blogosphere is all abuzz over parental involvement in abortion, it's a good time to review the old "teen endangerment" myth the abortion lobby has built up around this topic. Read A Tale of Two Abortions, an examination of one teenage girl who died from an induced abortion, and another whose death is falsely attributed to abortion.
The truth is that in their desperation to find a death, any death, that they could blame on parental involvement laws, they latched onto the closest thing they could find: a girl who miscarried while dying of pneumonia. But to find teens who died of abortions done behind their parents' backs, you'd not have to look far:
Even with parental involvement, abortions will continue to kill teenagers. Seventeen-year-old Teresa Causey was clutching her mother's hand when she died on the abortion table, gasping, "Oh, mama, mama, it hurts so much!" Erna Fisher's mother was holding her hand when she choked to death on her own vomit on the abortion table. So clearly, involving teenagers' parents isn't a panacea. But when teens know that their parents will have to be involved in their abortion decisions, fewer of them risk pregnancy to begin with. Fewer teens risking pregnancy means fewer teens risking abortion. Parental involvement means that those teens that do resort to abortion will have no need to fear reporting complications to their parents. They will also have the financial help of their parents, and experienced guidance, reducing the chances that they'll turn to a fly-by-night, filthy, cut-rate abortion mill. Fewer teens at risk, and a lower risk for those teens who do gamble their lives on the abortion table, will mean fewer devastated parents choking back silent screams at their daughters' deathbeds. How anybody could oppose this is anybody's guess.
The truth is that in their desperation to find a death, any death, that they could blame on parental involvement laws, they latched onto the closest thing they could find: a girl who miscarried while dying of pneumonia. But to find teens who died of abortions done behind their parents' backs, you'd not have to look far:
- Dawn Ravenelle, age 13
- Erica Kae Richardson, age 16
- Sandra Kaiser, age 14
- Sophie McCoy, age 17
- Tamia Russell, age 15
Even with parental involvement, abortions will continue to kill teenagers. Seventeen-year-old Teresa Causey was clutching her mother's hand when she died on the abortion table, gasping, "Oh, mama, mama, it hurts so much!" Erna Fisher's mother was holding her hand when she choked to death on her own vomit on the abortion table. So clearly, involving teenagers' parents isn't a panacea. But when teens know that their parents will have to be involved in their abortion decisions, fewer of them risk pregnancy to begin with. Fewer teens risking pregnancy means fewer teens risking abortion. Parental involvement means that those teens that do resort to abortion will have no need to fear reporting complications to their parents. They will also have the financial help of their parents, and experienced guidance, reducing the chances that they'll turn to a fly-by-night, filthy, cut-rate abortion mill. Fewer teens at risk, and a lower risk for those teens who do gamble their lives on the abortion table, will mean fewer devastated parents choking back silent screams at their daughters' deathbeds. How anybody could oppose this is anybody's guess.
Lest we forget -- Denise Montoya
Denise Montoya was fifteen years old when her parents brought her to Women's Pavillion in Houston for an abortion on May 13, 1988. Denise was 25 weeks pregnant. The abortion was performed by Douglas Karpen, an osteopath.
Denise suffered severe bleeding, and was admitted to Ben Taub hospital. Her condition deteriorated, and she died on May 29, 1988.
Her parents filed suit against Karpen and the clinic, saying that they had faied to adequately explain the risks of the procedure, and had not provided consent forms, or had the parents sign any informed consent document, prior to the fatal abortion.
Denise suffered severe bleeding, and was admitted to Ben Taub hospital. Her condition deteriorated, and she died on May 29, 1988.
Her parents filed suit against Karpen and the clinic, saying that they had faied to adequately explain the risks of the procedure, and had not provided consent forms, or had the parents sign any informed consent document, prior to the fatal abortion.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
I couldn't resist commenting
This post celebrates an abortion-advocacy artwork, "Your body is a battleground." Well, I had to put in my two cents' worth:
Well if a woman's body is a battleground it's because she's choosing to wage war within it. It's not like the fetus is armed; it can't even defend itself. Mom hires an assassin, fetus dies, mission accomplished.
Brave mom chooses life for unborn twins -- and for herself
Read this amazing blog of a mom who was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia during pregnancy. She had given birth to her twins and is undergoing treatment for her APL.
The anatomy of an abortion-lobby myth
Fact-Check has analyzed how an opinion piece turned into the widespread myth that abortions have increased since Bush took office.
Fact-Check looks at the evolution of the myth:
Stassen had theorized that Bush's economic policies were fueling a rise in abortions.
Though Clinton stated that abortions were increasing only in "some states," some listeners evidently concluded that she was referring to a national trend. John Kerry got the ball rolling in an interview on Meet the Press on January 30, 2005. Then Howard Dean jumped into the fraay, saying on Meet the Press on May 24 that abortions had gone up 25% since Bush became President.
Russert didn't challenge him, Fact-Check continued:
So let's drive the final nail in the coffin of this little myth.
A number of politicians and organizations have been circulating an interesting and surprising idea: that abortions have gone up under George W. Bush’s watch. The claim is repeated by supporters of abortion rights as evidence that Bush's anti-abortion policies have backfired, or at least been ineffective.
But the claim is untrue. In fact, according to the respected Alan Guttmacher Institute, a 20-year decline in abortion rates continued after Bush took office. ....
Fact-Check looks at the evolution of the myth:
The claim that abortions are rising again can be traced back to an opinion piece by Glen Harold Stassen [that] originally appeared in a web and e-mail publication of Sojourners, a Christian magazine, in October 2004. Several other outlets ... ran a similar piece co-authored by Stassen and journalist Gary Krane. The articles generated a good deal of discussion on a number of both liberal and conservative blogs.
.... Stassen reported that ... "Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed," he said. "Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction."
Stassen's broad conclusion wasn't justified by the sketchy information he cited, however. Furthermore, a primary organization he cited specifically as a source for historical data now contradicts him, saying abortions have continued to decline since Bush took office.
Stassen had theorized that Bush's economic policies were fueling a rise in abortions.
In a speech to family-planning providers in New York on January 24, 2005 , Sen. Hillary Clinton recounted decreases in the abortion rate that occurred in her husband's administration, then lamented that the situation had changed. She repeated exactly some of the figures that Stassen had given in his Houston Chronicle article.
Though Clinton stated that abortions were increasing only in "some states," some listeners evidently concluded that she was referring to a national trend. John Kerry got the ball rolling in an interview on Meet the Press on January 30, 2005. Then Howard Dean jumped into the fraay, saying on Meet the Press on May 24 that abortions had gone up 25% since Bush became President.
Russert didn't challenge him, Fact-Check continued:
We asked the Democratic National Committee repeatedly where Dean got his 25 percent figure, but we got no response. Even if Stassen's estimate of 52,000 additional abortions were correct, that would figure to an increase of less than 4 percent. ....
Stassen’s numbers, and the widespread acceptance they seemed to be getting, prompted the Guttmacher Institute to conduct a special analysis to update its comprehensive census of abortion providers for the year 2000. The increases that Stassen reported “would be a significant change in a long-standing trend in the US ,” Leila Darabi of the institute explained to Factcheck. ....
The Guttmacher Institute announced its findings May 19. .... What it found was that the number of abortions decreased nationwide – by 0.8% in 2001 and by another 0.8% in 2002. The abortion rate , which is the number of women having abortions relative to the total population, also decreased 1% in 2001 and 0.9% in 2002. That's not as rapid a decrease as had been seen in earlier years, but it is a decrease nonetheless.
So let's drive the final nail in the coffin of this little myth.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Great news from Wisconsin
LifeNews reports that Wisconsin's abortion rates are the lowest they've been since 1974.
LifeNews also notes other states with similar declines in abortions:
Kansas: 10% since 1996
Kentucky: 63% from 1991 to 2002
Illinios: 10% since last year, to a 30-year low
South Carolina: 53% since 1988
Mississippi: 95% from 1991 to 2002
Wow! Does anybody know if anybody is tracking national trends in abortion rates and linking them to prolife efforts, so we can see what's the most effective?
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, there were 9,943 abortions in the state last year, less than half of the all-time high of 21,754 in 1980.
In addition, the abortion rate is also less than half of its peak. Last year, there were 14 abortions for every 100 births in Wisconsin while there were 29 abortions per 100 births in 1980.
The state health department also shows that there were nine abortions per 1,000 Wisconsin women in 2004 but a high of 20 per 1,000 women in 1980.
LifeNews also notes other states with similar declines in abortions:
Kansas: 10% since 1996
Kentucky: 63% from 1991 to 2002
Illinios: 10% since last year, to a 30-year low
South Carolina: 53% since 1988
Mississippi: 95% from 1991 to 2002
Wow! Does anybody know if anybody is tracking national trends in abortion rates and linking them to prolife efforts, so we can see what's the most effective?
When the POC really is just tissue
Two common prochoice euphamisms for the fetus destroyed by abortion -- "products of conception" and "pregnancy tissue" -- realy do accurately apply in those unusual circumstances when there is no fetus present in a pregnancy.
The two conditions in which a woman shows all the symptoms of pregnancy but is not sheltering a new human being are gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) and blighted ovum.
In GTD, the conception results in what is called a "hydatidiform mole." This is a cluster of tissue with an appearance somewhat similar to a bunch of grapes. In blighted ovum, a placenta and amniotic sac form, but there is no fetus in the sac. Some researchers seem to believe that a blighted ova is caused by the same abnormal conception process that causes hydatidiform moles. Others say that they are two different kinds of abnormalities.
Actually, the existence of hydatidiform moles underscores the prolife position. One need only compare a fetus with a molar pregnancy of the same gestation age to see very clearly the difference between "pregnancy tissue" and a viable embryonic human being. In fact, even in a partial mole, there is a clear difference between the doomed fetus, which is recognizably a fetus, and the molar tissue. For those of you with a strong stomach, here are a removed mole, a blighted ovum opened after it was expelled, and aborted fetuses, for your comparison:
Hydatidiform Mole
Blighted Ovum
First Trimester Abortion Photos (Warning: Very Graphic!)
You can see that the mole really is just a blob of tissue. Ditto for the blighted ovum. Nobody is going to be harvesting lungs, liver, thymus, long bones, or neural tissue from either because there are none. When there is a tiny human being present it's different. No matter how thoroughly shredded the embryo is, you can still see recognizable human body parts, such as arms, legs, hands, feet, and face. Only the degree to which the organs are damaged would stop a procurement company from harvesting a heart or a head.
To reiterate for the benefit of the terminally clueless: Prolifers don't oppose removing tissue. We oppose killing fetuses. Any questions?
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
The two conditions in which a woman shows all the symptoms of pregnancy but is not sheltering a new human being are gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) and blighted ovum.
In GTD, the conception results in what is called a "hydatidiform mole." This is a cluster of tissue with an appearance somewhat similar to a bunch of grapes. In blighted ovum, a placenta and amniotic sac form, but there is no fetus in the sac. Some researchers seem to believe that a blighted ova is caused by the same abnormal conception process that causes hydatidiform moles. Others say that they are two different kinds of abnormalities.
Actually, the existence of hydatidiform moles underscores the prolife position. One need only compare a fetus with a molar pregnancy of the same gestation age to see very clearly the difference between "pregnancy tissue" and a viable embryonic human being. In fact, even in a partial mole, there is a clear difference between the doomed fetus, which is recognizably a fetus, and the molar tissue. For those of you with a strong stomach, here are a removed mole, a blighted ovum opened after it was expelled, and aborted fetuses, for your comparison:
Hydatidiform Mole
Blighted Ovum
First Trimester Abortion Photos (Warning: Very Graphic!)
You can see that the mole really is just a blob of tissue. Ditto for the blighted ovum. Nobody is going to be harvesting lungs, liver, thymus, long bones, or neural tissue from either because there are none. When there is a tiny human being present it's different. No matter how thoroughly shredded the embryo is, you can still see recognizable human body parts, such as arms, legs, hands, feet, and face. Only the degree to which the organs are damaged would stop a procurement company from harvesting a heart or a head.
To reiterate for the benefit of the terminally clueless: Prolifers don't oppose removing tissue. We oppose killing fetuses. Any questions?
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Abu Hayat attempts name change
Don't panic -- he's still in the hoosegow, he's been rejected for parole twice, and won't be eligible for release until July of 2006. That might be pushed to July 2007 because of a refusal to provide a mandatory DNA sample in 2001.
But Hayat did request a name change, to Alba D.R. Willobeyeee. The judge rejected the petition on the grounds that the initials might mislead people into thinking he was a doctor. Hayat didn't say how he picked out the name, but did say he was seeking a new name because he'd converted to Christianity. I'm skeptical.
Hayat brought a whole load of trouble onto his own head in 1991, when he ripped the arm off a 32-week fetus who was subsequently born alive. The plight of baby Ana Rosa Rodriguez (pictured) gained national attention; she even appeared on Donahue. And with the publicity came scrutiny, revealing a sordid background including the death of Sophie McCoy seventeen-year-old abortion patient, just the year earlier. There was so much publicity over Hayat's exploits that we started to joke at Life Dynamics that even people sending us hate mail were enclosing clippings about Hayat.
Hayat was sentenced to prison both over the abortion that maimed Ana Rosa, and for another abortion in which he discharged a bleeding woman from his clinic in the middle of an abortion because her husband couldn't come up with additional money.
What the press somehow never got around to mentioning is that Hayat was a member of the National Abortion Federation. You remember them -- the folks who won't allow quacks in their ranks. Yup. If you believe that, there are some Nigerians who need your bank account numbers so they can transfer currency.
To see Hayat's disciplinary documents with the New York medical board, just pop over here and do a search for him. While you're at it, check on David Benjamin, who used to be Elias Bonrouhi before changing his name to try to hide his unsavory background. The last thing we need is to allow quacks to change their names.
But Hayat did request a name change, to Alba D.R. Willobeyeee. The judge rejected the petition on the grounds that the initials might mislead people into thinking he was a doctor. Hayat didn't say how he picked out the name, but did say he was seeking a new name because he'd converted to Christianity. I'm skeptical.
Hayat brought a whole load of trouble onto his own head in 1991, when he ripped the arm off a 32-week fetus who was subsequently born alive. The plight of baby Ana Rosa Rodriguez (pictured) gained national attention; she even appeared on Donahue. And with the publicity came scrutiny, revealing a sordid background including the death of Sophie McCoy seventeen-year-old abortion patient, just the year earlier. There was so much publicity over Hayat's exploits that we started to joke at Life Dynamics that even people sending us hate mail were enclosing clippings about Hayat.
Hayat was sentenced to prison both over the abortion that maimed Ana Rosa, and for another abortion in which he discharged a bleeding woman from his clinic in the middle of an abortion because her husband couldn't come up with additional money.
What the press somehow never got around to mentioning is that Hayat was a member of the National Abortion Federation. You remember them -- the folks who won't allow quacks in their ranks. Yup. If you believe that, there are some Nigerians who need your bank account numbers so they can transfer currency.
To see Hayat's disciplinary documents with the New York medical board, just pop over here and do a search for him. While you're at it, check on David Benjamin, who used to be Elias Bonrouhi before changing his name to try to hide his unsavory background. The last thing we need is to allow quacks to change their names.
Abortion, Suffering, and the Chinese Widow
Once upon a time, according to a Chinese legend, there was a poor widow whose only son was killed in an accident. Her grief was so deep that she wanted to die. In desperation, she went to a magician and asked if he could prepare a potion for her to cure her grief.
The magician told the widow that he could make just the potion she needed. But the widow had to bring him a special ingredient: an onion from a home that had never known sorrow.
So off the widow went to find an onion from a home that had never known sorrow. She went from village to village, door to door, seeking the onion. But every home she went to had known sorrow. Soon the widow found that she was spending her time giving comfort and recieving comfort from those she visited, sharing her sorrows and their sorrows. And in time, her grief faded and she found a will to live again and a new joy in life.
Finally she went back to the magician and told him that she had failed. She could not find an onion from a house that had known no sorrow.
"Ah," the magician said, "But still the potion worked! For your grief is cured!"
So many arguments in favor of abortion are based on the idea that abortion is somehow necessary to spare the child a life of suffering. But I challenge you, like the Chinese widow, to find someone who has known no sorrow, no suffering.
It's natural for parents to try to protect their children from suffering. They take them to the doctor and the dentist for preventive care. They teach them to beware of strangers. They teach them basic safety rules. And their hearts are always broken as life somehow manages to cause the child suffering, from a skinned knee to a crippling automobile accident, from taunting at school to torment by criminals. All of our best efforts to keep our children safe and happy only stack the deck. They delay the encounter with suffering, or they mitigate the suffering, but they can't eliminate it entirely, because suffering is an inevitable part of life.
The parent who is considering abortion to spare the child suffering might do well to follow the Chinese magician's advice. For proof that you're making the right choice, go and find an onion from a home that has never known sorrow. If you find one in time to keep your abortion appointment, go for it.
Then let me know. Because I'd like to meet the people who gave you the onion.
The magician told the widow that he could make just the potion she needed. But the widow had to bring him a special ingredient: an onion from a home that had never known sorrow.
So off the widow went to find an onion from a home that had never known sorrow. She went from village to village, door to door, seeking the onion. But every home she went to had known sorrow. Soon the widow found that she was spending her time giving comfort and recieving comfort from those she visited, sharing her sorrows and their sorrows. And in time, her grief faded and she found a will to live again and a new joy in life.
Finally she went back to the magician and told him that she had failed. She could not find an onion from a house that had known no sorrow.
"Ah," the magician said, "But still the potion worked! For your grief is cured!"
So many arguments in favor of abortion are based on the idea that abortion is somehow necessary to spare the child a life of suffering. But I challenge you, like the Chinese widow, to find someone who has known no sorrow, no suffering.
It's natural for parents to try to protect their children from suffering. They take them to the doctor and the dentist for preventive care. They teach them to beware of strangers. They teach them basic safety rules. And their hearts are always broken as life somehow manages to cause the child suffering, from a skinned knee to a crippling automobile accident, from taunting at school to torment by criminals. All of our best efforts to keep our children safe and happy only stack the deck. They delay the encounter with suffering, or they mitigate the suffering, but they can't eliminate it entirely, because suffering is an inevitable part of life.
The parent who is considering abortion to spare the child suffering might do well to follow the Chinese magician's advice. For proof that you're making the right choice, go and find an onion from a home that has never known sorrow. If you find one in time to keep your abortion appointment, go for it.
Then let me know. Because I'd like to meet the people who gave you the onion.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Let's set the record straight
Neil Cavuto of Fox News recently interviewed Rep. Jim Langevin. Langevin justfied supporting the gutting of abandoned embryos for research purposes on the grounds that they're just going to be thrown away anyway -- while enthusiastically endorsing the IVF procedures that result in these throw-away children in the first place.
Neil Cavuto can be reached at cavuto@foxnews.com
Langevin can be contacted through his web site.
Let's get this through to these guys: Treatments from embryonic stem-cells are pie-in-the-sky. Treatments using cord blood and adult stem cells are producing miracles here-and-now.
And yes, I know that embryonic stem cell research is wrong because it kills little people, not because it's fruitless. But this isn't something that matters to Langevin and others like him. What they care about is results. So we need to stress that they can get what they want -- miracle cures -- far faster and more effectively if they focus on cord blood and adult stemm cells, not on gutting embryos.
You can go to my blog entry for links to provide, or go directly here.
Here's the email I sent to Rep. Langevin:
Let me know if you contact either of them. My letter to Mr. Cavuto is on Not Just the Unborn.
Neil Cavuto can be reached at cavuto@foxnews.com
Langevin can be contacted through his web site.
Let's get this through to these guys: Treatments from embryonic stem-cells are pie-in-the-sky. Treatments using cord blood and adult stem cells are producing miracles here-and-now.
And yes, I know that embryonic stem cell research is wrong because it kills little people, not because it's fruitless. But this isn't something that matters to Langevin and others like him. What they care about is results. So we need to stress that they can get what they want -- miracle cures -- far faster and more effectively if they focus on cord blood and adult stemm cells, not on gutting embryos.
You can go to my blog entry for links to provide, or go directly here.
Here's the email I sent to Rep. Langevin:
I'm very perplexed as to why, as a prolife representative, you're endorsing pie-in-the-sky embryonic stem-cell research, which has produced dubious results at best, in preference to adult and cord-blood stem-cell research, which is producing miraculous results in the here-and-now.
I can see no reason to support embryonic stem-cell research other than to dehumanize embryos, in light of the fact that sight is being restored to the blind and movement to the paralized with adult and cord-blood stem cells, which don't require the destruction of embryos.
For more on the amazing work being done -- the amazing treatments that are currently being done on human patients -- see these sites:
http://realchoice.blogspot.com/2005/05/msm-get-it-right.html
http://www.stemcellresearch.org
Thank you.
Let me know if you contact either of them. My letter to Mr. Cavuto is on Not Just the Unborn.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Where in the world is she getting this idea?
Dana Reeve, widow of Christopher Reeve, on gutting "surplus" IVF embryos for their stem cells:
Mrs. Reeve, if these "surplus" embryos from IVF clinics couldn't develop into babies if implanted, then the IVF clinics in question were defrauding their customers.
Is she really this clueless? She's either lying or has her head so deep in the sand it's a wonder she can breathe. How can any human adult, without some kind of organic brain dysfunction, claim that the frozen embryos in IVF labs aren't capable of developing into babies in the womb?
Thanks to JivinJehoshaphat for the tip.
A lot of people will say, 'Well, you have no right to tamper with human life.' By 'tampering with human life,' I believe that they're talking about using an early cell that even if it were implanted, that it would not become a human being. That's where you get stem cells from. This is not a baby. It's not an embryo. It is pre-embryonic. This is something that would not, once it was implanted, turn into a human being.
Mrs. Reeve, if these "surplus" embryos from IVF clinics couldn't develop into babies if implanted, then the IVF clinics in question were defrauding their customers.
Is she really this clueless? She's either lying or has her head so deep in the sand it's a wonder she can breathe. How can any human adult, without some kind of organic brain dysfunction, claim that the frozen embryos in IVF labs aren't capable of developing into babies in the womb?
Thanks to JivinJehoshaphat for the tip.
Blogger ponders: Why aren't prolifers against IVF?
Nemohee ponders:
Well, personally hate the idea of IVF because of the fact that it involved putting embryos in the freezer and often abandoning them there. It also results in too many multiple pregnancies that place the lives of the babies at risk both during gestation and after premature birth. Though I don't want to see IVF outright banned, I want to see protections in place:
1. There should be limits placed on how many embryos are created at one time, to prevent the creation of embryos that get left in the freezer.
2. There should be limits placed on how many embryos are implanted at one time, to prevent the multiple gestations that are so risky to mother and babies.
3. There should be provisions in place for custody of the embryos that aren't implanted, either because the parents divorce or because the parents choose not to implant them all. IVF creates children, not property. It's inexcusably irresponsible to go to so much trouble to create children, then leave no provisions for them to be cared for should the parents be unwilling or unable to care for them.
How about the rest of you? Tell us, are you prolife or prochoice, and where do you stand on IVF?
Why aren't the anti-abortion people, who believe that adoption is the answer that having an abortion is playing God, rallying against IVF? Having a baby that's assembled in a lab is more like playing God to me. Why aren't Pro-Choice people rallying as well, if we are for reducing the number of abortions?
Well, personally hate the idea of IVF because of the fact that it involved putting embryos in the freezer and often abandoning them there. It also results in too many multiple pregnancies that place the lives of the babies at risk both during gestation and after premature birth. Though I don't want to see IVF outright banned, I want to see protections in place:
1. There should be limits placed on how many embryos are created at one time, to prevent the creation of embryos that get left in the freezer.
2. There should be limits placed on how many embryos are implanted at one time, to prevent the multiple gestations that are so risky to mother and babies.
3. There should be provisions in place for custody of the embryos that aren't implanted, either because the parents divorce or because the parents choose not to implant them all. IVF creates children, not property. It's inexcusably irresponsible to go to so much trouble to create children, then leave no provisions for them to be cared for should the parents be unwilling or unable to care for them.
How about the rest of you? Tell us, are you prolife or prochoice, and where do you stand on IVF?
The Bad Old Days
It never hurts to review. What were the bad old days of abortion really like?
Mary Claderone (then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood) and Nancy Howell Lee (a pro choice researcher) both investigated the practice of criminal abortion in the pre-legalization era. Calderone estimated that 90% of all illegal abortions in the early 1960s were being done by physicians. Calderone further estimated that 8% were self-induced and that 2% were induced by someone other than the woman or a doctor. Lee estimated that 89% of pre-legalization abortions were done by physicians, an additional 5% by nurses or others with some medical training, and 6% were done by non-medical persons or the woman herself.
Anecdotal data tends to support Lee's research. Stories of abortions by midwives, orderlies, chiropractors, and assorted lay practitioners like Harvey Karman (pictured) and the Jane Syndicate are far too common to represent only 2% of criminal abortions. We would probably not err too far if we relied primarily on Lee's numbers and adjusted them slightly to reflect the slight under-reporting of amateur abortions. Thus, a fair estimate of the breakdown of criminal abortions would probably look like this:
90% performed by physicians, either illegally or through loopholes in the law
5% performed by trained non-physicians (medical and lay)
5% performed by amateurs, either the woman or somebody else
This is a far cry from what the abortion lobby commonly claims.
For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Mary Claderone (then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood) and Nancy Howell Lee (a pro choice researcher) both investigated the practice of criminal abortion in the pre-legalization era. Calderone estimated that 90% of all illegal abortions in the early 1960s were being done by physicians. Calderone further estimated that 8% were self-induced and that 2% were induced by someone other than the woman or a doctor. Lee estimated that 89% of pre-legalization abortions were done by physicians, an additional 5% by nurses or others with some medical training, and 6% were done by non-medical persons or the woman herself.
Anecdotal data tends to support Lee's research. Stories of abortions by midwives, orderlies, chiropractors, and assorted lay practitioners like Harvey Karman (pictured) and the Jane Syndicate are far too common to represent only 2% of criminal abortions. We would probably not err too far if we relied primarily on Lee's numbers and adjusted them slightly to reflect the slight under-reporting of amateur abortions. Thus, a fair estimate of the breakdown of criminal abortions would probably look like this:90% performed by physicians, either illegally or through loopholes in the law
5% performed by trained non-physicians (medical and lay)
5% performed by amateurs, either the woman or somebody else
This is a far cry from what the abortion lobby commonly claims.
For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Blog roundup
This blog touts the embryonic stem cell research bill, and includes this gem:
Can't people grasp the simple facts? Embryonic stem cells, aside from being a morally objectionable line of approach, have produced nothing but disasters, while we're already getting medical miracles from cord blood and adult stem cells.
Here is another blogger who just doesn't get it, and equates Bush's stand on embryonic stem cells with a threat on cancer research.
Here's a blogger with an interesting proposal -- she thinks parental involvement laws for abortion are only appropriate if the child in question is under the age of consent. Let's go in there and encourage her fresh and innovative thinking!
Liberal Quicksand ponders how abortion can simultaneously be a right, and something that ought to be rare.
Chase argues that a "right" to abortion implies a "right" to the resources and labor of other people. He's right in that's how the abortion lobby seems to see it. But the abortion lobby doesn't consider this to be a bad thing.
Representative James R. Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, who was paralyzed at age 16 after a gun accidentally discharged in a police station and severed his spinal cord, said he supported the embryonic stem cell legislation despite opposing abortion.
Can't people grasp the simple facts? Embryonic stem cells, aside from being a morally objectionable line of approach, have produced nothing but disasters, while we're already getting medical miracles from cord blood and adult stem cells.
Here is another blogger who just doesn't get it, and equates Bush's stand on embryonic stem cells with a threat on cancer research.
Here's a blogger with an interesting proposal -- she thinks parental involvement laws for abortion are only appropriate if the child in question is under the age of consent. Let's go in there and encourage her fresh and innovative thinking!
Liberal Quicksand ponders how abortion can simultaneously be a right, and something that ought to be rare.
Chase argues that a "right" to abortion implies a "right" to the resources and labor of other people. He's right in that's how the abortion lobby seems to see it. But the abortion lobby doesn't consider this to be a bad thing.
Again: Why are they ignoring cord blood stem cells?
Thanks to Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online for a great article on the real breakthroughs in stem-cell research -- breakthroughs that do not require gutting an embryo. She links to this list of ailments that have been treated with cord blood stem cells.
Contact your congresscritter and stress that there is no excuse for throwing our money at ethically-bankrupt, ineffectual and dangerous research when morally sound alternatives are actually succeeding now, not in some hypothetical utopia.
Contact your congresscritter and stress that there is no excuse for throwing our money at ethically-bankrupt, ineffectual and dangerous research when morally sound alternatives are actually succeeding now, not in some hypothetical utopia.
The "Leftovers" Lie
One of the arguments some advocates put forward in favor of gutting embryos for stem cells is that IVF labs are full of "leftover" embryos that are "just going to be discarded anyway." WRONG!
People can and do adopt these embryos Click here to see some pictures of these kids.
People can and do adopt these embryos Click here to see some pictures of these kids.
Dubya and stem cells, redux
With the current Congressional trend toward further funding of medical exploitation, now is a good time to look back at what I said about where President Bush drew the line between politics and morality.
In a nutshell, I think Bush did the best he could, and I pray he stands firm. And we need to tell Congress that we want to opt out of any medical research, technology, or techniques that require the death of one person to treat another.
In a nutshell, I think Bush did the best he could, and I pray he stands firm. And we need to tell Congress that we want to opt out of any medical research, technology, or techniques that require the death of one person to treat another.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Flippancy
Who says everybody takes abortion seriously? The Family Research Council has a clip of the radio show with Elliot Segal of Washington, D.C.'s radio station DC101 holding a contest to see which listeners had the most abortions.
The first caller on the clip tells of how, at 13, she learned that the "boyfriend" who had impregnanted her was actually a cousin, so her father forced her to have an abortion. This got a laugh out of Segal, but he dismissed her three abortions as chump change. Then a male caller claimed responsibility for 16 abortions and started a trend of boasting dudes.
FRC requires that you "order" the clip, providing some information, but the clip itself is free. They do request a donation but they don't pester about it. Add this clip to your library. Put it on your iPod and play it to prochoicers who insist that nobody uses abortion for birth control, that abortion is a "tragic necessity," that it's always taken seriously, etc. Just don't expect them to listen to the whole thing.
The first caller on the clip tells of how, at 13, she learned that the "boyfriend" who had impregnanted her was actually a cousin, so her father forced her to have an abortion. This got a laugh out of Segal, but he dismissed her three abortions as chump change. Then a male caller claimed responsibility for 16 abortions and started a trend of boasting dudes.
FRC requires that you "order" the clip, providing some information, but the clip itself is free. They do request a donation but they don't pester about it. Add this clip to your library. Put it on your iPod and play it to prochoicers who insist that nobody uses abortion for birth control, that abortion is a "tragic necessity," that it's always taken seriously, etc. Just don't expect them to listen to the whole thing.
Abortion survior complete marthon, despite CP
Twenty-eight years ago, Gianna Jessen was born as a result of a botched saline abortion. After a year of intense training, Gianna completed the 26-mile Country Music Marathon. Go, Gianna!
Not bad for a tenacious fetus!
Not bad for a tenacious fetus!
Lest we forget... Rhonda Ruggiero
Life Dynamics lists 29-year-old Rhonda on their Blackmun Wall. Their research indicates that Rhonda underwent an abortion in May of 1982. She suddenly died of an abortion-related pulmonary embolism on May 23.
Note to the abortion lobby: Stop threatening to bring back the coathangers; you're killing too many with medical instruments as it is.
Note to the abortion lobby: Stop threatening to bring back the coathangers; you're killing too many with medical instruments as it is.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Blogger observes at abortion facility
I came across this blog entry looking for abortion-related bloggings. This blogger was "observing" at an abortion facility as part of an internship for school.
I asked her what was so disturbing. I'll be checking back with her.
Needless to say I was very unprepared for what I was going to witness. They preformed 14 abortions in just one day and I witnessed only 2 of them. .... I was to be the support person for the woman having the abortion, the first woman ... was in so much pain it was overwhelming for me to stand there and watch. I didn't really know what to do, and I kept thinking I needed to stay there for her, but at the very end I couldn't do it. I thought I was going to passout. I was losing my vision and my head was getting heavy, so I left the room and sat down in the hallway. The second abortion I witnessed, the woman was 7 weeks along, she was so strong I couldn't believe it. I didn't have the same reaction with her as I did the first. I know I chose this internship to challenge myself. I think that it will be far more challenging than I had ever imagined. Right now I am just reflecting on the experience and I feel that I may need to decide if this is the kind of challenge that God is going to get me through...I want to be able to make a difference, but I'm not sure if I will be able to in that environment.
I asked her what was so disturbing. I'll be checking back with her.
2002 death confirmed as abortion death
In November, 2002, Pro-Life Infonet posted this story about a 26-year-old woman who died after undergoing "a medical procedure" at Landmark Women's Center in Alexandria, Virginia. The woman was from Fairfax, Virginia. The story included a link to this police statement, indicating that the woman was transported from the facility at 5130 Duke Street at 10:30 a.m. and tanken by ambulance to Inova Alexandria Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 11:11 a.m. on November 16.
Now this article verifies that the woman did indeed die after an abortion, not some other procedure. It also identifies the doctor, Kim Mi Yong, and clarifies a point that seems small but looms large in the issue of abortion safety: The facility where the woman underwent her fatal procedure was not a clinic, as it would appear to the layperson. It was legally merely Kim's office.
Kim lacked both the training and the equipment to resuscitate a patient. Virginia stopped breathing after Kim gave her 25 mg. of Versed. Nobody on Kim's staff was trained in CPR, and there was no person on the premises qualified to administer anesthesia. According to Kim, she has corrected these deficiencies. Kim was disciplined by the Virginia medical board after Virginia's death.
Now this article verifies that the woman did indeed die after an abortion, not some other procedure. It also identifies the doctor, Kim Mi Yong, and clarifies a point that seems small but looms large in the issue of abortion safety: The facility where the woman underwent her fatal procedure was not a clinic, as it would appear to the layperson. It was legally merely Kim's office.
Kim lacked both the training and the equipment to resuscitate a patient. Virginia stopped breathing after Kim gave her 25 mg. of Versed. Nobody on Kim's staff was trained in CPR, and there was no person on the premises qualified to administer anesthesia. According to Kim, she has corrected these deficiencies. Kim was disciplined by the Virginia medical board after Virginia's death.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
MSM, get it right!
I've lost count of how many news cllips I've seen and how many stories I've read that paint those of us opposed to gutting embryos as being "opponents of stem cell research."
One more time, with feeling: We are not opposed to stem cell research! We're just opposed to gutting embryos to get them.
And frankly, we're bewildered by the obsession with cloning to get genetically matched embryos to gut, since embryonic stem cells have produced nothing but disasters. Treatments already exist, and many more are on the horizon, using the patient's own stem cells. Why go through the Dr. Frankenstein step of creating and killing a clone in search of a Magic Bullet, when we have what we need right in the patient's own body, free of ethical baggage, free of the disturbing risks of embryonic stem cells. What's the deal anyway?
This obsession with emrbyonic stem cells is doubly morally repulsive, because it not only involves killing embryos, it is wasting resources that could be bringing real healing instead of false hopes. What is with these people?
Let's look at what adult and cord-blod stem cells are doing:
Enough with gutting embryos already! Start treating ailing patients!
One more time, with feeling: We are not opposed to stem cell research! We're just opposed to gutting embryos to get them.
And frankly, we're bewildered by the obsession with cloning to get genetically matched embryos to gut, since embryonic stem cells have produced nothing but disasters. Treatments already exist, and many more are on the horizon, using the patient's own stem cells. Why go through the Dr. Frankenstein step of creating and killing a clone in search of a Magic Bullet, when we have what we need right in the patient's own body, free of ethical baggage, free of the disturbing risks of embryonic stem cells. What's the deal anyway?
This obsession with emrbyonic stem cells is doubly morally repulsive, because it not only involves killing embryos, it is wasting resources that could be bringing real healing instead of false hopes. What is with these people?
Let's look at what adult and cord-blod stem cells are doing:
- Restoring sight to the blind
- Restoring bladder control
- Providing an immune system to a "bubble boy"
- Healing sick hearts
- Treating leukemia
- Restoring movement and sensation after spinal-cord injury
- Enabling the paralyzed to walk
- Restore bone lost to cancer
- Restoring damaged cartilage
- Improving recovery after heart attacks
- Saving children with Hurler's syndrome, a rare, fatal disease
- Etc.
Enough with gutting embryos already! Start treating ailing patients!
Am I seeing a trend here?
I'm sorry I didn't notice it before, but this is the second blog entry I've stumbled across today in which a prochoice blogger can't understand how a woman can submit to an abortion.
Postabortion folks, can you clarify this for this blogger? I did a brief post myself.
Postabortion folks, can you clarify this for this blogger? I did a brief post myself.
Pray for blogger in pain
I found this blog entry while searching for recent abortion bloggings. This poor girl is in so much pain: abortion, eating disorder, sleep disturbances, trouble at work, trouble at home... I wanted to reach through the net and give her a hug. I couldn't figure out how to post to her.
Some people just don't ever learn.
30 Something Baby Doc blogged:
What, if anything, is going on in her head? Until we start addressing sexual behavior, we're never going to eliminate abortion. Is this woman with an abuser, and having sex becuase she's afraid? Is she weak-willed? Delusional? Masochistic?
I had another patient who underwent a termination (abortion) last week who came in to see me for follow up. She wanted birth control, but started having unprotected sex already dejavu??? I asked her if she was having sex and she replied "well we didn't really have sex". I then asked her if he ejaculated inside of her and she replied "Yes".
What, if anything, is going on in her head? Until we start addressing sexual behavior, we're never going to eliminate abortion. Is this woman with an abuser, and having sex becuase she's afraid? Is she weak-willed? Delusional? Masochistic?
Lest we forget.... Kimberly Neil
On this date, May 22, in 2000, Kimberly Neil was added to the rolls of women and girls who died after botched abortions at Edward Allred's Family Planning Associates Medical Group facilities. FPA is a member of the National Abortion Federation.
FPA's checkered past is far too extensive in scope for this blog. Wright's closet, on the other hand, has a more manageable number of skeletons. He was sued over the 1986 abortion death of 17-year-old Laniece Dorsey. He was a co-defendant in the lawsuit filed over the death of 37-year-old Josefina Garcia. Wright has been a defendant in a multitude of other abortion malpractice suits, including:
Other suits relating to non-abortion or unspecified procedures include:
Note that these suits were uncovered in searches in Orange and Los Angeles counties; to my knowledge, nobody has yet done a search for suits against Wright or FPA in Fresno County.
It surely would be refreshing to see all the cheerleaders for "safe and legal" abortion start actually demanding safety.
For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
FPA's checkered past is far too extensive in scope for this blog. Wright's closet, on the other hand, has a more manageable number of skeletons. He was sued over the 1986 abortion death of 17-year-old Laniece Dorsey. He was a co-defendant in the lawsuit filed over the death of 37-year-old Josefina Garcia. Wright has been a defendant in a multitude of other abortion malpractice suits, including:
- L.V.: abortion by Allred and/or Wright and/or Morton Sacks and/or Soon G. Sohn and/or D. Cannon October 28, 1989 at FPA facility; transported Linda to San Vicente for treatment October 28 - November 6; subsequent cramps, hemorrhage, emergency surgery, hospitalization, due to incomplete abortion.
- J.V.: abortion at FPA by Allred and/or Wright and/or and/or J. Terrell Crad and/or Sohn July 19, 1983; patient "rendered sick, lame, disabled and suffered injuries which caused and continue to cause pain, suffering, intense anxiety, emotional distress, insecurity, and apprehension;" loss of earnings.
- A.A.: abortion by Allred and/or Wright October 28, 1980; admitted to hospital November 1 for gynecological infection; A. suffered "severe and permanent injury, disability and damages."
- C.W.: abortion by Allred and/or Leslie Orleans and/or Wright at FPA May 10. 1978; incomplete abortion, "massive uterine bleeding necessitating further medical care."
- P.T.: abortion by Allred and/or Wright at Pregnancy Control Medical Group August 6, 1976; failure to diagnose ectopic pregnancy; Penny "suffered severe, acute pain, a ruptured tubal pregnancy, hemoperitoneum, shock, and a resulting total abdominal hysterectomy" August 20.
- P.C.: abortion performed October 5, 1982, when she was not actually pregnant. Suit names as co defendants Allred, Soon Sohn, Wright, and Ruben Marmet.
- V.P.: abortion March 2, 1980; failure to warn of risks; negligence resulting in "disabling injuries to her body and to her small bowel and uterus, requiring surgical repair." Wright was named as co-defendant.
- D.B.: abortion at Avalon by Allred and/or Wright June 19, 1976; incomplete abortion; inadequate follow-up instruction and care; hemorrhage several days later necessitating hospitalization to prevent death and repair damage.
Other suits relating to non-abortion or unspecified procedures include:
- P.S.: 1977 surgery by Wright at FPA's Avalon Hospital; displaced IUD that was in place at time of surgery; patient required hospital and medical treatment.
- S.V.: improperly attended coming out of anesthesia following October 21, 1985 tubal ligation by Allred and/or Wright; fell, struck by gurney, injured; post-op infection.
- P.B.: 1976 suit, failure to diagnose and treat, resulting in damages.
- L.G.: in 1974, suture of left ureter during hysterectomy; patient subsequently required cystouethroscopy, left retrograde pyelogram, and left uretero-neocystotomy, with reimplantation of the left ureter to the bladder, also continuing pain and suffering and need for medical care.
Note that these suits were uncovered in searches in Orange and Los Angeles counties; to my knowledge, nobody has yet done a search for suits against Wright or FPA in Fresno County.
It surely would be refreshing to see all the cheerleaders for "safe and legal" abortion start actually demanding safety.
For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Relative Risk
Let's compare the risk of dying from a "safe and legal" abortion to the risk of dying from doing things commonly thought of as potentially dangerous.
The Centers for Disease Control claim a death rate of 1.2 deaths per 100,000 legal abortions. I would dispute that, because I don't think the CDC makes more than a cursory attempt to identify legal abortion deaths. Nevertheless, it's the only number we have, so we have to use it.
First, I'll compare the risk of abortion to another personal, gynecological risk: Toxic Shock Syndrome caused by tampon use. TSS is seen in one per 100,000 menstruating women. The mortality rate for TSS is roughly three percent. So the risk of death from TSS associated with tampon use is .03 deaths per 100,000. This is considered significant enough to alert women to the risks of tampon-associated TSS, and significant enough to warrant policing of the feminine tampon industry. But a woman is more likely to die from an abortion than she is to get TSS from using a tampon -- and even if she gets TSS, she has a 97% chance of survival.
How about fireworks? Every summer, we're bombarded with warnings to leave fireworks use to the professionals, lest we blast ourselves to bits. Still, professionals set up fireworks shows, and in many states it is legal to purchase fireworks. The American Pyrotechnics Association, which monitors fireworks injuries, tallies the risk in terms of injuries per 100,000 pounds of pyrotechnic materials. Fireworks-Related Injury Rates, 1990-1998, shows slightly more than 6 injuries per 100,000 pounds of fireworks. I contacted the National Council on Fireworks Safety for statistics on fireworks mortality, and was told, "Because fireworks fatalities are so rare and when they do occur they are generally due to illegal explosives and not fireworks, we do not have such a figure." The alarming number of fireworks injuries is largely due to the large amount of fireworks used - over 100 million pounds a year in the United States. Mortality is negligible in proportion, no doubt due to safety-consciousness and protective laws and regulations. In other words, warning people about the dangers of fireworks, and failing to warn people about the dangers of abortion, have led to a world in which playing with fireworks is probably safer than getting an abortion.
Another cause for alarm is amusement park rides. Consumer groups are lobbying for more stringent state controls of amusement rides, as well as for federal oversight of amusement rides. And how dangerous are these rides? According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) the odds that you'll be seriously injured on an amusement ride are about one in seven million -- the odds against a fatal injury one in two hundred fifty million.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that we shouldn't take steps to ensure that people are safe. Carnival rides should be inspected, fireworks should be regulated, and tampon users should be warned of the risks of Toxic Shock Syndrome. We can't take responsibility for our own safety if we're not warned. But what I do want people to consider is how much the cavalier attitude toward abortion risks is leading to unnecessary trauma and death.
I listened to a tape of a National Abortion Federation meeting in which nurses vented their frustration over their futile attempts to get abortion patients to take aftercare seriously. These nurses could not convince patients of the importance of reporting symptoms and seeking prompt care. As a result, relatively minor complications became life-threatening.
If the National Abortion Federation nurses want to know why women won't take abortion risks seriously, they need to look in the mirror. Efforts by NAF and other abortion-advocacy organizations to present abortion as virtually risk-free have been effective. They've been far too effective, to the point where no amount of scolding by a nurse is able to overcome a lifetime of bland assurances that abortion is perfectly safe.
The Centers for Disease Control claim a death rate of 1.2 deaths per 100,000 legal abortions. I would dispute that, because I don't think the CDC makes more than a cursory attempt to identify legal abortion deaths. Nevertheless, it's the only number we have, so we have to use it.
First, I'll compare the risk of abortion to another personal, gynecological risk: Toxic Shock Syndrome caused by tampon use. TSS is seen in one per 100,000 menstruating women. The mortality rate for TSS is roughly three percent. So the risk of death from TSS associated with tampon use is .03 deaths per 100,000. This is considered significant enough to alert women to the risks of tampon-associated TSS, and significant enough to warrant policing of the feminine tampon industry. But a woman is more likely to die from an abortion than she is to get TSS from using a tampon -- and even if she gets TSS, she has a 97% chance of survival.
How about fireworks? Every summer, we're bombarded with warnings to leave fireworks use to the professionals, lest we blast ourselves to bits. Still, professionals set up fireworks shows, and in many states it is legal to purchase fireworks. The American Pyrotechnics Association, which monitors fireworks injuries, tallies the risk in terms of injuries per 100,000 pounds of pyrotechnic materials. Fireworks-Related Injury Rates, 1990-1998, shows slightly more than 6 injuries per 100,000 pounds of fireworks. I contacted the National Council on Fireworks Safety for statistics on fireworks mortality, and was told, "Because fireworks fatalities are so rare and when they do occur they are generally due to illegal explosives and not fireworks, we do not have such a figure." The alarming number of fireworks injuries is largely due to the large amount of fireworks used - over 100 million pounds a year in the United States. Mortality is negligible in proportion, no doubt due to safety-consciousness and protective laws and regulations. In other words, warning people about the dangers of fireworks, and failing to warn people about the dangers of abortion, have led to a world in which playing with fireworks is probably safer than getting an abortion.
Another cause for alarm is amusement park rides. Consumer groups are lobbying for more stringent state controls of amusement rides, as well as for federal oversight of amusement rides. And how dangerous are these rides? According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) the odds that you'll be seriously injured on an amusement ride are about one in seven million -- the odds against a fatal injury one in two hundred fifty million.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that we shouldn't take steps to ensure that people are safe. Carnival rides should be inspected, fireworks should be regulated, and tampon users should be warned of the risks of Toxic Shock Syndrome. We can't take responsibility for our own safety if we're not warned. But what I do want people to consider is how much the cavalier attitude toward abortion risks is leading to unnecessary trauma and death.
I listened to a tape of a National Abortion Federation meeting in which nurses vented their frustration over their futile attempts to get abortion patients to take aftercare seriously. These nurses could not convince patients of the importance of reporting symptoms and seeking prompt care. As a result, relatively minor complications became life-threatening.
If the National Abortion Federation nurses want to know why women won't take abortion risks seriously, they need to look in the mirror. Efforts by NAF and other abortion-advocacy organizations to present abortion as virtually risk-free have been effective. They've been far too effective, to the point where no amount of scolding by a nurse is able to overcome a lifetime of bland assurances that abortion is perfectly safe.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Lest we forget... Wilma Harris
Milan Vuitch was a hero among abortion advocates. He had deliberately been arrested performing criminal abortions so that he could challenge the Washington, DC abortion law, and he succeeded to some extent -- he made it so difficult to successfully prosecut that the law lost its teeth.
On June 15, 1974, seventeen-year-old Wilma Harris of West Virginia went to Vuitch's Laurel Clinic for an abortion. Although he had begun a vacuum abortion, Vuitch said that the fetus had been too big to pass through the suction tube. He said he used instruments to remove the remaining fetal parts.
Although the abortion was done at around 2:00 PM, Vuitch didn't trasfer Wilma to a properly equipped hospital until after midnight. Wilma's family sued, claiming that Vuitch and his staff had allowed Wilma to lapse into a coma and lie unattended for 12 hours before transferring her to the hospital. Wilma died of her injuries on May 20.
Vuitch went on to perform a fatal abortion on Georgianna English in 1980. Vuitch is one of two abortionists I know of who managed to keep their noses clean operating "back alley" who went on to kill two legal abortion patients. The other is Jesse Ketchum.
Hey, abortion lobby: How did taking away the threat of prison transform these "back alley butchers" into "caring, professional providers of vital reproductive health services"?
On June 15, 1974, seventeen-year-old Wilma Harris of West Virginia went to Vuitch's Laurel Clinic for an abortion. Although he had begun a vacuum abortion, Vuitch said that the fetus had been too big to pass through the suction tube. He said he used instruments to remove the remaining fetal parts.
Although the abortion was done at around 2:00 PM, Vuitch didn't trasfer Wilma to a properly equipped hospital until after midnight. Wilma's family sued, claiming that Vuitch and his staff had allowed Wilma to lapse into a coma and lie unattended for 12 hours before transferring her to the hospital. Wilma died of her injuries on May 20.
Vuitch went on to perform a fatal abortion on Georgianna English in 1980. Vuitch is one of two abortionists I know of who managed to keep their noses clean operating "back alley" who went on to kill two legal abortion patients. The other is Jesse Ketchum.
Hey, abortion lobby: How did taking away the threat of prison transform these "back alley butchers" into "caring, professional providers of vital reproductive health services"?
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Lest we forget -- "Danielle" Roe
"Danielle" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a legal abortion. Danielle, age 18, had traveled from Massachusetts to New York for a safe and legal abortion. On May 17, 1972, the abortion was performed. Minutes after the abortion was completed, Danielle was dead. She'd developed arterial and veous air emboli.
Hey, abortionists: Quit threatening to kill them with coathangers. You're killing too many with medical instruments as it is.
Hey, abortionists: Quit threatening to kill them with coathangers. You're killing too many with medical instruments as it is.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Wife wants to Schiavo brain-injured husband
Brain-injured man's wife wants feeding tube pulled
...Scott Thomas suffered a brain injury in September 2004 at home that incapacitated him and left him in need of constant care, including the use of a feeding tube. ... Thomas's wife, Eliza, is seeking to have him moved to the Community Hospice of Northeast Florida Inc. as soon as his mother's temporary guardianship of the 34-year-old man ends.
....
According to Patton, Scott is cognizant and able to answer correctly when asked by doctors where he lives and where he went to school. He swallows on his own, but requires a tube because of concerns over aspiration. She says he remains responsive, tracking family members as they move around his room, smiling, crying, communicating with hand signals and eyebrows and forming words with his mouth. And the story he tells about his injury is very different than the one told by his wife.
Eliza Smith ... says Scott fell backwards ... and struck his head in the kitchen. .... Scott's mother reports her son communicating to her that his injury ... was intentionally inflicted by his wife. "The doctors say that his injuries are not consistent with such a fall and believe the severe head trauma was caused by a blow to the head," Patton told Empire Journal.
Patton was awarded a six-month temporary guardianship of her son in November. A June 3 hearing will determine if decisions for Scott's care will remain with her or will be transferred to Eliza who is seeking guardianship. ...
Why abortion?
People ask me why, when I'm so passionate about so many issues, my focus is on abortion. The short answer is, "Because I have a low betrayal tolerance."
I was always prolife by inclination. But this wasn't enough to make an activist out of me. Abortion was distant, vague. It had no pull on me.
Then I went away to college and noticed something fishy about how sex education was handled by my prochoice professor, Dr. Z. The stages of pregnancy during which abortions took place were decidely absent from our studies of embryology. A chart in our text listed the risks of various methods of birth control, from the most dangerous -- none! -- to the safest -- abortion. I wondered snidely how any of us survived to reproduce a second time if childbirth was so deadly. It also shocked me to hear the racist things he said: that the only reason white people opposed abortion, for example, was that we preferred letting black children grow up to rape white women so we could execute them.
I also noticed creepy behavior of the nurse and doctor when I went to get a rubella vaccine. The nurse counseled me, "Be very careful with birth control, because if you get pregnant in the next three months, you'll have to have an abortion." The doctor repeated this caveat. I went home preplexed. If this vaccine posed that great a threat, why not admonish me to abstain for three months? The other thing that struck me was the admonition, "you'll have to have an abortion." Weren't they supposed to give me the information about what kind of birth defects the vaccine might cause, and let me make the choice?
Then I had a pregnancy scare during that three month period. I had been taught that my choices were to impose a horrible disability on an innocent child, or to abort. It took two weeks of agonizing before something dawned on me. If I didn't abort, I wasn't causing a child to be disabled. I would just be allowing an existing disabled child to live. I began to resent the nurse and doctor who had advised me at the time of my vaccine. How dare they try to guilt-trip me into an abortion before I was even pregnant?
The scare prompted me to get the Pill. There, again, another doctor and another nurse both reminded me that I had to follow my instructions carefully: "We don't want you back here for an abortion." I resented that they presumed to choose for me before I even got pregnant.
After I married, I decided to start a family, even though my husband and I were a couple of uninsured college students. Then the pressure to abort really piled on. I asked for a referral for cheap prenatal care, and was sent to a midwives' clinic for poor women. The receptionist turned me away because I had no medical assistance card.
I cried out in the parking lot. I was heartbroken. Nobody cared about our baby. But a woman came running out of the hospital looking for us. Panting, she told us, "I'm glad I caught you before you left!" She introduced herself as one of the midwives. She assured me that she would make sure that I got proper prenatal care, and led us back inside. I never forgot the despair as I stood crying in the parking lot, or the relief and gratitude when the midwife reached out to me. I swore that I'd never leave a pregnant woman alone and despairing, as I had been. I had my baby girl, and headed out to California with my husband, who had joined the Army.
Then came the double whammy to my awareness. My babysitter told me about two abortions her mother had forced her into, and how Planned Parenthood had lied to her, telling her that at 8 weeks there was no baby, just "a blood clot." And I heard the local abortion clinic administrator complaining about a billboard showing prenatal development. She said, "We've been getting hundreds of angry calls from women wanting to know why they weren't given this information before their abortions. We want that billboard down!" So what had happened to my babysitter wasn't a fluke: It was systematic deception.
We were poor, the lower enlisted at Fort Ord. And I got pregnant again myself. I'd already been brainwashed -- excuse me, educated -- in college about how poor women "need" abortions. Now I was one of them! My "education" had taught me that my choices were abort or starve, and paralyzed my thinking. Fortunately, I had a prolife friend who saw that our real problem was our apartment. He dragged us out and made us find what we thought was impossible to find: a better place to live. That one simple thing made all the difference. That brought it home in a profound way how the lies and omissions and decption of the prochoice movement worked together to deprive women of real choices, and to deprive them of their children, as I'd very nearly been deprived of my son.
That was the jolt that got me off the fence and turned me into an antiabortion activist. That's why, of all things, abortion is what I focus on. I can not tolerate the systematic, deliberate betrayal of women. Period, paragraph.
I was always prolife by inclination. But this wasn't enough to make an activist out of me. Abortion was distant, vague. It had no pull on me.
Then I went away to college and noticed something fishy about how sex education was handled by my prochoice professor, Dr. Z. The stages of pregnancy during which abortions took place were decidely absent from our studies of embryology. A chart in our text listed the risks of various methods of birth control, from the most dangerous -- none! -- to the safest -- abortion. I wondered snidely how any of us survived to reproduce a second time if childbirth was so deadly. It also shocked me to hear the racist things he said: that the only reason white people opposed abortion, for example, was that we preferred letting black children grow up to rape white women so we could execute them.
I also noticed creepy behavior of the nurse and doctor when I went to get a rubella vaccine. The nurse counseled me, "Be very careful with birth control, because if you get pregnant in the next three months, you'll have to have an abortion." The doctor repeated this caveat. I went home preplexed. If this vaccine posed that great a threat, why not admonish me to abstain for three months? The other thing that struck me was the admonition, "you'll have to have an abortion." Weren't they supposed to give me the information about what kind of birth defects the vaccine might cause, and let me make the choice?
Then I had a pregnancy scare during that three month period. I had been taught that my choices were to impose a horrible disability on an innocent child, or to abort. It took two weeks of agonizing before something dawned on me. If I didn't abort, I wasn't causing a child to be disabled. I would just be allowing an existing disabled child to live. I began to resent the nurse and doctor who had advised me at the time of my vaccine. How dare they try to guilt-trip me into an abortion before I was even pregnant?
The scare prompted me to get the Pill. There, again, another doctor and another nurse both reminded me that I had to follow my instructions carefully: "We don't want you back here for an abortion." I resented that they presumed to choose for me before I even got pregnant.
After I married, I decided to start a family, even though my husband and I were a couple of uninsured college students. Then the pressure to abort really piled on. I asked for a referral for cheap prenatal care, and was sent to a midwives' clinic for poor women. The receptionist turned me away because I had no medical assistance card.
I cried out in the parking lot. I was heartbroken. Nobody cared about our baby. But a woman came running out of the hospital looking for us. Panting, she told us, "I'm glad I caught you before you left!" She introduced herself as one of the midwives. She assured me that she would make sure that I got proper prenatal care, and led us back inside. I never forgot the despair as I stood crying in the parking lot, or the relief and gratitude when the midwife reached out to me. I swore that I'd never leave a pregnant woman alone and despairing, as I had been. I had my baby girl, and headed out to California with my husband, who had joined the Army.
Then came the double whammy to my awareness. My babysitter told me about two abortions her mother had forced her into, and how Planned Parenthood had lied to her, telling her that at 8 weeks there was no baby, just "a blood clot." And I heard the local abortion clinic administrator complaining about a billboard showing prenatal development. She said, "We've been getting hundreds of angry calls from women wanting to know why they weren't given this information before their abortions. We want that billboard down!" So what had happened to my babysitter wasn't a fluke: It was systematic deception.
We were poor, the lower enlisted at Fort Ord. And I got pregnant again myself. I'd already been brainwashed -- excuse me, educated -- in college about how poor women "need" abortions. Now I was one of them! My "education" had taught me that my choices were abort or starve, and paralyzed my thinking. Fortunately, I had a prolife friend who saw that our real problem was our apartment. He dragged us out and made us find what we thought was impossible to find: a better place to live. That one simple thing made all the difference. That brought it home in a profound way how the lies and omissions and decption of the prochoice movement worked together to deprive women of real choices, and to deprive them of their children, as I'd very nearly been deprived of my son.
That was the jolt that got me off the fence and turned me into an antiabortion activist. That's why, of all things, abortion is what I focus on. I can not tolerate the systematic, deliberate betrayal of women. Period, paragraph.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Lest we forget -- "Roxanne" Roe
A girl Life Dynamics refers to as "Roxanne" was 17 years old when she traveled to New York from Michigan to have a first-trimester abortion in a doctor's office. The doctor gave her sedatives and local anesthesia to begin the abortion on May 13, 1972. But before the abortion could be started, Roxanne started to have convulsions and went into cardiac arrest. Roxanne was taken to an area hospital, but she was declared dead on arrival. An investigation into the case revealed that the doctor had exceeded the recommended dose of the local anesthesetic.
Note to the abortion lobby: Stop threatening to kill women with coathangers. You kill quite enough with medical equipment as it is.
Note to the abortion lobby: Stop threatening to kill women with coathangers. You kill quite enough with medical equipment as it is.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Baby Charlotte Update
Baby Charlotte's family is keeping the world posted on their little girl and her progress. This is the baby that British courts are insisting needs a DNR order because she's a hopeless case and her life isn't worth living. Please also check out the new photo album.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Lest we forget - Three more deaths
May 12 marks the sad anniversary of more deaths from safe and legal abortions.
"Anita" Roe was a 23-year-old mother of two when she chose safe and legal abortion in 1971. She traveled from Massachusetts to New York for her abortion. She was 22 weeks pregnant. On May 11, the doctor initiated a saline abortion, then sent Anita home to expel the fetus. The next day, Anita was found unresponsive at her home. She was rushed to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. She had bled to death.
Gladyss Delanoche Estanislao, 28-year-old mother of 1, underwent an aspiration abortion by Alan J. Ross at The Wisconsin Avenue Women's Health Care Center on April 25, 1989. On May 12, Gladyss was found unresponsive on the floor of the rest room near her college classroom. A doctor who was in the vicinity performed CPR while awaiting an ambulance. Gladyss was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival from cardiac arrest due to blood loss from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. This is yet another example of the inexcusable failure of abortion practitioners to diagnose ectopic pregnancy, allowing patients to die needlessly.
The family of 34-year-old Colleen Chambers had become concerned about her after her abortion in 1991. They called an employee of the place Colleen lived, and asked him to check on her. He found her dead in her room. Autopsy showed that she had died from blood clots in her lungs and legs, and gave her date of death as May 12, 1991.
Note to the abortion lobby: Quit threatening to kill women with coat hangers. You're killing enough as it is with medical instruments.
"Anita" Roe was a 23-year-old mother of two when she chose safe and legal abortion in 1971. She traveled from Massachusetts to New York for her abortion. She was 22 weeks pregnant. On May 11, the doctor initiated a saline abortion, then sent Anita home to expel the fetus. The next day, Anita was found unresponsive at her home. She was rushed to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. She had bled to death.
Gladyss Delanoche Estanislao, 28-year-old mother of 1, underwent an aspiration abortion by Alan J. Ross at The Wisconsin Avenue Women's Health Care Center on April 25, 1989. On May 12, Gladyss was found unresponsive on the floor of the rest room near her college classroom. A doctor who was in the vicinity performed CPR while awaiting an ambulance. Gladyss was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival from cardiac arrest due to blood loss from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. This is yet another example of the inexcusable failure of abortion practitioners to diagnose ectopic pregnancy, allowing patients to die needlessly.
The family of 34-year-old Colleen Chambers had become concerned about her after her abortion in 1991. They called an employee of the place Colleen lived, and asked him to check on her. He found her dead in her room. Autopsy showed that she had died from blood clots in her lungs and legs, and gave her date of death as May 12, 1991.
Note to the abortion lobby: Quit threatening to kill women with coat hangers. You're killing enough as it is with medical instruments.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Lest we forget - Three deaths
May 11 is the sad anniversary of the day these patients died of complications of their safe-and-legal abortions:
Barbara Dillon died of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy after her 1981 abortion. She was 22 years old. Though women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of this complication, they're more likely to die than women who don't choose abortion because their symptoms are misattributed to the abortion.
"Melissa" Roe was 27 years old and five months pregnant when she checked into Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklin on May 1, 1992. For some reason, her doctor chose the dangerous and antiquated saline abortion procedure. She died of complications on May 11.
Sara Niebel was onlly 14 years old when she went to Midtown Hospital in Atlanta for an abortion at 17 weeks. She was given a clean bill of health and sent home. She sicked over the next few days. Sara went into respiratory arrest, and was admitted to the ICU. She was pronounced dead May 11, 1994. The cause of death was determined to be Group B Streptococci Meningitis caused by infected amniotic flued in her bloodstream. Midtown Hospital is a National Abortion Federation member facility.
With NAF providers, who needs coathangers?
Barbara Dillon died of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy after her 1981 abortion. She was 22 years old. Though women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of this complication, they're more likely to die than women who don't choose abortion because their symptoms are misattributed to the abortion.
"Melissa" Roe was 27 years old and five months pregnant when she checked into Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklin on May 1, 1992. For some reason, her doctor chose the dangerous and antiquated saline abortion procedure. She died of complications on May 11.
Sara Niebel was onlly 14 years old when she went to Midtown Hospital in Atlanta for an abortion at 17 weeks. She was given a clean bill of health and sent home. She sicked over the next few days. Sara went into respiratory arrest, and was admitted to the ICU. She was pronounced dead May 11, 1994. The cause of death was determined to be Group B Streptococci Meningitis caused by infected amniotic flued in her bloodstream. Midtown Hospital is a National Abortion Federation member facility.
With NAF providers, who needs coathangers?
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Lest we forget... Claudia Caventou
Claudia Caventou, age 33, underwent a first-trimester abortion at Mercy Medical Clinic in Los Angeles on May 8, 1986, performed by H. N. Fahmy. Claudia's boyfriend was in the waiting room during the procedure. Staff told him that everything was okay, and suggested that he leave and get something to eat. Since he'd heard Claudia screaming earlier, he decided to stay.
Several hours later, he heard the doctor come out and tell his staff to call 911. Claudia was taken to a hospital where she underwent emergency surgery for what doctors thought was a perforated uterus. It turned out that Claudia's pregnancy had been in her fallopian tube, which had ruptured during the abortion. Efforts to save Claudia were futile, and she died later that day.
In theory, women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, because the abortion practitioner is supposed to verify the location of the embryo, and to verify that the pregnancy is indeed over. But in practice, women who choose abortion are actually more likely to die of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, because sloppy abortion practices fail to diagnose the ectopic pregnancy, and sloppy aftercare reassures the woman that nothing is wrong, that the symptoms that should be prompting a visit to the emergency room are just normal post-abortion symptoms.
Here's more on this abysmal failure on the part of abortionists, which costs women their lives:
FDA Heightens Abortion Pill Warning After Latest RU486 Patient Death
Legal Abortion Deaths, Part II: Misreported, Unreported & Covered Up
Other women who have died because of this failure by abortionists to take proper care:
Angela Satterfield
Brenda Vise
Janyth Caldwell
Magnolia Thomas
Lynette Wallace
Gladyss Estanislao
Laura Sorrels
Barbara Dillon
Yvette Poteat
Sherry Emry
This phenomenon has killed at least one woman choosing herbal, do-it-yourself abortion: Kris Humphrey.
Several hours later, he heard the doctor come out and tell his staff to call 911. Claudia was taken to a hospital where she underwent emergency surgery for what doctors thought was a perforated uterus. It turned out that Claudia's pregnancy had been in her fallopian tube, which had ruptured during the abortion. Efforts to save Claudia were futile, and she died later that day.
In theory, women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, because the abortion practitioner is supposed to verify the location of the embryo, and to verify that the pregnancy is indeed over. But in practice, women who choose abortion are actually more likely to die of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, because sloppy abortion practices fail to diagnose the ectopic pregnancy, and sloppy aftercare reassures the woman that nothing is wrong, that the symptoms that should be prompting a visit to the emergency room are just normal post-abortion symptoms.
Here's more on this abysmal failure on the part of abortionists, which costs women their lives:
Other women who have died because of this failure by abortionists to take proper care:
This phenomenon has killed at least one woman choosing herbal, do-it-yourself abortion: Kris Humphrey.
Pray for Baby Charlotte and her family
Baby Charlotte is the baby doctors want to give up on, whose parents say she's getting stronger and just needs more support. Charlotte Wyatt
A recent update from her family:
So she's not vent-dependent, as mainstream news has been reporting. You'll learn a lot on this site that will leave you wondering what kind of "research" the reporters are doing on this story. Do they just parrot what the doctors say? Why haven't we heard that Charlotte was eating from a spoon and had been transferred to the regular children's ward before suffering a setback? A setback from which she seems to be recovering from?
A recent update from her family:
Charlotte is continuing to get stronger, but today there was another set-back from the hospital. Though she spends most of the time in her oxygen box, she had been slowly introduced to nasel cannula for the past few weeks; going up to two hours a day, split up into two sessions.
Darren and Debbie loved this new advancement-- she was more alert when she was on them, and certainly easier to hold and stimulate. But today they found out the nasal prong machine had been removed, and on inquiring, that the hospital had decided to stop giving her time on it. No reason was given, simply "it hadn't been a success".
But why not a success? She did so well on them!
So she's not vent-dependent, as mainstream news has been reporting. You'll learn a lot on this site that will leave you wondering what kind of "research" the reporters are doing on this story. Do they just parrot what the doctors say? Why haven't we heard that Charlotte was eating from a spoon and had been transferred to the regular children's ward before suffering a setback? A setback from which she seems to be recovering from?
About those NAF clinics in Kentucky...
One of them hired a security chief who used the clinic as a rape site:
Two Women Raped at Abortion Clinic to Sue
EMW is a National Abortion Federation member facility.
Hey, prochoicers: When are you gonna hold these NAF goons accountable?
Two Women Raped at Abortion Clinic to Sue
The chief of security for the EMW Women's Surgical Center, an abortion clinic in Louisville Kentucky, has been sentenced to 10 years for raping two women in their early twenties. The April 2002 Life Dynamics newsletter, Life Activist, reports that 44-year-old Anthony Harvell pled guilty after DNA tests tied him to both victims. .... One of the victims, Barbara Stinson, told Life Dynamic's writer Gary McCullough that Harvell drove her down an alley, punched a code to open a security gate, unlocked the back door to the abortion clinic, placed his gun on the table and raped her inside the clinic.
Stinson holds that the abortion clinic is responsible saying, "he controlled the premises, he unlocked fences, he unlocked the back door. He knew he could take me there. And when the case first started, I had harassing phone calls coming from the abortion clinic calling me a liar, calling me a whore. I had a lot of harassment from the abortion clinic." Stinson says the voices making the harassing calls were female. Louisville police traced the calls to the abortion clinic.
EMW is a National Abortion Federation member facility.
Hey, prochoicers: When are you gonna hold these NAF goons accountable?
Lest we forget ... Maura Morales
Twenty-four-year-old Maura Morales was eight weeks pregnant when she went to Woman's Care Center for an abortion on May 8, 1981. When she was in the recovery room, her heart went into spontaneous ventricular fibrillation -- irregular heartbeats not capable of effectively pumping blood. Maura was taken to a hospital, but died that day.
Maura was the fourth woman to die at the same facility. The others were Shirley Payne, Myrta Baptiste, and Ruth Montero.
For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Maura was the fourth woman to die at the same facility. The others were Shirley Payne, Myrta Baptiste, and Ruth Montero.
For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:
To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.
Before Terri, Florida seeks death for toddler
Thanks to Vanessa for this link: Before Schiavo, DCF sought to let abused girl die
Fifteen years after brain damage put Terri Schiavo in a persistent vegetative state, the Florida Department of Children and Families went to excruciating lengths to block the removal of a feeding tube that was sustaining her. Fifteen days after a toddler was beaten nearly to death despite DCF cataloging numerous alarming signs of abuse, the agency began seeking a Do-Not-Resuscitate order for her.
.... Then-DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney had sent Dr. Eric Handler to Palm Beach County to assess Moesha, who was admitted to Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach on Jan. 11, 2001, and transferred to Delray Medical Center's trauma unit the next day. She was unconscious with a swollen brain, bruised liver, broken bones and black-and-green welts. Some breaks and bruises were old — having been detected, though unexplained, during a monthlong stay at Miami Children's Hospital that had ended just weeks prior, with doctors and nurses pleading that DCF not release Moesha to her uninterested mother. ....
DCF asked a judge to appoint an attorney ad litem to pursue a Do-Not-Resuscitate order. ....
DCF's missteps were so obvious and horrific that a grand jury recommended the firing of nine DCF workers, and the cases of Moesha and two boys who died in 2000 became teaching tools for new DCF hires. ....
On the day Moesha was scheduled to go home, Pierre-Louis did not show up because she was, instead, trying to help her boyfriend get out of jail. Yet DCF let the girl leave with Pierre-Louis — and, while debating whether the Miami-Dade office or the Palm Beach County office should have jurisdiction, did not follow up when Moesha missed doctor appointments on Jan. 8, 10 or 12. On Jan. 11, Moesha was barely alive at Bethesda.
The girl DCF gave up on four years ago has been spending recent days in her wheelchair in Palm Beach County Courtroom 11B, as lawyers for DCF try to convince a jury that the agency should not have to pay for her continued medical care. Often referred to in DCF records as the "V/C," for "victim child," Moesha has been renamed Marissa Amora. ....
"You can always have another baby later."
Yeah, with a high risk of an extremely premature baby.
This isn't the first research linking abortion to prematurity in future babies. There are, I've read, upwards of fifty. Here's more reading on the topic:
Induced Abortion and Risk of Later Premature Births
Neonatal and Childhood Sequeale Related to Abortion
Abortion Linked to Subsequent Premature Births
Abortion's Link to Premature Birth is No Mystery
Women With Abortion History at Increased Risk of Delivering Very Preterm in Subsequent Pregnancies, Study Says
60 Significant studies of abortion/prematurity risk
Prof. Barbara Luke and the 'Preemie' risk of Abortion
Abortions Tied to Subsequent Preterm Delivery (Abortion Pill)
History of induced abortion as a risk factor for preterm birth in European countries: results of the EUROPOP survey
After Abortion, Danish Women's Odds of Preterm Delivery Are Doubled
(Note -- some of the above links are redundant so that if one link expires, you can still read the information elsewhere.)
This isn't the first research linking abortion to prematurity in future babies. There are, I've read, upwards of fifty. Here's more reading on the topic:
(Note -- some of the above links are redundant so that if one link expires, you can still read the information elsewhere.)
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Isn't that special?
NOW has an amazing Mother's Day gift idea: the abortion bracelet. No, it doesn't encourage her to celebrate any particular abortion, it's just touting abortion. Is that sick or what?
Friday, May 06, 2005
Fascinating!
Recommended reading: Hillary's "common ground" begins to shift under its false weight. Snippets:
Food for thought.
A cynical but, I think, accurate assessment. Ain't gonna work, Hillary!
Preach it! Amen!
She's right that there's a powerful energy there. I'd say it's the soul, but we'll call it "chi" for the sake of argument. I don't care what you call it, but you gotta acknowledge it, because it's pretty amazing.
Can't argue with that.
Good point.
Well said.
My choice of snippets has made the piece seem much more disjointed than it is. Read the whole thing for yourself.
The issue of abortion is a deep fault line in the nation, and the only real common ground to be found at any fault line would have to be a created ground, i.e. a bridge. And a bridge built over a fault line will easily crumble, as fault lines are notoriously unstable. Mrs. Clinton's suggestion, while laudable (I suppose) for its tone, brings no solutions and satisfies no one because it does not address what caused the initial shift in the plate tectonics of American morality. That instability was wrought by a simple question and its two possible answers: Is abortion really okay, or not? If so, then it should always be okay, and there can be no common ground. If not, then it should never be okay. And there can be no common ground.
Food for thought.
Here is where the press - even conservative papers like the NY Post - make their bloomer. Clinton never preached moderation. Her "common ground" comments amounted to: "I'm not moving one step closer to the middle, but I think we should talk nicer to each other about this until we finally get these pro-lifers to give it up."
A cynical but, I think, accurate assessment. Ain't gonna work, Hillary!
Because the truth is what I have already said: there can be no common ground on this issue. There can be no common ground on an idea that an "adult in good faith" should be able to take an underage girl out of state to procure an abortion. While Hillary and her cohorts plead "compassion" here what they are doing is making it easy for your 14 year-old daughter's 24 year-old exploiter to take her across the state lines and have the evidence of his statutory rape vacuumed out of her body before he leaves her, crushed and alone, to deal forever with what has happened to her. While her family knows nothing about any of it and wonders why she is suddenly depressed, morose, dressing in black and cutting herself.
That's compassion for you.
Preach it! Amen!
I have an idea! Let's do something a little radical today, okay? Let's actually sit down and talk for a moment about what is going when a woman is having an abortion. ... Let's start from the rather acceptable premise that "what goes around comes around," aka Karma. And just for fun let's bring in the sort of new-agey idea of "energy" or "life force" - what Chinese Medicine calls "chi" and put it all together, and see what we get, mmkay?
Okay, when sperm meets egg and creates the troublesome creature known as a human zygote, embryo, fetus, baby, we see cells multiply and multiply - an event that is powered by something - call it a life-force. There is energy there - real energy, moving, growing, creating, evolving - and that energy is protected and nurtured within the walls of a uterus, deep within the body of a human female - utterly at her core.
She's right that there's a powerful energy there. I'd say it's the soul, but we'll call it "chi" for the sake of argument. I don't care what you call it, but you gotta acknowledge it, because it's pretty amazing.
Well, there are many means of "dis-enabling the life force" of a fetus. Some are more efficient than others, and some are less dangerous than others. These days the most legal abortions are performed by inserting a sort of vacuum into the vagina of a female of pretty much any age, its nozzel inserted past the cervix of the uterus and introduced to the creature clinging to the walls of the uterus.... The vacuum is turned on, the creature is quickly ripped to shreds and sucked through the pipe, landing in a sterile little container that will remind you of those "baby-in-a-blender" jokes you might have heard in Jr. High School. The life force, or chi, or energy of the baby is gone. Destroyed. And that violent action took place deeply within the body of the woman ... so, where her body once hosted an innocent and pure, rather positive sort of chi, there is now an energy of a different sort, a mean energy, a destructive energy, a chi of catastrophic violence and death.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Destroy a good chi, and you will only do so by introducing a bad chi. Any Chinese physician will tell you this. In the case of an abortion, you get to live with that bad energy not just around you but inside you. And it's not a bad energy that simply found its way inside you, like a cancer or disease. ... no, it's a bad, negative, murderous energy, that you have brought inside yourself. You've invited it in.
This cannot be a good thing. They never tell us stuff like this, when they talk about abortion, do they? No. ... all we ever hear is how abortion serves women. Truthfully, abortion serves men, and it serves The Destructor. For most women, they have not been served, only further burdened.
Can't argue with that.
Now, if a pregnancy is too far along for the vacuum, if the little life-force has grown enough to have a substantial hold on its mother ... in this case, he or she will dilate - or open - the cervix and introduce a curette and scrape and pull and yank the stubborn little mite apart. All of this happens, again, within the woman's womb. Deeply inside the woman, violence and murder are taking place. She's traded her little bundle of inconvenience for a bundle of negative chi. She's supposed to hop off the table and feel good about all that, afterward.
Good point.
We've heard for thirty years that a woman who has been raped should not have to bear the additional burden of carrying and delivering the rapist's child. And on a purely emotional and sympathetic level, most people will nod their heads and agree. But I wonder about it. I've read numerous stories of women who delivered their babies concieved in rape - either to raise the child or to allow its adoption - and I have never seen such a woman declare that doing so extended the terror of her rape or victimized her further. Usually these women say just the opposite - that in allowing the innocent baby (which is partly her own flesh) to live, she has delivered herself of something horrific, that out of something profoundly negative, they have managed to deliver something positive and yes, healing.
A positive from a negative - the exact opposite of abortion. I have never been able to understand how a woman who has been violated and victimized in rape can be somehow cleansed of the effects of that rape by the additional violation and violence of an abortion. Maybe it's possible, but I just don't see how. How does an abortion after rape bring healing and closure to a victim? .... But does it ever, really? It's a question no one is asking, anywhere. It needs asking.
Well said.
My choice of snippets has made the piece seem much more disjointed than it is. Read the whole thing for yourself.
Raunchy Bunchamoney
In the merry, merry month of May, let's look back on a May, 1979 inspection of Ronachai Banchongmanie's RELSCO abortion clinic:
no lavatory or handwashing sinks in exam rooms
sinks in patient care areas not able to be shut off without using hands
no tracheotomy set available
no transfer agreement with hospital
no job descriptions for nursing staff
employee files lacking resumes of training and experience
urinalysis not performed prior to surgery
no written infection control measures
scrub sink area "in need of a thorough cleaning"
no system for patients to summon attendant
drugs not stored safely
excessive temperature in area where oxygen and nitrous oxide tanks were stored
24-hour waiting period for abortions not adhered to
It was this and other nastiness that won Banchongmanie the nicknames "Raunchy Bunchamoney" and "Raunchy Botchamany" at Life Dynamics.
Ah, but this was just May of 1979! Surely he cleaned up his act after that! Yeah, and pigs fly. You can read summaries of 1980 - 1983 inspections here. He got slapped on the wrist and continued to operate through 1984. More of the same in 1985. By 1987 the state of Kentucky finally wised up and tried to shut him down, only to have him successfully argue that he wasn't operating a clinic; he was just doing surgery in his office. He accumulated malpractice suits as woman accumulated injuries. And still the mill ground on. His facility was still disgusting through 1990. He was still being deposed in malpractice suits through the early to mid-1990s. It was during these depositions that Banchongmanie admitted to having been a member of the National Abortion Federation during the 1970s. He said he quit; I certainly can't see NAF having thrown him out.
And surely organizations that promote safe and legal abortion kept their distance from Dr. B! Forsooth! In 2001, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky instead put their money, resources, and reputation behind Banchongmanie in a federal lawsuit to block the state from enforcing a new law that requires women to obtain state-mandated information and then wait at least 24 hours before receiving an abortion. (Why Banchongmanie would go to all the trouble to file a suit remains a mystery; he didn't exactly have a history of rigid obedience to other laws and regulations.) The ACLU indicates that there are only three doctors "providing" abortions in Kentucky.
Life Dynamics lists only three abortion facilities in Kentucky:
EMW Women's Clinic - 859-278-0331
161 Burt Rd., Lexington, KY 40503
Pregnancy Options- Dr. Sheikh - 859-278-0214
1725 Harrodsburg Rd. # H2, Lexington, KY 40504
EMW Women's Surgical Center - 502-589-2124
138 W Market St., Louisville, KY 40202
Both EMW facilities are current NAF members. The Kentucky medical board lists this information for Banchongmanie:
Ronachai Banchongmanie M.D.
Address: 5341 Mitscher Ave.
Louisville KY 40214
Phone : (502) 589-4030
So either he's operating freelance and Life Dynamics has no information on where, or he works at one of those three facilities -- two of which are NAF members.
I'd like to challenge the prochoice folks out there to see where he's practicing, and if women are being steered to him with assurances of "safety."
It was this and other nastiness that won Banchongmanie the nicknames "Raunchy Bunchamoney" and "Raunchy Botchamany" at Life Dynamics.
Ah, but this was just May of 1979! Surely he cleaned up his act after that! Yeah, and pigs fly. You can read summaries of 1980 - 1983 inspections here. He got slapped on the wrist and continued to operate through 1984. More of the same in 1985. By 1987 the state of Kentucky finally wised up and tried to shut him down, only to have him successfully argue that he wasn't operating a clinic; he was just doing surgery in his office. He accumulated malpractice suits as woman accumulated injuries. And still the mill ground on. His facility was still disgusting through 1990. He was still being deposed in malpractice suits through the early to mid-1990s. It was during these depositions that Banchongmanie admitted to having been a member of the National Abortion Federation during the 1970s. He said he quit; I certainly can't see NAF having thrown him out.
And surely organizations that promote safe and legal abortion kept their distance from Dr. B! Forsooth! In 2001, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky instead put their money, resources, and reputation behind Banchongmanie in a federal lawsuit to block the state from enforcing a new law that requires women to obtain state-mandated information and then wait at least 24 hours before receiving an abortion. (Why Banchongmanie would go to all the trouble to file a suit remains a mystery; he didn't exactly have a history of rigid obedience to other laws and regulations.) The ACLU indicates that there are only three doctors "providing" abortions in Kentucky.
Life Dynamics lists only three abortion facilities in Kentucky:
EMW Women's Clinic - 859-278-0331
161 Burt Rd., Lexington, KY 40503
Pregnancy Options- Dr. Sheikh - 859-278-0214
1725 Harrodsburg Rd. # H2, Lexington, KY 40504
EMW Women's Surgical Center - 502-589-2124
138 W Market St., Louisville, KY 40202
Both EMW facilities are current NAF members. The Kentucky medical board lists this information for Banchongmanie:
Ronachai Banchongmanie M.D.
Address: 5341 Mitscher Ave.
Louisville KY 40214
Phone : (502) 589-4030
So either he's operating freelance and Life Dynamics has no information on where, or he works at one of those three facilities -- two of which are NAF members.
I'd like to challenge the prochoice folks out there to see where he's practicing, and if women are being steered to him with assurances of "safety."
UN, PP seek to undermine Islamic teachings
Read the full report, UNFPA, IPPF Organize Pakistani Conference to Undermine Muslim Teaching on Abortion/Contraception at C-Fam.
A three-day international conference of Muslim scholars that portrayed contraception and even abortion as acceptable to Islam wraps up today in Islamabad, Pakistan. The International Ulama Conference on Population and Development was the first of its kind, bringing together Muslim teachers to explore whether Islam could approve of family planning and "reproductive health" programs. The Conference was organized by Pakistan's Ministry of Population Welfare with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)....
The Minister for Population Welfare, Shahbaz Hussain, explained that Pakistan's government has been working to gain the approval of religious scholars for Pakistan's recent embrace of population control programs based on family planning and "reproductive health." Hussain explained that the government has established "Mobile Service Units" that provide door-to-door "family planning and reproductive health services," and has expanded "reproductive health services centers," as well as running a media campaign to promote family planning.
The conference was attended by several key members of Pakistan's government, the representatives of at least 18 countries, including Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, and important Muslim scholars from at least 29 countries.
Ms. Hong Ping of the Chinese chapter of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), who presented at the conference, explained in her paper that currently there is "misunderstanding and misperception of reproductive health and family planning prevailing among the Muslims, such as...'abortion is life-killing,' etc. All of [this] traditional ideology tends to result in resistance to reproductive health services and acceptance of family planning measures."....
Undermining traditional religious teachings of many faiths has long been the desire and goal of UNFPA and other proponents of UN-style family planning. UNFPA executives consistently have misstated Catholic teachings on contraception.
Lest we forget -- illegal abortion death
On May 5, 1938, Mrs. Genevieve Horton, a practical nurse, pleaded guilty in an abortion case in Westchester County, New York. She was released on $1,500 bail. According to an indictment, after being released, Horton performed an abortion on 29-year-old Mrs. Asunta La Rosa, a mother of three. Asunta died in her home later that evening.
Since the New York Times didn't specify when Asunta died, I've listed her in May.
Genevieve Horton is an example of the second-largest group of illegal abortionists: non-physicians with medical training. For a while in the mid- to late-1990s, there was a drive within the prochoice lobby to promote paramedical abortion providers. This drive is no longer on the front burner for some reason, despite repeated lamentations about the "provider shortage."
Laws don't kill women. Abortionists do.
Since the New York Times didn't specify when Asunta died, I've listed her in May.
Genevieve Horton is an example of the second-largest group of illegal abortionists: non-physicians with medical training. For a while in the mid- to late-1990s, there was a drive within the prochoice lobby to promote paramedical abortion providers. This drive is no longer on the front burner for some reason, despite repeated lamentations about the "provider shortage."
Laws don't kill women. Abortionists do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)