Fortunately, the prolifers invited her next door for a free ultrasound, and if necessary a referral for high-risk obstetric care and perinatal hospice.
Turns out she didn't need any of those things after all. The whole thing had been a goof. Oops. Sorry about scaring you into nearly killing your baby in a risky third-trimester abortion.
One more time, with feeling: a prognosis is a prediction. When a doctor gives a patient a prognosis, he's doing the same thing the weather man is doing when he gives a forecast: Trying to predict the future. Would you stake your child's life on the weather report? No? Then why stake his or her life on anybody else reading high-tech tea leaves?
There are also doctors who aren't above lying to get a woman to do what he thinks is the sensible thing. Shari Russell was told that her life was in danger in order to trick her into aborting her anencephalic baby. Dolores was told that she had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy to trick her into a abortion her boyfriend wanted her to have.
Women have died because of abortions pushed on them for maternal and fetal indications that simply weren't true. Allegra Roseberry had been falsely told that she wouldn't be eligible for cancer treatment, and that her baby was "doomed" anyway. Marla Cardamone was falsely told that her medications had injured her unborn baby.
For more:
- The Limitations of Medical Prognostications
- Parents 'misled over gene disorders'
- When The Future Looks Bleak
- Midtown Hospital's Late Abortion Scandal
- Beware of "Maternal and Fetal Indications"
- "Don't Like Abortions? Don't Have One."
- Protecting Yourself and Your Unborn Child
- "Don't Like Abortions? Don't Have One!" Redux
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Thank you for this blog, and particularly this post. It's important that women understand that abortion can and does kill them, and that prenatal diagnoses can be wrong. I've recently written a post on my blog about the inaccuracy of ultrasound, and included two stories of women who refused abortions after being inaccurately told that their babies had severe/lethal birth defects. The baby "without a brain" is now a smart 8 year old, and the baby with "severe birth defects" is a high school Honors student without a thing wrong with her. Not included in that blog was a story about a woman who was pressured to have an abortion after contracting Rubella while pregnant. She ultimately declined and her baby was born normally and is now the mother of 5!
ReplyDeleteHere is Kathy's blog post.
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