Common Ground on Late-Term Abortion: Anguish
They omitted some salient points:
1. There was no mention of the degree to which women facing prenatal diagnoses are often pushed into abortion against their own inclinations.
2. There was no mention of the failure to ensure that women really did get proper treatment for their mental health issues eitehr before or after their abortions.
3. There was no mention of women's regret that they'd gone to Tiller and hadn't given their babies a chance at life.
4. No mention of Sarah Brown, left blind, paralyzed, and mentally retarded by one of Tiller's attempts at a "compassionate" late abortion.
5. No mention of the fact that YES, some of the patients did give some pretty trivial reasons, like cheerleading or wanting to go to a concert, for aborting.
But refreshingly evenhanded overall.
My thoughts on the article:
ReplyDelete"We loved our baby boy too much to suffer the misery of waking up every morning awaiting his impending death," said Miriam Kleiman, who found out in her third trimester that her son had fatal brain abnormalities. Dr. Tiller performed the abortion in 2000.
Hmm, sounds like the parents were going to "suffer the misery", not the baby, so how does killing him benefit the child? I'm not minimizing their grief and anguish -- I just don't see how murdering a terminal patient is still not murder. And I can understand that they suffered after the diagnosis, but it doesn't sound as if their baby was suffering at all. Also there is a lot of research showing that parents who abort tend to regret their decision a lot, whereas parents who choose to let their babies live even if they are stillborn or die soon after birth do not have that regret, and are at peace.
very young girls, victims of rape, drug addicts, women in abusive relationships.
These don't sound like women's lives are in danger -- unless the woman's abuser is threatening to kill her if she doesn't kill the baby. But then, the woman is returned to her abuser, so how does that help?? And we're talking at least 6 months of pregnancy, so I have to question women who suddenly decide after so long carrying their rapist's child that they just can't do it any more. Makes me question the rape. Ditto very young girls -- surely their condition would be likely to be known earlier in pregnancy so a viable baby would not be killed by abortion; but once you get past the age of viability, it is more hazardous to the mother's life to have an abortion than to carry the baby to term, unless the mother's life is already being threatened by the pregnancy, in which case the woman needs to be in the hospital, and an induction or C-section can be performed, saving both mother and child.
There are risks to the mother -- 8.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 late-term abortions, compared with 7.1 deaths per 100,000 births,
A majority of maternal deaths are due to C-sections; and C-sections are often unnecessary, so these death rates could come down if more women gave birth vaginally. Not quarreling with the numbers so much as saying they're unnecessarily skewed. But again, it shows that interfering with a normal process (pregnancy) hurts and kills mothers.