Where's the blind rage come from?

I was just looking for some interesting abortion-related discussions at Delphi Forums, when I stumbled into this. (WARNING: VERY crude and nasty language)

What's with these people? Where does the blind, impotent rage come from?

The only underlying thing I can pick out is the idea that their sense of self is so constricted that there's simply no room for anything else. It's like, "If the fetus exists at all, then I AM NOT REAL!" And they have to deny the very existence of the fetus in order to assert their own existence. It's really creepy and sad.

Abortion Survivor Lauren Pulliam

"Destined to be born" (Scroll down; translation by Babelfish)
Tiny Witnesses (Scroll down)

Seventeen-year-old Kristen went to Birthright for a pregnancy test. When the result was positive, she cried. Her mother spent the next few days reassuring Kristen that she'd help with caring for the baby, or with an adoption plan, but not with abortion. Kristen became withdrawn, and her mother became concerned. She learned that a friend had encouraged Kristen to go to Planned Parenthood.

After speaking with Planned Parenthood staff, who assured Kristen that she didn't need her parents' permission to abort, Kristen decided to schedule the abortion. Her parents pleaded with her. The day of the abortion, Kristen left the house in silence. Kristen's mother, Pat Pulliam, said, "Our home seemed a tomb."

Four weeks after the abortion, when Kristen returned to Planned Parenthood for a checkup, she learned that she was still pregnant. The staff recommended that she schedule a second procedure, but Kristen instead rushed home. Her mother called Planned Parenthood, but nobody would speak to her.

Kristen then went to an obstetrician for a checkup. He performed an ultrasound, and told her that the baby was a girl. Kristen and her mother looked at the ultrasound and everything seemed fine to them, but the doctor told them that the baby had abnormalities. He asked Kristen to reconsider abortion, but after having heard the baby's heartbeat, Kristen refused.

Kristen's mother took her to a pro-life obstetrician, who told them that the baby was "destined to be born."

Lauren Pulliam was born one month early, weighing six pounds. She was perfectly healthy. "Our daughter was in labor only twenty minutes," says Kristen's mother. "The baby was six pounds and absolutely perfect in every way.... Our daughter has been chosen to know the fullness of Christ’s love, care and forgiveness. Our lives will never be the same."

Hillary softening abortion stance!

Hillary Clinton sent Bush a letter encouraging him to address the issue of forced abortions during his upcoming visit to China! To my knowledge, this is the first time a high-profile abortion advocate has even recognized that these forced abortions are taking place, much less spoken out against them. Wow!

This is, of course, good news for the women of China, since a united prolfe/prochoice front will bring to bear enough pressure to at least soften China's draconian campaign against second children. But it's bad news for women and children in the US, since a softening of her stand on abortion will make Hillary more palatable to voters in the US. Hillary's proposed national health care plan would have effectively forced abortion of disabled children, since it would have made it illegal to provide medical care to those who were not aborted.

Patricia Case, Abortion Survivor

According to this site (Translation by Babelfish), based on the HLI Congress of Abortion Survivors held in 1992, the parents of Patricia Case wanted a divorce. This was in the mid 1940s. By law, they had to be physically separated for at least a year. But shortly before that year was up, Patricia's mother became pregnant. This made it impossible to prove that they'd been separated for the full year and jeopardized their divorce plans.

According to Patricia, three unsuccessful attempts were made to cause an abortion. Despite these attempts, Patricia was born and placed for adoption. Patricia said that all went well until 1985, when Patricia was struck with strange feelings and tried to kill herself. In discussions with her therapist and adopted mother, Patricia learned that as a very small child she rejected people, and did not want to be shown affection. Patricia attributes this to how strongly her birth mother was rejecting her in-utero.

Blog Roundup

Erin ponders where she really stands on abortion. We get a nice variety of stands here; stop in and chime in!

Read here about a woman's amazing victory.

Joshua Vandervelden, Abortion Survivor

A lawsuit filed suit on behalf of Joshua Vandervelden alleged that Dr. Benjamin Victoria attempted to perform an abortion on Linda Moie on January 12, 1979, at Fox Valley Reproductive Health Care Center in Wisconsin. The abortion injured but did not kill the fetus (Joshua), who was born September 18, 1979. Joshua spent two weeks on a respirator. The suit was struck down by the court on the grounds that Linda consented to the abortion. Linda appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's refusal to hear the case.

According to this site (translation by Babelfish), Joshua's mother became prolife after the birth of her son, and together they picket the clinic where the attempt on Joshua's life was made.

How many deaths?

Life Dynamics Inc. (LDI) has never claimed to have uncovered every case in which a woman has died from a legal abortion. Their focus is on the individual story. But still, we can count how many deaths LDI was able to discover, and compare those numbers to the "official" abortion mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and see what we can see.

Life Dynamics numbers are obtained by counting the deaths from the "Tombstone Project" poster for each year, then adding stories from "The Blackmun Wall" for that year, for which Life Dynamics is unable to give names. This will give us the total legal abortion deaths Life Dynamics was able to find. I posted a table here. (It will open in a new window so you can refer to it as you read.) Years in red are years in which Life Dynamics found fewer deaths than did the CDC. Years in black are years in which Life Dynamics found the same number of deaths as the CDC. Years in green are years in which Life Dynamics found more deaths than the CDC.

Clearly, Life Dynamics is not finding all of the abortion deaths, since many years the CDC found more. But clearly also, the CDC is not finding them all. In fact, as time goes on, they seem to become worse and worse at finding abortion deaths.

The CDC has access to documents Life Dynamics can't get -- death certificates and coroner reports from jurisdictions with closed records, for example. The CDC also can easily obtain medical records from doctors and hospitals; Life Dynamics can not. In the 1970s, this advantage shows clearly, with the CDC finding far more abortion deaths than Life Dynamics finds. But in the early 1980s, this trend flattens out, with LDI and the CDC running neck and neck. In the late 1980s, Life Dynamics, with its limited access to records, outstrips the CDC at the job taxpayers are paying them to do: find out how many women are dying from legal abortions.

Clearly, nobody really knows how many women are dying from legal abortion. And the people in charge of keeping track dropped the ball.

Abortion survivors added to sidebar

I've made yet another addition to the sidebar -- children born alive after abortions. I'll be gathering information on survivor Joshua Vandervelden, since I can find a picture of him but the only text I can find online is in Spanish.

If you know of any other abortion survivors with photos available, let me know.

Additions to the cemetery of choice

Thanks to information I've gotten from the National Organization for [Some] Women, I've added four illegal abortion deaths to the Cemetery of Choice. These women are Clara Duvall, Ruth Friedl, Pauline Shirley, and Vivian Cambpell.

Improved search-and-destroy

First Trimester Best Time to Test for Downs Syndrome

Of course, the unspoken message is, "and then you can arrange an abortion."

To their credit, the authors say Down Syndrome causes "mild-to-moderate mental retardation," rather than painting a grim picture. But you know where the whole thing is leading.

For a reminder of what it is they're testing for in these search-and-destroy missions, visit Band of Angels.

Abortion: The Un Choice

The Elliot Institute has a great new campaign addressing how about is experienced by far too many of the woman who go through it.

Unwanted:

In Virginia, a homeless woman testified that she was forced to choose between an abortion and staying at the shelter. ...

Unsafe:

Our granddaughter, age 21, had an abortion. Three months later her father found her hanging from the cross beams in the basement.

Unfair:

"If you regret an abortion, nobody wants to hear about it. After all, there's nothing anyone can do to fix the problem. So you have to tell yourself what happened was good - and everyone around tells you the same thing. After that, I knew I would never bring up the subject again."

The campaign features billboards,

display ads,

radio ads, and TV ads.

Visit the site. It's full of information you can use even if you're not in a position to place an ad.

Two blog entries that belong together

I don't usually link to poetry, but I make an exception for Destroying His Image. This is not typical sappy prolife poetry -- it's a strong witness from somebody who has been there, done that.

To complement this -- tell me this isn't the hand of God -- Catholic Fire posts these words from Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae.

Sidebar addition -- the cost of abortion

I've made another addition to the sidebar -- pictures, with links, of women whose abortions cost them their lives. Top to bottom: Christin Gilbert, Carolina Gutierrez, Maureen Tyke, Diana Lopez with her kids, Sharon Hamplton with her son, Holly Patterson, and Marla Cardamone.

I didn't select them on the basis of their specific stories, but because I had pictures which could bring home the reality, that these were somebody's daughters, somebody's moms. They weren't statistics. They weren't theoretical. In each case, somebody who supported abortion took instruments or prescription pad in hand and took action that killed them.

Let's not forget.

Narrow victory for California perverts

By a narrow margin, 53 to 47, advocates for abortion, and the perverts who benefit from their activism, defeated a measure that would have required abortionists to notify parents that their children were seeking abortions. This goes so far beyond being disgusting that I can't find words to express it. How anybody could value the privacy of perverts above the well-being of underage girls is beyond me. Perverts and abortionists -- the most disgusting bedfellows politics has ever made.

Sad anniversary of a lingering death

Demetrice Andrews, age 22, underwent an abortion on October 17, 1988. She became progressively ill, and was finally admitted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Demetrice suffered multiple organ failure. She died on November 9, 1988.

It is ironic that Demetrice was admitted to Grady to be treated for abortion complications. Another woman, Jacqueline Reynolds, died just two years earlier, from complications of anesthesia administered for an abortion performed at Grady.

Christian thoughts on the Pill

From Christianity Today, A Hard Pill to Swallow.

Standards of Care

Calif. Holds Tanning Salons to Higher Standards Than Abortionists

Despite the fact that parents generally have the best interests of their children in mind and they are legally liable for any costs or complications resulting from their minor daughter's abortion, the state of California does not require them to be notified. Yet, the state requires not only parental notification but parental consent for a minor age 14 to 18 to use a tanning bed. A minor under the age of 14 cannot use a tanning bed under any circumstance, but she can have an abortion without telling her parents.

The article goes on to tell individual stories:

Diana Lopez received a call on July 30, 2004 from her 13-year old daughter's school that she had been taken to the hospital because she was bleeding. As it turns out, her daughter's boyfriend’s mother took the child to an abortion clinic in downtown San Diego. By the time Diana reached the clinic, the clinic staff would not allow her to see or be with her own daughter. In fact, the clinic threatened to call the police.

Bill and Georganne, each parents of 15-year old daughters who’d had abortions, found out well after the procedures. But they got to pick up the pieces. Each called into the Roger Hedgecock radio talk show in San Diego to tell their experiences. Georganne's daughter became an alcoholic shortly after she had an abortion without telling her parents. Five years later, alcoholism claimed her life. Bill found out about his daughter's abortion when he came home and found that she'd overdosed in an attempt to commit suicide. Fortunately, he was able to get her to the hospital in time to save her. The father of her baby was her 33-year old karate instructor who had threatened her if she told anyone about her pregnancy and subsequent abortion.

Anecdotes can move your heart, but how representative are these cases?

A 1995 study published in Lancet surveyed 46,000 pregnancies of minor girls in California. The researchers found that 71 percent - about 33,000 - were fathered by adult men who were an average age of 22.6 years old. The study also revealed that men 25 and older father more children among minor girls than do boys under the age of 18.

Another study published in a 1999 issue of the American Pediatrics journal showed that 74 percent of all girls who were under the age of 14 at first intercourse did not have voluntary intercourse. For girls under age 15, the percentage was 60 percent.

California has been pandering to predators for too long, and young girls have been paying the price.

Blog Roundup: Abortion map, UK minors

Where the Abortions Are. The map shows "percentage" for abortion. I think they mean what percent of pregnancies end in induced abortion. What I find encouraging is how patchy the US is. Some areas -- California immediately leaps out -- have appallingly high abortion rates, but other areas have few abortions. This means that we can learn what it is that leads a woman to end up on the abortion table, and devise prevention methods accordingly.

UK mother challenges child abortion rules. We can only pray that she succeeds.

Illegal abortion, not homicide

I have to agree with Brad Zambrell, who wrote Do-It-Yourself Abortion, in that charging Gerardo Flores with murder makes no legal sense. Flores was charged with two counts of murder for helping his teenage girlfriend kill her fetuses by beating and stomping on her abdomen. But I disagree with Zambrell about why.

Zembrell holds that 16-year-old Erica Basori had every right to demand that her fetuses be put to death, and that legally she had every right to ask anybody she wanted to help her achieve that end. Zelbrell wants to loosen abortion laws to allow anybody to perform them, as long as the mother asks for the fetus to be killed.

I disagree that anybody has any right to demand that somebody be put to death. But if abortion is legal, the most you can charge anybody with, should they illegally assist in killing a fetus the mother wants dead, is practicing medicine without a license. Zembrell is right that we can't give cart-blanc to physicians to slay fetuses, then charge a layman with murder for doing it.

The law, as it is written, should be used to protect women who want their babies to live. Anybody who causes a fetus to die without the mother's express consent should indeed be prosecuted for murder of that fetus, and I think that should include any physician who proceeds without a clear instruction from the mother that she has considered her fetus and wants it dead. Not that she wants to not be pregnant any more, but that she specifically wants that particular fetus to die.

I think that by clearly re-defining legal abortion as the destruction of a fetus whose mother actively wants that fetus dead, we'll go a long way to reduce abortions. Anybody performing an abortion would need to be able to demonstrate that he was acting at the express wish of the mother, that she knew what was being killed -- a living fetus that had passed whatever developmental milestones her fetus had passed -- and that she absolutely and without reservation wanted that fetus put to death on her behalf.

In fact, I think that the mother ought to be required to sign a death warrant, similar to the warrants signed to authorize a legal execution.

If this country wants abortion to be a legal right, we need to be honest about what it is we're giving women a right to do -- to have an innocent human being put to death. We need to stop pretending that it has anything to do with provision of "medical care."

Where are all the coathangers?

This review of The Last Abortion Clinic features an interesting quote:

''It's like even before Roe v. Wade for these poor women," says Pat White, an OB-GYN nurse who has worked for 30 years at public health clinics in the Mississippi Delta.

We've been told time and again that before Roe, women were flooding emergency rooms and morgues, impaled on coathangers. But there's no mention of that happening in Mississippi.

Let's look at the CDC's stats on Mississippi abortions prior to PP v. Casey, the SCOTUS decision that allowed states to start regulating abortion. In 1991, the CDC's abortion surveillance indicates that 8,184 abortions were performed in Mississippi, out of 1,388,937 abortions reported for the entire US. That's .6% (six-tenths of one percent) of all abortions. We're also told that 5,000 - 10,000 women were dying from botched abortions every year in the US prior to Roe. That would mean that 30 - 60 women were dying of botched abortions in Mississippi every year before Roe.

So if the hysteria mongers are right, there are virtually no legal abortions being done in Mississippi, and perhaps as many as 60 women are dying from botched illegal abortions.

Let's look at the most recent numbers. The most recent abortion surveillance numbers put out by the CDC are for 2001. According to their numbers, 6,983 women submitted to abortions in Mississippi, out of 752,283 reported nationwide. (The CDC's numbers are low because many states don't report.) So though the overall numbers dropped 1,201 (15%), the percentage of US abortions performed in Mississippi climbed 33%! How's that for lack of "access"?

And what about the 30-50 dead women we should be expecting, since Mississippi's abortion situation is now "like even before Roe v. Wade? Well, the CDC counted a total of 12 induced abortion deaths in the US for 1991 (11 legal and 1 illegal), but for 2000 they counted 11 legal and no illegal. So for all these horrible restrictions unleashed after 1991, we're not seeing all the coathanger-impaled women we were told would be inevitable.

The point is this: restrictions on abortions result in fewer abortions, with no rise in the number of women dying as a result of their abortions.