During early 1861, a German physician by the name of John H. Joecken was caring for Mr. Malinken, who was ailing in his Brooklyn home. On one of his visits, Malinken's 35-year-old wife, Caroline, approached Joecken privately and told him "she did not want to have so many children, and wished to know if it was possible to get rid of her present burthen. The doctor replied that it was the easiest thing imaginable, and that in eight days all would be over."
Joecken set to work on Caroline, "and by the use of drugs as well as instruments succeeded in making her very sick." Over the course of several days her condition deteriorated. She died late Monday night, February 11.
The coroner's jury concluded that Caronline had died from "pyemia, supervening upon metritis, consequent of an abortion produced at the hands of Dr. Joecken." Joecken was arrested.
Caroline's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.
In studying pre-legalization deaths, I was surprised at the number of instances I found of doctors and other abortionists blithely assuring patients that abortion would be quite easy and safe. They sounded, to my modern ears, quite indistinguishable from post-legalization abortion proponents, who can not stop trumpeting how fast, easy, safe, and reliable abortion is. The main difference is how long it will allegedly take to restore the woman to her desired non-pregnant state.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
They told me I had to get down to St. Luke's right away, that Dawn was at that hospital fighting for her life.
It's the call every parent dreads. Ruth Ravenelle was no exception. Her 13-year-old daughter, Dawn, was active in the church where both her parents were ministers. The family sang Gospel songs together. Dawn was a dream child -- the kid who did her homework without being told, who liked to surprise her mother by cleaning the house. She was what's known in the vernacular as "a good girl". Her parents never expected any trouble about Dawn.
I was going, 'How can she be fighting for her life? She left for school this morning, looking healthy, never been sick.'"
What Ruth didn't know was that Dawn had slipped off her pedestal, had engaged in a dalliance with a 15-year-old Romeo. And when she learned that she was pregnant, she knew her parents would be crushed. She went to a teacher for advice. The teacher and a counselor arranged to take care of the whole mess so that Dawn's parents would never have to know. The boyfriend borrowed a credit card from a relative to pay for the risky, expensive, second-trimester abortion.
The counselor at Eastern Women's Center (a National Abortion Federation member) had seen how frightened Dawn was, and had marked on her chart that she should be treated with "tender loving care". But abortionist Alan Kline had his own ideas about what constituted "tender loving care". According to the suit filed by Dawn's parents, he didn't administer enough anesthesia to get the frightened girl through the entire procedure. She began to cough, vomit, and choke. Kline put a breathing tube in Dawn's throat, put her aside, and left her unattended to lapse into a coma. Dawn was eventually rushed to the hospital, where it finally occurred to somebody to do the obvious: call Dawn's mother.
While I was there at the hospital -- they were doing tests -- I had to keep my hand pressed over my mouth to keep from screaming in horror. I kept going, 'This is all a bad dream. I am going to wake up and this will not have happened.'"
Day after day Dawn's family gathered at her bedside, talking to her, playing tapes of the family singing together, trying to lure her back from the brink of death -- all to no avail. Dawn died three weeks after her abortion, on February 11, 1985, without ever having regained consciousness.
The family sued and won, but as the New York Post headline pointed out, "$1.2M Won't Bring Her Back." The story featured a photo of Dawn at her junior high graduation, in cap and gown, gazing out smiling at a future she would never have.
And the abortion lobby, interestingly enough, has never thought to object to the kind of parental notification Ruth Ravenelle received -- the phone call to tell her that her daughter was in the hospital, fighting to survive, after the damage was done.
This is old news being reiterated, but it never hurts to repeat truth until people start hearing it: You don't need to kill the unborn baby in order to treat the pregnant mother for cancer.
Dr. Beth Beadle, who works at the prestigious medical center and is the lead author of the study, told AP that both mother and baby can be cared for during treatment.
"If we can get them early, we can treat them aggressively and have good and promising outcomes for both woman and child," she said.
....
Ruth O'Regan, an associate professor at Emory University's Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, also told AP that cancer doctors can treat both mother and child without the need for an abortion.
"It's quite complicated, but all of us have been able to treat pregnant women successfully," O'Regan said.
This is good news for the vast majority of women diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy, but bad news for people casting about for reasons to justify abortion.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. -- Ephesians 6:12 NAS
When it comes to the abortion battle, it seems the lines are drawn pretty clearly: prolife vs. prochoice. No matter which side you align yourself with, it's easy to tell who is friend and who is foe, right? If you're prolife, the prochoicers are the enemy. If you're prochoice, the prolifers are the enemy. Right?
Well, it might be possible to put forth that argument from a purely secular perspective (although I don't think it holds water even from a secular perspective). But from a Christian perspective, the idea that this is a war of prolife versus prochoice -- or even "good guys" versus "bad guys" -- is bogus.
The Bible makes it pretty clear who the Enemy is. We can explore this Enemy at length at another time. Right now, we'll look closely at Ephesians 6:12, as a reminder of who the enemy is not:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Let's turn to the Greek Lexicon and see what we can find about the words used in this passage.
We can start with the Greek word transliterated "pale" (pal ay). This word is used only in this passage, and means "wrestling (a contest between two in which each endeavours to throw the other, and which is decided when the victor is able to hold his opponent down with his hand upon his neck); the term is transferred to the Christian's struggle with the power of evil." So it looks like we're not talking about a "live and let live" situation, in which our Enemy will let us be if we ignore it. We're engaged in a wrestling match in which one, and only one, can emerge victorious.
We can then look at the Greek words transliterated "sarx," indicating "flesh (the soft substance of the living body, which covers the bones and is permeated with blood)...used of natural or physical origin, ...denotes mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God;" and "haima" (hah ee ma), "blood." We can take this then pretty literally -- we're not fighting flesh and blood, mortal creatures, men and women like ourselves.
Well, then, what are we fighting? Here's where it really gets interesting.
The word translated here as "powers" is the Greek transliterated "exousia" (ex oo see ah). Here are some of the ways this word is defined:
power of choice, liberty of doing as one pleases
physical and mental power
the ability or strength with which one is endued, which he either possesses or exercises the power of authority (influence) and of right (privilege)
the power of rule or government (the power of him whose will and commands must be submitted to by others and obeyed)
the leading and more powerful among created beings superior to man, spiritual potentates
I find it fascinating that Paul chose this word here, a word that means not just those in authority or those with power, but free will itself. Although this idea is not, I would presume, the crux of the passage, I think we'd do well to remember that our own free will is often ready to trip us up. The very capacity for making choices which the abortion advocates hold up as the ultimate good seems here cast as a potential pitfall. This stands as a warning to all Christians no matter what side of the abortion battle they've stationed themselves on: just because we can does not mean we should. Having been given free will, and the power to make choices, we are given at every moment of our lives the capacity to rebel against God and set ourselves up as petty tyrants over our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Again, though, this is an interesting side concept. Biblical scholars point to the meaning of this word in this passage as focusing on spiritual powers having control in the world, and over people.
"World forces of this darkness" is a concept built of three words:
The word translated as "world forces" is transliterated "kosmokrator." This word is used only in this passage, and means "lord of the world, prince of this age; the devil and his demons."
The word translated as "darkness" is transliterated "skotos," meaning "darkness of night; darkness of darkened eyesight or blindness; metaphorically of ignorance respecting divine things and human duties, and the accompanying ungodliness and immorality, together with their consequent misery in hell; persons in whom darkness becomes visible and holds sway."
We can pull this together into a picture of Satan and the way he works in the world, where he has dominion. Note also, that the word translated "darkness" can refer to "persons in whom darkness becomes visible and holds sway," this doens't indicate that these persons themselves are that which we are fighting, but the darkness that is being manifested in them. This is, perhaps, a fancy way of restating, "Hate the sin, love the sinner."
The third concept of what we are fighting is translated here, "spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."
The word translated "spiritual" is transliterated "pneumatikos," and translates as "sprit." The specific meaning that fits in this passage is "belonging to a spirit, or a being higher than man but inferior to God."
The word translated as "wickedness" is transliterated "poneria," meaning "depravity, iniquity, wickedness; malice; evil purposes and desires." That's pretty straightforward.
The word translated "heavenly" is transliterated "epouranios," which translates pretty much into our current "heavenly." We tend to think of "heavenly" as meaning "good," or "superior," but in this passage it can't be indicitave of anything good or superior, and therefore must designate that we're talking about a spiritual realm, a higher reality, and not the physical world visible around us. This stands in contrast to what this passage says we do not contend against, i.e. "flesh and blood," or worldly enemies.
This is not meant to be the final word on how we can apply this passage, either in our lives or as we struggle to put an end to abortion. But it's certainly a start.
On February 10, 1957, veterinarian Ira Ledbetter performed an abortion on Alice Kimberly. Ledbetter used a veterinary instrument called a milk tube on Alice, causing lacerations and an embolism. She quickly died of her injuries, leaving her husband with five minor children to raise alone.
Alice's abortion was unusual in that it was not preformed by a physician, as was by far the most typical scenario. Still, it was performed by somebody with medical training, which was unusual but still more common than amateur or self-induced abortions.
Pro-Life News is bearing false witness in its headlines again:
The deliberately slanderous headline reads: "11 states consider murdering babies after ultrasound pictures are taken"
As Christians, we are often called upon to reprove our brothers and sisters. The editor of Pro-Life News does not allow comments so that we can chide him personally or privately. He slanders his brothers and sisters in public, and he needs to be taken down a notch in public.
This brother's actions are designed to tear others down, to deliberately attack brothers and sisters who are working to limit the carnage, deliberately misrepresenting them. Again, this is bearing false witness -- the breaking of a Commandment -- on a deliberate and ongoing basis. If we do a study of how the word translated "violence" is used in Scripture, this brother is daily and deliberately committing violence against brothers and sisters. Read Hebrew Words and Abortion, Part II. Let me share a portion:
The next word for "violence" is "chamac," meaning "to wrong, do violence to, treat violently, do wrongly (Qal); to treat violently, do wrong; of physical wrong; of ethical wrong; of physical and ethical wrong (Niphal); to be treated violently." This is a primative root word used 8 times in the Old Testament, and translated (KJV) as violence (2 times), violated (1), shake off (1), wrongfully imagine (1), violently taken away (1), wronged (1), and made bare (1). Example are:
Proverbs 8:36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. (KJV)
Jeremiah 22:3 Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place. (KJV)
Zephaniah 3:4 Her prophets are light and treacherous persons: her priests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law. (KJV)
Another word, also transliterated "chamac," means "violence, wrong, cruelty, injustice." It is used a total of 60 times in the Old Testament, translated as violence (39 times), violent (7), cruelty (4), wrong (3), false (2), cruel (1), damage (1), injustice (1), oppressor (1), and unrighteous (1). Examples are (all KJV):
Genesis 6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Genesis 49:5 Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.
Psalms 72:14 He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight.
Jonah 3:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
The final word used in the Old Testament to indicate "violence" is transliterated "m@rutsah," meaning "crushing, oppression:"
Jeremiah 22:17 But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.
I'm beginning to see a pattern here, in that violence is indeed condemned roundly by God -- but that "violence" encompasses not just what we'd think of as a direct physical assault, but also any assault upon the integrity of a person or God's law. This includes taking away anything from another person -- posessions, reputation, dignity.
The editor of Pro-Life News is committing this sin against brothers and sisters regularly, publicly, daily, deliberately. This is not an occasional slip of the tongue or misunderstanding. This is deliberate and daily wrongdoing against brothers and sisters. This brother needs to be expelled from the fellowship until he repents. You can email the moderator of Pro Life Blogs at prolifeblogs@gmail.com, or contact him or her through the contact form.
Things like this are a huge part of the spiritual battle. We must keep our own house clean. We often slander our opponents -- saying that they are deliberately committing murder when we do not know how it is they actually view their actions. That is probably a huge part of why God allows the outrage of abortion to continue -- to teach us how to do battle. To teach us to identify the enemy. And we are joining forces with the real Enemy when we resort to Satan's methods of dealing with those we disagree with. Satan is, I'm sure, quite delighted when any brother or sister tries to fight the breaking of one Commandment (against murder) with habitual breaking of another (against bearing false witness).
And I can hear the squeals of outrage: "How dare you compare a few words typed on a keyboard to the deliberate slaughter of innocent unborn children!?" Well, I'll reply in advance that I'm not the one making the comparison. God is. He had a reason for putting covetousness and slander on the same list with murder. Are we going to trust Him to recognize evil or not?
In closing I will quote C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity:
It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity-that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride-just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
I might add that Satan is no doubt delighted to see you battle abortion as long as you do it by committing slander, bearing false witness, and puffing yourself up with the sin of Pride. And prolifers are very, very prone to this: to saying, "Yeah, I do this bad thing, but at least I'm not killing babies!" Well, for the most part, abortion is a very carnal sin. (Only the "Abortion as a Sacrifice to Artemis" types embrace it as a spiritual sin.) Fighting it by puffing yourself up with Pride is a spiritual sin. Which one was Jesus more likely to take a sinner to the woodshed over? He was far more gentle on the Woman Caught in Adultery than he was with the puffed-up religious leaders who congratulated themselves daily on how much more holy they were than the woman in question.
And I have been remiss in not couching the battle regularly in spiritual terms, and in not calling Scriptures to play on a regular basis. I'm guilty of fostering this cancer by not taking great care in how I address others' motives myself.
At 9:00 in the morning, February 8, 1968, 19-year-old Nancy Ward, a student at the University of Oklahoma, died in the ear, nose, and throat clinic of Dr. Richard Mucie of Kansas City, Missouri. The chain of events that cost Nancy her life had begun in November of 1967, when Nancy had told her boyfriend that she was pregnant and wanted an abortion. The boyfriend contacted his father in Kansas City for help. On January 30, 1968, the boyfriend's father contacted Dr. Richard Mucie at his ear, nose, and throat clinic and made arrangements for the abortion.
On February 7, Nancy and her boyfriend flew from Oklahoma to Kansas City and boyfriend visited Mucie at clinic. Mucie examined Nancy and told the couple that he would contact them at their hotel. At 11 p.m., Mucie called and arranged to pick them up and drive them to his clinic. He took Nancy back for the back room while the boyfriend waited in the outer office. About 20 to 30 minutes later, Mucie returned to the front office and asked the boyfriend for money before starting the procedure. Evidence indicates that Mucie then performed a D&C abortion on Nancy.
During the abortion, Mucie made a 1/2 inch tear in Nany's uterus. She went into shock and died at the clinic at about 9 a.m. February 8, in spite of Mucie's attempts to resucitate her. At about 11:30 a.m., Nancy's body was taken to Osteopathic hosptal. An autopsy revealed parts of a 4 1/2 to five month fetus still in Nancy's uterus. She had bled to death.
Mucie was convicted on June 8, 1968, of performing an abortion "not necessary to preserve the life" of the mother. Illegal abortion at that time carried a penalty of 3-5 years, with the sentence to be increased in cases where the mother died. Mucie served 14 months then was released on parole. Parole was set to expire on July 27, 1977. His medical license was revoked on May 4, 1971. After Roe v. Wade overturned Missouri's abortion law, Mucie successfully appealed his conviction and got his license restored under a ruling that made Roe retroactive in Missouri. He was released from propation and his record expunged of the manslaughter-abortion convicted. Ironically, Nancy's fatal abortion was retroactively declared legal on the grounds that the state's "interest in materal health" did not allow Missouri to have prohibited Mucie from performing it.
Robert Dale Crist, who would later go on to kill three of his own abortion patients, was one of the people who testified in Mucie's behalf to get his conviction thrown out and his license restored.
I believe that if a woman decides to have a termination, it should be done safely, legally and with some dignity. -- P. Scott Ricke
"Shanda" was 25 years old when she went to Ricke for an abortion on February 7, 1987 at his Women's Surgical Clinic in Arizona.
During the abortion, Shanda said, the head of the fetus became lodged. She was screaming in pain, but Ricke refused her request for painkillers by telling her that he didn't have any. She asked to be taken to a hospital, but Ricke told her that since her pregnancy was more than 24 weeks along, beyond the 24 week limit most hospitals observed, no hospital would take her.
Ricke made as many as 40 unsuccessful attempts to start an IV, and asked Shanda for advice about how to deal with the lodged head (wanting her to decide if crushing the head would be the right course of action).
After three hours of attempts to remove the head, Ricke wrapped the body of the fetus -- which was hanging out of Shanda's vagina -- in a towel, and loaded Shanda into an employee's car to be transported to the hospital.
The Assistant Arizona Attorney General investigated the case, and asserted that during the three hours he spent trying to dislodge Shanda's fetus, Ricke left her several times to do other abortions. After packing Shanda into a private car for transport, Ricke remained behind at his clinic to do three more abortions before following Shanda to the hospital and completing her abortion there.
The Assistant Attorney General said that by attempting to abort a 28-week, 2.4-pound fetus in this manner, he failed to minimize risks and jeopardized Shanda's health. Ricke's attorney countered that the fetus was only 24 weeks old, and that it had a less than 50% chance of survival. Ricke was disciplined by the medical board.
Why this sudden massive interest in something that happens every day?
Is it because Shanice was given a name, rather than just being "a baby" or "a fetus that survived an abortion"?
Is it because of the biohazard bag?
Is it because she was tossed on the roof?
Is it because she was actively killed instead of just abandoned to die of neglect?
Why is there so much more interest in Shanice's brief life and cruel death than in so many other children who survived a prenatal attempt on their lives, only to be finished off by the people who had, after all, been paid to kill them?
For more on just how ordinary what happened to Shanice is, see:
On February 6, 1952, Elizabeth Barbara "Betty" Hellman, the 35-year-old wife of an Air Force Major, died of peritonitis at Tinker Air Force Base Hospital. Her husband, who had been stationed in Tokyo for over a year, had managed to rush home from Tokyo in time to see his wife before she died. Not only did Major Hellman lose his wife, he was met with the additional shock of learning that Betty had been unfaithful during his absence.
Betty had been admitted to the hospital in critical condition on January 28, suffering from pain and low blood pressure, on January 28. Her red blood count was very low, and her white count very high, indicating infection. She admitted to having undergone an abortion on January 25. An autopsy verified that she had died from peritonitis from an abortion.
The story came out between Betty's admission to the hospital and her death. When questioned by investigators on January 31, Betty said that friends had referred her to a woman named Jane. She was shown a photo and identified the woman in it, 43-year-old Mrs. Jane McDaniel White, as her abortionist. She gave White's address as the place she had gone for the abortion.
Betty said that White had put her off for several days while she got over her fear of undergoing the abortion. She promised White $100, but only paid her $50. White initiated the abortion with some kind of packing and sent Betty home.
Betty became very ill, and called White, who with her daughter came to Betty's home and "scraped her out".
After Betty gave her statement, police raided White's home. White and her daughter, Mrs. S. B. Anderson, Jr., were nowhere to be found. Police eventually tracked the pair down and arrested them for murder and procuring an abortion.
White said that Betty had indeed come to her home, asking for Jane, and saying that she thought she was pregnant. White told investigators, "She said she had been taking medicine and she was vomiting. She also said she had been taking white capsules and shots." (Betty said that the medicine and shots had been in anticipation of travel to Japan to join her husband.) She said that Betty had asked who could perform an abortion, and insisted that she'd told Betty she "was not in the business."
However, White said, she treated Betty for ptomaine poisoning, which she believed was what was causing Betty's vomiting. She admitted to visiting Betty at her home, but said that she had only given her a laxative to treat ptomaine poisoning. White admitted to having no medical training, and said that she "had no right" to diagnoses whether or not Betty was pregnant, but she was qualified to diagnose the ptomaine poisoning because she'd had a bout of it herself.
The criminal case against White went well until the defense managed to have the Betty's deathbed statement, given on January 31, inadmissible because it couldn't be proved satisfactorily that Betty believed herself to be near death. With the deathbed statement thrown out, the case was dropped.
This had been White's third arrest for abortion charges. She had been convicted in 1947, under the name Jane McDaniel, and sentenced to seven years, but the conviction was thrown out on a technicality based on how advanced the girl's pregnancy had been. A new trial had been scheduled, but it never took place because the main prosecution witness had left the state or died. White was clearly operating as an abortionist, since an operating table, fashioned from an old restaurant table, and surgical instruments had been sized from her home at the time of her arrest -- “enough instruments and medicine to stock a small hospital.†She was charged again in 1951 but the main witness had vanished and the case had been dismissed.
Life Dynamics lists 26-year-old Kathy Davis on their "Blackmun Wall" of women killed by safe and legal abortions. Citing Kathy's death certificate, Life Dynamics says that Kathy died at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital of heart failure and hypertension following a safe, legal abortion on February 6, 1987.
Laniece lapsed into a coma, was transferred to a nearby hospital, and died later that day.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department medical examiner blamed the death on cardiorespiratory arrest due to the anesthesia, although he also found "a thick adherent layer of fibrinous material containing moderate numbers of inflammatory infiltrates" in Laniece's uterus.
Laniece wasn't the first or last young woman to die from abortion at a facility owned by FPA head honcho Edward Campbell Allred. Others include:
Sycloria Williams is the young woman now suing a Florida abortion mill. Her baby, who she named Shaniece, was born alive at the clinic. The clinic owner, Belkis Gonzalez, put the baby in a biohazard bag and tossed her on the roof. An anonymous tipster alerted the cops, who eventually found the baby -- leading to the utterly surreal call for an autopsy not to determine just the cause of death, but the very nature of the corpse. Was this a dead baby, or just biomass? You need an expert to discern these things in the post-Roe era.
Gosh, Barack Obama reassured the people of Illinois that babies just aren't born alive during abortions. That it's a non-issue. The doctors are always very careful not to start abortions on babies that might survive! There's no need for a neonatologist to come see if the baby could survive if it's born alive -- excuse me, if the nonviable tissue that is wrigging and squirming and gasping in your procedure room is actually a baby. Illinois law was very clear on that point -- if the doctor decided before the abortion that it was a nonviable tissue mass, well, then it was, all squirming and gasping and generally acting like a preemie to the contrary. Any nonviable tissue mass that does that -- wiggles and squirms and breathes and gasps -- is just pulling a clever ruse, trying to convince you it's a baby. But it's not! And how do we know? Barack Obama says so! And of course, he never screws up.
Keep in mind amidst the outrage is that things like what happened to Sycolria and her baby are literally an everyday occurrence in this country. The CDC's last admission was that they got about 400 reports a year of live births during abortions, and their spokesman, Willard Cates, said that this number was no doubt a gross underreporting because reporting a live birth is "like turning yourself in to the IRS for an audit." This is an everyday occurrence. Keep that in mind.
For more about babies that survive abortions, click on the "born alive" topic just below this post.
It's one of those, "Should I complain?" moments. After all, they are covering the story, which must stick in their craws. But I still have bones to pick, starting with the headline:
I've never seen the AP cover a mother's death as a "badly botched abortion". It's just an abortion. An ordinary abortion. But if the baby survives, it's not just botched -- it's badly botched. Like the worst possible thing that can happen, far worse than any other unintended outcome -- the mother needing a colostomy, or a teenage girl ending up with a hysterectomy, or the mother dying -- is a live birth. I guess I can see their point -- with anything else that goes wrong, the aim of the abortion -- a dead baby -- was still achieved. But if that's their measure, this one wasn't so badly botched, since the baby did end up dead.
They're pretty factual after that, though it wasn't Sycloria's pregnancy Renelique was being paid to terminate. It was her baby. After all, the termination of the pregnancy was a success. But then:
What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
Yeah, I suppose some people were shocked, and that the shocked people were on both sides. But to be shocked, what took place has to come as somewhat of a surprise. Raise your hand if you were the least bit surprised that:
1. An unlicensed clinic owner was tending to a patient in an abortion facility because there was no doctor present.
2. A baby, born alive in an abortion facility, was put in a biohazard bag.
3. The live baby was then disposed of.
Is any part of that particularly surprising to anybody here? It's all very dismaying, yes, but about as surprising and shocking as frat pledges getting drunk at a toga party.
The only shocking component to the entire sordid situation is that the AP is covering it.
Now to other aspects of the situation:
"It really disturbed me," said Joanne Sterner, president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women, after reviewing the administrative complaint against Renelique. "I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep (women) from going to these types of clinics."
Not "We need to close these types of clinics." Just hope that women don't stumble into them. Is this attitude familiar? Oh, yeah! That was in Florida, too! Remember these words:
"In my gut, I am completely aghast at what goes on at that place [Dadeland]. But I staunchly oppose anything that would correct this situation in law."
That was Janis Compton-Carr, National Abortion Federation member and co-founder of FLAC -- the Florida Abortion Council. FLAC was founded block state efforts to close seedy abortion mills.
Now, here is where I have to give the AP kudos, not merely credit:
At 23 weeks, an otherwise healthy fetus would have a slim but legitimate chance of survival. Quadruplets born at 23 weeks last year at The Nebraska Medical Center survived.
An autopsy determined Williams' baby — she named her Shanice — had filled her lungs with air, meaning she had been born alive, according to the Department of Health. The cause of death was listed as extreme prematurity.
So not only did they cover the story, but they included information the reader would need in order to understand why it would be appropriate to charge Gonzales with murder in Shaniece's death.
Now, Bill, just get this into your head: Poor people are just as entitled as us well-off folks to the joys of parenthood. They don't need you financing crews to go around spaying and neutering them and offering cheap abortions, as if they're so many stray animals we need to keep from breeding. Stop giving money to population control groups and start diverting it all to basic sanitation infrastructure so that they and their children can live and thrive.
On this date in 1996, 21-year-old Carolina Gutierrez lost her battle with post-abortion sepsis.
Just four days earlier, doctors had amputated her gangrenous feet, hoping that this would free up her immune system to battle the infection that had been raging since her abortion on December 19, 1995.
Carolina had been hospitalized since December 21, when her family had called an ambulance in their alarm over her difficulty breathing. Two days of trying to contact Maber Medical Center, where Carolina had undergone the abortion, had yielded no help. The voice mails she left had gone unanswered. When somebody finally did pick up the phone, whoever it was had hung up on her. The young mother, who had no medical insurance, had been suffering from fever and pain since the evening of the 19th.
She had arrived at the emergency room already in septic shock. Doctors had performed an emergency hysterectomy, trying to halt the spread of infection from her perforated uterus, but the sepsis had raged on.
Carolina had spent her 21st birthday as she had spent Christmas and New Year's: on a respirator, sepsis raging through her body. Her two children from a previous relationship, now orphaned, had spent most of their time in the care of relatives as her husband, Jose Linarte, had spent as much time as he could by Carolina's side, waiting and praying.
His prayers, like the doctors' efforts, had ultimately been in vain.
On January 29, 1929, Louise Allman, age 25, underwent an abortion at the home of Amelia K. Jaruez, a midwife. The address is also listed as a medical facility, so evidently she provided care to legitimate patients there as well.
On February 5, Louise died. Jaruez was held by the coroner on February 23, and indicted for homicide by a grand jury, but she was acquitted on July 2. My source doesn't say why.
Research on criminal abortions shows a lot of roadblocks to successful conviction. Prolifers seeking to stop abortion with a ban would do well to study these cases before drafting their laws, so as to close the loopholes these abortionists would wriggle out through. And think creatively, asking, "If I was a lawyer, how would I try to help an abortionist beat the rap?"
I had a fascinating conversation this evening. The gentleman in question argued that since there are so many early miscarriages, prolifers would want to try to save those babies if if was medically possible, right? I pointed out yes, preventing miscarriages is worthy and ought to be pursued.
But then we hit a snag when I had a hard time explaining that not every early miscarriage of a pregnancy is an early miscarriage of a human embryo. Nobody, I pointed out, is collecting the miscarried entities to see what they are. They might not be viable human embryos that could possibly be saved. In fact, it's probable that what is being expelled is either a hydatidiform mole or a blighted ovum -- neither of which is a new human being. This conversation led me to bring up this old article:
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. Researchers aren't 100 percent in agreement as to what causes hydatidiform moles, but the current theory is that they are caused by double genetic input from the male. There are three basic ways hydatidiform moles are believed to form:
A sperm fertilizes an ova with no genetic material in it, so the sperm reproduces its chromosomes, making a mole that has two identical sets of haploid chromosomes from the male.
Two sperm fertilize an ova with no genetic material in it, producing a diploid mole with two different sets of chromosomes from the male.
Two sperm fertilize an apparently normal ova, causing a mole with three sets of chromosomes in stead of two. This produces a "partial mole," with molar tissue and a fetus with lethal abnormalities.
As an aside, it is the formation of molar pregnancies that makes geneticists, such as Jerome Lejeune, believe that plans to enable two homosexual men to have biological children by replacing the genetic material in an ova with the genetic material from their sperm are doomed to failure.
Hydatidiform moles usually are expelled naturally by the mother's body before twenty weeks of pregnancy. Sometimes they will cause potentially life-threatening symptoms and need to be removed by suction. Also, sometimes the abnormal cells can invade the uterus, causing hemorrhage. They can also become cancerous.
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.
A blighted ova tends to be expelled naturally by the mothers body in the very early weeks of pregnancy. I've not seen any indication that they become invasive or cancerous, like hydatidiform moles.
For a while there was a trend among abortion defenders to claim that the existence of hydatidiform moles proves that life can not begin at conception. After all, they argue, here's a hydatiform mole, with its own genetic makeup, and it's not a person. So since conception sometimes produces this blob of tissue that is obviously not a person, life can't begin at conception. We could use the same logic (if you can call it logic) to disprove the prochoice claim that life begins at birth. Some babies are stillborn. So sometimes at birth you don't get a live person; you get a little corpse. Does this prove that babies aren't alive? Hardly.
More to the point, you can ask an abortion advocate when his life began, and when he says, "At birth," you can point to the existence of six billion other people on the planet and say that his life can't have begun at birth if birth can produce six billion currently living entities that are not him. An entity's existence begins when that entity comes into existence, and at conception we have either a blighted ovum, a hydatidiform mole, or a new human being.
(And let's not squabble about twins. Conjoined twins Abby and Britty Hensel have just one body, but are two people, so I see no reason one body can't be two people before birth as well -- or why we can't recognize twinning as a form of asexual reproduction, which human beings are capable of doing only at a very early age.)
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, as in this illustration:
You can see that the mole really is just a blob of tissue, but that no matter how throughly shredded the embryo is, you can still see recognizable human body parts, such as arms, legs, hands, feet, and face. And even more to the point, if you leave the hydatidiform mole to itself, it will never develop into an organism, because it never was an organism to begin with. It will not differentiate into organs and organ systems. It has no capacity to do so. An embryo does.
Nowhere is the difference between a hydatidiform mole and a viable fetus more vividly demonstrated than in those rare pregnancies in which a woman has a twin pregnancy -- one hydatidiform mole and one normal fetus. So far, there seem to only have been about 30 of these cases reported. The mole is much larger than the fetus, and of course has no organs, limbs, or behaviors. Sadly, although some doctors have tried to manage these pregnancies in ways that save the fetus, they tend to miscarry before the fetus is old enough to live outside the womb. Some do carry to viability, and are not associated with a high number of birth defects.
Now, if prolifers really just had their knickers in a twist about what was being done to women's bodies, we'd object just as much to the destruction of hydatidiform moles as we do to the destruction of fetuses. We'd be just as outraged if a woman took chemicals to expel a blighted ovum as if she was taking them to cause the death of an embryo. But we're not. We're simply not interested. It's a medical matter, between a woman and her doctor, to decide how best to deal with a molar pregnancy or a blighted ovum, just as it's a medical matter, between a woman and her doctor, to decide how to deal with a fetus or embryo who has died but has not been naturally expelled.
It's the killing of a new human being that we object to, not the removal of unwanted tissue from the uterus.
Just saying that the parallel leaped out at me. Ironic, no, for a President who stands so much in solidarity with abortionists, to echo the words of one of the seediest ones ever to trod American soil?
Evidently the Pro Life News editor doesn't understand something that the abortion lobby is capable of understanding: Most abortionists are circuit-riding quacks who can't get local hospital privileges. So what the bill boils down to in practice is, "No, you can't kill the baby."
Does the Pro Life News editor object to areas being utterly without an abortionist, and the reduction of abortions that this invariably brings? If so, then he has common ground with the abortion lobby.
What would this bill do, that the Pro Life News editor objects to? Why, it gives approval to abortion, as long as the doctor jumps through certain hoops! (This despite the fact that the bill's "prochoice" opponents know full well that it'll reduce abortion, and that reducing abortion is part of the sponsors' agenda. The editor of Pro Life News can't seem to get that abortionists are smart enough to realize that prolifers disapprove of their practice, and that any legislation we're pushing for has that as an underlying motive, regardless of whatever other motives might come into play.)
Far better to actually kill the babies, perhaps maiming or killing some of the mothers while you're at it, than to not kill the babies at all, if you're going to be not-killing the babies while under the impression that we'd have been okay with you killing them as long as you had hospital privileges.
You see, far more important than whether or not the babies live or die is whether or not the people who might have killed them understand that we disapprove. It's our passing of moral judgment that matters, and not whether or not the baby is torn to pieces and thrown out in the biohazard waste.
1. Do not do anything to try to reach women who are contemplating abortions.
2. Do not try to keep abortionists from injuring or killing women.
3. Do not try in any way to limit abortions.
If your effort can't save every baby in America slated for abortion, don't even bother trying.
Just focus on one thing: The greater your scorn and contempt for other people's efforts to actually prevent abortions, the more God will love you, because you stood up for all the babies slated for abortion. Before you let them all get killed.
Paradoxically, by their own logic, the absolutists should totally oppose overturning Roe. After all, if you overturn Roe, you're implying that the states have a right to permit abortion. So you're not defending all babies.
Anything that might in any way be construed as "And then you can kill the baby" is evil.
So do NOT be a prayer and counseling presence outside abortion mills. The message you're giving is, "Walk past us. And then you can kill the baby."
Don't run a CPC. The message is, "Call this number. And then you can kill the baby."
Don't put up prolife billboards. The message is, "Read this. And then you can kill the baby."
Don't go to March for Life. The message is, "We'll rally here while you kill the baby."
The only acceptable action is pushing relentlessly for a national personhood amendment. (After all, if you only push for it in your state, the message is, "Cross the state line into a neighboring state. And then you can kill the baby.")
Once you have the national level personhood amendment, abortions will go back underground and will continue to happen, but everybody will know that it's without your approval.
So the real message is, "Know that I disapprove and want you to go to jail. And then you can kill the baby."
Though somehow -- and I realize this is evil of me -- I think that the issue of whether or not the baby dies is at least as important as how much the mother knew that you disapproved of killing it.
Janyth Caldwell, age 36, died February 4, 1986, a month after George Wayne Patterson attempted to perform a safe and legal abortion on her. The Alabama state Medical Examiner attributed her death to loss of oxygen to the brain, due to internal hemorrhaging from an ectopic pregnancy.
A proper pre-abortion examination should be able to determine if the pregnancy is ectopic, in which case standard abortion techniques will not touch the embryo. Proper post-abortion pathology reports would detect that no embryo was removed from the uterus, and would clue the abortionist in to the fact that the pregnancy was ectopic. Patterson evidently missed both of these opportunities to detect Janyth's ectopic pregnancy and prevent her death.
Even though, in theory, women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of ectopic pregnancy complications, experiences shows that they're actually more likely to die, due to sloppy practices by abortion practitioners. Brenda Vise suffered this fate after getting abortion drugs at a clinic that was operating illegally after having been shut down by Tennessee authorities.
As for Patterson, according to official documents, another Alabama woman, Mary Bradley, died after an abortion performed by a doctor identified as Wayne Patterson. The Alabama medical board lists no Dr. Wayne Patterson, only Dr. George Wayne Patterson, deceased, which leads me to believe that the same Dr. Patterson responsible for Janyth's death had also caused the death of Mary Bradley the year before. If anybody can confirm or disprove this theory, please let me know.
Patterson himself also suffered an early death at somebody else's hands. He was gunned down outside a pornography theater in an apparent gangland slaying. (The Feminist Majority Foundation, and Revolutionary Worker refer to the slain doctor as "Wayne Patterson", which is further evidence that he is the same doctor responsible for Mary Bradley's death. The fact that this organization laments the gangland shooting of an abortionist, while ignoring the fact that he himself had evidently killed two women, underscores where such organizations' priorities are.)
A 4-year-old girl climbed into a front loading washer, and her little brother either hit or bumped a button that started the machine. It's estimated she was in there for at least two minutes before her mother found her, dead from blunt-force trauma.
That mother will never be right again, and the little boy will be an emotional wreck because no matter how you couch it, no matter how accidental it was, his reality is going to be that he killed his sister. Trust me, I know whereof I speak. The fact that you were only a toddler when it happened and you intended no harm doesn't spare you any guilt or anguish.
Seems Capt. Sully had a library book in the cargo hold when he ditched the plane in the Hudson. He called the library to ask for an extension and waiver of overdue fees.
The library waived it all, and will put a dedication to him in the replacement book.
It gets better. The topic of the book? Professional ethics.
Abortion advocates tend to work on the assumption that if a woman walks in the abortion clinic door, she's made a rational, well-educated, well-considered decision. They tend to insist that the woman who walks in the door is very firm in her decision. They do this even in cases where the abortion clinic offers "options counseling" -- presumably to help the woman decide whether she really wants to go through with the abortion or not.
But we don't need to look far for evidence that this isn't the case -- that women are undergoing abortions when their decisions weren't all that firm. And they could hardly be expected to be, considering the normal psychology of pregnancy plus the normal psychology of stress. It's normal to panic, to reject the pregnancy early on, only to change your mind later. And it's normal, during a time of stress, to go into full-scale "fight or flight" mode and make a rushed decision to escape the feelings of stress and fear.
Here is one example of a young mother who suffered terribly and needlessly because of the assumption that just because she'd signed on the dotted line, she'd made a firm decision:
Her name was April S.. She was underage when she went to Margaret Sanger Center for a vaccum aspiration abortion abortion on February 3, 1987. The abortion was performed by Dr. Norman E. Matthews.
There were no fetal parts found in the examination of the tissue removed during the abortion, but nobody at Margaret Sanger Center told April that. She was sent home.
Three months later, on May 7, another doctor examined April and noted that she was still pregnant, 22.5 weeks along. April "decided to keep the child due to the emotional trauma experienced by the first abortion procedure and the numerous additional risks to a late stage abortion."
In other words, April learned that when push came to shove, she really didn't want her baby to die after all.
Thus began a time of great anxiety for April. Ultrasounds performed between May 7 and June 29 showed decreasing amniotic fluid. It was on June 29 that April went into premature labor and underwent a c-section. Due to the low levels of amniotic fluid, the baby was born with chorioamnionitis, hypoplastic lungs, and Hyaline Membrane Disease. The baby died the following day.
The child who had seemed unwanted enough to be slated for an abortion in early February became wanted by June. And this young mother, not even out of her teens, got to watch that child die. Though nobody can prove the abortion caused the string of complications that led to the baby's death, anybody who has ever lived through the death of a loved one knows the crushing guilt of wondering what you might have done to cause it, and how you might have prevented it. Imagine how April felt, reflecting back on that early attempt on her baby's life, as she watched the child dying.
April is far from the only young mother to change her mind after an abortion fails. Other mothers have been known to change their minds after the abortion begins -- to the point where abortionist Douglas Karpan complained to his fellow National Abortion Federation members that the prolifers standing around outside his clinic, offering to help women who'd already started their abortions get the laminaria removed and go to term. Instead of asking how to improve his facility's counseling techniques so that they'd not be starting abortions on women who were so unsure of their choice that a chance word from a stranger outside the building could change their minds, he asked for advice on how to word his consent forms and how to browbeat his patients into following through with the abortions even after they'd decided they wanted their babies to live.
How respectful of choice is that? To me, that sounds like a man focused either on his profit margin or scoring political points one patient at a time, not a doctor who cares about the women who are trusting him.
It's not disrespectful of women to take into account normal psychology when they think abortion is their only option. These women are seeking, first of all, an irreversible medical or surgical procedure. What doctor allows patients to do this based on self-referral, without at least ensuring that they've had a thorough consult and really know what the risks and alternatives are? Consider the intensive informed consent process I went through in Germany, for oral surgery I had known for ten years that I desperately wanted. It turns out I didn't really want it that much after all, when I was made fully aware of the risks by a doctor who refused to do surgery on patients until he was satisfied that they really, truly understood the ramifications and had no doubts.
Based on decades of research I've read, the stories of women who regretted their abortions or who changed their minds before, during, or afterward, I've postulated that this is what adequate informed consent would look like, if we were really treating abortion like a medical procedure, to be chosen by a woman in consultation with her doctor. Compare it to what they actually get.
Read these stories. What kind of informed consent did these women have? How firm, really, were their decisions? How informed?
Dr. Alec Bourne, who had successfully challenged abortion law in the UK by openly performing an abortion on a teenage rape victim, later wrote:
"Those who plead for an extensive relaxation of the law [against abortion] have no idea of the very many cases where a woman who, during the first three months, makes a most impassioned appeal for her pregnancy to be 'finished,' later, when the baby is born, is thankful indeed that it was not killed while still an embryo. During my long years in practice I have had many a letter of the deepest gratitude for refusing to accede to an early appeal."
When I was in labor with my daughter, I was in terrible pain, and I was begging for drugs. But my midwife respected me enough to find out if that was the pain talking, or if I had really changed my mind about the natural, drug-free childbirth I had wanted. Was she being disrespectful?
Too often "choice" is about the pain or fear making a decision, and not about anybody really bothering to find out what the woman really wants.
Now, many of you will ask, "So, are you saying that you're okay with abortion as long as the woman has chosen it freely and in an informed manner, consistent with her deeply held beliefs?" Well, no. Not any more than I'd be okay with anybody else killing an innocent person as long as they make the decision to kill freely and in an informed manner, consistent with their deeply held beliefs. But:
1. If we limited abortions to only those cases, I doubt that we'd see even ten percent of the abortions we're seeing take place now. Sparing that many women and children is indeed a worthwhile goal.
2. If prochoicers are really about choice, then they need to really think about what the choice in question is, and how it's made. Just getting the prochoice behind the idea of limiting abortions to those who really, truly, unequivocally and without question understand what an abortion destroys, and still want to go through with it, would go a long way to ending the practice.
My goal is to get people to think -- both before going through with an abortion themselves, and before getting behind the status quo of self-referred abortions performed on women whose only "counseling" is by a salesperson helping them choose chemical or surgical.
Los Angeles, CA – Bertha Bugarin was sentenced in a Los Angeles court on Friday to 3 years, 4 months in prison for committing illegal abortions without a medical license. Prosecutors had asked for five years.
....
Bugarin has a long history of total disregard for the law and the safety of women who came to her abortion business that once operated 11 abortion mills. At least six of Bugarin’s abortionists have lost their medical licenses due to negligence and fraud. ....
Another "Pro Life News" headline about an effort to save babies, with the snarky, "And then you can kill the baby."
Yes, for all practical purposes, she still can kill the baby. But that's not the intent of the law and you know it.
The idea is that the more time she has to think about it, the less likely she is to kill the baby. And you know full well this is the intent. The prolifers who are working for these laws are being wise as serpents, rescuing as many as they can of those who are being led to slaughter.
Laws that stand directly between the woman and the abortionist can't possibly pass, and if they did, they'd never be enforced. The Born Alive Infants Protection Act isn't even being enforced! A country that doesn't enforce a law saying you can't kill a baby once it's born alive isn't going to enforce a law saying you can't kill them before they're born. It's NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. So we have to do the best we can to save as many babies as we can.
YES, go out and do your own thing. Push for an overturn of Roe. Push for a total ban. GO FOR IT! But in the mean time, STOP WITH THIS BEARING OF FALSE WITNESS, of deliberately misrepresenting the motives of people who are managing the best they can to save as many children as they can.
Abortionist Morton Barke was somehow involved, although documents aren't clear what his role was in her death. Barke also worked at the unsavory San Vicente Hospital. He is known to have been a partner at Inglewood and to have been involved in the deaths of Yvonne Tanner and Lynette Wallace. His involvement might have been that he served in a supervisory role.
The other women who met their deaths at Inglewood include:
New Era, New Worry: New tests for Down syndrome could lead to more abortions and less support for families.
I must praise Newsweek, first of all, for the whole setup:
The title itself captures the fears -- not that the world will be plagued with those nasty DS kids, but that these kids will be put to death, and that the survivors and their families be left friendless. And the photo is remarkable: just a couple of kids being kids in the autumn leaves. The caption simply identifies them by name. Only the context of the article tells you that one of these kids must have DS. If you know the signs of Down syndrome, you can spot that it's Ben.
The article, by Mary Carmichael, starts by describing the cruelty of elitist, ableist doctors who tried to browbeat a woman, first into aborting her child, then into placing him for adoption:
Beth Allard was recovering from labor, waiting for a hospital photographer to capture her newborn son's first day in the world, when a pediatrician walked into her room and told Allard her life was ruined. Allard might have expected as much from a doctor, given what she'd already heard from others in the previous few months: little Ben, who had tested positive in utero for Down syndrome, would be mute and illiterate, they said; he would spend his life hanging off her, drooling. The pediatrician was harsher: "You should consider putting him up for adoption," she said. "You're going to end up divorced. Don't even bother having any other children. Didn't you have the option to terminate?" Finally, the pediatrician left, and Allard resumed her wait for the photographer. He never came.
Beth nearly capitulated to the fearmongering -- something that the article implies would have been a terrible loss of a wonderful child. How refreshing! Usually the tone of articles in the MSM about kids with any sort of special need is how burdensome they are.
Carmichael then goes on to note, "Life with Down syndrome can be very challenging for both parents and kids, and according to studies, 90 percent of women whose fetuses test positive choose to abort. Now, because of a technological advance, pro-life and disability advocates worry those numbers may rise even higher."
I like that Carmichael recognizes the number as high, rather than buying into the "we must eradicate Down syndrome" attitude of too many doctors, and lamenting that the number isn't 100%. And I like that Carmichael refers to us as "pro-life" advocates and link us -- quite as we have been linked for decades -- with disability rights. It is, after all, those with disabilities who are at greatest risk of being put to death. As long as I've been involved in pro-life work, defending the lives of folks with disabilities, both born and unborn, has been a big part of that, as I'm sure it was before I joined the fray.
If [less risky prenatal tests] become common, they could result in more diagnoses, more abortions, a dwindling Down population and a drop in support for families who carry to term—what Down activist Patricia Bauer has called "the elimination of an entire class of people." Even now, only 5,000 babies are born with the syndrome each year.
I love how this is couched.
Carmichael goes on to note, "As technology has advanced, doctors' education about Down syndrome has lagged behind." She paints a far different picture of life with Down syndrome than the one many doctors paint. Siblings are empathetic people, and the parents are less likely to divorce than couples who aren't parenting a child with Down syndrome. And Carmichael points out something disability rights activists and prolifers have been lamenting for years: "In a 2000 study published in Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, 23 percent of doctors admitted trying to influence mothers' decisions, usually encouraging them to abort."
So, there is finally some recognition in the MSM that the lives of kids with Down syndrome are of value. It's about time!
On this date in 1996, doctors finally got 21-year-old Carolina Gutierrez stable enough to survive the amputation of her gangrenous feet. She had been hospitalized since December 21, 1995, when her family had called an ambulance in their alarm over her difficulty breathing. Two days of trying to contact Maber Medical Center, where Carolina had undergone an abortion on the 19th, had yielded no help. The voice mails she left had gone unanswered. When somebody finally did pick up the phone, whoever it was had hung up on her. The young mother, who had no medical insurance, had been suffering from fever and pain since the evening of the 19th.
She had arrived at the emergency room already in septic shock. Doctors had performed an emergency hysterectomy, trying to halt the spread of infection from her perforated uterus, but the sepsis raged on.
Carolina had spent her 21st birthday as she had spent Christmas and New Year's: on a respirator, sepsis raging through her body. Her two children from a previous relationship spent most of their time in the care of relatives as her husband, Jose Linarte, spent as much time as he could by Carolina's side, waiting and praying.
The doctors hoped that once her body no longer was coping with the gangrene in her feet, Carolina could fight off the massive infection. Only time would tell if their desperate measures would be enough to save the young mother's life and restore her to her children.
