It’s always interesting to read After Abortion, if only as a sort of portal into an alternate universe, in which pro-choicers are evil evil subhuman demons who only favor reproductive rights because we just hate babies that much.
This comment by After Abortion reader “Selma” really impressed me for how much it got wrong in so few words. It seems worth blogging about because so many pro-lifers seem to share Selma’s mistakes. Let’s take a look:
This supports the pro-lifer belief that intact D&X is absolutely, positively never needed (and thus, women won’t be hurt if it is banned). Unfortunately, Selma’s quote lies by omission – she’s only quoted part of the paragraph. Here’s the whole paragraph:
Quite a difference those extra two sentences make, don’t you think? In fact, the AMA (which has gone back and forth on the PBA ban) is, in this statement, taking the opposite point of view from Selma. They’re saying that there may be some times when alternative procedures could be riskier for women, and that doctors need to be able to have intact D&X as an option.
Selma is like a movie ad which quotes a reviewer as saying “A great movie!,” when in reality the reviewer wrote “if you want to see a great movie, avoid seeing this stinker.”
Anyhow, Selma goes on:
But pro-choicers don’t have “preferred methods,” in the sense of liking one abortion procedure better or worse than another. That pro-lifers like Selma think pro-choicers “prefer” intact D&X shows how utterly ignorant they are of what pro-choicers think. Pro-choicers don’t favor any single medical procedure; we just favor a process in which women and their doctors have the freedom to choose what’s best for themselves. (Pro-lifers, in contrast, want the choices to be made by the federal government.)
Selma goes on:
Of course, pro-choicers don’t care about women; we’re all unfeeling, evil demons. Boy, Selma’s sure got our number.
But another misconception here is more interesting: Selma believes that “parital-birth abortion” and “D&X” are the same thing. That’s not true. Here’s what intact D&X means, according to the AMA:
That’s what an intact D&X is, according to medical authorities. Compare that to how pro-lifers officially define “partial-birth abortion”:
`(A) the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and
`(B) performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus;
So an intact D&X, by definition, is feet-first (“footling”). “Partial-birth” abortion, on the other hand, includes head-first deliveries. Why is that important? Because second trimester D&E abortions can be head-first; late-term D&X abortions, in contrast, are never head-first. By sticking in the “head-first” language, pro-lifers are trying to sneak a ban of second trimester D&E abortions (the most common and safest procedure for women who need second-trimester abortions) into law – and claim that they’re just trying to ban late-term D&X abortions. They could never get the votes to ban second-trimester D&Es honestly, so they do it by lying instead.
Similarly, the specific way intact D&X abortions kill the fetus – by removing the contents of the skull – isn’t part of the “partial birth abortion” definition. Instead, “parital birth abortions” forbid any “overt act” that would kill the fetus. Again, by being vague, the pro-lifers get to pass a ban that would in fact apply to many different abortion procedures, but they claim they’re only after D&X.
Finally, the medical definition of intact D&X specifically distinguishes D&X from D&E abortions. Of course, the partial birth ban doesn’t do that, because the entire point is to include D&E abortions.
I don’t think “Selma” is deliberately lying – she’s just parroting what the pro-life leadership says. Nonetheless, it’s a lie to claim that “intact D&X” and “partial-birth” abortions are the same thing..
This is what failed to convince me:
“…by removing the contents of the skull…”
That right there is why I’m pro-life. I care about the *children*.
Okay. So that’s why you’re against intact D&X.
But “partial birth” abortion doesn’t necessarily include the bit you object to. So why are you against “partial birth” abortion?
My guess is that you’re against abortion however it’s performed, whether or not material is removed from the head as part of the procedure. I mean, if there was some method of abortion that wasn’t gross – for instance, if it were possible to just shoot the fetus with a Star Trek phaser and dissolve it instantly into nothing – wouldn’t you still be pro-life?
Keep in mind, there’s no argument between pro-choicers and pro-lifers about banning late-term abortion. Both sides agree to do that. The argument is over whether we also ban lots of other types of abortion, and whether or not it’s okay to perform a late-term abortion if the woman’s health is at stake. So when you say “I’m pro-life because I’m against gross late-term abortions,” you’re actually agreeing with most pro-choice democrats – they’re against that stuff too. The only way pro-lifers disagree with most democrats about late-term abortion is that the democrats want an exception for the health of the mother, whereas republicans are against that.
(By the way, the reason for taking material out of the skull is to make it possible to remove the fetus without doing severe injury to the mother. Sometimes, in medicine, it’s necessary to do things which sound gross.)
(I’m tempted to put in a crack about “that’s why I’m pro-choice – I care about *women*” – but right now I’m not in the mood for that sort of rhetoric. You don’t necessarily hate women just because you’re pro-life, and – even though you may imagine otherwise – pro-choicers love children just as much as you do.)
We must get the scientists to develp this phaser technology immediately!
Anyway, great post Amp.
“Portal into an alternate universe” — yeah, that’s the first thing that sprung to mind on reading this post. I mean, the idea of some woman actually feeling guilty over merely paying a professional hit-man-equivalent to kill a baby! How weird. If she read enough of the male-authored writings on this site, maybe she would know enough to dismiss the baby’s life without any doubts or conscience.
Great link!
The posts about post-abortion trauma are very revealing. This has been a tactic that has been in circulation because it supposedly demonstrates that pro-lifers care about women. It doesn’t get far because the enthusiasm for faking concern for women just isn’t there.
I notice from the posts that the post-abortion trauma does seem to be a result of the women’s overall life situation and not just the abortion itself, but the abortion makes a great scapegoat to pin all their worries on.
What’s also important to note is that late-term abortions such as these are not generally done just because the woman doesn’t feel like having a baby and didn’t get around to aborting earlier. (Third trimester abortions are not afforded the same protection under Roe v. Wade and are restricted in various ways) They are almost exclusively done beause they are medically necessary. These are often wanted pregnancies that, sadly, must be ended because the child has severe developmental problems and could not survive or because the woman’s health is in serious danger. Eliminating them would not have a major impact on the number of “abortions of convenience”, as some anti-abortion folks may think of them, but would ban a medical procedure that is sometimes the best option to protect the woman’s health and ability to have children in the future.
Oh, I’m adamantly anti-abortion. I would like to outlaw it totally. But before we can do that (the outlawing part) we must make sure that sex education is un-biased and tell kids about all the different kinds of birth control there are.
And we must make sure that all kinds of birth control is 100% safe, never fails, available and very cheap. And the “abortion-pill” must be available, cheap and 100% safe and never fail.
And we must make sure that every conceived fetus is wanted.
And we must make sure that every conceived fetus will be born into some sort of family (not necessarily an opposite-sex couple) that will love it, cherish it, be good parents, and have a some economic means to support it.
Until we can’t do that with a 100% certainty: I’m pro-choice.
[Applauds Catarina]
Way to rock it!
Absolutely Catarina. In a perfect world, no-one would ever need an abortion, but until that blessed day dawns let’s not make an unpleasant choice any harder than it needs to be.
Someone close to me has had an abortion, and has shared with me on a couple of occasions how conflicted she still sometimes feels about it. And contrary to the stories I read on that site, she is the main reason why I’m so staunchly pro-choice: I don’t want to make her pain worse by declaring her a murderer.
Joe M., do you have any idea how ridiculous of you it is to insist that because Amp is a male that he can’t possibly know how women could/should/would feel about abortion and is saying things contrary to their nature, while you yourself are a man who presumes to know how women could/should/would feel?
Seriously. Don’t tell me what I do or don’t know, or would or wouldn’t feel, if you feel it’s such an insult to me as a woman. I feel I could quite happily be spared your insight.
Way to go, Catarina!
I would also like to add, that abortion can be made illegal when 100% of all pregnancies are perfect with no chance of fatal birth defects or danger to the mother’s health.
People are so wrapped up in believing that abortion is a “selfish” choice they forget that most women who make that choice would probably like to have a baby one day or already have had them, but they know that right now they couldn’t give the baby the life that he/she deserves. How selfish indeed.
The thing about the fetus’ skull being pierced and the “contents” removed is a favourite anecdote of anti-choice groups. I guess because it really does sound barbaric and horrific. It’s worth remembering though, as Ampersand said, this is often done when the fetus has such serious defects that the head is hugely swollen, and could not be delivered without injury to the woman (or c-section, which of course is major abdominal surgery with all the attendant risks). And that often the fetus is actually dead by this time anyway, or has no chance of survival.
The “PBA” ban makes no sense. It doesn’t prevent any abortions, late term or otherwise, just puts restrictions on the safest methods of performing the necessary abortion. Which you’d think would be an issue for the people who are pro-life because they care about the poor women traumatised by abortions?
The concern about post-abortion syndrome is equally illogical and hypocritical. If a woman develops mental health problems after an abortion, of course she should receive appropriate care. If she feels sadness or regret or whatever, of course that’s not something to be ashamed of, and counselling and support should be available if she needs it. But to use this as an argument to ban abortion? Post-partum depression and associated problems are well documented, does this mean no one should give birth?
“How pro-lifers view the PBA issue” a.k.a. “Pro-Choice Ampersand Speaks For All Pro-Lifers.” Hello, again. So you have a blog, I should have guessed…
Re: The AMA, in their May 19, 1997 to Sen. Rick Santorum, supported efforts to have PBA banned and said that it “is not good medicine.”
RE: The Truth: “Dr. Martin Haskell, who drew PBA to public attention by writing an instructional paper explaining how to perform the procedure,… in 1993, told American Medical News that 80% of his partial-birth abortions were ‘purely elective.'”
“On September 15, 1996, the Record (Bergen-Hackensack, New Jersey) published a report by staff writer Ruth Padawer, based on separate interviews with two abortionists at a single abortion clinic in Englewood, who independently told her that they perform over 1,500 partial-birth abortions annually in that facility — triple the nationwide figure given out by pro-abortion advocacy and industry groups. As to why they performed these procedures, the Record reported what the abortionists said: ‘We have an occasional amnio abnormality, but it’s a minuscule amount,’ said one of the doctors at Metropolitan Medical, an assessment confirmed by another doctor there. ‘Most are Medicaid patients, black and white, and most are for elective, not medical, reasons: people who didn’t realize, or didn’t care, how far along they were. Most are teenagers.'”
“The September 17, 1996 edition of the Washington Post contained the results of an investigation conducted by reporters Barbara Vobejda and David M. Brown, M.D., who interviewed several doctors (not those in New Jersey), and concluded: ‘Furthermore, in most cases where the procedure is used, the physical health of the woman whose pregnancy is being terminated is not in jeopardy…. Instead, the “typical” patients tend to be young, low-income women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reasons for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are rarely medical.'”
The New York Times interviewed Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, in 1997; he admitted his regret at his industry’s false “party line” (his term) that PBA was rarely done: “[I] lied through my teeth…and in the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.” The New York Times, Feb. 26, 1997.
“Renee Chelian, the president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said, ‘The spin out of Washington was that it was done for medical necessity, even though we knew it wasn’t so.’ For more such quotes, see ‘Pro-choice advocates admit to deception,’ by Ruth Padawer (The Record, Bergen-Hackensack, NJ, Feb. 27, 1997).”
“In March 2003, Ron Fitzsimmons—still the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers—was asked if he wanted to withdraw the assessment he gave to The New York Times in 1997 (quoted above). He said, ‘No, no, no, no. I’m not recanting any of that stuff. In terms of when it’s done or how it’s done, nothing has changed, as far as I know.’ Informed of a news story that asserted that the method is used mostly to save a mother’s life or in cases of fetal deformity, Fitzsimmons said, ‘It’s amazing that a lot of people still think that, despite the evidence to the contrary.'”
There’s more, but most of you won’t believe the above anyway…and thanks, Joe M. for your remarks. I’m the lady whose post you linked to over at “afterabortion.”
And lastly, a college kid gets it right, over anyone here: http://www.tuftsdaily.com/articleDisplay.jsp?a_id=2482
Hmm, annie, it might be me, but I thought the post title was “How pro-lifers view the PBA issue” not “How all pro-lifers view the PBA issue”. Then the post takes samples of what Amp interprets of indicative pro-life stands, and implies that many pro-lifers feel this way, not that this is the monolithic pro-life stance.
And if the best you can do is quote studies that are nearly a decade old with no links to back them up, really your post doesn’t have a limb to stand on.
Come on, Annie, show us a little respect, hmm?
Annie:
The odd thing is, my post didn’t say a thing about the issues you bring up. My post didn’t talk about how many so-called “partial birth” abortions a year there are (in the various quotes you cite, by the way, it’s not clear if you’re talking about “partial birth” or “intact D&X” abortions). Nor did I talk about what proportion of “D&X” or “PB” abortions are elective.
Of course, the same thing is true of Joe’s post; neither of you seems willing to address the actual issues I brought up in my post. For instance, the main thing I discussed is how there is in fact a medically significant distinction between “partial birth” and “intact D&X” abortions, and that it’s dishonest of pro-lifers to pretend the two terms are interchangable. Neither of you even touched on this issue.
I get the feeling that you’ve just recycled material you’ve written elsewhere, rather than reading what I wrote.
Regaring how many “partial-birth abortions” a year there are, it’s impossible to say, because it’s not a medical term, and because pro-lifers have constantly changed the definition when it suits them.
The majority of “intact D&E” and “intact D&X” abortions are performed pre-viability on healthy fetuses (that’s according to David Brown, one of the folks you cite).
Most of these abortions are elective, performed for the same reasons as most other pre-viability abortions.
No one knows for sure, but a responsible estimate seems to be that there are about 5,000 of these performed in the USA per year (out of around 1.3 million total abortions per year).
If we’re discussing truly late-term abortions (say, those performed after the 26th week), then virtually all authorities agree that the number of these procedures performed goes way down, and many fewer are elective. But pro-life rhetoric often leaves the impression that all so-called “partial birth” abortions are late-term, and that’s simply not true.
There; I’ve discussed your post. Is there any chance that you’ll now be willing to discuss my post?
A few links relating to Ron Fitzsimmons:
1997 Salon interview with Dr. Suzanne Poppema about Fitzsimmons’ statement.
ACLU statement, 1997.
And an American Medical News article with extensive quotes from Fitzsimmons himself.
The trouble with your movie review analogy is that you make it sound like I attributed something to the AMA that they never intended to say. In fact, your additional context DOES NOT contradict my assertion that the AMA is saying they have not identified any situation where D&X is medically necessary.
“According to the scientific literature, there does not appear to be any identified situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion” REMAINS TRUE even if the AMA wholeheartedly embraces legal PBA. Take notice, Elena and kasasagi: Your claim that PBA is medically necessary isn’t supported by the evidence the AMA has. So, if you know something about abortion the medical establishment doesn’t, why haven’t you given them your evidence?
Since the AMA’s agenda is to protect physicians’ autonomy, not necessarily to protect society’s best interests (look at their history in opposing cost containment in the medical industry), it’s not surprising that they do not want a PBA ban. I never claimed they did support the ban; I simply pointed out that they have not found any evidence to back up what pro-choicers claim about PBA being “medically necessary”.
Some pro-choicers claim that PBA is necessary because it meets some need that the D&E doesn’t (again, see the claims Elena and kasasagi made in this very entry about the “medically necessary” issue). I’d say that makes the PBA a “preferred” method compared to D&E for some pro-choicers.
Pro-choicers are all unfeeling demons? So, are you saying all pro-choicers are abortionists? I was referring to abortionists in the quote about not caring about women’s interests. Indeed, I suppose some pro-choicers honestly do believe PBA is good for women, if they listen to pro-choice organizations’ propaganda.
Nonetheless, I stand by my opinion that most abortion providers are probably more worried about making their job easier than about being selfless advocates for women.
According to the paper in which Martin Haskell, the inventor of the intact D&X, introduced the technique, one of the benefits of intact D&X is that it is easier than trying to dismember a second trimester fetus (which has tougher tissues than a first trimester one does) as in a D&E.
As for the issue of AMA not mentioning a head-first presentation, the AMA is not attempting to craft a law without any loopholes with their definition, so it is not as critical for them to mention all variations of the technique as it is for lawmakers. If the law only specified a breech presentation, abortionists could easily switch to a head-first method to get around the ban, without having changed the basic nature of what many people find abhorrent about the procedure.
The important thing is that the ban specifies that it refers to a “PARTIALLY DELIVERED LIVING FETUS”. That is what offends so many people about PBA: the line between abortion and infanticide is blurred when you kill a fetus that is inches away from being born.
Please find me a medical resource’s description of a dilation & evacuation abortion that involves partially delivering a live fetus. The general public may find it easy to confuse D&E and D&X because of the similar names, but I think most medical professionals can see there is a clear difference.
Wow, selma is either entirely ignorant of medical practices or a complete lying scumbag. First just two posts below where Amp says, “For instance, the main thing I discussed is how there is in fact a medically significant distinction between “partial birth” and “intact D&X” abortions, and that it’s dishonest of pro-lifers to pretend the two terms are interchangable” in pops selma, interchanging PBA with D&X, good show that.
Here’s the thing, PBA is not a medical term. That’s why doctors don’t like it. It’s meaningless. It has a definition in the latest legislature but is in no ways medically rigid, in that it’s not specific. When a doctor refers to intact D&X, she’s referring to a specific medical procedure that is easy to define and nonambiguous, like triple bypass surgery. Partial birth abortion is entirely ambiguous, and forcing medical professionals to affect how they treat patients by using ambiguous terminology is not cool.
Raznor, ya know I love you posting on this site.
But, language like “complete lying scumbag” is inappropriate when used to describe other posters on this site. Please avoid it in the future.
Understood and withdrawn and avoided in the future. Eliminate the words “complete” and “scumbag” and it would have been either lying or ignorance, which it really is, without being rude.
Now you’ve done it. Selma (and several others) have awoken the ANGRY RAZNOR. Graaargh!! Raznor smash! But seriously folks, I just flew in from Cleveland & boy are my arms tired. It’s easy to become enraged while reading folks post things that are disengenuous at best, lies at worst. I was there about 3 weeks ago. Here’s what worked for me. Stop reading the lies for a couple of days. Play some games. Vent to the cat. Then come back and use more subtle, emotionally cooler insults. Then you’ll be back to good old Bruce Raznor.
Selma, I tend to agree with the charge that you’re ignorant of medical practices. The reason to compress the skull in a late-term abortion is to prevent the skull from injuring the mother when it’s drawn from her body. There is NO SUCH THING as an intact D&X head-first abortion, because leaving the skull intact would be very dangerous for the mother.
(Keep in mind, these procedures are typically performed before the mother’s body is ready to give birth naturally; what’s possible during natural childbirth is very dangerous two months before labor).
Selma wrote: If the law only specified a breech presentation, abortionists could easily switch to a head-first method to get around the ban, without having changed the basic nature of what many people find abhorrent about the procedure.
Regarding late-term abortions, your claim that doctors would simply do intact D&Xs head-first is both impossible, and appallingly ignorant for someone who takes it on herself to tell doctors what procedures they may or may not perform. That you think that intact D&Xs could “easily” be performed head-first shows exactly why doctors should be the ones making these decisions, not pro-life activists.
Finally, if the intent of pro-life legislators wasn’t to dishonestly slip in a ban of second-trimester D&Es, they could have easily have just said so in the legislation: “Nothing in this legislation shall be taken to forbid D&E abortions (insert medical dictionary definition of D&E here) performed before the 24th week of pregnancy,” or something like that. They were well aware of the problem (that their legislation could be read to ban 2nd trimester D&Es), and well aware of how to solve the problem. They chose to leave the problem intact because that was their intention.
Whoops, gotta go. More later.
Or wait for Jake Squid to come and cool your head with humorous commentary. Whatever works. ;)
Nick : He does not want to make his friends pain worse “by declaring her a murderer”.
This is the problem of many pro choice people. They believe by being against abortion they are saying women are murderers.Truth is, you can be pro life and still support your friend. No one is calling them murderers.
“I notice from the posts that the post-abortion trauma does seem to be a result of the women’s overall life situation and not just the abortion itself, but the abortion makes a great scapegoat to pin all their worries on.” Amanda
Give me a break…from what did you assume this Amanda??? Typical pro abortion spin…if it were true as you imply,and you truly care about women, why not screen women before abortion so that those who are not stable will be denied.
Amanda again:”People are so wrapped up in believing that abortion is a “selfish” choice they forget that most women who make that choice would probably like to have a baby one day or already have had them, but they know that right now they couldn’t give the baby the life that he/she deserves. How selfish indeed.”
If you think what you said here is not selfish, I feel sorry for you! What rationalization.There have been over 43 million abortions in this country…if you do not want a baby DO NOT GET PREGNANT.
How do you all feel about Right to Know legislation? Or parental consent? Or prosecuting abortion doctors who have repeatedly left women sterile,or dead for that matter? I wonder, do you express outrage at the death of women? How about the 15 year old girl Tamiah Russel who just died…to spite parental consent laws her parents did not know she was getting an abortion.
I don;t believe I saw anyone post about her…oh right…those women don’t count….
I think you guys should all read the testimony from the current trials from the mouths of the abortionists…it says it all.
He was asked, “Is D and E a destructive procedure as you use the term?”
His answer was, “Yes, sir.”
The testimony became extremely gruesome when he began to describe the reason for the creation of the D and E procedure. He said that the intact procedure was created to deal with the problem of the free-floating fetal head. He said that the head of the fetus is relatively large and relatively calcified, so it is hard to grasp and sometimes becomes unattached from the fetal body during the dismemberment procedure because it is round and it slips out of the instruments.
When Judge Casey found that the doctor had never performed the procedure, he interrupted Plaintiff’s Counsel with his own questions.
Judge Casey asked, “Just a minute. You have never done it?”
Answer: “No sir, I have not.”
When the doctor described the procedure he had observed, the testimony became almost surreal.
The doctor said, “What they did, they delivered the fetus intact until the head was lodged in the cervix. Then they reached up and crushed it. They used forceps to crush the skull.”
Judge Casey asked about the instruments, “Like a cracker that they use to crack a lobster shell?”
The doctor answered, “Like an end of tongs you use to pick up a salad, except they are thick enough and heavy enough to crush the skull.”
Teresa originally did three posts in a row, each longer than the last, containing nothing but long quotes from this webpage. I left the first one up, and deleted the second and third.
Teresa:
You know, if ANY pro-choice poster did what you’re doing – spammed my site with screen after screen of unoriginal, tedious content – I’d just delete their posts and replace them with a link to the source material they’re plagerizing without credit.
My comments are not intended for you or anyone else to fill with reams of quoted material; they’re intended for discussion. If you want to bring in other material – particularly material that’s so easily available on the web – just link to it.
I know that you’ll probably start saying now that “pro-choicers can’t take the truth about abortion” or “I got censored on a pro-choice board” or some other nonsense. Try to keep in mind, in a previous post I already linked to the exact same material you’re now quoting – long before you brought it up – so I don’t think I can be fairly accused of trying to hide that material.
You’re welcome to post here, as long as you keep things reasonably polite, and in your own words. But right now you’re acting like a spammer.
Best wishes,
Ampersand
Nick : He does not want to make his friends pain worse “by declaring her a murderer”.
This is the problem of many pro choice people. They believe by being against abortion they are saying women are murderers.Truth is, you can be pro life and still support your friend. No one is calling them murderers.
The last sentence is factually incorrect: many people have called women who have had abortions murderers. Maybe you haven’t, but you aren’t everyone.
I have trouble seeing how it’s supportive of a woman who made the best choice she could in the situation she found herself in to expose her to graphic descriptions of dismembered fetuses and rhetoric about how she killed her baby. I have trouble understanding how the “abortion is murder” idea can possibly exclude the implication that the women involved are murderers.
And just so you know, the woman I was talking about was my mother. If she hadn’t had that abortion, my brother, now 15, would never have been born.
ampersand, re: your remarks like “it’s not clear if you’re talking about “partial birth” or “intact D&X” abortions)” and “the main thing I discussed is how there is in fact a medically significant distinction between “partial birth” and “intact D&X” abortions, and that it’s dishonest of pro-lifers to pretend the two terms are interchangable. Neither of you even touched on this issue.”
You’re right. I didn’t choose to respond to your tortured descent into semantics and wordsmithing, ampersand, since you’ve demonstrated in the past your unwillingess (inability?) to believe the whole truth found even in government reports you yourself quoted but from which you selectively chose to lift phrases that suited your belief system…But since you insist on microscoping the words (focusing on “the letter of the law instead of the spirit”):
Pls. reread the notes Theresa quoted above: “…the Plaintiff’s witness, who is an abortion doctor…discussed the difference between an intact dilation and extraction D&E WHICH IS THEIR TERM FOR PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION [emphasis mine] and dismemberment D&E.”
RE: Your reply to this post above: This is what failed to convince me: ‘…by removing the contents of the skull…’ That right there is why I’m pro-life. I care about the *children*. Posted by: James D at April 4, 2004 11:46 AM…..Posted by Ampersand: Okay. So that’s why you’re against intact D&X. But “partial birth” abortion doesn’t necessarily include the bit you object to.”:
It doesn’t? From the court transcripts: “Later Judge Casey questioned the [abortion] doctor. Question: ‘Do you describe the D&X procedure where you put the scissors into the base of the skull and remove the brains?’ Answer: ‘Yes, I do. And sometimes after hearing the details couples leave.'”
I won’t waste my time being baited by you, ampersand. You can chide your readers after the fact all you want, but the insults are and will continue to be hurled regardless. The fact is many pro-choice people stoop to that level. We simply don’t.
Raznor, you won’t believe the links anyway because you (as ampersand has in the past) diss the news sources, yet you swallow hook, line and sinker the news sources YOU ingest like a tonic, even when THEIR quotes are 10-years-old or 30+ years old. Do your OWN homework, and read both sides, as I did. And Fitzsimmons was questioned about his earlier quotes in MARCH 2003 and didn’t change his comments. You won’t be “happy” anyway unless I produce a quote days old. You want me to “show [you] a little respect, hmm?” when you call us “lying scumbags and completely ignorant?” Please.
Why don’t you all go ask a woman who’s just given birth, partially, to a breeched, 2nd or 3rd trimester baby, what it felt like to have her baby’s half-born body, kicking, writhing and flailing its arms and legs against her thighs to escape the “doctor” as s/he jams the scissors up its skull. Ask her how it felt when the baby’s blood hit her thighs and then she heard the vacuum sucking its brains out and the baby’s body suddenly go limp. The only reason why they breech the baby (feet-first) is so the mother won’t hear it scream.
Nick, re: If she hadn’t had that abortion, my brother, now 15, would never have been born.
If I read this correctly, you have TWO brothers, or a brother and a sister, Nick. One who was aborted, and apparently, one who was born. You cannot know for sure your brother would never have been born. My son, now 14, has wondered the same thing, that if his sister had been born, I would never have had him. That is a terrible thing to allow anyone to think about themselves. Please, I urge you to not pass on that thinking to your brother. Talk about accidentally helping HIM feel guilty for being born while a sibling “didn’t make it.” One-third of your brother’s and my son’s generation “didn’t make it.” The 2/3rds who did, are more pro-life than not because they are acutely aware that they survived abortion.
Annie B. sez:
“blah blah blah, naive anthropomorphization and emotional manipulation, blah blah blah, stones-in-glass-houses opinions and graphic cinematic scare tactics everyone has heard BILLIONS of times before, blah blah blah, selective perception of information and undisguisable conviction that pro-choicers are ghouls, blah blah blah, cognitive dissonance and self-hatred at being born a woman…”
zzzzzzzzzz
Folks on both sides, please try and keep your comments respectful, or at least try and hide your contempt under a thin layer of civility. Thanks!
Theresa, sorry for misspelling your name back there – it was an accident.
Annie B., I was trying to find that thread on Calpundit where you and I debated before, so I could post a link here, but I couldn’t find it. Do you remember where it was, or what the subject was, or anything like that?
Annie B. sez:
“My son, now 14, has wondered the same thing, that if his sister had been born, I would never have had him. That is a terrible thing to allow anyone to think about themselves.”
Oh christ, this one always makes my eyes roll so bad it gives me a headache. You can’t regret having never existed, and only a son raised to view a fetus as a being equal or superior to its mother can be traumatized by it.
I apologize Amp, but it drives me crazy when we even dignify their arguments with debate. Freedom of choice is a non-negotiable human right as far as I’m concerned, and to even discuss it demeans billions of women.
Ampersand, I won’t go over this old ground, but here is where my comments began, at least, since you asked. http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003290.html#110315
Deep river, that’s just it. The children DID exist, according to the best scientists and medical researchers, all of whom were once sons raised (and taught by medical science) to believe a fetus is equal to its mother in its humanity… Why is it that when we want it, it’s an “unborn baby” from the moment of conception, and when we don’t want it, it ISN’T?
I dunno Annie. In my opinion, whether we want it or not, it is a fetus from the moment of conception and an “unborn baby” from the moment of viability. Sheesh. And I don’t understand, “The children DID exist, according to the best scientists and medical researchers, all of whom were once sons raised (and taught by medical science) to believe a fetus is equal to its mother in its humanity.” What does that mean? I didn’t realize that medical science taught us that a 3 week (or 3 month) fetus was “equal to its mother in its humanity.” Which textbook has that info?
Well, this one, by Keith L. Moore, _The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology_, 2nd Ed., 1977, a well-known med-school textbook: “The cell (a single-celled zygote) results from fertilization of an oocyte by a sperm and is the beginning of human life.”
And Dr. Landrum Shettles, discoverer of male and female producing sperm and a pioneer in the field of in vitro fertilization, said this: “I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest-that human life commences at the time of conception-and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian.”
And Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman of the Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, said this: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania: “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception…I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life. I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty…is not a human being. This is human life at every stage…”
Professor Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down’s Syndrome: “After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being…This is no longer a matter of taste or opinion, it is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: “It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive…It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School: “The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter- the beginning is conception.”
Even the Hippocratic Oath has been changed to be “politically correct.” It USED to say, “Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.” NOW, it says, “But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.” Which, ironically, is exactly what the abortionists do when they perform abortions.
Most of the above quotes you won’t find on anything but pro-life websites, but here’s one link for some of them: http://www.gravityteen.com/prenatal/life_beginning.cfm
Annie wrote:
I’ve already chided a couple of pro-choice posters for needless rudeness here, Annie. Similarly, I want to remind you that treating other posters here with open contempt – as your comment quoted above does – is something I’d like all posters here to avoid. Especially when discussing an issue as volitile as abortion.
Regarding if “partial birth” and “intact D&X” are the same thing, Annie wrote:
All that quote shows is that Jay of “Jay’s Court Notebook” (or whatever it’s called) believes that intact D&E is what doctors call “partial birth abortion.” Since Jay is pro-life, that fits in perfectly well with my thesis that pro-lifers claim that “partial birth abortion” is the same thing as “intact D&X” or (in Jay’s case) “intact D&X.”
So pro-lifers like you and Jay believe the two terms are interchangable. But just look at the definitions (in my post – scroll to the top of this page) – the two definitions are obviously not the same. One requires feet-first presentation, the other does not. One excludes D&Es from the definition, the other does not. One requires the head be emptied, the other does not. When the definitions themselves contain all these obvious and significant differences, how can you go on claiming they are the same thing?
In response to me saying “‘partial birth’ abortion doesn’t necessarily include” removing the contents of the skull, Annie wrote:
Yes, but the D&X procedure and “partial birth abortion” are not the same thing, as anyone could see just by directly comparing how the two things are defined. Read the definition of “partial birth abortion” from the PBA ban, which was written by pro-life Republicans:
Nothing in that definition requires that the head’s contents be evacuated; any “overt act” at all is included in the definition of “partial birth” abortion. So, for instance, if the fetus was killed with an injection of poison, that would fufill the definition of “overt act.”
Fair enough. But if you don’t want to go over that old thread, then I think it’s a bit unfair of you to keep bringing it up to attack me, as you’ve done twice on this thread.
Nick, re: If she hadn’t had that abortion, my brother, now 15, would never have been born.
If I read this correctly, you have TWO brothers, or a brother and a sister, Nick. One who was aborted, and apparently, one who was born. You cannot know for sure your brother would never have been born.
If you want to get technical, I have one sister and two brothers. My mother had a fifth pregnancy between my sister and my eldest brother that never came to term. I find it hard to consider the aborted fetus as a sister, since I never even saw her/it.
And I do know for sure that my brother would not have been born. Had my mother carried the fetus to term, she would still have been pregnant at the time of my brother’s conception, making it impossible for him to exist.
*Sigh* ok, one more time…
But Annie, even if those you quote spoke for all doctors (which they don’t by a long shot), all they prove is that a physiological entity now exists. That doesn’t mean it’s a human, any more than an acorn (a “living” thing in the broadest sense) is the equivalent of a full grown tree.
Now, no reasonable doctor will ever deny that this entity is blank minded to all intents and purposes, and it will remain that way until significant stimuli is presented to begin forming a mind of consequence. It doesn’t THINK, and cannot until it has something to THINK about. If you’ve only existed in darkness and isolation you can’t even imagine the concept of others, and cannot therefore distinguish yourself.
If you are not religious, then you are using cuteness as a measure of humanity, which is foolish and arbitrary.
If you ARE religious (which I’m pretty sure you are) then I am more inclined to respect your position, and I respond to it thus: I respect your choice never to have an abortion, and I will never force you to have one. Now live your life and let others make the choices that are best for them.
Annie and Jake, you two are experiencing a difference in vocabularies.
Annie uses the word “humanity” to refer to whether or not a fetus or embryo is, biologically speaking, human life – that is to say, life belonging to the species homo sapian. And in that sense, of course a fetus has as much humanity as any other human being.
Jake, I beleive, was using “humanity” more in the sense of (to quote one of the dictionary definitions) “the peculiar nature of man,” refering not to biological status but to philosophical status.
In other words, it’s the traditional mix-up pro-lifers and pro-choicers have between the questions “is the fetus human?” and “is the fetus a person?” The answer to the first question is undeniably “yes,” the answer to the second question is under dispute.
Amp sez:
“The answer to the first question is undeniably “yes,” the answer to the second question is under dispute.”
Actually, there is no dispute of importance. Either you are not religious and you face up to the obvious non-humanity of the fetus no matter how “cute”, or you are religious and your opinion cannot therefore be forced on others.
You presume to speak for me, ampersand, as to how I “use words?” Human life is human life is human life. Science says, “It’s a human being.” I should not be surprised that the wordsmithing continues with the tired old “sentience” theories, even when respected science proves otherwise. The sentience theorists also use that to justify post-birth infanticide up to toddlerhood (Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, comes to mind). Pls. see this, http://www.all.org/abac/dni003.htm : “These are philosophical terms or concepts, which have been illegitimately imposed on the scientific data.”
Deep river, I DID have an abortion, and I speak as one of the millions of women who did and who would give up everything I’ve gained in this life, which is considerable, to go back in time and change my “choice” then, no matter what hardship or tragedy would befall me. But you won’t hear about us from the mass media, so you probably won’t accept that we exist.
Amp is right. We were using words in different context. I don’t deny that an 8 second embryo is human life. I do deny that its health/life has the same importance as the health/life of the mother. Deep River Appartments response to the quotes provided by Annie B. matches mine. Except that I think the problem is that at the point most abortions are performed, the brain is not sufficiently developed to allow cognitive thought.
But that’s all besides the point. I think Ampersand has clearly stated the differences between the lay-termed “PBA” and the medically termed & specifice “D&E” & “D&X” procedures. If Annie B. can’t or won’t grasp that, what’s the point of interaction with her?
Annie B. sez:
“I speak as one of the millions of women who did and who would give up everything I’ve gained in this life, which is considerable, to go back in time and change my “choice” then, no matter what hardship or tragedy would befall me.”
And I speak for the BILLIONS of women who had an abortion and in no way regret it, whose lives would have been ruined or terminated without one, so back off! Don’t you ever DARE to presume you speak for everyone.
As for your “reliable scientists”, I repeat, they don’t speak for all scientists AT ALL, and anyway I have a hard time believing anyone whose paycheck comes from “The Institute of Scientists Who Really Really Want to Believe Their Religious Beliefs are Scientifically Accurate But Would Never Let This Bias Their Research and Language, Honest”
What’s the point indeed, when in one breath, you say, “I don’t deny that an 8 second embryo is human life” and in the next, you deny several million “human lives” their primary right (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”).
Humans are “CREATED equal.” It doesn’t say “BORN equal” or “equal only when they have a brain sufficiently developed to allow cognitive thought.” The “right to life” is WRITTEN FIRST with good reason. I guess the founding fathers were wrong about one thing, though: it just isn’t “self-evident” to many/several readers of this blog.
Maybe someone now will take the government to court to rewrite the Declaration of Independence to reflect the current “sensibilities” of a minority of Americans too.
First of all I apologize for posting the testimony….I did not have a link and thought it important to read. Also, no one has answered any of my questions about outrage for women who have died from abortion, or have been left sterile or denial of legislation, etc. I think these are legimate questions.
Seems to me that everyone is making this a pro life, pro choice issue. The fact is, some women claim they are ok with abortion, others obviously have had deep regrets, physical, psychological and emotional damage. To try to brush that aside by saying there were prior life situations to make them feel that way, or any other excuse, is an insult. It is not unreasonable to think that many women would have adverse effects to abortion. Especially given the fact that all the information is not disclosed to them prior to the procedure. No matter how much anyone chooses to deny these effects, there are more and more women coming forward to declare it as true.
One way to obviously remedy this, is to pass legislation that would give women full disclosure to the risks of abortion, something that unfortunately never seems to make it past the senate. If we want women to make informed choices for themselves, why not inform them ?
I personally, had no “prior” situation before abortion. No one told me the development of my child or what was going to happen to him or me. I saw my aborted son…yes, son, not fetus. Did someone screw up…you may say that, but the truth is, he was a baby whether I saw him or not, and I resent the implication that something is wrong because I regret what I did. Something would be wrong if I did not regret what I did.
Unfortunately, those who regret abortion are often “socially aborted” by both sides of this issue. Many Pro lifers still judge us and pro choicers deny our existence. We are somehow caught in the middle of the debate…
Annie,
I’m able to find a difference between 2 celled human life and adult human life. I’m sorry that you can’t. I also find a difference between value of body parts like toenails & legs.
Theresa,
I don’t have a problem w/ you regretting your decision. I have a problem w/ you advocating removing that choice for others. I’m very sorry that you regret your choice.
Deep river, if you reread what I wrote, I never said I “speak for everyone” nor implied it. But if you can cite for me your stats that there are “billions” who feel as you do about their abortions, I will be glad to know it. In the U.S., the Planned Parenthood stats say there are about 25 to maybe 30 million women tops who’ve had abortions.
These are the most direct stats I’ve found to date: “In a study done in 2000, 78% of The National Abortion Rights Action League’s (NARAL) membership was female, while 63% of National Right to Life Committee’s was female. 32% of NARAL’s women members admitted having had an abortion. Only 3% of the NRL women had had an abortion. NARAL had a total membership then of 156,000, while NRL had 12 million. So 32% of 78% of 156,000 gives 39,000 such pro-choice, post-abortive women, while 3% of 63% of 12 million yields 226,800 women who have had abortions and regretted them enough to go public as pro-life advocates.
“SIX times as many become pro-woman/pro-child after regretting their abortions.” (This is paraphrased from the book, _ACHIEVING PEACE IN THE ABORTION WAR: Predictions on Possible Social Impacts of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Cognitive Dissonance as Structural Stressors, by Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D.; found online here: http://www.fnsa.org/apaw/ch13.html )
For every one of me who “went public/active” as these above, there are at least 2 dozen others who regret but can’t go public. (I know because I personally know 100s of women who are “active” and to a woman, this is our common experience: hearing from at least that many women personally, plus knowing actually how many attend more than 1,000 post-abortion healing groups yearly for at least the past 5 years, etc. If you still don’t believe me, I only know all this because I’m one of the state leaders of “Silent No More,” a 4-year-old organization of thousands of post-abortive women and yes, some men)
227,000 times 2 dozen is about 5.5 million women silently suffering out there because people who feel as you do condemn us for being sorry we chose abortion. We take full responsibility for our mistakes. And we accept that you don’t regret, why can’t you accept that we do, and in such numbers as this research shows? This doesn’t even factor in the scientific research on the physical and emotional trauma to women caused by abortion. ( http://www.afterabortion.org/reasmor.html )
“I’m able to find a difference between 2 celled human life and adult human life. I’m sorry that you can’t.” Jake, I’m sorry that you can. And that you HAVE to and WANT to.
Annie B. sez:
“What’s the point indeed, when in one breath, you say, “I don’t deny that an 8 second embryo is human life” and in the next, you deny several million “human lives” their primary right…”
And again: a human life, not a person. If we play your stupid regression game then every woman is a serial killer since several fertilized eggs (which are “human lives”) are washed out of every sexually active woman in the course of her lifetime through natural processes.
Sorry Annie, you are now repeating yourself in a tautological evasion loop. You have failed to say or grasp anything profound and it is clear that you speak only as a theocratic tyrant who cherry picks the dubious/vague science/politics that supports her arguments and is incapable of reaching beyond the superstructure she was clearly born and raised in.
You have no new “supreme truth” to reveal to me. I’ve heard everything you’ve said a thousand times before from a thousand different, much more reasonable sounding people. You are wasting your breath, and I’m tired of repeating, and repeating, and REPEATING myself to defend that which I should not have to.
Do us all a favor and save your strength. I’ll see you on the other side of the picket line. You may win battles, but it is impossible for you to win the war now that women have tasted the self respect of self control.
To Theresa:
Oh I do believe you exist, the trouble is you insist that women with no regrets are irrelevant. As long as even ONE woman with no regrets demands choice, it is tyranny to deny it to her.
Same applies to everything Annie B. said in her last post (including the dubious/long discredited/obviously biased products of “The Institute of Scientists Who Really Really Want to Believe Their Religious Beliefs are Scientifically Accurate But Would Never Let This Bias Their Research and Language, Honest” statistics)
And then there’s all those women, like many in my community, who have had abortions that they don’t regret but can’t go public because of community pressures. Many women regret the abortion, but not as much as they regret getting pregnant in the first place. I’m one of them. In a perfect world, my birth control would be 100% effective, not 97%. Welcome to the rate of failure! I take BC because I would make a lousy mother and I don’t want to be pregnant (doesn’t sound too pleasant to me, and the few weeks that I was were pretty much the most miserable time of my life, what with the vomiting and achiness and all), and I definitely don’t want to give birth. I regret that an abortion was necessary, not that I had it.
Deep river, exactly who’s being “repetitive?” Am I to understand you’re dismissing Dr. Shettles, Dr. Gordon, Dr. Moore, Dr. Bongioanni, Prof. LeJeune, Prof. Matthews-Roth and Dr. Bowes as getting their paychecks from your fictitious, twice-named “institute?”
Listen, if not to me, then to the words of a woman who was as staunchly pro-choice as you, deep river, and even helped her friend seek an abortion: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32582
Jane Chastain, formerly pro-choice, is a co-host of the Judicial Watch Report radio show, heard daily on the USA Radio Network: “As the host of eight documentaries on the subject of abortion, I have met…so many [psychologically scarred women] that I now believe that there are only two kinds of women who have had abortions: those who have hit the emotional wall and those who will.”
Hey anti-choicers, have you been following the news in Portugal (and I mean through actual news sources, not stuff filtered by the “We Really Don’t Like Abortion But We Swear We’ll Report Every Side, Honest” online network)?
There’s your prototype world without abortion ripping at the seams, and it’s a very religious place too. You can fling as many distorted statistics as you want, they don’t erase the simple and obvious equation “woman > fetus” from the minds of reasonable people.
So the people you cite are faultlessly honest and represent the entire population Annie, but those I interact with everyday are deluded and/or liars? What a pleasant fantasy. I wish I had such a thorough mental superstructure.
Um, no, those doctors and professors whose names I list and whose words I quoted above are world-renowned specialist M.D.’s, scientists, researchers and Med. School icons. The world has already accepted them as honest. Once again, I never said they or anyone else represent “the entire population.” But I did give you published, hotlinked, reliable research-study stats on the numbers of post-abortive women who regret their ab’s vs. those who don’t. Facts, deep river. I don’t have any fantasy to offer, nor would I offer it if I had. Please stop putting words in my mouth.
deep river..and it is tyranny to deny all the facts of abortion to any woman and to try to discount those who suffer. There are countless women unable to have other children because of “safe, legal” abortion. women have the right to know all the dangers and risks BEFORE they undergo the procedure…not finding out after when they ar eunable to have children or suffer in other ways.
Anyway, enough is enough…it is obvious you keep dismissing this all by labeling it pro life, pro choice instead of answering legitimate questions regarding the saftey of women NOW.
Hopefully, when you want children, you will be able to have them and will not turn out like many I know whose aborted children turned out to be their only ones…but I guess they don;t count either…after all, abortion at any cost, any time, as long as one WOMEN wants it.
You see, when you list those doctors, it’s a mere argument by authority, and is a cheap trick and ignores the fact that there are also several doctors and scientists and professors who don’t agree with them. It’s like if I started quoting mathematical intuitionists and said “see, mathemeticians don’t believe in the Real number line” when most mathemeticians do.
Anyway, let’s go back to your personal insults of me (they were fun).
Raznor, you won’t believe the links anyway because you (as ampersand has in the past) diss the news sources, yet you swallow hook, line and sinker the news sources YOU ingest like a tonic, even when THEIR quotes are 10-years-old or 30+ years old. Do your OWN homework, and read both sides, as I did.
Mix some gin in that tonic and call it a night (I mean what a bizarre sequence of analogies) Besides, posting long quotes is boring, and it’s cheap and lazy. If you can’t argue your own points you have no business posting on a blog. But apparently you can use your own words, so let’s stick to the actual argument rather than bring up extra pointless things, hmm?
And then:
You want me to “show [you] a little respect, hmm?” when you call us “lying scumbags and completely ignorant?” Please.
Wow, way to misquote me. When did they change the word “or” to “and”. What I said was to a specific person was:
Wow, selma is either entirely ignorant of medical practices or a complete lying scumbag.
And I later detracted saying “complete lying scumbag” and would replace it with “is lying” easily. But other than the fact that “complete lying scumbag” was a needless insult, I stand by that statement. Since Selma was completely misrepresenting medical practices, so she either didn’t know or did know and was lying. How tautological can you get?
Theresa writes: “There are countless women unable to have other children because of “safe, legal” abortion.”
Countless? Can you give me some reliable statistics on this? Can anybody give me the rate at which legal abortions damage a woman’s ability to bear children? Without that info, this is a meaningless, yet hyperbolic, statement.
Annie B. writes: “”As the host of eight documentaries on the subject of abortion, I have met…so many [psychologically scarred women] that I now believe that there are only two kinds of women who have had abortions: those who have hit the emotional wall and those who will.””
I realize that those are not your words, but a quote from somebody else. Yet that doesn’t stop the quote from being Anecdotal Evidence. And I can match that anecdotal evidence with my own. Anecdotal evidence is not proof of anything except one’s own experience. Again I’m going to have to ask for statistics on mental health issues of women who have had abortions. And that would need to include mental health histories prior to having an abortion.
Maybe the 2 of you are too young to remember the rate at which women were injured or killed in the days when “wire hangers” & “back alley” abortions were the only available methods to most women. The fact of the matter is women’s survival & health rates wrt abortion are MUCH better now than before Roe.
[blows a kiss to zoe, just because somebody really ought to.]
Jake asked:
“Theresa writes: “There are countless women unable to have other children because of “safe, legal” abortion.”
Countless? Can you give me some reliable statistics on this? Can anybody give me the rate at which legal abortions damage a woman’s ability to bear children? Without that info, this is a meaningless, yet hyperbolic, statement.”
Well, she claims they are countless. How can you have stats if they can’t be counted?
(sorry, the temptation to ridicule was too strong…I too would like to see actual real numbers–I did a search for incidences of infertility associated with abortion and all I could find were anti-abortion propaganda sites. I then searched Academic Journals and couldn’t find any info anywhere–the countless women citation is indeed meaningless).
“Maybe the 2 of you are too young to remember the rate at which women were injured or killed in the days when “wire hangers” & “back alley” abortions were the only available methods to most women. The fact of the matter is women’s survival & health rates wrt abortion are MUCH better now than before Roe. Sounds pretty anecdotal to me. Give us YOUR stats, then, Jake.
Ok Annie, let’s look at your “facts.” I’ll do it in several posts.
Annie quotz:
“Well, this one, by Keith L. Moore, _The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology_, 2nd Ed., 1977, a well-known med-school textbook: “The cell (a single-celled zygote) results from fertilization of an oocyte by a sperm and is the beginning of human life.”
The beginning of life, not personhood. No reasonable doctor will claim that no form of life begins at conception. Even pro-choice doctors freely and unconcernedly admit this. Keith L Moore could very well be pro-choice.
Annie quotz:
“Dr. Landrum Shettles, discoverer of male and female producing sperm and a pioneer in the field of in vitro fertilization, said this: “I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest-that human life commences at the time of conception-and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian.”
Yeah, too bad Landrum Shettles was a pioneer of in-vitro fertilization who routinely discarded fertilized eggs:
Explains P.D. Turner: “It was reported in January 1979 that Dr. Landrum B. Shettles had transplanted a human nucleus. The transplanted human nucleus was derived from a human spermatological cell (the diploid precursors of the mature haploid sperm). The human egg recipient was enucleated with a micropipette. Several operations were performed, three resulting in ova that formed small clusters of cells (morulae ). The three human morulae were then discarded. Shettles suggested normal development would have resulted, had the morulae been inserted in the uteruses of humans. See Shettles: Diploid Nuclear Replacement in Mature Human Ova with Cleavage.” 24
Annie Quotz:
“And Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman of the Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, said this: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
Life, not personhood. See the above post. This could easily be a pro-choice physician.
Annie Quotz:
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania: “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception…I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life. I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty…is not a human being. This is human life at every stage…”
Oh look, an anti-choice doctor, how impossible *rolls eyes*. I guess his opinion overrules the rest of the medical establishment then.
Annie Quotz:
“Professor Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down’s Syndrome: “After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being…This is no longer a matter of taste or opinion, it is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”
Life not personhood again. Next.
Annie quotz:
“Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: “It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive…It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”
Life not personhood. Next.
Annie quotz:
“Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School: “The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter- the beginning is conception.”
Life not personhood. This one even include the neutralist qualifier “from a biological point of view.”
All of the above quotes are not new to me because they have been circulating around anti-choice sites for ages, and they get re-gurgitated with stunning regularity.
Okay Annie here are some statistics:
Quoted in Andrews and McMeel, The Universal Almanac, Kansas City, 1990, page 220.
Year Mortality/Abortions Mortality/Births
1970 19.0 16.0
1971 11.0 14.9
1972 4.1 15.2
1973 3.4 12.5
1974 2.9 12.4
1975 2.8 10.3
1976 0.9 10.2
1977 1.3 9.8
1978 0.6 9.7
1979 1.2 8.0
1980 0.6 7.5
1981 0.4 7.2
1982 0.8 7.9
1983 0.7 8.0
Notice how much greater the decrease in mortality from abortions is than the decrease in mortality from childbirth. I think that is a pretty good argument against the decrease being solely due to improvement in medicine.
Now can you provide some facts? And please cite your source for those.
My lack of HTML skills makes the chart ugly, but I think it is still readable. If it’s not, can somebody more competent make it better?
And of course Annie isn’t the only one who can cite people and stats that “support” her position (assuming those she quotes really do, since they could be decontextualized and reinterpreted). Let’s try some of these:
In 1966, Romania prohibited the importation of contraceptives and banned abortion
for most women. Romania ended the 1980s with the highest recorded maternal
mortality rate of any country in Europe ‐‐ 159 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1989.
An estimated 87 percent of those deaths were due to illegal and unsafe abortion. A
year later, when Romania legalized abortion, the maternal mortality rate decreased
to 83 deaths per 100,000 live births, nearly half of its 1989 level.
– Charlotte Hord et al., “Reproductive Health in Romania: Reversing the Ceausescu
Legacy,” Studies in Family Planning, vol. 22, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1991): 232‐34.
And another:
Legal abortion entails half the risk of death involved in a tonsillectomy and one‐
hundredth the risk of death involved in an appendectomy.9 The risk of death from
abortion is lower than that from a shot of penicillin.10
– Nancy Felipe Russo, “Unwanted Childbearing, Abortion, and Women’s Mental Health:
Research Findings, Policy Implications,” Summary of Presidential Address, Rocky
Mountain Psychologist (1992): 9.
Oooh, here’s a really good one:
“In 1987, President Reagan promised anti‐choice leaders a report on the health effects
of abortion. During the next two years, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and his
staff reviewed hundreds of studies and met with numerous experts in the field. Dr.
Koop found that women who have had an abortion are not more likely to experience
problems with their physical health, and he was unable to conclude that abortion
damages women’s mental health. When testifying before Congress, he stated that
the development of psychological problems related to abortion is “minuscule from a
public health perspective.” However, the official report was never released.”
– Gold, Abortion and Women’s Health at 9, 33, citing Hearings before the Human Resources
and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee of the Committee on Government
Operations, U.S. House of Representatives, Mar. 16, 1989, p. 195; Letter from C. Everett
Koop, M.D. Sc.D., Surgeon General, U.S.P.H.S., to Ronald Reagan, President of the
United States (Jan. 9, 1989).
I could go on, but do you really want to play this game some more Annie?
And in the end it doesn’t matter how many people are for or against abortion. Even if 99.99% of the world thought it was wrong that wouldn’t take away a woman’s right to control her own body.
And guess what, you’ll never even get 99.99%. As we speak free choice policies continue to liberalize in most of Europe (to point out but a few significant regions), where they have been seen as no big deal for decades now. As long as such a bastion of freedom exist in the world it will continue to remind U.S. women of what they should have, even if you turn the country into a theocratic police state, temporarily overturn Roe V. Wade and jail mothers, sisters, and wives.
Theresa (and maybe someone else?): Depending on what state you live in, it is legally required that all the risks of abortion (including emotional ones) be presented to the woman before she decides whether to have the procedure. And whether it is written into law or not, it’s good medicine and should be expected of doctors to present facts about all available choices and their possible complications. My experience at Planned Parenthood of GA and the Altanta Feminist Women’s Health Center is that this is done. The problem with the laws requiring that the patient be informed of all risks is that, being written and pushed through state legislatures by staunchly anti-choice reps, they often impose scripts on the doctor that include false information such as the now-disproved link between abortion and breast cancer (some other cancer?) and sometimes even religious material. It is also good medicine to provide counseling before and after an abortion. Pro-choice people should and often do support counseling, remaining on gaurd for the anti-choice propaganda that is often built into laws pertaining to this.
As for the women who regret their abortions, I do not deny their existence and I do not minimize their pain. Their emotions, no matter how strong, are not legal grounds to deny the rights of other women.There are many things we may regret in this life. Some women feel emotionally damaged after masectomy (sp?) or historectomy, but banning these procedures is not a solution. Unbiased counseling may be.
I only wish that more pro-life people would direct their energy to providing safe and effective birth control for all, along with comprehensive sex education. This would prevent more abortions than any other project you might undertake. Yet these measures are often opposed by anti-choice people and almost uniformly supported by pro-choice people. Why should this be?
Thanks, Amy!
There’s a reason I follow you around from board to board…
Elena sez:
“…yet these measures are often opposed by anti-choice people and almost uniformly supported by pro-choice people. Why should this be?”
Oh you know the answer to this one. For the most rabid among them the big picture is their shortsighted, vindictive, and arbitrary interpretation of their religion. Scrath away their outer coating of pseudoscience and you’ll quickly reveal puritanical theocrats still mired in the dark ages.
1) “Maybe the 2 of you are too young to remember the rate at which women were injured or killed in the days when “wire hangers” & “back alley” abortions were the only available methods to most women. 2) The fact of the matter is women’s survival & health rates wrt abortion are MUCH better now than before Roe.”
Well, I get dinged for quoting other people/content and then I get dinged for not quoting them…oh, well…
1) All evidence points to 1,231 abortion-related deaths in 1942, 133 deaths in 1968, 114 deaths in 1963, and in 1972, there were 24 deaths from legal abortion and 39 from illegal abortions, not the 5,000 to 10,000 deaths yearly from illegal abortions that some pro-choice advocates have still quoted to me. (http://www.roevwade.org/abortdeaths.html )
Planned Parenthood’s statistician, Dr. Christopher Tietze, called the 5,000-10,000 numbers “unmitigated nonsense.” (Harvard Divinity School, Kennedy Foundation International Conference on Abortion Washington D.C., 1967. See also Scientific America, Vo1.220 [1969] pp.21,23).
NARAL Co-founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson admitted: “I knew the figure was totally false…But in the morality of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of the way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.” (Aborting America, Doubleday Pub. p.193)
Before 1973, 90% of illegal abortions were done by licensed physicians and not “back-alley butchers.” In the American Journal of Public Health, July 1960, Mary Calderone, then medical director of Planned Parenthood, wrote: “…90% of all illegal abortions are done by physicians. Another source is Nancy Howell Lee’s book _Search for an Abortionist_ . In a book by Dr. Kinsey’s chief researchers, Paul Gebhard, et al, _Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion_, Harber & Brothers, 1958, pp.194,197), they found that 8% of illegal abortions were self-induced. Of those abortions that involved the use of surgical instruments (e.g., knives), only 1% were self-induced. The other 9% doing self-induced abortions used “less hazardous methods.” (Gebhard was Kinsey’s chief researcher).
Dr. Andre Hellegers, (former Prof. of OB/GYN, Georgetown U.) testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee (April 25, 1974) that enhanced medical care and penicillin caused the decrease in maternal deaths from 1,231 deaths in 1942, to 133 deaths in 1968.
Between 1972 and 1987, when the stats stopped being collected, there were 239 deaths from LEGAL abortion. Sources include: C.D.C. Surveillance Summaries, Vol. 36, No. 1SS, p. 38SS and Table 21, Page 41SS; National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 1994; Hyattsville, Maryland: Public Health Service, 1995; Abortion Surveillance 1985, Center for Disease Control, Table #18.
Induced Abortion: World Review, by Christopher Tietze, The Population Council, p 103, 1983. http://www.roevwade.org/abortdeaths.html
2) From Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2004 FEB.; 190(2):422-7.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14981384
also at
http://www2.us.elsevierhealth.com/scripts/om.dll/serve?retrieve=/pii/S0002937803011360&
PREGNANCY-ASSOCIATED MORTALITY AFTER BIRTH, SPONTANEOUS ABORTION, OR INDUCED ABORTION IN FINLAND, 1987-2000. By Gissler M, Berg C, Bouvier-Colle MH, Buekens P. National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, Information Division, Helsinki, Finland. Email: mika.kissler@stakes.fi
From the abstract: “OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that pregnant and recently pregnant women enjoy a “healthy pregnant women effect,” we compared the all natural cause mortality rates for women who were pregnant or within 1 year of pregnancy termination with all other women of reproductive age.”
While the study “found support for the ‘healthy pregnant woman effect’ for all pregnancies including those not ending in births,” here’s the fine print: in this study of already-recorded statistics, if a woman gave birth, she had a 28 in 100,000 likelihood of dying VS. if she had an induced abortion, she had an 83 in 100,000 chance of dying. If she never got pregnant, she had a 57 in 100,000 chance of dying.
Emily at afterabortion, summed it up this way [ http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2004_03_28_afterabortion_archive.html ]: “This article…concludes that the mortality rate associated with abortion is 2.95 times higher than that associated with pregnancies carried to term. The study included the entire population of women 15 to 49 years of age in Finland [for 14 years ending in 2000]. …results were derived not from interviews with individual subjects, but in this case by linking birth and abortion records to death certificates. The annual death rate of women who had abortions in the previous year was also 46% higher than that of non-pregnant women.”
3) I’m dismayed to know, deep river, that you are still buying what the media hyped to us all about Surgeon General Koop. You all MUST simply go read this, if you really want to know the truth: http://medpundit.blogspot.com/2003_02_02_medpundit_archive.html By a pro-choice pundit who was an intern at the time “when Dr. Koop sent his summary to President Reagan,” who links to the letter to which you referred.
That report was made almost 20 years ago and the findings were inconclusive, precisely because — as Koop himself pointed out — not enough studies had been done to draw definitive conclusions. He didn’t actually deny Post Abortive complications. It is certainly time to conduct those overdue studies. Koop asked in 1988 for a substantial longitudinal study to examine this issue, but Congress denied it and it was never conducted. In the meantime, we can’t ignore the pain that many women are in.
And Jake, did your chart come from pro-abortion sites http://eileen.undonet.com/Main/7_R_Eile/Numbrs.htm or http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/fem041.htm ? Who exactly are “Eileen” and “Don Martin,” and what are their doctoral degrees and credentials? I note that this “almanac” has as its sources, “according to the Center for Disease Control; Alan Guttmacher Institute.” Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood? The one supporting a group that made, for the past 5 years, $300 million profit, 99% of that from abortions? THAT Alan Guttmacher Institute?
There’s tons more, everyone, esp. on health rates, and I could counter every attempt you have posted (e.g., Romania), but I’ll invite you all to do your own research as I have done, if you really want to know the whole truth. If you don’t, then you’ll keep tossing out stuff for me to refute, for the “game” some of you think this is. It’s clear you (collectively) only have researched one side, and it’s much easier for you since you’ve got the mass media on your side, only publishing what they want you to think and know and blacking-out the rest, as is apparent by what you cite. I’ve done both. If they HADN’T blacked it out, what I cite wouldn’t be “news” to anyone here.
The point is, there ARE two sides and a lot of the truth ISN’T YET definitively OUT THERE. So why do the pro-choice people/lobbyists/lawyers spend so much time and money going to court to block the whole truth? Why does the media black it out? If abortion is so great for women, they should be glad to get all the truth out.
I remember reading about the decriminalisation of abortion on this side of the Atlantic. One of the reasons affecting the decision was that choice before then depended on class. A wealthy woman could get her doctor to sign her off for an “emergency D&C” for “abnormalities of the womb lining”, but a poor woman without a personal doctor had to put her life in the hands of an untrained butcher.
This is something that so easily gets lost in the discussion. The choice isn’t between abortion and no abortion, it’s between access to abortion and desperate measures.
Theresa: I’d support so-called “right to know” legislation only if every other elective surgery had such legislation, and the material is written by unbiased doctors, not the fundie hacks who usually write it.
I am against parental consent legislation as well. Oftentimes, it is a father or other male relative or family friend who’s to blame for the pregnancy, and such regulations are counterproductive to patient safety.
I take your Tamika Russell and raise you Becky Bell (who died from a botched back-alley abortion) and Spring Adams (forced to tell her father by parental notifcation laws, her father killed her).
Theresa: I’d support so-called “right to know” legislation only if every other elective surgery had such legislation, and the material is written by unbiased doctors, not the fundie hacks who usually write it.
I am against parental consent legislation as well. Oftentimes, it is a father or other male relative or family friend who’s to blame for the pregnancy, and such regulations are counterproductive to patient safety.
I take your Tamika Russell and raise you Becky Bell (who died from a botched back-alley abortion) and Spring Adams (forced to tell her father by parental notifcation laws, her father killed her).
From working on Oregon Measure 58 (Adoptees allowed to get a copy of their original birth certificate upon 21), I do know that women regret abortions – but they also regret giving up children in closed adoptions as well.
White pregnant women were routinely coerced into giving up children for adoption, oftentimes by being admitted into prenatal programs and being threatened with having to pay the organization back if they decided to keep the baby. The right column on this page has many instances of coercion and abuse of pregnant women by adoption agencies.
You’ll find very few pro-choice people who are pro-abortion. Almost every one of us wants birth control to be inexpensive and available to everyone who wants it, and respects women’s inalienable right to choose to continue or abort a pregnancy, and if she carries the pregnancy to term, to raise the child or have it adopted.
Annie, I’m starting to think you don’t even want to debate, but are intent on trolling. For example, there’s this:
) All evidence points to 1,231 abortion-related deaths in 1942, 133 deaths in 1968, 114 deaths in 1963, and in 1972, there were 24 deaths from legal abortion and 39 from illegal abortions, not the 5,000 to 10,000 deaths yearly from illegal abortions that some pro-choice advocates have still quoted to me. (http://www.roevwade.org/abortdeaths.html )
Tell me, who in this discussion mentioned 5,000 to 10,000 deaths? Jake Squid, when asked for proof, showed statistical evidence that death rates from abortions drastically dropped after Roe v Wade, he doesn’t mention 5,000 or 10,000, but a ratio of deaths per X abortions (which I’d call on him to clarify exactly what that “X” is, I’d assume per 1000 operations, since that is typical, but Jake doesn’t specify). But here you are, Annie, devoting 3 paragraphs to disproving this claim no one is making.
Then you say:
Before 1973, 90% of illegal abortions were done by licensed physicians and not “back-alley butchers.”
What is your source? You quote an article from 1960, but there are 13 years between 1960 and 1973 (you see because 1973-1960=13), so it’s possible that situations change. And besides, if 90% of illegal abortions were performed by doctors, that means 10% were not. (see, 100-90=10) But if you make a claim as blanket as you did, I want more recent articles than 1960. It doesn’t have to be from last week, 1975 would suffice.
That’s all. Your focus in C. Everett Koop shows you completely misunderstand what DRA’s point was, which was my point too, that arguments by authority prove nothing and are lazy. You’re the one who brought up what a handful of scientists say about abortion, as if they were representative of all science. DRA was showing that they weren’t representative by giving a handful of countering opinions right back at you.
Respond to the arguments that are made, not the ones you wish were made so that they would be easy to refute. Then maybe I’ll take your posting seriously.
Oh look, Annie B. brought us quotes and statistics from those unimpeachably trustworthy folks at http://www.roevwade.org, the hack book “Aborting America,” http://afterabortion.blogspot.com. It’s like a golden oldies parade, the same mythmaker sites just keep coming up and those pushing them always assume we haven’t seen their “incredible truth” before. Remember, this is the country where the National Equirer is still believed to be gospel truth by a frightening number of its readers. *Eyes roll*
And hey, the one guy talking about the Koop letter warns us “I know the letter is posted at a pro-life site, but that’s no reason to doubt the authenticity of the letter itself” and he highlight the passage “I cannot support either the preconceived beliefs of those PRO-LIFE or of those pro-choice”! And if you didn’t trust him already then you’ll be convinced when you read the rest of his site and find out he’s a conservative blogger who was an intern at the time. *Eyes roll into the back of my skull*
And here’s a mind blower for you. Try to set your “Left Behind” fundamentalist paranoia aside for a minute and imagine that maybe the media doesn’t report on this stuff because it just isn’t credible for even their low standards? Remember, you’re the side that has to depend on bombs because even thirty years fetus porn, pseudoscience, hysterical anthropomorphism, and a whole series of anti-choice administrations haven’t been able to convince a significant portion of women that they are subservient to something less intelligent than a krill shrimp.
“Try to set your “Left Behind” fundamentalist paranoia aside for a minute…”
Deep River Apartments, I LOVE the posts you’ve been doing here, and hope you keep on posting. But let me ask you again to try and keep things polite. (And that goes for everyone else here, on both sides of the debate, as well).
Apologies Amp.
One last post for the night. Here’s an article I found on the Ms. Boards, extracted from the New York Times, talking about the situation in Portugal (from an author who isn’t exactly an unwavering defender of choice either).
The Abortion Question
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 7, 2004
LISBON — To understand what might happen in America if President Bush gets his way with the Supreme Court, consider recent events in Portugal.
Seven women were tried this year in the northern Portuguese fishing community of Aveiro for getting abortions. They were prosecuted — facing three-year prison sentences — along with 10 “accomplices,” including husbands, boyfriends, parents and a taxi driver who had taken a pregnant woman to a clinic.
The police staked out gynecological clinics and investigated those who emerged looking as if they might have had abortions because they looked particularly pale, weak or upset. At the trial, the most intimate aspects of their gynecological history were revealed.
This was the second such mass abortion trial lately in Portugal. The previous one involved 42 defendants, including a girl who had been 16 at the time of the alleged abortion.
Both trials ended in acquittals, except for a nurse who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for performing abortions.
Portugal, like the U.S., is an industrialized democracy with a conservative religious streak, but the trials have repulsed the Portuguese. A recent opinion poll shows that people here now favor abortion rights, 79 percent to 14 percent. In a sign of the changing mood, Portugal’s president recently commuted the remainder of the nurse’s sentence. There’s a growing sense that while abortion may be wrong, criminalization is worse.
Portugal offers a couple of sobering lessons for Americans who, like Mr. Bush, aim to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The first is that abortion laws are very difficult to enforce in a world as mobile as ours. Some 20,000 Portuguese women still get abortions each year, mostly by crossing the border into Spain. In the U.S., where an overturn of Roe v. Wade would probably mean bans on abortion only in a patchwork of Bible Belt states, pregnant women would travel to places like New York, California and Illinois for their abortions.
The second is that if states did criminalize abortion, they would face a backlash as the public focus shifted from the fetus to the woman. “The fundamentalists have lost the debate” in Portugal, said Helena Pinto, president of UMAR, a Portuguese abortion rights group. “Now the debate has shifted to the rights of women. Do we want to live in a country where women can be in jail for abortion?”
Mr. Bush and other conservatives have chipped away successfully at abortion rights, as Gloria Feldt notes in her new book, “The War on Choice.” That’s because their strategy has been to focus on procedures like so-called partial-birth abortion and on protecting fetal rights. The strategy succeeds because most Americans share Mr. Bush’s aversion to abortion.
Like most Americans, I find abortion a difficult issue, because a fetus seems much more than a lump of tissue but considerably less than a human being. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with abortion, especially in the third trimester, but we still don’t equate it with murder.
That’s why it makes sense to try to reduce abortions by encouraging sex education and contraception. The conservative impulse to teach abstinence only, without promoting contraception, is probably one reason the U.S. has so many more abortions per capita than Canada or Britain.
“Forbidding abortion doesn’t save anyone or anything,” said Sonia Fertuzinhos, a member of the Portuguese Parliament. “It just gets women arrested and humiliated in the public arena.”
As one sensible woman put it in her autobiography: “For me, abortion is a personal issue — between the mother, father and doctor.” She added, “Abortion is not a presidential matter.”
President Bush, listen to your mother.
D’OH!
I just remebered Amp already posted the above article! Sorry for wasting space everyone *puts on a dunce cap and sulks*
“Ah, yes, when we only have partisan, biased sources ourselves and we don’t have ‘Authority stats’ of our own or much else to say, bring up the ‘trolling’ charge, that always works to shut them up…”
Annie sez:
“Ah, yes, when we only have partisan, biased sources ourselves and we don’t have ‘Authority stats’ of our own or much else to say, bring up the ‘trolling’ charge, that always works to shut them up…”
Look who’s talking. Everything you’ve put on the table has been filtered through the anti-choice lens, emerging either as distortions, de-contextualizations, tautologies, or outright fabrications. Anything that wasn’t one of the above turns out to have been irrelevant to the debate.
Honestly, what do you hope to achieve by persisting like this? Your side lost most of its credibility a long time ago, and you know very well that no one here is going to fall for such manipulative trickery. All they have to do is a little research to discover you are only telling a third of the story. We do have the internet too you know, PLUS official libraries and institutions that are not filtered through your desperate prism like the overwhelming number of clumsy anti-choice sites clogging the web.
And after all, everything you say still remains irrelevant as long as one woman anywhere demands the right to control her body. No amount of dubious scare tactics, misguided dissaproval, and outright cruel guilt tripping will ever convince every intelligent woman that she is a brood mare, especially when she knows there are other places in the world where such puritanism is laughed at.
So why don’t we bury the hatchet, and I’ll paraphrase myself in an effort to bring this pointless exercise to a close: I support your choice never to haven another abortion, and I’ll never force you to have another one. Now go live your life a let others make the choice that is best for them.
“Your side lost most of its credibility a long time ago…?? Here’s something “un-tautological” for you who are “the kettles calling me black:”
Aug. 1984, Wirthlin National Poll: 80% of California voters support some form of parental consent law. http://www.house.gov/judiciary/222463.htm
Jan. 1988: Wirthlin National Poll: 78% strongly agree that women who have had abortions experience emotional trauma, such as grief and regret. Source book by Rachel MacNair. http://www.fnsa.org/apaw/ch17.html
1989, Boston Globe National Poll: 72% believe abortion should be illegal if a mother wants an abortion but the father wants the baby. Only 14% said it should be legal. http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLENC/ENCYC076.HTM
1992: Wirthlin National Poll: 80% of Americans support requiring parental notification before an abortion is performed on a girl under age 18. 20% opposed it. http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/CCPA/why_we_need_CCPA.htm
1996, New York Times/CBS News Poll: 56% of those aged 18 to 29 agree that “abortion is the same thing as murdering a child.” http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9708/opinion/green.html
1996, Tarrance Group Poll: 55 % of Democrats and 65 % of those identifying themselves as pro-choice supported the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. http://www.house.gov/judiciary/107-604.pdf (this and next 2)
1996, Gallup Poll: 71 % of American voters favored a law criminalizing Partial-Birth Abortion.
1997 Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: Women supported the PBA Ban by 56 %; Republicans, Democrats, and Independents supported it by 55, 54, and 56 %, respectively.
1998: New York Times/CBS News Poll: 78% of Americans support parental CONSENT before an abortion is performed on a girl under age 18, and even MORE supported parental NOTIFICATION. 17% opposed it. http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/CCPA/why_we_need_CCPA.htm
5/2000, L.A.Times poll: 57% of Americans believed that “Abortion is an act of murder.” http://report.kff.org/archive/repro/2000/06/kr000619.1.htm
7/2000: Princeton Survey Research Associates: 68% of American 18-24 year-olds support policies requiring girls under 18 to get a parent’s CONSENT for abortion.
8/2001, CNN/Gallup/USA Today Poll: 60% said abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances. 38% said it should legal in all or most circumstances. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-08-13-mideast-poll.htm (this and next one)
8/2001, CNN/Gallup/USA Today Poll: 60% approved of President Bush’s decision to not allow the government to fund stem cell research that would destroy additional embryos in the future. 34% disapproved. Of those disapproving, 56% did so because the ban WAS NOT STRICT ENOUGH. Only 36% of those disapproving thought it was too strict.
11/2002, http://WWW.VOTE.COM Poll: With 57,071 votes cast, 82% said YES, “Congress Should Make It A Federal Crime To Harm A Fetus During An Assault On A Pregnant Woman.”
11/2002, http://WWW.VOTE.COM: 86% voted Yes, “Congress Should Pass A Ban On Partial Birth Abortions.”
1/23/03, USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll: 69% of Americans favored a law criminalizing Partial-Birth Abortion.
1/16/03, Wirthlin Worldwide poll: 68% of randomly surveyed adults said they were “in favor of legal protection for unborn children, in light of medical advances that reveal the unborn child’s body and facial features in detail.”
1/2003, New York Times/CBS News Poll: Among people aged 18 to 29, only 39% felt that abortion should be generally available to those who want it. (that’s down from 48% in 1993)
5/2003, Harvard University Poll: 74% of college students believe that abortion should be illegal under all or most circumstances. [“26% of undergraduates believe abortion should be legal under all circumstances, compared to 23% of the general population.” http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/press/releases/2003/iop_survey_052203.htm
6/2003, Center for Advancement of Women Survey: 51% of 3,329 women want abortion banned entirely or limited to cases of rape, incest or where the mother’s life is threatened. [This was commissioned by former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton]
10/2004: Gallup-CNN-USA Today poll: Among “young adults” (age 18-29), the PBA ban is favored by 77% (19% were opposed) while among the older groups, support was 68% (25% were opposed).
11/23/2003: Gallup Youth Survey: Among teens (aged 13 to 17), 72% do not consider abortion to be a morally acceptable choice and oppose the use of abortion in most circumstances. Only 26% find abortion morally acceptable. 32% of teens said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances, and 47% said abortions should only be legal under certain circumstances. Less than one in five (19%) say abortion should always be legal. Almost twice as many teens thought abortions should never be legal as only 17% of adults say that should be the case. About 55% of adults say abortion ought to be legal under certain circumstances while some 26% of adults in the US say abortion should always be legal.
correction, that’s “10/2003: Gallup-CNN-USA Today poll,” not “10/2004.”
*cracks knuckles in preparation* ok, I’ll go through this in several posts.
“Aug. 1984, Wirthlin National Poll: 80% of California voters support some form of parental consent law. http://www.house.gov/judiciary/222463.htm”
Irrelevant even if true. At one time slavery and the denial of a woman’s right to vote were considered ok, so are you going to brandish statistics in support of that? This doesn’t even show dissaproval for choice, just a desire for consent laws, and Wirthlin is an institution usually retained by conservative and corporate interests.
Jan. 1988: Wirthlin National Poll: 78% strongly agree that women who have had abortions experience emotional trauma, such as grief and regret. Source book by Rachel MacNair. http://www.fnsa.org/apaw/ch17.html
Again, irrelevant even if true (Wirthlin statistic once more). The general public is not made up of qualified psychologists, a large number of them don’t even personally know a woman who has had an abortion, and a fair chunk has been raised with the belief that choice is evil anyway so they are more inclined to bias their assessment. While we are at it we can’t discount the fact that some women who have had abortions were of course raised to view it as evil as well, and have been guilt tripped by their upbringing and relatives. And even IF many women were traumatized it sTILL doesn’t negate the right to choice for those who wouldn’t be. AMPUTATING A LIMB WILL TRAUMATIZE MOST PEOPLE, BUT WE DON’T BAN THAT PROCEEDURE NOW DO WE?
1989, Boston Globe National Poll: 72% believe abortion should be illegal if a mother wants an abortion but the father wants the baby. Only 14% said it should be legal. http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLENC/ENCYC076.HTM
Irrelevant. If he wants the baby so bad, he can carry it. Once again, this doesn’t even show dissaproval for choice, just for a woman’s exclusive say in the decision.
Ooops, forgot to clearly differentiate the quotes from my reactions. I’ll do so from now on.
> 1992: Wirthlin National Poll: 80% of Americans > support requiring parental notification before > an abortion is performed on a girl under age
> 18. 20% opposed it.
>http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/CCPA/why_we_need_CCPA> .htm
Once again irrelevant for the above discussed reasons. Yet again, not necessarily a dissaproval of choice.
> 1996, New York Times/CBS News Poll: 56% of
> those aged 18 to 29 agree that “abortion is the > same thing as murdering a child.”
>http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9708/opinio> n/green.html
Irrelevant again. See my analogy to slavery and denying women the right to vote. Also, you have no idea how many would have followed up on that statement with: “…but banning it would be dangerous, pointless and tyrannical, so I won’t force my views on others.”
> 1996, Tarrance Group Poll: 55 % of Democrats
> and 65 % of those identifying themselves as pro-> choice supported the Partial Birth Abortion
> Ban. http://www.house.gov/judiciary/107-604.pdf > (this and next 2)
> 1996, Gallup Poll: 71 % of American voters
> favored a law criminalizing Partial-Birth
> Abortion.
> 1997 Pew Research Center for the People & the
> Press: Women supported the PBA Ban by 56 %;
> Republicans, Democrats, and Independents
> supported it by 55, 54, and 56 %, respectively.
*BUZZ* Irrelevant. See above, slavery, woman’s right to vote, etc. Wake up and smell the pandering Annie, politicians have to please misinformed constituencies or lose support, and democrats have always been slightly left of center at best, center right at worst.
> 1998: New York Times/CBS News Poll: 78% of
> Americans support parental CONSENT before an
> abortion is performed on a girl under age 18,
> and even MORE supported parental NOTIFICATION. > 17% opposed it.
>http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/CCPA/why_we_need_CCPA> .htm
> 5/2000, L.A.Times poll: 57% of Americans
> believed that “Abortion is an act of murder.”
>http://report.kff.org/archive/repro/2000/06/kr000> 619.1.htm
> 7/2000: Princeton Survey Research Associates:
> 68% of American 18-24 year-olds support
> policies requiring girls under 18 to get a
> parent’s CONSENT for abortion.
> 8/2001, CNN/Gallup/USA Today Poll: 60% said
> abortion should be illegal in all or most
> circumstances. 38% said it should legal in all > or most circumstances.
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-08-> 13-mideast-poll.htm (this and next one)
All of these are just repetitions of what was stated above, so *GONG* irrelevant. Since repetition seems to be key with you Annie, I’ll walk on the safe side and restate that A) Statistics can be wrong, outdated, manipulated, or even fabricated and falsely attributed; B) Tyranny of the majority is STILL no indication of morality, otherwise it would have been ok to hunt down and destroy those heretical minorities called the protestants and Jews during the middle ages; C) These statistics probably don’t reflect Europe to name but one generally pro-choice place.
Ugh, everything after that in your post is more of the same. In the interest of expediency I will follow your lead to a logical conclusion and simply copy paste some of my earlier statements, since you apparently didn’t read them the first time:
“And in the end it doesn’t matter how many people are for or against abortion. Even if 99.99% of the world thought it was wrong that wouldn’t take away a woman’s right to control her own body.
And guess what, you’ll never even get 99.99%. As we speak free choice policies continue to liberalize in most of Europe (to point out but a few significant regions), where they have been seen as no big deal for decades now. As long as such a bastion of freedom exist in the world it will continue to remind U.S. women of what they should have, even if you turn the country into a theocratic police state, temporarily overturn Roe V. Wade and jail mothers, sisters, and wives.”
“Portugal, like the U.S., is an industrialized democracy with a conservative religious streak, but the trials [of women who had illegal abortions] have repulsed the Portuguese. A recent opinion poll shows that people here now favor abortion rights, 79 percent to 14 percent. In a sign of the changing mood, Portugal’s president recently commuted the remainder of the nurse’s sentence. There’s a growing sense that while abortion may be wrong, criminalization is worse.”
“And again: a human life, not a person. If we play your stupid regression game then every woman is a serial killer since several fertilized eggs (which are “human lives”) are washed out of every sexually active woman in the course of her lifetime through natural processes.”
Amazing.
Amazing is right Annie. And I can play “statistics bludgeon” too. Let’s give it a whirl:
ACCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH Organization, unsafe abortion is “a procedure for terminating an unwanted pregnancy, either by persons lacking the necessary skills, or in an environment lacking the minimal standards, or both.”
WHO estimates that approximately one-third of maternal deaths are due to complications arising from illegally induced abortions.
Each year an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions are performed worldwide, 95% of which are performed in low-income countries.
150,000 to 200,000 deaths occur in countries having very strict abortion laws. In countries where abortion is legal, death rates are, on average, under one death per 100,000 procedures.
Hundreds of thousands of women suffer long-or short-term disabilities due to complications arising from unsafe abortions. In low-income countries, mainly in the developing world, a total of approximately 200 women die each day as a result of unsafe abortion.
For many years, the issue of unsafe abortion and reproductive health has been clouded by cultural, religious and political opposition to safe abortion. In many developing countries abortion is illegal, and yet this does not prevent it from occurring.
Here are some more:
Currently, 62% of the world’s people live in countries where induced abortion is permitted either for a wide range of reasons or without restriction as to reason.
Forty-one percent of the world’s people live in the 50 nations with the world’s most liberal abortion laws – those that permit abortion without restriction as to reason.
[In the US] One stark indication of the prevalence of illegal abortion was the death toll. In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women–nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher.
47% of women who have had an abortion will have two or more in their lifetime.
Statistics provided by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. http://www.prochoiceresource.org
And hey, since you love to falsely insist that women who have had regretless abortions are a self-deluding minority, or even imaginary, I’ll see that as an invitation to take potshots at your segment of the population:
The mental health of women faced with unwanted pregnancy is at greater risk when they are compelled to deliver than when they are allowed to choose abortion. According to one study, 34 percent of women who were denied abortions reported one to three years later that the child was a burden that they frequently resented. Dagg, Paul K. B. (1991). “The Psychological Sequelae of Therapeutic Abortion – Denied and Completed.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 148(5), 578-585.
Although only a small minority of women report severe negative emotional effects post-abortion, the idea that abortion has severe negative effects continues to be widespread by abortion opponents (Boyle, 1997; Russo & Denious, 2001). The fact is that anti-abortion groups have invented this condition to further their cause. The American Psychiatric Association does not recognize “post-abortion syndrome” (1994), and all of the studies that purport to prove PAS contain methodological flaws that render their conclusions nongeneralizable beyond their subjects. The most egregious flaw common to all of these studies is that ONLY WOMEN WHO ALREADY SELF-IDENTIFIED AS HAVING PROBLEMS WITH ABORTION WERE RECRUITED FOR THEM. For example:
In her doctoral dissertation, “The Psycho-Social Aspects of Stress Following Abortion,” Anne Catherine Speckhard chronicled how “abortion functions as a stressor” (Speckhard, 1985). However, she drew her conclusions from a subject pool of 30 women who “had high-stress abortion experiences” (Speckhard, 1985). As a result, in unpublished correspondence, her doctoral advisor clarified that Speckhard’s “findings apply only to the 30 women who volunteered to participate in her study and to absolutely no one else” (Boss, 1986). In fact, there is little evidence to support the notion that abortion will lead to severe psychological sequelae among the general population of women. The American Psychological Association assembled an expert panel to review the evidence of psychological risks of abortion. This panel concluded “the weight of the evidence from scientific studies indicates that legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester does not pose a psychological hazard for most women. (Beckman, 1998).
In his survey of women who had abortions, David Reardon found that 94 percent of his respondents experienced negative psychological effects (Reardon, 1987). However, he used a biased subject pool, drawing only from members of an anti-choice group called Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA).
To demonstrate that adolescents suffer greater psychological consequences after abortion than adults, Wanda Franz and David Reardon examine data from “a survey of organizations [such as WEBA] serving as support groups for women who have had negative reactions to abortion” (Franz & Reardon, 1992). They conclude by making generalizations about the effects of abortion on all adolescents, even though they derive their data from a non-representative, highly biased subject pool. In fact, a recent study of young women found that there is no evidence that abortion poses a threat to adolescents psychological well-being (Pope, 2001).
In an unpublished but widely circulated paper, Terry Selby limits her discussion of “post-abortion trauma” to “a population of women who have presented themselves in a general mental health practice with a variety of presenting psychological and psycho-social issues” (Selby, 1984).
In 1987, a white paper was presented to former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop describing the “problem” of PAS. In the paper, the writers admit, “the psychological risks of abortion are based mainly upon studies which have used small, uncontrolled and non-representative samples” and “cannot be predictive of national estimates” (Rue et al., 1987).
And here’s a follow up on good old Koop:
“Furthermore, in closed meetings in 1988, Koop told representatives from several anti-abortion organizations that the risk of significant emotional problems following abortion was “minuscule” from a public health perspective (House Committee on Government Operations, 1989).”
Now I could go on, and on, and on with the statistics, but as I said (three or four times), it doesn’t MATTER how many people are for or against choice. As long as a single woman with no regrets or hang ups demands the right to control her body, you must respect her wish or forfeit all pretense of female equality. And I know for a fact that such women exist.
But if you insist on this argument, then I also have a modest proposal for you. Since a sizeable majority of the country once believed (and who knows, perhaps still believes) that interracial marriage is immoral, then how about we re-ban it, since a context-free majority is clearly all that is needed?
I don’t see much difference between a government that requires women to have abortions and one that demands to take away that right. Essentially, the government that says abortion should be illegal in all cases says it’s okay for women to die of botched, back-alley surgery, that the desperation of an unplanned pregnancy that results in a woman dying of inserting firecrackers and bleach into her vagina is preferable to the alternative.
In short, the government can specify how it wishes a pregnancy would end in a perfect world, but to legally demand that an individual woman with a life full of context and meaning that can’t be defined in black and white legalities is simply overstepping it’s boundaries.
I resent plastic surgery because it often takes a fine and perfect human body, tears it up and remodels it to what I would consider immoral proportions. But there are individuals out there who need it or desire it for reasons that I cannot identify with, and some whose needs I can. Does my identification and approval allow me to deny them the right to modify their anatomy as they so please?
A bad analogy, perhaps, but somewhat comparable. Not enough coffee in me yet.
No government should have the right to outlaw any elective surgery that is proven to be safe and reliable if conducted by doctors who are properly trained and licensed by that government, even if the government collectively can’t identify with the need for said surgery.
Frankly, the need is there, and any restrictions on the procedure place undue weight on the situations and context of others while simultaneously denying others with comparable context and needs on the basis of subjective moral bases.
I was sixteen when I had an abortion. I was a drug addict in the midst of a long, hard recovery, and my withdrawl from my drug of choice was enough strain on a pregnancy to render it unhealthy, not to mention that the unplanned pregnancy was a considerable strain on my recovery from addiction. I might have taken the “moral high road,” as the anti-abortion rights camp defines it, and carried the pregnancy to term, but I decided that my survival and sobriety were of more importance. I have no regrets.
The law as Anne wishes to define it would not have allowed me that option; after all, my experience didn’t afford me the Christian compassion of my pregnancy being dirtied by rape or incest. Instead, I would have ended up dead of an overdose. No lie or assumption there. And what’s the use of a dead pregnant teenager?