Folks,
Some of the offensive language and personal attacks have been removed.
– Jamie

Jaime

Thanks

This thread has become too emotional on both sides and I woun’t post anymore here. See everyone on some other ( perhaps calmer) thread.

For Si Vis:

“The Louisiana Department of Health compiled statistics over a 14-year period and found that the justification for 99.12% of abortions in that state were “mother’s mental health.” Mother’s physical health made up .75% of all abortions, fetal deformity another .09%, and rape/incest at .04%.”

Anyone willing to look hard enough will find mild variations on the above statistics, usually skewed towards the political leanings of the source. Whatever the source, however, it’s clear that abortions are very rarely associated with rape, incest or concerns for anything other than the “mental health” of the mother.

Doubtingthomas,

Isn’t this what the whole Supreme Court Justice argument is all about? It’s not about how you or I feel about abortion, it’s about the law. The law says that abortion is legal (for now) murder, however, is not.

What you feel is to take the law into your own hands or at least justify someone else doing so.

Jellio: My handy pocket Websters dictionary defines murder as “the unlawful OR premeditated killing of one human being by another.” Now, it is hard for me to conceive of an abortion that was not premediated. I admit it is kind of a play on words for shock value, and this definition would actually make state executions and killing on the battlefield while protecting our country murder, both of which I support. I certainly condemn the murder of Dr Tiller, and it actually hurts our cause as abortion opponents. I realize the supreme court has deemed abortion to be legal. That does not mean I am going to stop opposing it and trying to get the law reversed. I will not break the law while doing so.

One woman’s story…

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20031222/ayrey
A whirlwind of tests and consultations ensued during the following week, all determining that her quality-of-life outlook was markedly low. Alarmingly, two parts of her brain were missing completely, other areas were malformed and there was a heart defect, as well as acute limb irregularities. My heart sank in disbelief, as time began to tick…

Taking a life for what one believes shows a step into revolutionary thought and a frustration with the more evolutionary process of bringing about change by winning hearts and minds and trying to change the law. Killing doctors does not win hearts and minds. All it does is solidify the opposition.

So, clearly, the killer was not thinking rationally. What drove him to take revolutionary action? Was he weak minded and easily influenced by the rhetoric on TV and talk radio? Was this an act of religious ferver much like the terrorist who would bomb a restaurant because of his beliefs?

Any way you look at it, the rhetoric needs to tone down. We don’t need Gordon Liddy telling people to shoot for the head when confronting BATF agents. Yes, he actually said that. The psycho-talk coming from the media needs to be seriously considered. Maybe we could look at the example of what happened in Rwanda when talk radio personalities compared the Tutsis to cockroaches and that they needed to be exterminated. One of the things that should have been learned from Rwanda was that people are easily influenced through the shock of the zeitgeist. The here and now of fear can make people to crazy stuff.

Another woman’s story…

(LINK)
Instead of cinnamon and spice, our child came with technical terms like hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as it got. What they knew — that the baby would certainly be paralyzed and incontinent, that the baby’s brain was being tugged against the opening in the base of the skull and the cranium was full of fluid — was awful. What they didn’t know — whether the baby would live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects — was devastating. Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live. None of them would repair the damage that was already done…

Everyone said, of course it’s the right thing to do — even my Catholic father and my Republican father-in-law, neither of whom was ever “pro-choice.” Because suddenly, for them, it wasn’t about religious doctrine or political platforms. It was personal — their son, their daughter, their grandchild. It was flesh and blood, as opposed to abstract ideology, and that changed everything…

The doctor who performed my termination talks about the women he has helped through the years — the pregnant woman who was diagnosed with metastic melanoma and needed immediate chemotherapy, the woman who was carrying conjoined twins that had only one set of lungs and one heart, the woman whose baby had a three-chambered heart and would never live. Now, he is turning these women away. “Now, today, I can say no, but what is she going to do?” he says sadly. “What is she going to do?”

Another woman’s story…

(LINK)
But a routine ultrasound on October 26 — meant to be a time of great joy (my best friend came with us to the appointment — revealed terrible news: one of the twins had died, probably about a week before. We went from the ultrasound appointment to my obstetrician’s office and were met with even more grim news. My weight had spiked up about 18 pounds, my blood pressure was soaring, and I had protein in my urine.

It turned out that I was in full-blown preeclampsia. I was admitted to the hospital immediately.

After that, everything happened very quickly. I was put on medication (magnesium sulfate) in an attempt to treat the preeclampsia and save the remaining twin until he reached outside-the-womb viability — a mere two weeks away (I was just over 22 weeks pregnant). But I got much worse overnight; my blood pressure couldn’t be controlled, I had a massive headache and was vomiting uncontrollably. My kidneys shut down. I was moments away from seizures, coma, and death when the doctors came and told us the bad news: my remaining twin could not be saved. My pregnancy had to be terminated or both the baby and I would die…

Here’s the part of the story where choice comes in. I could, of course, have gone through induced labor and delivered my tiny twins. But my blood pressure was hovering around 165/120 (often going higher), even with treatment. Can you imagine what labor would have done to my body with blood pressure that high? My doctor recommended, and I agreed, that I undergo the much less stressful intact dilation and extraction procedure — what the “pro-life” forces often like to call a “partial birth abortion.”…

I was lucky because the partial-birth abortion ban was not yet in effect in October of 2004. If it had been, I would have been forced to undergo labor and delivery, no matter the risks to my health, and I might right now be either dead or so brain damaged I would be unable to type this.

Another woman’s story…

(LINK)
I could see my baby’s amazing and perfect spine, a precise, pebbled curl of vertebrae. His little round skull. The curve of his nose. I could even see his small leg floating slowly through my uterus.

My doctor came in a moment later, slid the ultrasound sensor around my growing, round belly and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not alive,” she said…

My doctor turned around and faced me. She told me that because dilation and evacuation is rarely offered in my community, I could opt instead to chemically induce labor over several days and then deliver the little body at my local maternity ward. “It’s up to you,” she said.

I’d been through labor and delivery three times before, with great joy as well as pain, and the notion of going through that profound experience only to deliver a dead fetus (whose skin was already starting to slough off, whose skull might be collapsing) was horrifying.

I also did some research, spoke with friends who were obstetricians and gynecologists, and quickly learned this: Study after study shows D&Es are safer than labor and delivery. Women who had D&Es were far less likely to have bleeding requiring transfusion, infection requiring intravenous antibiotics, organ injuries requiring additional surgery or cervical laceration requiring repair and hospital readmission.

I could feel my baby’s dead body inside of mine. This baby had thrilled me with kicks and flutters, those first soft tickles of life bringing a smile to my face and my hand to my rounding belly. Now this baby floated, limp and heavy, from one side to the other, as I rolled in my bed.

And within a day, I started to bleed. My body, with or without a doctor’s help, was starting to expel the fetus. Technically, I was threatening a spontaneous abortion, the least safe of the available options.

I did what any pregnant patient would do. I called my doctor. And she advised me to wait.

I lay in my bed, not sleeping day or night, trying not to lose this little baby’s body that my own womb was working to expel. Wait, I told myself. Just hold on. Let a doctor take this out.

On my fourth morning, with the bleeding and cramping increasing, I couldn’t wait any more. I called my doctor and was told that since I wasn’t hemorrhaging, I should not come in. Her partner, on call, pedantically explained that women can safely lose a lot of blood, even during a routine period.

I began calling labor and delivery units at the top five medical centers in my area. I told them I had been 19 weeks along. The baby is dead. I’m bleeding, I said. I’m scheduled for a D&E in a few days. If I come in right now, what could you do for me, I asked.

Don’t come in, they told me again and again. “Go to your emergency room if you are hemorrhaging to avoid bleeding to death. No one here can do a D&E today, and unless you’re really in active labor you’re safer to wait.”