Radical feminists and other blood-thirsty infanticide supporters must be crying in their collective beer right about now. Here’s a PDF copy of the opinion. Read more here.
(If you’re neither a radical feminist nor blood-thirsty, you shouldn’t be offended by the characterization.)
For the ignorant, a so-called partial birth abortion is a procedure in which a woman allows a “doctor” to pull her baby down the birth canal, delivering him partially to avoid murder charges (he’s considered a person in utero only if he’s “wanted,” you see), and inserting a probe or scissors into his skull, killing him. You’ve come a long way, baby!
More from me on this later…
Update: See “Intact” Infanticide.
Other bloggers: SCOTUS blog, Wizbang, Prolife Blogs (gruesome photo warning), California Conservative, Global Review, Blue Crab Boulevard, Captain Ed, “Okie” On The Lam…
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LaShawn, you know that you and I do not agree on everything with regard to abortion, but I can honestly say that I am very happy about this ruling.
Somehow, batyah, I thought you would. That procedure is particularly gruesome.
I’m glad to see this finally put to rest. It is a small victory for the unborn, but a victory none the less.
Thank God for this ruling and sane justices.
What I do not understand is how anyone can believe that whether an abortion is “allowable” or not depends entirely upon how you do it.
It is allowable to kill the foetus and then induce birth of a dead baby, but not to induce birth of a live baby, and then kill it.
Why does anyone believe that one of these is moral, but not the other?
I have two possible explanations:
1) Sentimentality. It is only a baby if you can hug it. A premature baby born at x weeks can be hugged. A non-premature baby still in the womb cannot be.
2) Sex politics.
Infanticide can be committed by either parent, but abortion can only be done at the wish of the mother. Allowing abortion but not infanticide maximises the power of the woman whilst minimising the power of the man.
This would be why abortion is a litmus test for feminists.
I have tried to think of less cynical explanations, but without success. Does anyone have any other ideas?
Excellent news indeed, made even more immediate to me, since we are now the proud grandparents of a week old boy. The mere thought of anything happening to that kid, now or during the past 9 months, gives me cold chills. And the idea of anyone deliberately taking that precious life is simply unthinkable.
This is such awesome news, La Shawn. Join me in an enthusiastic “WHOOPEE!”?
On aspect of “partial birth abortion” has always confounded me. Why do those who favor it get so squishy about killing the baby if it slips out before the killing can be effected?
In all rational honesty, I can not understand how holding the birth up while killing the baby is more desireable and honorable than just taking the baby in hand and destroying its life outside of the “mother.”
Lest anyone misunderstand me, all of abortion is abhorent to me.
I would think a “mother” would rather have the chapter of the SPCA devoted to humans come by and pick up the unwanted baby long before settling on partial birth abortion.
La Shawn, I believe that the sin/stain of abortion is one for which God will hold this generation accountable. Millstones and oceans.
The practice is barbaric and unworthy of a civilized nation. It is cold-blooded murder, plain and simple.
I wonder how much our modern culture, which places so much lower a value on human life than in former times, has generated the disconnect that creates our mass murderers such as Mr. Cho.
I find it interesting that in both Hillary and Obama’s responses to the decision, they chastise the Court for not being consistent with their previous rulings. The ultimate “consistency” would be to outlaw ALL abortions entirely. Is that what Hillary and Obama want? Be careful what you ask for, Senators.
now ,if only the concerned women for america and other pro-life supporters would turn their attention toward environmental pollutants and the affect they have on the fetus and the human reproductive system.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3024044&page=1
its not just about the fetus, nor is it just about the child when he or she is out of the womb. It’s about both.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3024044&page=1
Now, if only environmentalists would turn their attention to protecting baby humans with as much vigor as they do baby seals.
“Save the whales” – O.K. “Protect the Environment” – fine. So how about a little “Save the Baby Humans” and “Protect the Unborn”?
How could anyone, any human, be in favor of this procedure?
How does this procedure possible protect the life of the mother?
If ever there was doubt in your mind that Democrtas are EVIL, let there no longer be doubt.
Abortion during the first trimester in which the fetus is not viable outside the mother can be argued to actually be a woman’s choice because the baby is still part of her body.
But the cold-blooded murder of a viable infant is just disgusting. To think that there are people in America today that actually support this amazes me.
JIllary, Obama and Edwards should be forced to look into a trashcan of dead full-term babies killed in this manner and then tell me about how THIS is a woman’s Consitutional right!
The other incredible thing is that I see we have 100,000 of these murders each year in America (my god, who are the doctors that do this each day, every day?)
What do you do for a living? I kill babies, and you?
And yet, it is almost impossible for a young deserving and desperate couple to adopt and infant today.
Why not just give birth to the child and immediately put it up for adoption?
Hillary Clinton, Obama and Edwards actually favor this? OMG, incredible.
What could go through the mind of a doctor performing this act? Al Mohler recently posted about a backlash in England against abortion by the doctors themselves. A “crisis” in the abortion industry. Let’s hope it comes across the pond.
Who could ever do that to a little baby? I hope that it’s outlawed for good.
Mark La Roi,
I have a vivid memory of a conversation I overheard on a train several years ago between four nurses.
The nurses mentioned working in a room where abortions were done, and how it made them and other nurses uncomfortable to be in that room. One of them hurried to say she supported a woman’s right to choose, but still, helping someone carry out that choice seemed to make them uncomfortable.
On my job people tell us their life stories, and one that stands out is a woman who had multiple abortions. She said even the doctor who performed them told her not to keep getting them, and should look into birth control instead. I have the impression that abortion doctors who see repeat clients are unhappy about that. The discomfort is already here.
What I don’t understand is why anyone dreamed up partial birth abortion in the first place. I don’t believe there’s a medical justification, as I have never heard of it being imposed upon women who want their children (in contrast to an ectopic pregnancy where women have to have an abortion or die). The idea behind it is just too gruesome for words.
Praise God for this decision. It obviously doesn’t go far enough, but at least some children will be saved. In these dark days, when the sun breaks through it is reason for all of us to rejoice!
-Ben
When I first brought up Dr. Martin Haskell’s brutal procedure in 1992 to a group of folks, they were so vested in promoting abortion that they would not acknowledge that this was happening and would deny it angrily. Amazing!
Don’t know what came of it, but medical schools in New York were pressuring medical students. If they truly believed in choice whould they need to try to force others into doing this against their wills?
Cannot conceive of the attitude that gets someone involved with partial birth (or any other abortion) into a frame of mind where death of children is essential to their religion.
Thanks for the graphics, La Shawn.
Any & every one contemplating any form of abortion should be made to see techni-color video of the various procedures. Afterwards, be made to see the ultrasounds of their own God-given baby.
If they still want to go ahead, so be it. Our conscience would be clear.
Just as long as they understand they do so on their own dime.
Mark La Roi @ 25, if you think that’s bad, think of that sicko abortionist in Kansas City that ate body parts in his chili. Supposedly the DA looked into it but couldn’t charge him with anything.
Frankly, freaks like that have it made. A license for mayhem, blood & gore and for some, the opportunity to indulge in cannibalism. No need to go out in a blaze of glory like Cho, when you can perform a “useful” function as an upstanding member of society. SICK!
LaShawn,
I have never seen those pictures before (of aborted babies). I am absolutely floored.
Why are educators so adamantly opposed to keeping those pictures out of health classes? Never mind, I think we all know why.
Those are truly chilling.
I don’t see how anyone can justify something so horrible, and I agree with Bill and Mark–what kind of “doctor” could do such a horrible thing? It’s nothing less than pure insanity when people are lining up to defend something like this. And they always throw “life of the mother” and “health care” into it, when you know good and well that most abortions committed in this country have absolutely NOTHING to do with a woman’s “health.” It’s sick, emotionally charged rhetoric and too many babies die every day because so many people line up like sheep to buy the garbage spewing from the pro-abortion lobby. Yes, I said “pro-abortion,” not “pro-choice;” that term is a lie usurped by people who make a lot of money by providing abortions and I don’t use it, ever.
Sorry for all the vitriol, but this subject gets to me more than anything else.
It would be my guess that most average Americans who say they “support” partial birth abortion have NO IDEA what the procedure entails.
If they did, they would be horrified.
Most Americans hear abortion and they imagine a doctor sucking a fetus the size of your fingernail out of the mother’s womb. “Well that’s hardly worse than a mother having her period”, they say.
But this? This is horrific.
I think there is on over-riding problem in American morality that we see here.
“If it can’t speak to complain, we have a right to kill it…”
If farm animals could beg for their lives in English, would we slaughter them? If aborted babies could scream out “stop, that hurts!” would we abort them?
But because they cannot speak to defend themselves, our consciences are clear.
I just wrote about this, I am so happy that the Supreme Court to a small step forward.
I am so sick of women claiming that this is our right . Sick.
I go into detail about this feminism bomb that is still exploding every day on my blog.
Myself @32, here’s a couple of links on that sicko
TOPEKA – State Attorney General Phill Kline presented materials to legislators Thursday alleging that a Kansas City, Kan., abortion provider operated a dangerously substandard medical facility and even ate fetal tissue…
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/news/local/8553710.htm”
h/t Abortion Clinic Cannibalism?
Now, tell me this verse doesn’t describe pro-abortion Christians:
Mat 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
This world is full of sick (in mind & spirit) and evil, twisted people:
Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
So, If a Baby’s Heart is Beating, but There is No One There to Hear it, is the Baby Still Alive?
#22 Bill
“How does this procedure possible protect the life of the mother?”
Do you really want to know? I can give you the medical rationale, which has nothing to do with saving life, but beware, it’s pretty gruesome. WARNING. Only proceed if you are really curious.
When a fetus is this large, it has to be dismembered before a D&E can be done (sucking it out with a machine). Dismembering a substantial sized fetus requires a lot of chopping around inside the uterus with sharp instruments. The risk of puncturing the uterus and causing a severe complication (bleeding, emergency hysterectomy) is fairly significant. So, to avoid this risk, an “intact dilation and evacuation” or IDX, otherwise known as a partial-birth abortion, would be done. Passing most of the fetus’s body through the cervix is obviously less risky than having sharp instruments inside the uterus, but since a woman’s body is designed to give birth with the fetal head presenting first, having what is, in effect, a breech presentation can create problems in the abortion just as it does in delivery. The cervix in normal labor tends to clamp down after it perceives something passing through. If it is the head first, and the cervix clamps down, no problem, because the body, which is smaller than the head, can still pass through. But if the body goes first, and the cervix clamps down, now the head is stuck. In a breech birth of a fullterm infant, you might apply traction to get it delivered. Babies are born breech all the time but doctors still try to avoid it at all cost. But fetal tissue is very friable (delicate) and the head could come off if you pull on the body, (sorry if too graphic!), which would result in having to go in with sharp instruments to retrieve it, which is what the IDX was supposed to prevent in the first place. So . . . the head has to be “collapsed” so it will pass out of the body more easily.
Eek, is all I have to say.
The news article I read said that this procedure is done after 21 weeks. I have been out of nursing for a number of years but I’m pretty sure that that is totally wrong. IDX (partial-birth abortion with instruments used outside the uterus) or D&E (dilation and evacuation involving sharp instruments inside the uterus) are done for abortions at between 15 to 19 weeks, and after 20 weeks, a saline abortion is done where the mother delivers the (now dead) fetus whole. Saline abortions are not done prior to 20 weeks because the chances are too great that the uterus in early pregnancy won’t be able to expel it.
So that’s it, folks. Unless there is an OB here or a nurse with more current knowledge than mine, who can shed light on this, I don’t really see why IDX was ever medically necessary except to avoid complications to the mother’s uterus. And from a rigid pro-life standpoint where all abortion is abhorrent, I am not sure why the abortion method matters to you, in terms of one type being worse than another. Can someone explain? I mean, I get it that the yuk factor is far greater with this type of abortion, but other than that, what does this specific victory mean to you?
By the way, a number of you have asked, “how could a doctor do this?” Once an OB/Gyn leaves residency, they can choose not to do abortion as part of their practice, but during residency, they are expected to get experience doing D&C’s and D&E’s because they will surely have patients who have suffered a fetal demise and who, for whatever reason, cannot depend upon the fetus to pass in a completed miscarriage. In an OB/Gyn residency program, there are a number of residents needing experience and perhaps not enough miscarriage patients to provide it. Now, obviously, if a resident is pro-life then they can refuse to do abortions, but they will have to make a concerted effort to get D&C and D&E experience in some other way. You don’t want OBs out there who are incompetent. I myself had to have 5 D&C’s for incomplete miscarriages. Waiting it out could mean the products of conception never passes, leading to a serious infection, or that the nausea could continue for a couple of weeks until passing the pregnancy, not to mention the psychic anguish of walking around with a much loved but dead baby inside you. I was really glad to have OBs who knew how to do this procedure with skill.
When I worked in OB, we had a Christian resident who refused to do abortions but I respected him because he didn’t exploit the opportunity to get political, just calmly asked how to solve the problem of getting in his D&C and D&E procedure experience. It was decided that he would have to agree to be on call for any miscarriages, and he also agreed to do the post saline abortion D&C’s (no fetus was involved so he wasn’t participating in the abortion, just the after care).
Another female resident who had been firmly pro-choice confided in me that at a certain point, she realized that all she was doing was killing babies, and she had entered this profession because she loved babies and the miracle of gestation and birth. Mid-residency, she refused to do them as well, though said that in her practice, she would do abortions if she felt they were necessary according to her perception of morality. A lot of people here might scoff at her for saying that, but I respected it, since I am not opposed to ALL abortion.
A law banning a barbaric practice was found to be Constitutional, and my friendly local Planned Parenthood employee is calling this “a great loss for women’s rights” and ranting and raving about how we’re all just baby-making vessels to be used by the government.
If we’re lucky enough to get born in the first place. That the majority of abortions world-wide are of girls, simply because they’re girls, seems not to have registered.
“That the majority of abortions world-wide are of girls, simply because they’re girls, seems not to have registered.”
Oh come on, Radish! Haven’t you heard of the Queen Bee Syndrome?
Planned Parenthood was invited to my friend’s daughter’s junior high school to speak about “sexuality.” Can you imagine? Talking to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, not about menstruation or physiology, but about sex? My friend pulled her daughter out of the talk and took some flack for it, but later she heard that the idiot from PP showed up with all-over body piercings and pink hair and proceeded to talk to the girls about . . .masturbation!
True story.
I find I have the same “yuck” factor with all abortion. Anyone with a medical knowledge of the development of the human fetus, cannot help but have misgivings about the dismemberment of a tiny person with a beating heart and its own unique set of fingerprints. Any movement toward protecting unborn babies under the law, however, is progress in the right direction and reason to celebrate.
#46 Susannah
Thanks for responding — I hope I didn’t come across in my comment as someone who isn’t disgusted by this procedure, because I certainly am. It is far worse than an earlier abortion, in my view. But my views on abortion are not entirely in line with pro-life movement, so I simply wondered what it means to you who are in the pro-life movement.
Who was it– the American Pediatrics Association?– who issued a statement years back saying that there was NO situation where a partial birth abortion was “safer for the mother’s health” than a ceasarian, given that MOST of the trauma of childbirth (the “mother’s health” issue) is present in the PBA procedure, but with an additional emotional trauma added?
If the APA (if they were the ones who issued that statement) are right, I’ve often wondered, how many women with genuine medical problems were swept into the decision to have a PBA when a ceasarian would have been a safer choice, AND would have saved the baby’s life.
An excellent decision on the part of the Supreme Court!
batyah… excellent commentaries
.
re: “And from a rigid pro-life standpoint where all abortion is abhorrent, I am not sure why the abortion method matters to you, in terms of one type being worse than another. Can someone explain? I mean, I get it that the yuk factor is far greater with this type of abortion, but other than that, what does this specific victory mean to you?”
This particular method is an abomination to me particularly because of the cold calculation involved in the murder.
You see, the reason the head is left inside the mother is because those few inches are the difference between a “fetus” and a citizen with all the rights of the protection of the law.
The head being inside the mother is the difference between “birth” and death.
And that is COLD beyond understanding.
This is a great day for the pro-life movement. We have Senator Sam Brownback to thank for rejecting the Miers nomination and getting Justice Alito on the court.
mamapajamas @#50: “…The head being inside the mother is the difference between “birth†and death.”
For the abortionist, those few seconds are the difference between an abortion and a murder charge.
The Roe v Wade court gave an inch with the 1st trimester rule, and Klanned Parenthood took it to the last mile measured in split second timing.
Next, they’ll want the 1st trimester of post-birth as their inch. THIS is the slippery slope of the death culture.
Then we have mealy-mouthed & truly venal political hacks like Harry Reid, a Mormon who voted twice for PB bans, now comes out regretting the “activism” of Alito & friends in putting us on that slippery slope to preventing all abortions — Ah yeah, blame Bush!!
No wonder moonbats go postal. It’s the politics of convenience, stupid — principle be damned. The phrase, “Honor among thieves”, comes to mind.
Day after day, the nutroots are peppered with propaganda to hate the rich, hate the pro-life, hate this, hate that. Then they see their fearless (feckless) leader vote against their mantra, then blithely flip-flop and act shocked, shocked that a blow against women’s rights has been upheld.
“On my job people tell us their life stories, and one that stands out is a woman who had multiple abortions. She said even the doctor who performed them told her not to keep getting them, and should look into birth control instead. I have the impression that abortion doctors who see repeat clients are unhappy about that. The discomfort is already here.”
~We’ve all got a conscience, we can either condition it to respond or try and bury it. I’m glad to hear of some who still respond.
“Mark La Roi @ 25, if you think that’s bad, think of that sicko abortionist in Kansas City that ate body parts in his chili. Supposedly the DA looked into it but couldn’t charge him with anything.”
~Astounding what can be done to/with infants all depending upon the desires of the mother.
Mark Le Roi, it doesn’t always come down to “the desires of the mother.” I get really annoyed when I read so many comments that convey that attitude. Some women ARE amoral, immoral, selfish to the extreme, and lacking in values, or just plain unaware — agreed. But not all. I think everyone here who finds it very easy to condemn and stereotype women seeking abortion needs to have a reality check.
I worked in a hospital for two years, both on the gyn floor (2nd trimester abortions) and the gyn clinic (1st trimester abortions) and I can tell you that in AT LEAST HALF of the cases, the women were being intimidated, coerced, or “strongly encouraged” by the “man” in their life. They wanted the baby; he didn’t.
Now, you may not have much sympathy for that because it’s easy to say “no one held a gun to her head,” and “this is murder, after all,” but think of these women in the same category as domestic abuse victims. A smaller subset of them even allow the men to do horrible things to them and to their children. But many more feel powerless, lacking the self esteem or courage to break out from under the man’s control, may have other small children with him, and aren’t emotionally or financially equipped to sue for divorce and leave him, etc. It doesn’t matter what race or social class they are part of.
The scenarios ran the gamut from outright abuse in every aspect, to relationships in which the man was not necessarily abusive but nonetheless wielded too much power over decision-making. We tried to uncover these situations as much as we could and then sent them to our “abortion social worker,” who seemed so nice and empathetic, but I later found out that the idiot was basically approving all cases no matter what she heard behind closed doors. Her job was supposed to be to find out if a woman really wanted the abortion herself or if she was being pressured, and if she was capable of making the decision, etc. I can tell you that she failed miserably at this job because her underlying agenda was to keep the assembly line going and to “empower” women to have abortions. (And I make this accusation against her as a pro-choice person myself.) There was not much we could do because once the patient got a clue that we might send her away if we detected any ambivalence, she would pretend like this is what she really wanted because she was terrified of what her “man” would do to her if she showed up back at home still pregnant. The social worker could have dealt more effectively with this situation than we frazzled nurses could, but that wasn’t her idea of what her job was about, apparently.
Just please bear in mind that not all abortions are due to women’s desire to “kill their babies for their own convenience.” In my experience, many of them didn’t want to be doing what they were doing. How do I know this? I worked in women’s health (non abortion area) for several years, where part of our intake medical questionaire involved asking about past pregnancy losses and how the woman was dealing with it now. I was not surprised that in a large percentage of the cases, the woman felt grief over the loss of the baby, and many would get tearful even though the abortion happened YEARS ago. Why did they do it? “Because my boyfriend/husband didn’t want it.”
Anti-abortion groups who try to provide practical help and emotional support to women seeking abortion should be very aware of the male influence (I hope that they are already). I’m not trying to shift all the blame to men and I’m not a feminazi, nor do I want to entirely remove personal responsibility, but this is a reality. Not every woman is hooked into a supportive church network, nor does every woman have supportive parents or siblings who just can’t wait to welcome a new baby. She is often totally ALONE in dealing with this crisis.
If it shocks you that a woman could “do this to her baby,” realize that your instinct is right on and that probably, most women really don’t want to lose their babies. Yes, indeed, how COULD a woman do that (except for specific extenuating circumstances, which I can totally understand and hence why I am not in the pro-life camp)? If you really probe that question, you will find that often her first impulse is to keep the baby, but the man in her life doesn’t want it.
On a final note, I went with a friend to a pro-life “clinic” that offered baby equipment, diapers, clothes, etc, as well as (supposedly)emotional counseling by volunteers. The counseling was more on the order of “bimbo cheerleading” by sheltered volunteer women who had no clue about the kinds of lives their clients lived. This was many years ago and I hope and pray they have become more sophisticated, but the counselors were volunteers and TOTALLY unequipped to assess a situation and make a plan of action. Comments were made like “just remind your husband how much he will love the baby once it’s here” or “hang in there! you’ll get through the rough patch.” I mean, I am embarrassed just to think back on it, how naive and ineffectual these volunteers were. Videos of kicking babies in utero were shown to make the woman feel more attached to her baby and guilty for considering abortion, but that only made the situation worse for women whose real problem was NOT connecting to the baby, but trying to deal with a coercive male or a missing support system. What was needed were some tough, law saavy, psychologically skilled volunteers who could route the woman (if she was indeed in a scary, coercive situation) into temporary housing while she collects her thoughts, get her legal counsel, psychological counseling to explore the depression she will feel if she goes through with something that she doesn’t want or that goes against her morals, all for a “man,” get her financial aid if she doesn’t have a job, and basically treat her situation as one would treat a domestic abuse situation. That’s a tall order, I know. But if you are going to offer real help, offer the help that is needed for that woman’s situation. Because I can guarantee you that men who coerce women into abortion are not mollified by offers of free diapers, “Gee hon, how great that we got this loaner crib! Everything will be all right now.”
Surely there are enough women who were victims of male coercion, feel bad about their abortion experience, and are now pro-life. They might make better volunteers, with the right training.
Gosh, I apologize for taking up so much space! Sorry, LaShawn.
Batyah, one thing that might lead people to lay blame at the feet of women is the strident abortion-pushing agenda of organizations like NOW and various female abortion-pushing advocates in media. The battle cries always seem to be related to the woman, angrily asserting her “right” to do whatever she wants with her body, and blaming men for, well, just about everything.
In real life, I’m sure you are right that there are some irresponsible and cruel men pushing their women into abortions. This is unforgivable. These cretins get their green light from other congressional pro-abortion thugs like Teddy Kennedy.
Perhaps there have always been cold, unfeeling, immoral men who have wanted to make the babies “go away.” But in past generations, they did not have the willing complicity of the mothers like we have today.
Women used to function as the civilizing influence, the gatekeepers of morality, the ones who tamed the savage beasts. I liked that system. I liked the fact that my wife, when she was my girlfriend all those years ago, defined my rules of behavior toward her. I like the fact that she has always considered abortion to be murder, and would have given up her own life to defend our children from harm, before and after birth.
Our society has lost something very precious in recent decades.
Redbeard, all good points. The Talmud tells a parable about a couple who gets divorced after 10 years of marriage. The husband goes on to remarry, this time to a wicked woman, and he becomes wicked as well. The wife goes on to remarry, this time to a wicked man, and the man becomes good.
True, all true.
To borrow a phrase from Tim Allen, one that is uncomfortably accurate, “Men are pigs.” Which means, by logical extension, that we need women to keep us cleaned up. 
Redbeard, but I love my pig!
He’s a very, very good pig.
Batyah and Redbeard;
I was robbed yesterday, and yet, the two of you have just made me smile. T’anks!
Goodness, Jan! I hope you are okay. I’m sorry about the robbery. That’s awful.
I can back up both Mark and Batyah on this. Some of the women who give us their histories will report getting an abortion on the grounds of convenience.
But the other half get them because they have an abusive husband/boyfriend, and for whatever reason won’t stand up to him. One woman knew she had fertility issues and only had a small window of her lifetime to have children, but aborted her child anyway because her loser husband wanted more money for “things.”
I was unaware there was any kind of counseling for the second type, but I’m sorry to hear it wasn’t effective. It does seem that the “abortion empowers women” argument ignores that those “evil patriarchal men” actually gain the upper hand over women, which is ironic, considering.
By the way…I love the banter of people happily married. I only see failed marriages so I have to always remind myself there are good marriages out there.
Tyrian, where I worked was a large state hospital and research center/medical school. We served everyone from VIPs to the indigent. This was back in the early 1980’s. It was my first job so I didn’t know any better, just thought that every abortion provider offered counseling! Maybe they had an extra social worker that they needed to find a position for, I don’t know. I don’t really know what the practice is in the “abortion community” with regard to offering counseling. I presume it’s mostly about making the woman feel good about her decision, and I suspect the focus would be more on talking about those bad people who make her feel guilty vs. talking about those bad people who are making her do something she’d rather not do.
Jan, we need a status report. Are you ok? Did they catch the thug?
“Mark Le Roi, it doesn’t always come down to “the desires of the mother.†I get really annoyed when I read so many comments that convey that attitude. Some women ARE amoral, immoral, selfish to the extreme, and lacking in values, or just plain unaware — agreed. But not all. I think everyone here who finds it very easy to condemn and stereotype women seeking abortion needs to have a reality check.”
~That’s LA Roi actually. I’m not forgetting about the abuse women can go through in this situation. My mother was abused by my father, and I suffered part of her ordeal as well. I’ve made some terrible choices in life based on outside influences, including asking my then-girlfriend to have an abortion because I didn’t want a child at the time. (This was before Christ saved me and I acknowledged the value of life. I had no pretensions at the time: it was me or the kid and since I was stronger, I “won”. I was a scuz.)
The thing is, I’ve learned that most of life is choice, no matter what influences that choice. If a man slaps me in the face, I can slap him back, walk away, do a little jig to make him think I’m nuts…anything. It’s my choice.
When my ex-boss asked me to sign my name to something illegal that was unlikely to ever come to light, I could have done it and moved on, but I didn’t and spent some hungry days looking for a new job.
Every choice is made with consideration of the consequence, and as unloving as this may sound even the abused, confused, terrified person is making a choice based on consideration for the consequences. Even the mother with an ectopic pregnancy is making a choice for an abortion if she has one. Sure, it’s easy to understand why she made that choice, but it’s still a choice. In all likelihood she would die if she didn’t make the choice, but as long as she isn’t strapped down and assaulted to complete the procedure, it’s still a choice.
I’m not in any way freeing the fathers of aborted children of their responsibility, because if they’d kept their pants closed the situation wouldn’t even exist. I just realize that the vast majority of women who have abortions aren’t victims of abortion, they’re sufferers of their bad decision.
To this day I suffer from extremely thin blood vessels in my nose because of drug abuse, and I bleed a little every time I blow my nose. I could be angry with the person who immersed me in the lifestyle I led, and I do hold that person to a rightful degree of responsibility. At the same time, in order to past the memories of that life and really heal I had to recognize that I made the choice to take them. I made the choice to listen, no matter how powerful that person’sinfluence was in my life, and that influence was nearly total.
In “Lean on Me” Morgan Freeman’s character uttered the memorable line “I don’t have to do nothin’ but stay Black and die.” To a large degree that is true. Even with a gun pointed at your head your decision to obey or fight is still yours.
Again, please understand that I’m not saying throw these women out with the trash or that they are irrevocably evil, nor am I saying that they shouldn’t have someone who knows what love is try and share with them how to know and preserve life.
I’m just saying that choice is still choice, right or wrong, despite the outside influence.
If it helps elucidate my point, the people in my life who helped me most were sympathetic to my plight and very loving toward me, but even while acknowledging the powerful influeces of the people around me they never, ever let me think that my actions weren’t the result of the choices I made.
I love them all so much for teaching me that.
I have a question
I have a uterine defect that I did not know about until I got pregnant, and most women that half such a defect don’t know until they get pregnant because there is no way to tell if its there until your doctor has a reason to ultrasound your uterus. So my baby was there, on one side. I have essentially a uterus that is split in half and only one side can hold a baby at a time. In my case luckily both my halfs are even and my one side was able to stretch far enough for the baby grow enough to thrive without me going into premature labor, and she didn’t have the growth restrictive deformaties that can occur with this defect. However in many cases one side of the uterus is two small for the baby to grow to much of anything but maybe a 20 week old fetus if even that, and the growing baby explodes that part of the uterus, tearing it open, and falls into the adominal cavity causing immediate death to the baby and death and/or total destruction of the mother’s uterus.
Now by the grace of God I didn’t fall into that later category,but if I did should I not have been allowed to have an abortion? Or should I just have continued the pregnancy and wait for the trauma that was about to happen? If I had had twins I probably could not have continued the pregnancy.
Z, the issue has never been about genuine theraputic abortions that might be required to save the life of the mother. The issue, at its heart, is about callous use of abortion as a form of birth control, and specifically about the shocking butchery termed “partial birth” abortion.
I’m going to admit something here. I accompanied for and paid for an abortion for my daughter..it was first trimester..it was a mixed race pregnancy. I won’t go into all the details but my husband (grandfather of the child) would have gone ballistic. Well, God wasn’t done with us! Daughter got pregnant again with mixed race child from same father. This was an abusive relationship. The first time I was ok with abortion, the second time neither me nor my daughter could handle it. She was born…I was bedside at the birth of my beautiful biracial granddaughter..she’s 9 today…her father is not in the picture (another story). I love my gdaughter with all my heart. I can’t imagine life without her.
The first child, who was he/she? I know I would have loved him/her the same. We made a big mistake. We have asked God for forgiveness over and over again.
This abortion business has got to stop. It eats at our soul. It is cruel. A partial birth abortion is beyond comprehension to me, but we have to think beyond that. A woman’s right to choose is a woman’s right to kill. God forgive us and help us all.
Redbeard
My problem with the supereme court ruling is that it doeesn’t take into account medical emergencies at all. I feel like, with many anti-abortion people and what I sometimes see on this blog, is that they can’t fathom a situation where an abortion might be warranted.
You know that “abortion as a form of birth control” is ambiguous. Do you mean “abortion in lieu of birth control” or “abortion when birth control fails”?
Z… the law the Supreme Court upheld most certainly DOES support the woman’s right to life.
It allows PBAs for emergency situations where the mother’s life is at risk, but ONLY those situations. It does NOT allow for “emotional” issues, which the “women’s health” issue is all about. It’s the wording that counts. The “women’s health” issue being pushed by feminists has long been expanded to include “psychiatric health”, which would allow a woman to get a PBA for any reason down to “cold feet” at the last minute before birth.
The law the Supreme Court just upheld allows only for “physical danger” to the mother, which is exactly how it SHOULD be worded to avoid the “cold feet” trap.
I have a photo of my new grandson, one minute old, being held by the doctor. It’s a miraculous and wonderful thing to behold. How can anyone look at that and then justify the killing of such a child just prior to birth? Hillary, Obama, Edwards, care to try to explain your support of out-and-out barbarism and butchery?
It’s a sick world out there, and getting sicker. As this degeneracy builds, I find myself hoping for that big asteroid to hit.
Barrack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton “claim” they are all “christians, yet I can’t figure out why these “so called” christian would be against the supreme court upholding the partial birth abortion ban. Liberals are christians in name only it seems.
In name only, and when it suits their political ambitions. Phony, disingenuous, pandering; it’s a lot like Hillary and her fake southern accent that she recently adopted again. [insert rolling eyes here]
“As this degeneracy builds, I find myself hoping for that big asteroid to hit.”
And I thought the uber-left homo-sap hating eco-warriors had the whole ‘Roll on Armageddon Cuz Humans Don’t Deserve To Live’ thing totally covered
Well, they can’t be wrong about everything.
And as usual the liberals are whinning about it and doing this poppycock about coathangers and these are the same jerks who scream bloody murder when they want to drill in the ANWR because it will hurt the polar bears SCREW THE LIBERAL TREE HUGGERS GRANOLA MUNCHERS
A lot of liberals I know (I know plenty, I used to BE one!) really believe that partial birth abortion is an extremely rare procedure used only in cases where the baby will die shortly after birth or to save the mother’s life. Myself, I have done quite a bit of surfing and searching and have found testimony from actual abortionists who declare the exact opposite. I was shocked to discover just how many of these abortions are elective and performed on a perfectly healthy baby. I have tried to explain to a few of my friends just what partial birth abortion entails…and they stop me. Perhaps this is part of the problem…once you know exactly what partial birth abortion is, how can you possibly support it?
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