The story horrified me. I am pro-choice for a number of reasons. Simplest being, I was raised that way by a very liberal mother who (my drunken father, not my mother told me) she herself has had an abortion. She told me, if it wasn’t legal it would still happen, only girls would be dying. True.

I have had a couple friends who have had them. I love my friends, I stick by their choice. I know it doesn’t make them bad people.

Fact is, now a mother myself, I would not (could not!) have an abortion. I would find it morally wrong for myself. I know what it is like to carry a child, to birth one, to raise one. But I think that the choice to have a child, or not, should be up to the individual. It is a choice they will have to live with and not one that I can understand or have a right to judge.

I feel sorry for those girls and women that have to make that decision. I don’t think it is ever an easy one. My heart goes out to them.

Like Autumn, I am so happy I never had to make that decision and feel badly for anyone who has to.

If there’s one thing that makes me really angry about this it’s the fact that so many people simply refuse to use protection. I would like to stop as many pregnancies as possible ahead of time.

I still don’t see that there’s anything here to be angry or upset about other than the fact that this girl went in for a legal medical procedure that was horrifyingly mishandled. The inappropriateness of the actions of the medical staff across the board here seems enough from where I stand to have their licenses revoked entirely.

It doesn’t make me any less comfortable with abortion being legally available to women – and I type that as a woman currently pregnant with her first child. I would want to have the choice to go forward (or not) with this pregnancy, and once I had made that choice I would want that choice handled with the same professionalism and respect extended by medical teams to patients who choose all manner of other medicaly proceudures. For me, that’s the bottom line.

Do I think there are women who have abortions and then suffer emotionally even if the abortion went as planned? Sure. Just as I think there are women out there who hate the idea of ending their pregnancies but feel it necessary or proper for them for any NUMBER of reasons, whether those reasons be medical or not. Just because you have an abortion doesn’t mean you don’t equate the fetus with a living breathing person, people have abortions for many, many reasons.

So I have to disagree with your argument that maybe pro lifers see this as the way an abortion is supposed to go. Because that’s flawed right from the outset. Pro lifers may think that abortion is flat out murder, but that DOESN’T mean that it should ever, ever, EVER go the way it did for this woman.

I guess the easiest way to back up my argument on that is that there are a lot of pro lifers who fight for laws that would require a pregnant woman to have and to watch an ultrasound before the decision could be made to abort. I think that’s abhorrent. Yes, pro lifers may disagree with the availability of the choice to end a pregnancy, but it doesn’t mean they get to decide that it ‘should’ be any more emotionally painful for a woman than it already is in many cases.

This is getting long, so I’ll stop there! I do hope you leave the post up this time though!

I didn’t know you could even HAVE an abortion at 23 weeks. FIVE MONTHS?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?

I think it’s crazy that she’s suing, but at the same time I’ll tell you what I am angry about: why in the hell would anyone on this planet who is in a MEDICAL profession (and took an oath to “first do no harm”) place a living, breathing, newborn fetus INTO A BIOHAZARD BAG?!? THAT was not the correct way to go about this. Falsifying records after that was done, if they were indeed falsified, was not the correct way to go about this. I question his judgment as a physician if that’s the decision he made under pressure.

As for this partial birth, late-term abortion stuff, if this is what abortion is about, then I am pro-life. Sorry… as liberal and normally pro-choice as I am, this is not okay with me.

I know that they have late-term abortions when the mother’s life is in danger or the baby is going to die anyway and I can understand that, but to do it just because? Well, that might make me lose sleep at night.

Personally, I see this as a failure of the medical professionals to do what was appropriate and this is absolutely the sort of thing someone should lose their license over. Also, where was the MD? He wasn’t even at the office when all of this was happening.

It’s just a sad situation all around.

Opponents? Is the pro-life vs pro-choice issue a violent game? Or an all-out war?

I personally sit on a fence, I actually agree with both sides and I am disgusted and saddened by the wrath with which both sides are constantly trying to attack, deface, or one-up the other.

Pro-lifers will always be pro-lifers, pro-choicers will always be pro-choicers. Sure, under circumstances an individual’s opinion will change and this story may sway a lot of minds (in both directions, I think) but it’s not like there will ever be a victory for either side.

I am an idealist. BIG idealist. In my world the Pro-C would be able to have their choices without the Pro-Ls telling them they’re evil or murderers and the Pro-L could want babies live without the Pro-Cers telling them they’re oppressed or fanatics.

How did it become any one else’s business what either side did? How did the using of people and situations become public fodder for fueling the fire of pointing and screaming?

I’m an idealist but I’m not an idiot. I know it’s human nature to stick our noses in others’ business and to get passionate about beliefs and to try to defend them but where did respect fall out of the equation? Curiosity? sure. Blatant manipulation of incidents to righteously shove in another’s face? Shitty.

It goes beyond a pro-life, pro-choice stance and into medical ethics. Because the staff and the doctor here are at such a terrible fault. Yes. Yes, I totally will be judge, jury and executioner.

This part: “Two search warrants found nothing, but officers executing a third warrant “found the decomposing body of a baby in a cardboard box in a closet,” the suit said.” Just goes to show what these people were trying to cover up a serious error and that what the did was wrong and they knew it!

Obviously this poor girl (and yeah she is a girl, 18 by age does not equal maturity) had no clue what happens to a fetus at 23 weeks. How at that gestational age it can be considered “viable” and neither did the medical staff. Where was her family? Her mother? Why didn’t anyone try to educate her on what she was doing? I can’t even choose a birth control without getting packet on the side effects of it and here she is just getting a medical procedure done without any sort of talking to? There has to be way more to this story tan what we’re hearing.

In the end, there are just so many things wrong with this whole situation that I don’t think you can group it into either pro-life or pro-choice. It has to have it’s own unique category. A big giant FAIL all around.

My problem is with the people who consider abortion a quick and mess-free choice. This girl was very young and I wonder if she just wanted to get rid of her "problem" and get on with her youth. I'm making bad judgments, of course, but I really wish people would really think before choosing abortion. I think some pro-lifers go about it the wrong way by being crude assholes, but I also think some of my fellow pro-choice people tend to make it seem like a quick and easy thing...like having tonsils removed. I know that many women DO agonize over the decision, and I will always fight to give them the right to make a decision and make a choice, but I would like something to make them understand that what they are about to do is not necessarily as easy to endure as they may think. I think the whole ultrasound-before-abortion idea is the wrong thing. Women just need to be warned in some sort of humane way that maybe they're not going to be as ok with an abortion as they may think. This girl is certainly not the first to be surprised at how horrifying an abortion can be, although her circumstances are really terrible. But, she made her choice.

To give the child a name after she chose to have it aborted, after she decided that she was going to get rid of it is hypocritical. I DO think that pro-lifers may latch on to this, however. I once worked with a conservative pro-lifer who, on a regular basis, would pass out pamphlets full of the personal stories of women who had had abortions and later regretted it...along with the whole religious schpeel.

I made this way too long. Sorry. It’s a good conversation, though. I’m glad you re-posted it.

Opponents as defined by Webster:

1 : one that takes an opposite position (as in a debate, contest, or conflict)

While it may not be the case in your situation, because you can see both sides, it is the case for others. The word “opponent” doesn’t suggest that it need be an all out war or a viscous game—at least not according to Webster. :]

But the woman is not without fault. She initiated the situation and she should share some blame. Did they really know in advance that she was that far along?

Abortion is not an ideal situation, but I am pro-choice because I don’t think a woman should bring a child into the world that she is unprepared to support. And for cases of rape or incest, well, those women should never be forced to carry those pregnancies to term if they don’t want to. I also feel that abortion is the last and worse result of a situation that has many opportunities for prevention before it comes to that point and every woman should be informed and have access to the prevention options.

I personally think abortion after the first trimester is wrong. That is the window in my opinion. After that point, it is too late. That should be plenty of time to know and to decide. If someone doesn’t know they are pregnant by that point, there is a gross lack of knowledge that speaks of deeper problems.

Am I right in assuming that pro-lifers are funding this law suit? They have a very spectacular, heart-wrenching case on their hands, but someone needs to talk about the personal responsibility of the woman and the responsibility of the medical staff. That’s what this is about. Turning this into a poster case for the abortion movement is sheer exploitation.

But would you put it past anyone?

phew

I should dictionarate (sure, it’s a word.. just don’t look for it in the dictionary) more often. (I wasn’t angry with you, for what it’s worth.)

The abortion debate just always seems to get people to assume a battle-stance and I guess it gets me in defensive-stance. I, too, am generally over-sensitive.

Cheers :)

We have a lot of work to do in order to keep stories like this one where they belong: in minds like that of Stephen King.

The point is that we are all right and we are all wrong and I respect the pro-lifer’s choice to bring every pregnancy to term and I respect the pro-choicer’s decision to end a pregnancy at 20 and go on to have three children in her 30s. But pro-lifers can’t respect pro-choicers and therein lies the problem. I don’t set limits your ability to have as many children as you want. You have no right to tell me I can’t have an abortion at 20 after I was date raped. We have to co-exist and respect and protect each other even though we may not agree.

I don’t know anyone who believes that abortion is birth control on the level of the pill or other methods. Liberals are troubled by every abortion just like conservatives are. No one wants to see woman in that position and it should trouble every man and woman in this country to think about women or girls in those types of situations.

Abortion is very negative and unpleasant and it is hard for me to imagine women having more than one in their lifetime. I just don’t think statistics would support the theory that abortion is taken lightly or that it is used over and over as birth control. I think pro-lifers use that horrible scenario to demonize pro-choicers, but it just isn’t based in fact.

Understanding and compassion is what I think we need. We need responsible, clear medical guidelines that protect women and doctors and clearly define what is ok and what isn’t. That case clearly isn’t ok.

I know three women (well) who have had more than one abortion, one of them has had three and that’s when I stopped counting.

Maybe they need to add laws for repeat offenders. Have one. OK fine. Two? Have to have an ultrasound first. Three? Tubes are tied.

This is an anomaly. Many things about this case were unusual (the late date of the abortion, the astounding lack of competence of the medical team, etc), and this is NOT the way an abortion ‘normally’ goes by any stretch of the imagination.

But I bet, and I’m just riffing off the top of my head here, I have no stats etc. But I really would bet, that were abortion made illegal again, you’d have A LOT more crazy ass, screwed up, emotionally and physically scarring situations like this (because women would be forced to sneak around and get back alley abortions). So to me, the way to prevent it from happening is to give the doctors involved one hell of a hard kick in the proverbial pants, let the woman sue the hell out of them, and make sure that IF a doctor chooses to perform an abortion this late in the game, they DAMN well better do it properly.

On a total side note, I hate that people are assuming that this girl was basically duped into having an abortion because she ‘probably’ didn’t realize there were other ways to handle her pregnancy. The thing is, perhaps they’re right, but it’s EVERY bit as possible that she was well informed and educated and knew just exactly what she was doing and was okay with it. Or that she knew exactly what she was doing, but it was an excrutiating decision for her to make and she was going ahead with anyway. See, that’s the thing about ‘choice’ – if you’re pro-choice, then you’re okay with choices that don’t jive with your own.

As I said before, I’m currently pregnant with my first child. I can’t possibly imagine terminating the pregnancy, but you’d better be sure I’d fight long and hard to preserve the OPTION to do it.

In keeping with my whole pro-choice means being okay with choices that don’t jive with your own thing….if you’re okay with women having the choice to terminate a pregnancy, then you’re okay with it no matter how many times they do it. No matter if they choose to use it as a form of birth control (which by the way, is such a bullsh*t statistic that gets thrown around and I wish I wasn’t too lazy to go find statistics refuting it).

It’s not that I think you should just grant rights to people willy nilly with absolutely no restrictions, but if your stance is that a woman has a right to choose what happens to her own body and to any pregnancy she is carrying, then I don’t see how you can start hanging all kinds of strings off of it, because it’s too slippery a slope.

There is a role for the community and peers to encourage responsible reproductive and sexual lives and behaviors. There is a very deep problem if a woman is having multiple abortions. I don’t personally know anyone who has used abortion as a form of birth control. I’m sure it happens, but my point is that it is not the rule.

Here are some abortion stats from the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform:

- 83% of abortions are obtained in developing countries.
- 52% of women in the US having abortions are under 25. Teens obtain 20% of abortions.
- 60% of all abortions are performed on white women
- 64.4% of abortions are women who have never been married. 18.4% are married women and 9.4% are divorced women.
- 28.7% of women having abortions have family incomes of less than $15K annually
- 19.5% of women having abortions have family incomes between $15-30K
- 38% of women having abortions have family incomes between $30-60K
- It is estimated that 43% of all women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45. 47% of women having abortions have had at least one previous abortion. (Higher number than I would have though, but still shy of the “majority”)
- 93% of abortions occur because of social reasons (child unwanted) 1% rape/incest; 6% health considerations.
- 52% of abortions occur before the 9th week of pregnancy. 25% between 9-10th week. 12% between 11-12th week. Only 1% happen after the 20th week.

We all have personal boundaries for what is right and what isn’t, that’s normal. In America, we boundaries that are a little different from our neighbor and that’s our strength and also our weakness. We can’t legislate based on the worse case scenarios, we need to legislate based on the greater good for the most people. Keeping abortion safe and legal is the greater good. Women deserve to have control over when they have children and they deserve to make decisions about their reproductive life that are safe and informed. Innocent children don’t deserve to be brought into the world if they are unwanted, unloved, and ultimately uncared for.

My personal opinion is that the doctor is negligent because he wasn’t there, but he didn’t commit a crime toward that baby. He falsified documents, which is a different crime. The owner of that clinic (who isn’t a doctor) who disposed of the baby should be charged with manslaughter, plain and simple. She was covering her own ass instead of calling 911.

So maybe this frivolous lawsuit and the abhorrent criminal behavior of the hack abortion clinic does allow the creation of a Citizen Ruth, and that alone is enough to make me mad as hell because I’m pro-choice and I don’t want to give the rabid pro-life agenda more ammunition. But I also think about the what ifs. What if this 18 year old had access to INFORMATION about abortion in general? What if she’d gone to that clinic and been counseled to the effect of, “A 23 week fetus looks like a ‘real’ baby and delivers like a ‘real’ baby and it’s not your typical abortion.” She probably wasn’t. What if she knew from a health class or a pamphlet when a fetus is completely formed and not just a sack of cells or an embryo? Who knows if she knew or cared. But maybe if she had known she’d have made an informed and personal choice. She could have decided to bring that baby to term or abort it when the stakes weren’t so high. Those would have been responsible choices.

Sure the baby most likely might have not lived even if it were rushed to the hospital – but it never got the chance. The staff freaked out – plain and simple. Not acceptable. The doctor then tried to cover it up via paperwork. Not acceptable.

As for the mother – I cannot believe she is suing on behalf of the baby she wanted to abort. She should not be allowed to sue on behalf of that baby. If she was distraught,traumatized over what she saw, imagine what the baby felt.

(As for being pro choice/life I am in the middle. Meaning I get both sides. I do think the choice starts when you have sex. I do think everyone should be able to have control over their body.)

.

I read that absolutely ridiculous Mom Logic piece and I thought it nothing more than an uninformed, ignorant, arrogant, self-righteous rant from a right-wing Christian. I let just about everything those folks say go in one ear and out the other. This wasn’t any different. I, like you, have a hard time understanding why everyone got so upset about it… if a bum screams something nasty at you on the street do you take it personally? NO! Because he’s CRAZY!

;-)

Thanks for posting something that encouraged such intelligent discussion, Michele!

Why did everyone get so upset about it? Because, just like what we saw with the whole Motrin fiasco, it’s easy. It’s easy to get upset over some brainless rant. It’s easy to write an angry blog piece about it and know that at least half of those reading what you’ve written are going to agree with you and come to your defense.

But this story? This story needs a lot of help and work and attention, imo. This story should not have happened this way. And because it did happen this way and now she is suing in the name of the baby she aborted, I really do believe that the pro life movement could have a field day with this in much the same way we saw in CItizen Ruth. (As Jessica stated above.)

I feel that this story and its outcome poses a much bigger threat to everyone than some rant on Mom Logic.

But whatever. I’m in a mood today, I guess. I just wish things were different.

Thanks for putting this back up. After being mightily provoked during election season I wrote about why I’m pro-choice (http://117hudson.blogspot.com/2008/10/bird-in-hand-is-worth-two-in-bush.html) and it’s really nice to see this sane discussion going on.

Being pro-choice (not pro-abortion), I find I can respect the anti-choice position only when it is truly and consistently pro-life. That is, if you oppose abortion AND you oppose war (or the sending of young people into war, particularly when that war is not a direct response to an invasion) AND you oppose capital punishment of any kind, you have a consistent and clear moral stance. You reject the state sanction of murder. I admire and respect the purity of this, and I’d be willing to give it consideration if we could address the one remaining existential issue, which is individual bodily soveriegnty. But let’s leave that aside for the moment. If killing is impermissible, then killing is impermissible. Anything else – anything less, let’s say – is a matter of arbitrary lines and circumstantial deliberations.

In my judgment, life, and nature, are defined in their entirety by the latter. Life in every sense, as lived by every creature as far as I can determine, is a matter of negotiation and reaction to circumstance. In most species this is about survival. Among humans survival is blurred and diluted by superstructural constructs like ethics and morality and religion — such is our grandeur and our fallacy as a species, I guess. We get art on the one hand, debates over abortion and the death penalty and vegetarianism on the other. But in the end, even if perhaps only in the abstract, survival of some sort may be at the bottom of these issues. Survival of the family unit; survival of the herd; survival of the socio-cultural collective, whatever. I “square” my consumption of meat, for example (and it begs the quesiton, doesn’t it? “Square” with whom? Why?), by reminding myself that we are animals at the end of the day, omnivores at that (it’s the key to our success as a species), and it’s perfectly “natural,” evolutionarily speaking, for me to eat anything. What’s not natural is for me to pretend there’s not something brutal, even bestial, in that, and that I’m not responsible for that brutality. I cause it; I condone it; I internalize it, quite literally. If my worldview can’t contain that, I’d better get my broccoli on.

Thus with choice. Perhaps the best answer here is for anyone who is pro-choice to remind him or herself that it is choice he or she advocates, not abortion. And that it’s not a position to relish or to celebrate. It’s a position that emerges from defeat, that concedes to reality – economic, geopolitical, personal – and to a certain essential, but necessary, brutality in our humanity. Sometimes we kill to survive. We can, and we do. We wage war. We execute. The questions are when, why, how; and the answers – this is the important part – will never be clean, will never be easy, will never be less than tragic.

Consciousness of this may indeed a cornerstone of what it means to be human; and that, in turn, may be part of why being human means, always, to some degree, being sad.

I don’t personally agree with late term abortions even though I tentatively respect the inherent right to have one. I think that with the exception of a medical reason a late term abortion should be completely unnecessary for women who have access to family planning information and safe abortion practices.

When I mention ‘if’ she was informed and had access or cared to access those things, I take that presumptive stance only because it seems to me that a woman who would name the fetus she chose to abort would probably be receptive to making better choices for herself if she had the information and/or the desire, ie: terminating at 6-12 weeks or using contraceptives. Of course, this was an 18 year old girl who didn’t even know she was pregnant at nearly six months along so how informed (or how irresponsibly in denial) was she really?

It saddens and angers me that none of this had to happen the way it did. She could have used some method of contraception. She could have had a safer abortion in the first trimester. She could have been more responsible on so many levels and she wasn’t, either through personal ignorance or lack of teaching by an adult or not enough access to services or some combination of the three, and that pisses me off.

I’m pro-choice but that doesn’t mean people who are irresponsible about sex and pregnancy deserve carte blanche. Those people undermine my right as woman to make an informed choice by feeding the ire of some self righteous, hardcore pro-lifers. And that group of people, in my opinion, do their part to make the next generation of young women oblivious to the impact of sex on their bodies and their lives by suppressing sex education and family planning services, two very viable routes to informed personal choices.