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Subject: Re: The Great Debate Author: Pat [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 08/30/06 3:12pm In reply to: luka 's message, "The Great Debate" on 08/30/06 5:59am Hi, Luka, I am involved in several groups that help women decide, and usually we all try to discourage debate on the political questions, because we want to make the groups a safe place for women to discuss their pending decisions. That said, I'll just offer a couple of thoughts. As far as a baby who is too disabled to live is concerned, that isn't really quite the problem a lot of people try to make out. If the baby won't live anyway, then there is no long-term care issue involved, so the burden from that standpoing is relatively light. There may well be trauma when the baby dies, but there is also trauma in case of abortion, and having faced this situation, I can tell you I am glad I don't have an abortion on my conscience. Many things can be done to help these babies toward a more normal life, and there are breakthroughs every day. And sometimes prenatal diagnosis is flat-out wrong and the baby is really normal. I don't think it's a good solution, and I wouldn't encourage a woman to decide to abort a baby for that reason. In any case, disabled people see this reason for abortion as a threat, because it decides who is worthy to live or die based on disability, and that makes the disabled into second-class citizens. In the final analysis, abortion cuts off hope, and may in fact result in killing a baby who is either normal, or close to it. Prenatal diagnosis simply isn't that accurate. If a woman is with an abusive man, she needs to get out of the relationship. Having an abortion really means succumbing to his abusiveness. A woman is abusing herself. It doesn't solve anything. Granted, there may be difficulties disengaging herself from this man, but she needs to do it regardless, and there are various steps she can take to protect herself and her baby. Though they are not absolute, having a baby to protect can motivate some women to leave the relationship. Abusing herself probably means she won't think she is worthy of having a decent relationship. So I don't think abusing her baby fatally is an answer to an abusive relationship. Again, she will certainly have an easier time of her emotional state if instead of abusing her baby, she works to protect him or her from the abusive man. Being pro-life is about accepting that science has told us that the baby is fully human, and what we wouldn't do to a baby who has been born should not be done to a baby who hasn't been born. Being pro-life also is about recognizing that abortion is bad for women, and we deserve the protection of the law. As things stand now, at least 2/3 of all women who get abortions have been coerced. These women deserve protection, and it doesn't exist. I know this because I faced that situation myself. I once had a pregnancy where a "doctor" (who was really an abortionist) whom I didn't know tried to coerce me into an abortion, and used lies to try to convince me I was no longer pregnant. I wanted to sue him for the mental anguish he caused me (months of horrible nightmares) but I had no legal case because we are not protected. As for the life of the mother, granted there are a few situations where that might be an issue. If that is the case, I think a doctor has a duty to try to preserve the lives of both. If it isn't possible, then the baby should be delivered alive and attempts should be made to help the baby live, but if not, comfort care should be provided while nature takes its course. I can't offhand think of a situation where a doctor has to deliberately kill a baby to save a woman's life. Basically, women deserve better answers. I think there is no excuse for abandoning a woman to an abortionist who really just wants to make money off her body. There's a reason why the "counseling" is inadequate. Former abortionists have told us that they teach their staff to sell abortions. There is a huge conflict of interest problem. Given how many women are being hurt by outright butchery, and the fact that even under the care of a competent and conscientious practitioner abortion is still very dangerous medically and emotionally, I don't offhand see any excuse for giving abortionists a free ride. Making abortion illegal is really about protecting women from abortionists, not about prosecuting women. That is a matter of consensus among pro-life people. Legal abortion protects abortionists, not women. Reading between the lines, it sounds like you may have some unresolved issues of your own, and I would encourage you to work on resolving them. I am involved in groups that are for women who need to do just that, and you would be most welcome in such groups, and I would be most happy to talk to you. Please give what I have said some thought. :) I hope this helps. Hugs, Pat [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> [> Subject: Re: The Great Debate Author: luka [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 08/30/06 8:07pm Well said. I agree that if i was told my baby was going to die as soon as it is born or whatever i would carry the baby to term and see what happens. I would not want to have been the one who took the childs life either. And any hope that the child would survive even the faintest praying for a miracle would have been enough to continue the pregnancy because miracles do happen :) With regard to women in abusive situations the sad fact is that men continue to abuse women through the court system because sometimes it can be hard to prove the abuse or the man may have more money for a legal defense ect, some judges think that you only need to simply be the father of the child in order to have a right to vistitaion or more regardless of wether or not he was abusive or had the potential to be with the child. Things can be twisted and it can be the woman can be falsely accused of being vindictive and thus her concerns are overlooked.I'm sure youre all aware of the abuse of the term perental alienation syndrome in America. (but thats another debate) Women are taken for granted in their role as mothers but a man only has to bounce a child on his knee and he is super dad. In other words men seem to only have to feign interest in their children to be looked apon favourably. I know of a few cases where men with criminal records and such have had not only access to their children but in some cases custody and subsequently the child is abused and the mother is in agony legally unable to protect her child. It's frightening. Does it make is ok for a woman possibly facing such a fate to kill her unborn child? Does it mean her child has less of a right to live as any other? No. But it would be understandable that a woman in those circumstances would consider abortion. Again i'm not saying it's what she should though. I was doing some research of my own and All of the abortion clinics my way say they do abortions anywhere up to 20 weeks by vacum aspiration or some kind of suction. It's positively vile to think of a human child being killed in such a way, but also i wonder if thats entirely true. I just don't see how they are able to extract a 20 week old fetus from a mothers womb by suction curettage alone. Here is a portion of the interview i was speaking of. - PETER OVERTON: What techniques do you use to perform late-term abortions? DAVID GRUNMANN: We use a range of techniques. I'm not going to go into the specifics because I don't believe it advances the debate on either side terribly much. PETER OVERTON: Do you pierce the baby's head with a sharp instrument? DAVID GRUNMANN: As I said, I'm not going to discuss details or specifics about procedures because I don't think that you or the public needs to know specifics about a very small number of procedures. If I'm talking to a medical audience I'll have no problem discussing procedures because they understand it. PETER OVERTON: Is that because the procedure is so bad and so explicit and destructive? DAVID GRUNMANN: It's because the anti-choice people like to create hysteria about certain aspects of late abortion which I don't think that the public really needs to debate. *INTERESTING how he refuses to discuss exactly HOW those abortions are performed. PETER OVERTON: Only two percent of abortions are considered late term. But it's a potent weapon for anti-abortion protesters like Anne Dowling. Okay, you're now under arrest from state police... ANNE DOWLING: If there is a baby on the road, you would jump on the road, stop the traffic to pick up the baby. I can't pick up the baby, but I can stop the traffic. PETER OVERTON: Anne has seven children of her own but is prepared to go to jail for the cause. She's been arrested 25 times. ANNE DOWLING: A baby's going to die. A baby's going to be killed. What do you do? You hand someone a leaflet about it? No, you block the door and that's what we do. FIONA RICHARDS: We definitely did do the right thing because we weren't able to see that at the time, that it was the right thing, because we were so overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and loss and grief but once we were able to think about it, basically we had no choice. PETER OVERTON: Isn't it about the woman? JULIAN McGAURAN: Well, the women of course do not have an unfettered choice in this matter. If society is going to lead itself down that slippery slope where they will start aborting late term on the grounds of disability, then where do you draw the line? Where is the new line? PETER OVERTON: But, Senator, we're not talking disability, we're talking severe abnormalities, abnormalities that specialists have told the parents will kill their child? JULIAN McGAURAN: With modern medicine, a great many of these physical disabilities can be fixed up. It's a nonsense argument to say that you've been given evidence or a diagnosis by a doctor of a disability and that is exactly how it will be born. Quite often it does not. PETER OVERTON: No, hold on, who's the expert — the senator or the doctor? JULIAN McGAURAN: Well, I know of many examples and many doctors speak to me about it, that there's a prolifera of misdiagnosis. I mean, how close are we going to get to the point of infanticide? PETER OVERTON: What if this woman is told by a cardiologist, by her obstetrician, that your child has no chance of surviving. Doesn't the woman have a right to make a decision about what she wants? JULIAN McGAURAN: Well, it's my view that she doesn't. If she's been given those views, there are many equally case examples of survival. And that child ought to be given a chance to survive. FIONA RICHARDS: I would have probably killed myself if I could not terminate that pregnancy. If I had to carry that baby for another four months, feeling that kicking and then knowing that this baby, once it's a fully grown baby, was going to die — I could not live with that. Excuse me, we'd like to speak to you if we can. We're a couple that did have to have a late-term abortion. PETER OVERTON: When it comes to abortion, emotions run high on both sides. FIONA RICHARDS: Whether it's a 16-year-old girl who decides to terminate her pregnancy for whatever reason, or a 30-year-old whose baby is dying, that is a very personal thing. No-one should butt in, not a politician and not you. PETER OVERTON: The argument once seemed black and white — you were either for or against. But the focus on late-term abortion has brought shades of grey. FIONA RICHARDS: You've got to decide what you think is right for yourself. No-one else could have decided that for me. I was the one carrying that baby. I was the one suffering. It was my loss, it was my grief, I had to deal with it the only way I knew how to. PETER OVERTON: At a Melbourne cemetery, Natalie mourns the girl she never held. Four years on, the pain hasn't receded. At times the hurt so great she even thought of ending her own life. NATALIE WITHERS: I really didn't want to live with the pain anymore. So ... there was ... probably times of thinking that I would've rather go and be with her. She looked pained when she was born. She was born with her mouth open. If I was confronted with it again, I could not do it again. I couldn't play God again. This interview was taken in 2005. Incidentally Peter Overton the interveiwer is currently expecting his first child with his wife after having difficulty conceiving. I wonder what he now thinks of all of this... Pat i am amazed at hearing a doctor tried to coerce you into having an abortion. I would be interested in hearing more about that if you felt comfortable sharing your story. This is a really interesting thread! You both raised some VERY vaild points!

[> [> [> Subject: Re: The Great Debate Author: Heather [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 08/30/06 11:52pm Really interesting excerpt, Luka. Sounds very realistic. I had the thought when hearing it said over and over that the public didnt need to know about what happened in a late term abortion because it only involved 2% that it's relevent to consider how many abortions 2% of 1.3 million is: 26,000 babies aborted a year that were over halfway through their pregnancy. And that's just in America. And it's definitely not correct that the vaccuum method is used on a 20 week old baby. Anyone remotely curious can google abortion methods and see what's involved in the procedures at different weeks. Here's another interesting transcript of interview from a man, abortionist, who used to own several clinics but later become pro-life. He speaks about the inside things of an abortion clinic that make you wonder why it doesn't seem like there's much conscience there. http://www.abortionfacts.com/dr_willke/connector_july_98.asp#1 I think it's a must read for anyone interested in hearing both sides. Hard to read in some parts, but not because of anything graphic. Heather

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: The Great Debate Author: luka [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 08/31/06 3:26pm Yeah i agree it is disturbing... I think what the focus should be on helping understand whats really happening they need to hear from women who have had an abortion and come to regret it. Thats what is never mentioned in the media and it really needs to be addressed. Reading that article was horrible.. It's so hard to think about but it's totally true the atmosphere in those abortion clinics i still remember vividly and i was crying as i was getting myself onto the operating table when i went for one of my terminations and nobody seemed terribly concerned about it. It's never been a question for me of wether or not abortion clinics care they don't go out of their way to pretend that they do either. On a lighter note my baby is kicking and tumbling around inside of me almost all the time now. There are regular paterns of activity and quiet, sometimes i wonder what on earth he is doing because the movements feel very quick. I know he's probably still quite small but i feel his movements so clearly he seems bigger to me than he probably is. I wish i had an idea of just how big he was now compared to some common household item just so i had an idea. Anyway i think it's safe to say that he is very healthy and strong in there :) and Phew! after all of my recent research on abortion it just makes me so happy to know that i didn't succumb to the pressures of his father to have him killed. I know i could have said abortion but the fact is that he would have died if i had one, i prefer to use plain english. I remember the first abortion i ever had was forced by my mother the susequent was because the babys father (funny, it was same father of the baby i am pregnant to now) refused to talk to me about it. Stopped being affectionate emotionally abandned me, hung me out to dry. I accepted this treatment at the time because i had been abandoned so many times i was simply afraid to be alone literally alone with literally nothing and no one. I was very young and there was nobody around who cared about me or my baby to tell me otherwise. Based on my experiences it's my opinion that when forced into having an abortion at a young age it almost sets a precedent that an unplanned pregnancy should and could be aborted. It's horrible. Because in your mind untill you do it it seems like something you can just go and do, but afterwards and right before there is this sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach some call it conscience or intuition or various other things. I was also abused sexually as a child. I had no solid concept for what was right or wrong then either but i do remember that same horrible gut feeling that erodes from the inside like poison. I believe regardless of what we are taught we have an inbuilt abilty, an innate sense of what is truely right and wrong or not even right or wrong i just can't think of a better word right now.. But you know what i mean. I think sometimes our bodies give us signals and our minds get all tangled up in logic and debates. I mean some would argue that a woman in my circumstances cannot afford to have another baby much less to a man who doesn't love me or the baby. But i know i can do it and it can be ok and keeping my baby is the only thing sat sits right with my head and heart. Thats not to say that it won't be difficult at times (which can be said for someone in apparently better circumstances), I am prepared for that. I know what i am getting myself into and it is absolutley worth doing. I have no horrible sinking feeling in my stomach about my decision. It feels good and my mind is not cluttered with the confusion and heartache that comes with thinking on any level that i should have my baby aborted. I think confusion is only really denial in disguise. Confusion usually comes from know what the right thing to do is but not wanting to do it through fear or whatever and then trying to convince yourself of what others want you to do.

[> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: The Great Debate Author: Heather [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 08/31/06 8:16pm Hi Luka, I agree it's disturbing. I think what really concerns me at times is the promotion of the idea by the abortion industry that 'anti-choicers' are obsessed with only the baby and don't have the best interests of the woman at heart. And here you read from an ex-abortionist what can already be surmised about how very calloused and degradingingly they regard women. All the clinics set up for abortion alternatives that I've observed contain women helping women, quietly behind the scenes, WITHOUT BEING PAID the big bucks that the abortion industry pays out to it's employees but instead volunteer their time to support women who choose life. They're there because they genuinely care about the woman and her baby. My husband and I are board members of a local pro-life organization in our city and the motto underneath the simple logo for our group says 'Love Them Both.' I also agree with the positive focus in the motto of the Feminists for Life website - "Women Deserve Better." Yet despite this reality that I see evidenced among dear women and men everywhere who are part of the pro-life community, I continue to hear us in the media as 'anti-choice extremists.' Go figure! I agree also with the quote that abortion has done more to liberate men than women. By sweet-talking or flat out pressuring a woman they've had sex with to abort the evidence of it, they are able to play around much more without taking on the responsibility aspect of sex. And it's the woman who must undertake the abortion and live out her life with the effects of it. I'm not anti-men at all, lol. I just think it's far too enticing of an 'easy exit' for many that put their lust before the genuine well-being of the woman. Women struggle just as much with their own stuff. Anyway, I'm so thrilled for you that you were able to 'just say NO' lol to this pressure from the biological father and that you are now feeling the movements and experiencing the peaceful resolve you expressed so well in the end of your post. I always enjoy reading your posts and think you're an amazing woman. I really respect you. On the one hand, I can't help but be sorry for the particular abuses and trials you've endured in your relatively young life (hey, we can still call ourselves young, can't we?) but I'm also profoundly thankful for the measure of wisdom these experiences have shaped in you so far. I can relate about the sudden kicking, wondering what on earth babe could be up to. My first baby, our son, did this to me constantly. He is now 8 and I tell him that when he was in my womb he really had it in for my lowest left rib. He spent the entire pregnancy kicking at it and I kept telling him (in the womb) that he'd really be much better off if he would just move himself instead of trying to move my permanent bone structure, lol. He was relentless. And after kicking at that rib for awhile he'd do little sharp kicks suddenly then go totally quiet. He never gradually started moving. He would wake up and immediately jab which startled me on more than one occassion. I'm getting sentimental now thinking about that first pregnancy and am remembering the first time I ever felt him move. Since it was my first time being pregnant I was filled with curiosity and anticipation of wondering what it would be like to feel another human being moving around INSIDE you. I kept waiting, trying to feel him in there. Then one day, I was just driving along and I felt 'the butterflies.' I tensed up and wondered if that sensation was what I thought it was. Then it came again, just swirling like butterflies in my belly and I swear it seemed like chorale music started up in my head. I had to pull over to soak in the wonder of it. But he got over the 'butterfly' stage pretty quick and moved on to the pronounced kicking as soon as he was able, lol. I love this boy so much now. I thank God often for the good friendship we have. I really enjoy his company and have an easygoing, mutual respect with him that gives us a great relationship. I'm so happy for you, at the expense of sounding too trite. :) Heather

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: The Great Debate Author: luka [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09/ 1/06 3:54am Just read one of your posts again and forgot to add that yeah i agree about the 2% thing. I mean why is it any less horrific because there are less babies dying such a horrifc traumatic death at that gestation than say a 12 week old fetus??? It should not happen to even 1 child let alone thousands or millions.