| Subject: Re: The Great Debate |
Author:
luka
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Date Posted: 08/30/06 8:07pm
In reply to:
Pat
's message, "Re: The Great Debate" on 08/30/06 3:12pm
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!
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