A Small and an Enormous Thing
"I saw some things I can’t get out of my head."
A first year med student is "incredibly freaked out" after a day at Planned Parenthood.
via Conservative Grapevine
A first year med student is "incredibly freaked out" after a day at Planned Parenthood.
via Conservative Grapevine
Labels: abortion, death, perception, reactions
posted by scalpel at 11:22 AM
28 Comments:
That was a heavy read. I am not pro-abortion myself but am pro-let-people-make-their-own-decisions. I don't believe in legislating morality.
Personally, I can not imagine aborting much after the first four weeks. Although being infertile, I doubt I will ever face such a choice. Thank God.
Demented M
I can imagine that seeing the products of abortion and recognizing them for what they are -- a dismembered baby that was just killed -- might shake someone who had bought into the "undifferentiated clump of cells" rhetoric.
I have so much to say about this that...I am speechless. Total overload.
I have always thought that if the masses ever actually saw with their own eyes... what is really happening to those human unborn babies... that as with that blogger...they might have to rethink their positions.
And of course it is always a "product of conception" or "fetus" but never referred to as a baby.
And what about psychological follow-up with the mother? How do these events affect them down the road? Also are there physical ramifications with some women? And what about parents kept from the fact that their child is having an abortion?
Okay..some words got out.
Thanks for the link Scalpel.
Dr Mengele anyone?
Guess what you fruitcakes you do not, let me repeat, DO NOT, have a right to tell me what to do with my own body. I don't have the right to tell anyone else what to do with their body. If men were having the babies abortion would be a sacrament.
Ladies and gentlemen, try as you might women will not go backward. Now....come forward all you rabid anti CHOICE folks. I bet you wish you could put all those bloody pictures in your comments.
If you people would put half the effort and thought into PREVENTING pregnancy we wouldn't need abortion!
I believe, as a matter of faith, that abortion is a crime against humanity and a sin. I believe, as a matter of faith, that those who have abortions will have to atone their sins to God and to no one else. I also believe, as a matter of law, that I do not have a right to impose that belief on others. I don't have a right to make you goto Church on Sunday, or to baptize your children, or even to be respectful and kind, so I shouldn't have a right to tell you what private, medical decisions you should or should not make.
That being said I do believe that if a case where a woman chooses to have an abortion who has not been raped or abused, or is not in a situation where the abortion is medically necessary to save her own life, she should be made unable to have further children. A woman who chooses to have an abortion merely out of the selfish act of laziness or cowardice forfeits the right to have the opportunity to willingly have sex and terminate another "unwanted baby". No matter what you say, if you're any kind of human, you know that there really is no difference between a fetus that would otherwise grow into a healthy child and a baby that has already been born. You use that as a way to comfort yourselves and that's fine. But if you choose to have an abortion you should acknowledge that you no longer have the right to risk another situation where you may choose an abortion. You, as a matter of personal choice, don't have the right to choose when to take life and when to give life even if it is your body.
You say that women won't "go backwards" which I disagree with on principal. First, I don't consider a thoughtful, open process of debate and reflection which may result in the acknowledgment of a difference of opinion regarding abortion in our culture and subsequent changes in legislation regarding it, as moving backwards. The abortion debate occurred in this country largely during a movement of feminist radicalism that has large since subsided. I believe as the hysteria settles and as self-accountability once again becomes important in our way of life our culture will thoughtfully re-examine the way we approach abortion. It shouldn't be done because of faith or because God says it is a sin, but rather because thoughtful, accountable, and responsible human beings don't really feel that tearing a human fetus out of the body of a woman is fair, or pleasant, or kind. Thoughtful, accountable people see it for the brutal, terrifying thing that it is. Feminist radicals who wish to commandeer the basic structure of humanity are no different than Nazis exterminating the Jews.
And that's my political belief, not my religious one.
I worked at an abortion clinic.
This clinic I worked at only did early abortions.
I worked their despite the threats to my life on a daily basis.
The doctors arrived to the clinic by airplane. The physician's names were kept secret, to all but the DOH. We did not accept insurances (with few exceptions) for the safety of the providers. A wonderful ob/gyn in the area was murdered.
I take the issue of abortion very seriously. I think people who have abortions take it seriously.
Above all, the health of woman is my primary focus. And as it has been proven time and again through out the world....Women who do not have access to legal abortion die at an alarming rate.
I do not know the exact statistics but I belive that 1/3 of all American woman have had an abortion.
If society wants to reduce abortion, I believe it should support age-appropriate reproductive health education, encourage the use of birth control and condoms (to reduce STI), and support woman who choose to have children.
It does not make any sense to me to be against abortion, be against birth control, and then deny women the resources to raise healthy children.
Oh, that makes me so sad.
How America has slipped that mad scientists (actually medical doctors) woul dream up ways to kill people. And our lawmakers allow this.
I just read that Barrack is down with a "doctor" pulling a full-grown baby into a breach birth, shoving tools up the birth canal to rip a hole in the skull, suck out the brains, and deliver a brainless child.
Yeah. THAT is medicine. And that is the man I want running the country, one who sees nothing wrong with that. One who would start legalizing other types of butcher and telling us that it is fine, and redefining what "life" is. Reminds me a lot of the Nazi doctors who used to butcher people in their experiments.
Mm-hmmm! I'm voting the Obama/Satan ticket. Excuse me while I go puke.
What I've always found odd...
The pro-abortion crowd tells us that we are anti-choice. But any time we want to inject information into the choice, it is decried.
Only ignorant choices are respected, apparently, and only when the choice is the pre-approved one.
While we are told that abortion is overwhelmingly supported, the truth is that even most of the people who think it should be legal believe it needs restriction.
The earliest feminists in this country were pro-life. Abortion was considered a crime against not only the unborn, but against the woman undergoing it. What excuse does our society have for ignoring the plight of women so that they feel the need to kill their children when at their most helpless?
I have also read that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist and a racist. I have not been able to substantiate this personally, but I have read again and again that most PP clinics are in minority neighborhoods, and that the percentage of Black women having abortions is out of whack with their percentage of society as a whole; they are gravely overrepresented.
I may be wrong in drawing a line between the dehumanization of Black people in our racist past and the dehumanization of their unborn in a (mostly) colorblind current society, but I don't think so. And that is the scariest thing of all to me.
So...where's the horror story about the desperate woman who had an illegal back-alley abortion which resulted in a terrible outcome? Making abortion illegal won't make it go away, any more than making alcohol illegal during Prohibition stopped anyone from getting drunk.
If you want a heavy read, let me direct you to this story, from the other side of the argument: Link
Abortion is not so much about a "choice", it is the degree to which someone views an unborn fetus as having moral value. When I put the remains of a dead, spontaneously- miscarried 2nd trimester baby into the plastic bag to send to the lab, I am supposed to, per the pro-choice movement, think that that baby is not to be considered a person with any relevant moral worth or, I guess, if the baby does have some sort of moral worth, it is not more important than the "right" of the woman to end its life. Sad.
The worst was doing this for a lady who was bleeding so heavily from a miscarriage that she would have bled out and died had she not had a D&C emergently (at 15 weeks I believe was that baby's age). She'd had cervical incompetence with a cerclage and like an abdomen/uterus full of blood with no way out. The D&C was done while the fetus was still alive. FU for thinking that I shouldn't really care about that baby, Pro Choiceurs. I wish there was something we could have done to save it, but, no, there wasn't.
This student in the article had a touch of cognitive dissonance because it is NOT EASY to ignore the fact that older fetuses not only are people but LOOK LIKE PEOPLE and were alive and well prior to the procedure. The far left have been led to believe that there is no moral considerations to be had with these procedures other than the morality surrounding the question of a "choice" on the part of the woman. This is not the case.
For the record, I'm an atheist and think that abortion outside of the first trimester should be both illegal and is certainly immoral (something theoretically can certainly be immoral without needing to be illegal BTW).
Sabra, you are right. Do I remember you correctly as bellalinda? Nurse K, also right. GOP, I hope you can resolve your dissonances.
This is an area where I think there is absolute right and wrong, no gray area for me.
Why do you see dissonance? If we were to resolve ourselves to leading life by the letter of the the Word as I believe it to be from God, so much that has occurred in the way of social change would be lost. I believe God inspired the Word but it was still written and passed down by fallible human beings. And I call myself a Christian because I believe in Christ -- and what more central a message did Jesus Christ teach than that off love, acceptance, tolerance, peace, and forgiveness? These are what I make central to my life. Therefore, I can enjoy the ability to discern between what I call my religious beliefs and those which I believe are left to public health officials and legislators without feeling any dissonance.
Absolutely, unequivocally the answer to the problem of abortion is improving health education and starting it at a much younger age. For that matter I believe that so many, if not all, of our nation's problems can be solved through improved education and access to education.
I just cannot, if I'm being entirely objective, disregarding what I believe about the sacredness of human life, say that the state has the right or inherent authority to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body. To be fair, however, I also don't believe the state has the right to deny someone the right to die or to use drugs. I do disagree with these things with regards to their moral value, but I do not believe it is the place of the state to legislate and enforce morals. Because if we ask our government to govern morals who then becomes the ultimate authority on what is moral and what is immoral? Do we simply say that what is moral is what is moral by the majority? Do we need a 2/3 majority? Or do we decide what is moral based upon our leaders' words? Or their actions? No matter how terribly difficult it is to remove emotions from the equation, we must as rationale people take out of the abortion discussion arguments like "morals" and "God" and instead focus on the basic fact that this is a medical decision made between a woman and her doctor. It's an ugly business, yes, but it isn't our business.
I view the law as requiring complete objectivity. It is very difficult and in everyday practice the law is anything but objective, but as a matter of principle I have to maintain that level of sanctity in the law. If we cannot do that then why not begin an upheaval of all our laws and resort to a state of anarchy and disarray?
I've always respected 95% of the opinions of this community -- at least those of us who post with an identity. And I will continue to respect you all, thanks!
What so many people are missing in this post is that the abortions were not bad until she reached a later stage abortion. The provider of this abortion also felt the gravity of the girl's choice not to keep her more mature fetus, and as such spent extra time explaining her options, trying to impress upon the girl the seriousness of her decision.
Abortion is serious. It is a hard choice. It is, as the med student put so well, 'a small and an enormous thing'.
Think about how many abortions are done, how few are truly for later-term fetuses. It is truly a desperate woman who wants to put her body through a later term abortion. These procedures do not tickle, the whole process is embarrassing and uncomfortable.
Also, Obama is not telling anyone to go out and kill babies, he is not encouraging people to obtain late-term abortions- however he feels that they should be available as there are cases where terminating a pregnancy is a medical necessity. Would we remove this option from a providers toolbox? If we knew a fetus to have a terminal diagnosis would we require a woman to carry it to term- even if she might have comorbidities that make continuing the pregnancy bad for her health?
Also, I would dare those who are against abortion to spend a couple months working as a social worker.
If abortion is banned, the unwanted baby problem won't go away. There will be backalley abortions, illegal clinics, abandoned babies and children, dead babies, etc. Our foster care system is overloaded. In Washington, Oregon, and Idaho I have seen kiosks at malls trying to convince people to be foster parents. They actively recruit foster parents at fairs and public events.... and I've also seen kiosks at malls advertising children for adoption. It's sad, kids writing blurbs about why you should choose them,..
Imagine if abortion were illegal...
If there are "backalley abortions" then those people performing those should be put in jail for practicing medicine without a license as well as assault. There are currently things like "backalley sex changes" done by untrained people which cause serious harm. Do you think society should encourage and pay for sex changes on anyone who wants one as well just because some criminals are making money off backalley sex changes?
I mean, let's think about this. Oops, sex without a condom while drunk. You have three days to buy Plan B over the counter to terminate the pregnancy. Pregnancy tests read positive nowadays after missing your period for one day. If you still want to end the pregnancy, you have an additional 8 weeks to ponder it before it is even 2nd trimester.
No one would deny an abortion to a mother whose life was TRULY in jeopardy such as the mother I described. Very rare is that the case though.
I was offered an abortion due to my life being at risk when I was pregnant after my 10th diabetic coma in the first trimester. I still refused. I just couldn't do it despite being unmarried AND having to give up most of my dreams that I'd worked a lifetime to achieve.
I do not like the fact that this medical student received hateful remarks regarding her blog. I believe her reaction was perfectly human for someone who is trying to learn about and accept the world the way it is. The world is not black and white. Reality, just like pain, is relative and unique to each and every one of us.
Whenever someone asks me if I am pro-life or pro-choice I like to say, "Neither! I am pro-responsiblity." With that being said, I honestly find it difficult to pass judgment as I have never been in a position to have to make a choice one way or the other. I have been with friends through the choice. Some had abortions and others did not. I can say the ones who did have abortions have remarked that they will never feel okay with it and everyone who had their children says they can't imagine life without their child. The one I know who gave up her child for adoption longs to know what that child is experiencing but I like to believe that the parents the child went to can't imagine life any other way. The truth is, the reason it is such a heated debate between pro-life and pro-choice individuals is because on one hand, abortion is in fact very, very bad (I have never met anyone who is PRO-ABORTION), and on the other hand people should have the right to make the choice. Both sides of the debate are correct. When everyone is right, and yet can't get over the notion that others are entirely wrong, the fight will only continue.
In a perfect world, everyone would be responsible, and abortion would be a non-issue.
Many of those with morals depend upon the government to protect us to some degree from those without. I'm not sure how we can remove morality from legislation, or why we would want to.
GOP, fallible or not, what do you know of Jesus that does not come from the Bible? Interpret scripture by scripture (find the same theme in several places) and you'll be fine. Try Romans 13, Hebrews 13:17, and just for fun, Matthew 10:34.
Good for you NurseK. The right thing to do isn't always the easy thing, or the best for us.
Ah, NurseK, it was assumed I'd want an abortion when I got pregnant with my second daughter because my eldest was 13 months old at the time. No other reason!
After spending a weekend bleeding, I went in to have a qualitative HCG draw done (I'd already had the quantitative a couple of weeks before) to make sure my numbers were still rising. I broke down in tears at the reception desk because they didn't want to do the draw since I had my daughter with me, and everyone assumed I was upset because I was pregnant!
Given my own experience--and having been told by more than a few women who went to PP for a pregnancy test that they were immediately offered an abortion--I wonder what efforts are truly made to educate women. Do they know of the help that is out there? Do they know that most hospitals will give them a car seat, that they can almost certainly qualify for WIC, which will give (or at least loan) them a high-quality breastpump? Do they know of the crisis pregnancy centers that will help them obtain the other necessities? Or are they pushed into making the pre-approved "choice" and then treated like freaks or liars when they later suffer from a form of PTSD? And why the hell aren't more pro-choice people concerned with the answers to these questions?
And yes, Joint, I was formerly known as Bellalinda. Decided it was easier to just use my name.
I fall into the pro-life camp, although I realize that this is a complex issue and I don't think that anyone on either political side considers an abortion a good thing in and of itself. It's a sad ending to a bad situation. For me, it comes down to respect for the life of the fetus. And I am very pro-birth control and condom usage as a way of avoiding the situation altogether.
This being said, I think that it would purify the pro-life movement if every pro-life family adopted a child out of foster care. A kind of put your money where your mouth is--give these children, products of what could have easily been an abortion, a home.
The kids in American foster care aren't there because abortions are too difficult to obtain...they are there because their parents are irresponsible, often criminally so. It isn't difficult to find families to adopt newborns (even of another race), the problem is finding families to adopt the "difficult" adolescents (frequently with multiple siblings) produced, partially raised, and usually mistreated by these irresponsible or incapable parents.
Making abortion more or less restrictive wouldn't likely change our foster care demographics significantly. If the mothers of those children had wanted to abort them, nothing was stopping them...so asking the "pro-life" crowd to step up and adopt these children doesn't make much sense to me.
Whether one is pro-life or not has little to do with the issue. I would instead suggest asking those who praise our welfare system to step up and adopt these children to put THEIR money where their mouths are.
The Pelosi/Biden line about "I don't believe in legislating morality" is complete bull. We legislate morality ALL THE TIME. What do you think murder laws are? If you believe an unborn human is a PERSON, then yes, killing them intentionally is some form of homicide. If not, well, what are they, property? 3/5th of a person?
Make a choice and stand by it, but don't give us this nonsense about "I can't force my views on others".
-Chris M.
As an agnostic, all the Christian ranting and raving about "murder" when one discusses abortion is truly nauseating to me. I just can't see how people consider "life" as a blastocyst and as a toddler one in the same. I consider myself strongly pro-choice, but that said, don't agree that abortion should be legalised past 20 weeks (not 12 since many serious anomalies cannot be seen that early - like Trisomies) except in cases of maternal safety, rape, or significant aforementioned foetal anomalies. I agree with Nurse K that one does have enough time to get termination under most current laws - and I am glad to aggressively give out Plan B to any women who come to my ER.
And I also agree that if abortion is criminalised, it WILL be performed extensively underground and anticipate the ER's of our country to be inundated with patients suffering the consequences. Also, this med student might want to consider a different profession. if they are that freaked out by watching abortions. IMO, they will be seeing many very disturbing things throughout their training.
In our society, abortion can only be legal or illegal. There is no aggreement when human life is considered a mass of insignificant cell or a human being.
Personally, I think abortion is a sign of how irresponsible our society is.
Haaahahaha, at the sex change = abortion comparison. Funniest thing I've read all week.
Nurse K: I understand your arguement regarding sex change operations and illegal abortions, however, the numbers are vastly different. Again 1/3 of all American woman have had abortions. Maybe 0.1% of people have had backalley sex change operations.
I do agree that people should use plan B. However, my friend (and we live in one of those un-american blue states) tried to get an Rx for plan B from her ob/gyn and he said No! It was against his morals. Fine, but the office REFUSED to allow another doctor in the practice to give her the Rx. Even though that other doctor delivered her son. Unbelievable
That's fine if it is your choice to keep your child despite your life threatening illness, but that may not be the right choice for someone else. For someone else that may be the choice between life and death.
While it is no comfort at the time of fetal demise, when looking at it from the point of view of family members that love and depend on that person (spouse, other children, parents) most would want the mother, and the mother can create other pregnancies (usually).
Additionally, while I am against late term abortions, I am all for early term abortions. I think everyone should be required to pay for them.
I have had an abortion, and I had it at planned parenthood. They did not offer abortion until I brought it up. I was 'too early' (I was less than six weeks, but had already started morning sickness, etc, but was lacking the degree of maturity that is required in order to be able to confirm the termination of pregnancy post abortion) and had to wait two weeks before I could proceed. I was asked several times if I wanted to change my mind, I was given information on resources. They were very professional and compassionate, and I appreciated the information and support offered as I made my decision. They told me about options.
I wanted to be able to support a child and provide my child with a well educated and stable mother. Never did I expect to be in the perfect situation when a child came along, but without the ability to support a child without state aid I hardly felt it was my right to bring a child into the world. I used protection, the same protection I had used for three years without a problem.
I see no problem with what I did. I am no haunted by remorse. I don't wish I had made any other decision, it was my decision, it was my right, and it was something I took as seriously as a decision of that magnitude deserves to be taken. It was the right decision for me at that point in my life. The procedure was embarrassing, uncomfortable, and not something I could see anyone deciding to do on a lark. I can't imagine anyone deciding to undergo that medical procedure without feeling that they needed to at that point in their life.
I made a decision. I took responsibility for my actions. I had an abortion. I've never been on welfare, on WIC, on state insurance or on government aid, I've always supported myself and even helped to support family members. I have not regretted my decision for a single moment, it wasn't a pleasant decision to make but it was a well-reasoned one.
By the way, many of the children I see on the kiosks, and on the state adoption websites, are between 3 and 10. Hardly troubled adolescents.
Thoughtful people of good will and all faiths come to different conclusions on this topic. Why must we demonize them? Why indeed, must we demonize young women for struggling with a question whose answer divides even our best thinkers? This is a delicate topic which should be discussed with empathy and respect. Yet far too often we see screaming and brickbats.
I've never read how abortions are performed, so I did some research. The procedure involve everything from medications to surgical devices to remove the fetus. None involve any form of anaesthesia for the fetus. Otherwise, the older the fetus, the more nerves to feel the pain. I wonder if it hurts?
Jon
This is a medical student who has not yet been inured to the things that we see and do daily. She is in her first year. She still has her human reactions intact.
She will soon see her first patient told they have a fatal illness, her first open abdominal surgery, her first suicide-by-violence, her first patient with schizophrenia, her first visible beating heart, her first organ donor.... the list is endless.
These are things that touch us to the core, disturb us, and make us carefully consider our own positions and mortality.
I am pro-abortion, pro-choice, anti-life, whatever you want to label me. I respect that people have opinions, they have a right to them. But I thank my lucky stars (and Dr. Morgentaler) that I live in a country with no abortion laws whatsoever, as it reflects the fact that this is between a woman and her physician, and the law has no place there.
If a medical student is not touched and disturbed by seeing an abortion at this early stage, I submit that she may be in the wrong field.
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