Archives for October 2009

This may amaze you, but I am not a particularly big fan of Michael Ignatieff. In fact, I’m enjoying his continuing pratfall of a political career with unrestrained glee. So I hope you’ll forgive me for drawing your attention to this picture of the not-so-dear Liberal “leader” trying to cozy up to Ottawa daycare kids, and thoroughly failing. The kids want nothing to do with him. Maybe that will teach him not to try and use other people’s children as political props (which bugs me a great deal, regardless of what party the politician’s with)?

It’s got to be a sign of a bored and tired culture that we even have enough time to try to chronicle our happiness/unhappiness.

(If I tried to ask either of my grandmothers whether they thought they were more or less happy today than in the past they would not have comprehended the question, I’m quite sure. And not just because neither of them spoke English. Even with translation, neither of them spoke Oprah.)

It’s sunny and warm(ish) and we’re clearing a WHOLE BUNCH of atrocious junk from our basement. Off to the dump. Adios! Smells better already, and I’m a happy girl. It has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion, but I felt like sharing anyway.

Thank you for your cooperation, and have a brilliant afternoon.

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Andrea adds: Phewf. Things were getting pretty serious around here. (This is what the “Nothing in particular” category is for.)

Reading this took me right back to my days in the library for my Masters (with my pretty heavy emphasis on the Holocaust). I would read about the size and shape of gas chambers. I would read about Mengele and his experiments on little kids. And I would cry as I took notes. It’s been a while since I had that reaction to reading something. But I can’t lie; I felt sick to my stomach while reading this. Consider yourself warned:

When I was a little over 18 weeks pregnant with my now pre-school child, I did a second trimester abortion for a patient who was also a little over 18 weeks pregnant. As I reviewed her chart I realised that I was more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus. I went about doing the procedure as usual, removed the laminaria I had placed earlier and confirmed I had adequate dilation. I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. I felt lucky that this one was already in the breech position – it would make grasping small parts (legs and arms) a little easier. With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick – a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes – without me – meaning my conscious brain – even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling – a brutally visceral response – heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life. Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.

(h/t)

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At the risk of sounding heartless, Brigitte would like to beg a question: “dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.” Sadder than what?

A Montreal-area woman has a brush with death after second-trimester abortion. The story is in French, but you can find a good translation here.

In a nutshell: This 19-year-old woman, who already has one baby, doesn’t want to carry her second one to term. Because she’s past 12 weeks, she’s referred to a clinic that specializes in late-term abortions. She stays in the recovery room for 2 hours after the procedure, then gets up to go to the bathroom. There, she notices heavy bleeding. She tells the nurse, who sends her home anyway.

Understandably worried, she prefers not to stay home alone. So she accompanies her boyfriend on some errand. In the car she realizes the bleeding is getting worse and so is the pain. They head for the hospital. At that point there is a gush of blood with every step she takes (“À chaque pas que je faisais, ça coulait,” is how she put it). She received emergency surgery and blood transfusion. She says she was told in the hospital that if she’d gotten there five minutes later, she might not have made it.

The 19-year-old woman does not know whether she’ll be able to have more children.

Well.

First of all, let me concede that the reason this story made the news is because it’s so rare. But “rare” doesn’t mean “impossible”. Indeed, the story quotes a spokesperson from the Centre de santé Jeanne-Mance, a clinic that provides abortions, to the effect that, well, you know, of course there are risks related to abortion.

Les responsables du Centre de santé Jeanne-Mance assurent que toutes les mesures sont prises pour limiter les cas de complications graves, mais qu’ils font partie des risques d’une interruption volontaire de grossesse.

«Des saignements liés à l’avortement, c’est dans la normalité des choses. Est-ce qu’il y a des complications à chaque fois qu’il y a une chirurgie ? Bien sûr que non», indique Suzanne Carrière, directrice des services spécifiques au CSSS Jeanne-Mance.

Sans commenter directement le cas de Christelle Dupuis-Labelle, la directrice indique que les patients reçoivent un guide de 16 pages d’information en lien avec l’intervention. Tout ce qui touche d’éventuelles complications s’y trouve, ainsi qu’un numéro en cas d’urgence.

My translation: Bleeding after an abortion, that’s normal. Are there complications with each surgery? Of course not. The spokesperson adds that patients receive a 16-page guide before an abortion that includes information about possible complications and a phone number to call in case of emergency.

Did I tell you about my root canal last year? Probably not. It’s not that interesting. But I had a root canal last year. That’s a lucrative business, judging from the bill they handed me (it had four digits before the decimal point; I hated the whole thing). You’d think these people had an incentive to just do one root canal after another and send patients home quickly to make room for more paying patients, right? But no. Not only did the doctor who did my root canal explain, in painstaking detail, what would happen and why, I had to listen to a little lesson about possible risks and sign a whole bunch of papers saying I understood the risks and was OK with them. I was also told that there might be some pain once things thawed, but that if the pain didn’t go away after a day or so (or maybe it was 2 days, I forget), not to hesitate to give them a call. They scared the dickens out of me with those warnings, but other than burning a fine whole in my wallet the procedure did not cause me undue pain or discomfort.

I’m guessing that’s because dentists are both pro-tooth and pro-paying-patient.

I never had an abortion, and never asked for one, so I don’t have first-hand knowledge of how it goes. But I’d be curious to know. Is it more, or less, elaborate than for my root canal?

Some scary stats on abortion worldwide.

NEW YORK – While contraceptive use is increasing worldwide, helping fuel a drop in the number of abortions, unintended pregnancies and deaths from unsafe abortion remain rampant in many developing nations, a research institute reported Tuesday in a major global survey.

Sub-Saharan Africa was singled out as the region with by far the lowest rates of contraceptive use and the highest rates of unsafe abortions and unintended pregnancies.

[…]

In one example, the report told of a Nigerian woman named Victoria who first tried to induce an abortion by drinking an herbal concoction, then consulted a traditional healer who inserted leaves in her vagina that caused internal injuries.

This makes me so sad. I’m sure there are many reasons why so many women in developing countries would seek an abortion, regardless of how unsafe it is, and that the problem there is overwhelmingly complex. I, for one, am overwhelmed.

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Andrea adds: I agree with Melissa in the comments–this is the Guttmacher after all–and they don’t know a legal abortion they didn’t love, and an illegal one they didn’t want to legalize. The reality is that legalizing abortion the globe over is their goal and so I for one, will take this report with a more than a grain of salt. More like a salt mine. (And to tangentially inform our readers, and clutter this site with useless information, I have visited one, in Poland. Amazing.)

Well, that’s getting scary. I wonder where, in that Hippocratic Oath thingy, accelerating a patient’s demise is mentioned?

Quebec’s specialist doctors are overwhelmingly in favour of legalizing euthanasia, according to a survey conducted by their professional association. The poll by the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec found 75 per cent of doctors think the government should establish a legal framework that would allow them to help near-death patients accelerate their demise. The doctors are also urging the FMSQ to take a public stand on the matter. Nonetheless, 20 per cent of those polled say that even if euthanasia were legalized, they would refuse to perform it.

I’m learning to love this man real quick:

Detained Academy Award-winning director and convicted sex offender Roman Polanski may have the support of some famous faces in the film industry, but don’t count Jamie Foxx among them. According to the actor, he only needs to imagine the 1977 case against Polanski is a personal one to find his feelings.

“If it had been my daughter who was barely a teenager — my daughter is 15 — Roman Polanski would be missing … period,” Foxx stated in an interview with Parade magazine. “It wouldn’t even get to the court case. But, that’s me and I wouldn’t want anyone else to follow that because you should let the justice system work it out.”

Foxx went on to explain that while his perspective might have been different had he known the director personally, as do many of his Hollywood peers, ultimately he believes “this whole issue is bigger than Roman Polanski.” So big, it forces Foxx to confront his own complex sense of revenge.

“Revenge is a tough thing,” “The Soloist” star said. “When it comes to someone bringing harm to your family, it’s hard to think about turning the other cheek. When I hear about things that we allow to go on in our society where women are harmed, I just knee-jerk. I’ve said some things publicly that my publicist keeps telling me I should keep to myself. I don’t know if that’s my Texas upbringing, but there comes a point where you just say, ‘OK, that would be my tipping point. What would I do?’ Some of things I’ve said I’d do to sexual perpetrators were pretty graphic. But I also read some stories of people taking the law into their own hands, which is bad too. So it’s tough to know how far you’d go.”

No, taking justice into your own hands is not a good idea. But when it comes to raping little girls (or boys), you’ve got to admit it’s tempting. Jamie Foxx speaks for a lot of people, very much including me.

Breaking news! The New York Times ran a story that was fair to pro-lifers. Seems there was quite a lot of shock and revulsion over this; check the comments.  

Came with this photo spread, too. They warn you that the photos are graphic.

Too bad no one warns women that the procedure is very graphic before they do it. (The photos are of aborted fetuses.)