Archives for June 2011

Linda Gibbons, who has been in jail for 28 months for protesting inside the bubble zone of an abortion clinic, is out, without conditions until she must reappear in January 2012. Read about it, here.

Octomom, Nadya Suleman, seems to have strange intentions for wanting 14 children. Any doctor would recognize that and send her to see a psychiatrist, but Dr. Kamrava didn’t, which is in part why he’s losing his license.

LOS ANGELES — The fertility doctor who helped a woman give birth to octuplets in 2009 will be stripped of his license by the California Medical Board because of “gross negligence.”

The board revoked Dr. Michael Kamrava’s license effective July 1, according to documents on its website alleging a number of cases of malpractice, chief among them the creation of the tabloid sensation dubbed “Octomom.”

The Beverly Hills-based board said Kamrava had committed “gross negligence, repeated negligent acts and incompetence” when he repeatedly implanted multiple embryos into Nadya Suleman, identified as “N.S.” from 2002 to 2008.

In 2009 Suleman – who was unmarried, unemployed and already had six children – gave birth to octuplets after Kamrava implanted 12 embryos the year before, far more than the maximum recommended three.

The medical board filed two lawsuits against Kamrava in 2010, accusing him of negligence and of failing to recommend that Suleman consult a mental health specialist.

While I absolutely agree with this decision, I have to wonder why it isn’t also considered “gross negligence” not to recommend women who have multi-abortions to a mental health specialist.

I wrote this in today’s Ottawa Citizen. (I dedicate it to all the smart, beautiful, classy, funny, single women I know, who have higher standards than the culture around them, and who desire to be married. These same women are inclined to wonder if they are still single because “there is something wrong with me.” No. High standards is not a fault, neither is living in a culture with low standards.)

“Doctor Death” has himself died. You always knew this was coming. It’s just hard to know what to say when a man like that dies. It takes a bit of a psychopath to kill over 100 people and then have “no regrets” about that.

_______________________

Jennifer adds: According to The Telegraph today, one in three doctors now support euthanasia.

… are feeling the pressure.

I’m getting sick of it.

Sick of measure after measure, new legal stipulation after stipulation passing, aimed at limiting access to abortion—locally and nationally—like this past week’s Foxx amendment, which ensures that no tax dollars will be spent to train health-care providers to perform abortions. Abortion, mind them, remains a legal and crucial medical procedure for women in spite of the Draconian regulations suddenly being placed on it left and right.

[…]

A friend of mine—we’ll call her Rose—used to be on the other side of the argument. Like any good Catholic girl, she didn’t believe in abortion. Until, just as she neared her 17th birthday, the morning sickness kicked in. A hospital visit, and there it was: Her birth control had failed due to a drug interaction. She was pregnant.

“I was upset, my mom was upset and we had to tell my dad. He was really, really upset,” she recounts now, several years later. Neither she and the father (her former long-term boyfriend), nor her parents (both worked full-time) were in any way equipped to care for a baby. “It was hard, but I decided [an abortion] was the best thing.”

[…]

And so I challenge those who stand against it without understanding, those who make the laws without being there, those who spit fire at anything pro-choice without ever having had to choose: Put yourselves in her shoes. If abortion means the end of what would have been (or, to some, already was) a new life, the question is still valid: What makes that life any more important than the woman’s life, forever altered and maybe hindered by the decision to have an unplanned child? What about all the people Rose will help—the lives she’ll save when she becomes a nurse—that wouldn’t have been, had she chosen otherwise?

The comments to this article really speak for themselves (3 of the 4 I read were in favor of abortion restriction). But she asked the question, so I’ll answer. What makes a baby’s life more important than a mother’s? Nothing, and absolutely no one said it’s more important. What is important, is having a life to begin with, however altered. And those alterations, like parenting and finishing school, like parenting and working as a nurse, well, we pro-lifers have an app for that, it’s called resources. Contact any pro-life organization, or any crisis pregnancy center, and they’ll have staff and volunteers waiting to help and meet your specific needs.

And as for Rose’s potential lives saved as the nurse she wouldn’t have been with a baby (though I can’t actually think of any nurses I know who don’t have children)…I’m kind of shocked to hear someone use potentiality as an argument for abortion. What makes those patient’s lives worth more than her baby’s? And what about all those potential lives her baby could have changed?

I’m sick of it.

Sick of person after person saying women need abortion.

So, here’s my question. What makes a life as a mother so seemingly worthless and hindered that we think abortion is the favorable alternative?

Don’t let them fool you ladies, we’re a capable lot.

A broad movement to limit access to abortion is gathering steam. So says The Economist.

Chai Ling is a Chinese dissident who has started a campaign called All Girls Allowed:

People ask from time to time what my position on abortion after rape is. This time I was asked this by a reader because of this CNN column.

My line for the media is that I’d be happy to discuss abortions for rape victims in more detail when we eradicate the 98 percent of abortions that are not the result of rape.

Behind that answer, however, lies a deep concern for the victims of rape, and a deep conviction that abortion kills a human being and is therefore not a solution for a rape victim.

Today we live in a culture that accepts abortion as a solution. People’s views vary, but generally, for many Canadians, abortion is a plausible solution for an unwanted pregnancy in any of the following life circumstances: Poverty. Life stage. Wanting to finish education. Wanting to compete in an athletic event where nine months out would mean you couldn’t. Not wanting to be in contact with the father, who you believe will be involved and you don’t want him to. The list goes on.  

None of these reasons consider the humanity of the child. And the humanity of the child doesn’t change, given the reason for having an abortion.

We are appalled when someone is raped. And the circumstances are horrifying. We don’t view abortion as horrifying, and therefore, to many, abortion in the case of rape makes sense. I get that.

However, I am horrified by abortion, and so, in my mind, when you consider the trauma of rape you don’t top it up with the trauma of abortion. 

I know I’m in the minority on this one, and so I return to my media line. Let’s have a big discussion of rape when the vast majority of abortions for social reasons have been eradicated.

I’m not sure what it will take to change the societal attitude that abortion is AOK. I recently spoke to a woman who was about to go for her third abortion. To be clear: She is using abortion as birth control. I was definitely more eaten up by this situation than she was. I jumped into high gear to try and help her, because I thought she wanted help. Turns out she actually didn’t. She was being offered help up and down the block, but abortion was the “solution” she wanted. Some kid paid the price because she didn’t feel like it. Not claiming her circumstances were ideal, no, but they weren’t dire either. I’m just saying it’s a sad world when help is offered and denied when someone’s life is on the line.

We don’t view abortion as a life and death circumstance. And if we did, we wouldn’t offer it up as a solution to rape victims.

(And by the way, I think the politician’s dialogue clipped here by the author sounds terrible, callous and useless, but then again, so is this CNN columnist’s viewpoint.)