Late term abortions are happening in Canada because we have no legal restrictions on the procedure. We don’t know how frequently they occur because we don’t have access to statistics. They are happening for apparently any reason at all.

Talk show host Isabelle Maréchal could not believe her ears.

“I was 26 weeks,” said Karel.

The host was incredulous. “Oh wow, and they aborted you anyway?” she asked.

Karel: At the CLSC on Rue Sanguinet. They handle pregnancies of more than 24 weeks.

Host: Did you have a problem? Was it a [high-risk] pregnancy that endangered your life?

Karel: No, I had no problems.

Read more here. Entire transcript here.

Andrea wrote about this story as it was happening. The inquest results are in – as reported over at MercatorNet:

Savita Halappanavar died from septic shock resulting from an E.coli bacterial infection which had entered her bloodstream via the urinary tract. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has attributed most of the deaths of pregnant women in the UK with a baby under 24 weeks gestation, from sepsis, as being due to “substandard care… in particular a lack of recognition of the signs of sepsis and a lack of guidelines on the investigation and management of genital track sepsis”…

Savita Halappanavar first presented at University College Hospital Galway on the afternoon of Sunday, October 21, with backache but she was sent home following an examination. Savita had a history of back problems. She returned later that evening having experienced blood loss and was admitted. A blood sample was taken.

Crucially, the results of the blood tests, which showed an elevated white blood cell count indicating that an infection was present, were never followed up. The inquest heard that though the results were processed almost instantaneously, the first time they were accessed was some 24 hours later by an unidentified member of staff, and later by Dr Katherine Astbury, the consultant in charge of her care, at 11.24 on the Wednesday morning. This was five hours after she had been diagnosed with sepsis and after her condition had rapidly deteriorated.

Speaking at the inquest, Dr Astbury stated that if she had had access to the blood results earlier, she would have taken measures to terminate Savita’s pregnancy on the Monday or the Tuesday. However, she had been judging Mrs Halappanavar on the basis of clinical signs only and it had been her opinion that Savita was “distressed, but not unwell”.

It seems like hospital staff committed one mistake after another, from failing to monitor Savita to taking fluid samples in the wrong tubes, which prevented the lab from running the appropriate tests.

Did her survival hinge on a termination?

Opinion is divided as to whether or not a termination would helped Savita. The presence of an infection is a contraindication to surgical intervention, because the clamps and forceps required in a procedure risk further infection.

Furthermore Savita’s unborn child was not the source of her bacterial infection, the uterus and membranes being a sterile environment. Use of the drug misoprostol to contract the uterus and expedite delivery would not have guaranteed that the process would have been any swifter nor ruled out the necessity for surgery.

Conservative management is the preferred clinical approach in cases of spontaneous miscarriage. In the absence of obvious signs of infection, masked by her painkillers, it is not surprising that the medical staff decided that intervention was unnecessary. With ruptured membranes and a dilated cervix, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that nature would soon take its course. The outcome for the baby would have been tragically inevitable, but there would have been no long term ill-effects for the mother.

Susan Martinuk on how the “private choice” of killing oneself impacts all of society:

So there it is — the classic left-wing argument against almost everything. Not based on facts or statistics, or what has happened in other countries, but on emotional narratives that are loaded with words like compassion, “I feel,” and claims of “my body, “my choice” and the ignorant and naive assumption that this “will only affect me.”

In sharp contrast, the reality is that giving individuals the right to die “on their own terms” has plenty of public implications. First of all, it involves the assistance of another and the assurance that society will not stand in the way. Therefore, it is very much a public, not private, act. By giving doctors the right to help their patients die, the legalization of euthanasia would also influence the kind of medical care that the rest of society receives. We currently have a medical profession that is dedicated to supporting life, and is not compromised by some within it who will happily help you to die. This is societal progress; in the time of Hippocrates, a healer/doctor could just as easily kill you as heal you, depending on the desires of those paying the bill.

We’ve witnessed how the abortion “choice” has impacted North American society and how it has devalued the lives of the young. Let’s watch how this choice, if legalized, will devalue the lives of the sick and the elderly.

Brian Lilley recently interviewed Lila Rose on the Hermit Gosnell trial. The comments on when human life begins are especially interesting. We’re on such a sickening slippery slope…and we’re sliding down and down and down…

As you’ll remember, Andrea was disappointed that pictures weren’t immediately available at press time. Here he is.

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Andrea adds: Faye alerted me to this important post via email, but since I was at a business dinner, and didn’t want to swoon abruptly in front of near strangers, I thought it wise to wait to look. Fortunately, he’s really not my type.

From Wesley J. Smith,

Remember when they said “only” excess embryos would be used in research? It was always bunk, and now an article in the New England Journal of Medicine has called for allowing embryos to be made to order and sold like a corn crop.

What would justify this form of nascent human trafficking?

The lovely Stephanie Gray has us rethinking terms this week:

Any woman who has never been pregnant is a mother-to-be.  By virtue of our femininity, we women hold within us the potential for biological motherhood, but in the absence of conception, motherhood is a future possibility, not a present reality.  “Mother-to-be” speaks of what is to come.  “Mother” speaks of what is now.  After all, “bride-to-be” indicates a woman isn’t yet a bride.  Or, what would we call a student who’s going to be a lawyer one day, but is not one yet? A “lawyer-to-be.”  So what would we call a woman who’s going to be a mother one day, but not a mother yet? A “mother-to-be.”

To be clear, then, a pregnant woman is not—I repeat: NOT—a mother-to-be.  A pregnant woman is a mother.  Birth does not endow motherhood.  Fertilization does.  When a woman becomes pregnant, her status is permanently changed.  Whether her child survives or is miscarried, aborted, or adopted, her status as mother never disappears.

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Andrea adds: I am a supporter of Stephanie and CCBR. That fact that I don’t like this article doesn’t alter that. But I don’t like this article/concept, nor do I find it to be particularly logical. Her main point is that pregnant women are not “mothers-to-be,” but rather, they are mothers. Yes, agreed. It does not follow then that all women are in point of fact, mothers to be. Ice is not water in waiting if it lives in Antarctica, to make an off the cuff comparison. If someone asks me if I’m single and I say, “No! I’m a ‘wife-to-be,'” they might (rightly) think I was off my rocker.

Claiming all women are “mothers-to-be” regardless of what they are right now detracts both from the women who are not mothers, and possibly from mothering itself.

Students of law are not lawyers in waiting. They might flunk out, or decide they prefer another career path. Anything can happen.

This concept might also be considered terribly insensitive to women who are infertile–desperately wanting to be mothers but finding for one reason or another that they can’t be. Who, in that circumstance, wants to be told they actually are a “mother-to-be”? Fan.Tas.Tic.

Finally, we can marvel at the new life created in the embryo, right at conception.  We can and we should. We all started there. It’s an amazing miracle. But mothers (and aunties and uncles and good friends and grandparents) long to cradle their newborns in their arms and welcome them into the world. To see them. And we can’t pretend this is a distinction that doesn’t matter.

My two cents. I welcome the thoughts of others.

They are great conversation starters. I’ve had some good exchanges with people about abortion because they had no idea baby girls could be aborted simply because they’re girls and they were horrified by that fact.

This joint letter, publicized by Priests for Life, puts forward the idea that with the Gosnell trial, it is the entire abortion industry that is actually on trial.

Agree? Disagree? Is this a trial of the entire abortion industry?

Although only one abortionist is being prosecuted today, the entire abortion industry is on trial.

I tend to agree. Because the sanitary, “safe” abortions are also chilling to me. This will come as no great surprise, but every time I walk past an abortion clinic, I am entirely unable to accept the fact that we have small centres dotting this great country, that have the sole purpose of snuffing out lives.

Because of a media request, I read Speaker Sheer’s full ruling. I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to look it over. It’s short at eight pages and is a heartening read.

In making their arguments in this case, several Members have correctly pointed out the fundamental importance of freedom of speech for Members as they carry out their duties.