You can get in trouble for using the term “pro-abortion.” But in the gruesome story from Philadelphia, is there any other word?
But the grand jury found that Pennsylvania authorities knew what was happening at Gosnell’s abortion mill, yet deliberately looked the other way. In 1993, with the accession of a prochoice governor, the Pennsylvania Department of Health stopped inspecting abortion clinics. “Officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions,’’ the report says, and decided “to leave clinics to do as they pleased.’’
So great is the concern around “access” that standards get tossed aside. The tossing aside of standards happened recently in Quebec, too. Rebecca and I wrote about that, here.
Back to Philadelphia, though. When the goal is unethical (killing babies) is it any wonder that some doctors “cross the line”? From day one of choosing to work in a clinic, they already did.
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Brigitte adds: Words fail...
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Pro-abortion. Like the city councils and mayors who are targeting pregnancy crises centers because they may persuade women to keep their babies… Austin, NYC, Washington! Definitely pro-abortion! WHich makes you wonder who is is they don’t want…
That’s what occurred to me, too – this story out of Philadelphia is horrible, but it only differs from the story coming out of every single abortion clinic in the world in that it is more gruesome. Babies are being killed and women are being profoundly damaged every day, in every clinic! It’s just usually done in a more sanitized fashion, and (usually) does not result in the physical death of the mother.
One hopes that these atrocities will at least have the effect of opening more peoples’ eyes to the truth about abortion.
I really don’t see a huge ethical distinction between slicing a newborn’s neck with scissors and inejcting that baby with poison hours before he comes out. Seems to me that if you can ignore your blaring conscience and perform the one act, it shouldn’t be too hard to perform the other. Apparently Mr. Gosnell honestly didn’t understand the charge of murder with respect to the babies. He didn’t see a difference either.
Christina Dunigan at Real Choice is following this case closely. Consider adding her to your blogroll. http://realchoice.blogspot.com
I might get a lot of flak for saying this, but I think we should really consider the effects of allowing abortion this late in the pregnancy on the abortionists. It can’t be easy performing that kind of destructive surgery on a healthy mother and child. I would think that it would eat away at their souls. I really think that one of the reasons we should put stringent limits on the gestestational age that abortion is allowed to be committed is that it would allow the doctors, who really would rather not perform that abortion, an out. It is much easier to say no to a woman requesting abortion if the law is there on your side.
Melissa, you won’t get flak! You may get some healthy disagreement, which is AOK since that what this forum is for. 🙂 The problem is that the morally repugnant will do terrible things with or without a law. The average doctor, who doesn’t want to do an abortion, very fortunately, doesn’t have to. All he or she has to do is listen to his or her conscience and walk away. No further pressure will be applied.
The unfortunate reality is that there are people who, with a clear conscience (to them anyway) do abhorrent things (not limited to abortion). And for them, there’s something missing. I’m not sure what it is, or how to change it. I know it probably starts small… and then grows… People don’t just wake up one morning with a desire to snap newborn infants’ necks.
Andrea,
“The average doctor, who doesn’t want to do an abortion, very fortunately, doesn’t have to.”
Except…
Imagine that you are a pro-choice doctor. (I know, I know, but bear with me here.) Now, I’m a person who believes the pro-choicers when they say that nobody likes abortion, and nobody wants to perform one. They look at it as a necessary evil. So you don’t like abortion, and you certainly don’t want to perform them, but, if you believe that access to abortion is necessary for women’s freedom, autonomy, whatever, then somebody has to perform them. So you bite the bullet and start doing early abortions. D&C’s. And after the first couple they are not that hard to do anymore.
But then a young woman comes into your clinic who has terrible, terrible morning sickness, and, although she originally wanted to carry the child to term, she just can’t bear it any longer. So she’s a little further along than you would like, but she is just miserable, so you perform the abortion. And it is terrible. But the next time a woman comes in to the clinic at that gestational age, with a considerably less urgent reason for why she needs to abort, you figure you can’t say no to her because you said yes to the previous woman. And, sooner or later, you are performing D&E’s rather regularly.
But the thing is, I don’t care who you are, it ain’t easy to deal with the mangled bodies of something that looks remarkably like a baby day in and day out. And in order to keep your sanity, you start to not care anymore. You let the clinic get run down. You start to resent the women who keep coming in, because there will always be women who are in crisis, and pregnant. You are in Hell: a self-inflicted Hell to be sure, but a Hell nonetheless.
Now to those of us that are pro-life, the solution here seems simple: walk away. But this doctor truly believes the lie that late-term abortions are essential for those women who want them. And if he starts to question that assumption, it will all start to unravel and fall apart. But, in the meantime, everything IS unravelling and falling apart, but he is so locked up in his own delusion that he just doesn’t see it.
So here’s what I don’t get. How selfish do you have to be to keep referring women to these doctors? How selfish do you have to be to insist that abortion is a right and necessary well into the third trimester, when it is so obvious that performing these abortions is just plain traumatic on the abortionists? How selfish do you have to be to keep looking the other way, to fail over and over again to ask this fellow if he’s okay, when it is plain to anyone with eyes to see that he’s NOT? I mean, these guys are supposed to be the heros…
The whole business just makes me so sad.
Melissa, you bring up a good point. What ARE the psychological effects of abortion on providers? From Physicians for Life,
“What is the emotional impact on abortion providers? Those who perform or assist in surgical abortions have written and said enough to show that it is no ordinary medical procedure.
Some, like Sallie, suffer nightmares. Others suffer many of the other symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), once called “shell shock” and “battle fatigue”. The practice of medicine, of healing, should not give you nightmares, should not leave one shell-shocked.
Few studies have been done of the doctors, nurses, counselors, and other staff in abortion centers. Only 2 scientific studies that look at a large number of such providers have been done by researchers who did not work in the abortion field. These studies were conducted by M. Such-Baer, Social Casework in 1974, and by K.M. Roe in Social Science and Medicine in 1989.
Both studies were done by people in favor of legal abortion, yet they both note the high prevalence of symptoms that fit the condition now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The study published in 1974 noted that “obsessional thinking about abortion, depression, fatique, anger, lowered self-esteem, and identity conflicts were prominent.”
(source: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/691/26/ )