Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a place far away from here, I was employed by a state health department in the midwest. One of my duties was to oversee the annual and quarterly summary reports on therapeutic abortions performed in Our Fair State. State law required all providers to report each procedure along with the reason for the abortion.
Ordinarily, I just looked at the report tables and said to myself, "Yeah, that looks plausible." One day while preparing the annual summary report I decided to look at the original reports. Something that was apparent in the tables suddenly struck home. The justification for early (at the time early meant 6-8 weeks estimated gestational age) procedures was often what my boss termed "flimsy." "Mental health of patient," was a popular one.
But once you got past those early term procedures, every data point was official paperwork documenting a personal tragedy. I distinctly remember a line documenting an anencephalic fetus, and another a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in the mother.
Women don’t wake up one morning in the 18th or 19th week of gestation and decide that they’re tired of being pregnant, singing Hey, hey!, Whaddaya say? Let’s go get an abortion today!
Every one of these procedures marks the end of a period of hope for a family. Andrew Sullivan is mistaken if he really believes that better access to Plan B, ordinary contraceptives, and streamlined adoption will end late term abortions.
The early adolescent girl who hides her pregnancy until it couldn’t be hidden is very much the exception rather than the rule. There is a serious medical need for late-term abortions. Telling a woman that she must carry a malformed fetus to term, although there is a high probability that it will die on the warming table (and a much higher probability that it will die within the first year) is cruelty. If the woman and her family choose that course for their own reasons, that is their choice (it’s why it’s called choice, after all). But universal access to contraception will not end anencephaly, conjoined twins, cancer, preeclampsia and all the other tragedies that can indicate a therapeutic abortion.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for all of us.
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Thank you for this important post.
Thank you, BCT.
I’m really impressed by all the firepups willing to share their experiences, especially on this sad topic.
Funny Wheelie Diva
Seconded.
Yes, and the biggest reason for late-term abortions is the fact that it isn’t usually until after the 22nd week of gestation that parents find out for sure that their much hoped for infant has some of these horrid birth defects. (Trisomy 23 which produces children with no discernable internal organs, children with spina bifida from C2 to L4 (in other words, the entire length of the spinal cord), children with their entire organ system outside the body and half of their skeletons missing, children with only half a heart and Down Syndrome (not eligible for a transplant), and “monsters” (yes that is the medical term for them – children who are so misshapen, don’t have faces, have either minimal brains or sometimes two fused together, extra limbs or no limbs or partial ones, all of them in the wrong places, no openings for the ureter or anus, hydrocephaly, lungs that aren’t attached to the brachea, stomachs that arent attached either to the esophagus or the small intestine, livers that are fused to the lungs, and on and on.)
Many if not most of these defects are not apparent on ultrasound until late in pregnancy when the fetus is large enough to be able to see what is going on. Trisomy 21 and 23 can be tested by amniocentesis but that test is dangerous for both mom and baby and unless there are indications that the pregnancy is a high-risk for one of those or other chromosome abnormalities it is not normally done.
These babies are wanted, expected, planned for, and loved. Making the decision to terminate them is heart-wrenching and devastating to the moms, the dads, and their entire families. The women who go through this procedure do it for so-called selfish reasons – they are thinking of themselves, their husbands, their other children, the rest of their families, but most of all, and this is really important – for the babies. These babies are doomed to have very short lives, mostly spent in intensive care units with surgery after surgery – in a lot of pain, struggling to breath, suffering what can be only an unimaginable horror of a life that will end, in a few days or a few weeks at most.
This is a decision that is absolutely best left in the capable hands of the mother and her doctor. No one else should presume to try to interfere with it. Unfortunately, the so-called pro-lifers out there with this killing of Dr. Tillen have probably ended the availability of this choice for women everywhere in this country. No law necessary banning it. Just no doctors left who know how, and are willing to put themselves at so much risk.
As one woman said when going to Dr. Tillen’s clinic – “None of the protesters out there volunteered to adopt and take care of my baby.”
Thanks so much BC for telling it like it is.
The anti-s don’t want to hear this. They keep making themselves think that all those “babies” that are being “killed” by these docs are perfect. They live with those pictures of dead fetuses thinking that it was the docs who made them what they look like. It is impossible for them to imagine that anyone could actually give birth to such malformed creatures. They just can’t connect those dots. It would be too painful for them.
thanks and rec. Bargain
in reading personal accounts from patients and their families, Doctor Tiller wasn’t just skilled – he provided compassion, dignity and comfort at what was surely a horrific time – who among us wouldn’t want the same when we or a loved one face a serious health crisis
Thank you for putting this so well, lokywoky. I’ve been struggling for these words for days now. I get so infuriated at all the men on TV talking about this so patronizingly, talking about “the health of the mother” as the only possible reason why a woman would have a late-term abortion. I keep screaming at the TV: “You can’t tell that these problems exist in your beloved baby until the only choice is a late-term abortion”.
Thanks, Rev.
I’m grateful that I’m not telling it like it is, only as I saw it. I’ve been through several miscarriages with Mrs. BC and one with my ex-. I have an idea, but only an idea, of the loss those families experienced. That is how it really is.
What the forced-birth crowd ignores is the fact that development is very complex. There is so much that can go so wrong, and result in a nonviable fetus.
Thank you bc.
Exactly what we need. Sane, rational, compassionate discussion, and policy devolving from same.
Would that more “pro life” people could find the moral courage to confront the truth of the matter.
BargainCounter.
Thank you for your post. I shared this family story yesterday.
The family situation was complicated by more birth circumstances. Two weeks prior to this family member’s loss, Mr. Klynn and myself had just given birth to our youngest who was a high risk birth situation requiring a 6.5 week hospital stay and the risk had the potential in our baby’s death. Our baby survived. We lived with a deep sadness that our youngest lost a cousin who he would have grown up with. We found ourselves suppressing our joy and relief in our baby “making it” as we faced our grief that our extended family faced with the loss of a baby and the awful circumstances around the loss of the baby imposed on our loved ones by state/federal laws.
How ironic that the ad in the middle of the page is for forced birthers. I’m going to go click on it and make them pay. :)
Thank you for sharing this post, BC.
How sadly ironic it is, that many of those who say they do not want government to step into the middle of a doctor/patient relationship (a canard, btw) happily contradict themselves with this great big exception.
DemocracyNow spent the whole hour (after headlines)on June 1 on Dr.George Tiller, with women physicians, who worked with him and a premier choice advocate.
One of the physicians said “There will always be a need for first trimester abortions. And for second and third trimester abortions.”.
And, finally it’s my uterus and my decision. Not open for discussion. http://www.democracynow.org
and another;
Teh glorious Bible demonstrates, according to itself, there is no value on fetuses or infants less than one month old.
that’s pretty clear isn’t it, fetuses and infants less than one month old are not considered people.
the bible is respite;
here’s abortion by murder of the mother;
more;
got all these and there are tons more from here
I’m not a biblical scholar nor have i double checked these quotes for accuracy and context but they are pretty endicting
BCT, another excellent post on late term abortions.
That’s truly horrible, klynn.
One of the things that the forced birth crowd apparently don’t understand is the sheer number of births in this country. It exceeds 4,000,000 nationally per year.
That’s why even though late term abortions are rare, the numbers mount up. A back-of-the-envelope computation says Dr Tiller’s practice amounted 0.05% of the annual live births. If you figure two other surgeons nationally, that brings things around to 0.15% That is rare … about 1 in 1000 or so. But there are so many pregnancies in this country that even when something is rare, the numbers add up.
If we were more rational about this, we would have a few surgeons in each state who had the ability to perform these procedures. That would reduce the burden (and these procedures do take a toll on the medical personnel, too) on the providers and the patient. Having to travel cross country for these things compounds the pain.