NPR has a great story up about one of the families leading the charge against the South Dakota abortion ban. Tiffany Campbell was pregnant with much-wanted twins when she and her husband learned that the fetuses had a rare defect wherein they shared the same blood circulation, threatening not only their lives, but Tiffany’s as well. So the Campbells made a choice that is every parent’s nightmare:
The couple traveled to Cincinnati to consult with some of the country’s top fetal specialists. After considering and rejecting several options that put all three lives — the twins’ and Tiffany’s — at risk, they reluctantly decided to abort the second twin, whom they’d named Brendan. Tiffany already had two other small children at home; she says she didn’t want to risk leaving them without a mother and Chris without a wife.
“It was awful,” Tiffany Campbell says. “How do you give up on one of your children? But we were forced to make a decision. We don’t regret our decision. We regret having to make that decision to choose one child over the other. We live … every single day with what we did. But then we look at Brady and say, ‘Wow, he would not be here otherwise.’ ”
Chris Campbell says it was particularly hard for him because he was raised a Catholic and was always taught that abortion was a bad thing.
“But it wasn’t until this happened,” he says, “that I actually thought about some of the different things that can happen in a pregnancy, and [it] just really sunk in that this isn’t a black-and-white issue — and it’s really a decision that needs to be between a doctor and the families.”
When the Campbells returned home in fall 2006, Tiffany, who was still pregnant with Brady, was put on bed rest. She said she realized that the ban then on the ballot in South Dakota would likely have outlawed the procedure she’d just had. So she sent an e-mail to the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, the group fighting the ban, offering to do what she could from home. She did a few interviews, but little else. That ban was rejected by voters, and in 2007, Brady was born — healthy.
Chris is right — sometimes, you don’t know until you know. The health issues we face in our lives are complex. Pregnancy is not a simple process, and the fact that women don’t regularly die from it is a fairly modern phenomenon (and certainly not the case in much of the world). The human body is not a simple machine; that’s something that we recognize in every other area of health care. Yet when it comes to reproductive health, anti-choice activists allow for no such complexity, and are happy to limit the care that women can receive:
This year, the new ban is on the ballot. Backers say it includes exceptions to preserve the health of the pregnant woman, but the Campbells say it still would not allow their procedure. And they’ve taped a television ad opposing the ban.
“Under Measure 11, we wouldn’t have had that choice, and we would have lost both of them,” Tiffany, in the commercial, says of her twins.
Supporters of the ban, however, say the ad is deceptive, that aborting one twin is never necessary in cases like the Campbells’.
“The law just basically requires the doctor to do everything they can to save” both babies, says Allen Unruh of Vote Yes for Life, the group that put the initiative on the ballot.
Unruh says that if a doctor does one of several recognized procedures, “the doctor’s not liable under any aspect of this law, because he’s done everything he can to save them. They die from the condition, really, not the surgery. So to tell people [as the Campbells do in the ad] that we wouldn’t have a baby if we wouldn’t have done selective reduction is completely false.”
It’s the “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” healthcare policy: Just insist that these procedures are never necessary and repeatedly claim that outlawing them won’t hurt anyone. In fact, Unruh’s own words belie his point: The doctor would have had to do everything he could to save both of the fetuses, and if they died of their condition, well, he wouldn’t go to jail. But he would go to jail if, in accordance with his patient’s wishes, he took steps to save her and one of the fetuses. Unruh claims it’s false to say that “we wouldn’t have a baby if we hadn’t done a selective reduction.” Except that’s exactly what happened here: Both babies were not going to survive. There was a chance that Tiffany wasn’t going to survive. Anti-choicers can stick their fingers in their ears all they want, but these things happen. And that’s why it’s crucial to defeat the South Dakota abortion ban next week. Because as Tiffany points out, this is about more than just South Dakota — it’s part of a larger strategy to overturn Roe and take abortion rights away from all women.
Cara has been covering South Dakota quite extensively, so go back and check out her posts. Activists in South Dakota need help. To quote from Cara:
If you’re in South Dakota, email sstevens AT ppmns DOT org now to sign up for a volunteer shift. In a race this close with a voting population of this size, your time really will make such a big difference. And wherever you are, donate now. In the past week, Daily Kos has raised over $1,750,000 — a breath-taking amount for this campaign. Let’s see if we can help them reach their $2,000,000 goal. Remember that time is quickly running out!