Powerful Words

48 thoughts on Powerful Words

1. If Julie reads this, that was a heartbreaking story. And you summed it up so well:

   For some women, the decision comes easy, for some it is wrestled with over and over again, but the choice must always be hers.

2. Jill,
   Could you please substantiate your charge that “anti-choice advocates” would work to make an early induction like Julie’s illegal? I’m fairly familiar with the prolife movement and I don’t recall ever once seeing a position paper on a woman having an early induction at 27 weeks when her child has a fatal condition, especially a condition which may be causing the child pain.

   What does Julie’s experience have to do with defining “health” with regards to abortion (in Doe v. Bolton) as “the medical judgement may be exercised in the light of all factors – physcial, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.” ?

3. God, is Leif ever a shithead, further down the comments thread. Ugh.

4. There are powerful words indeed. But notice the following responses to her story. The message was lost on them. They’re still fetus-worshipping and bleating a whole lot about how women are subordinate to every other creature on earth. I pity them. For all the nonsense they peddle, they just come off sounding like victims of Stockholm Syndrome.

   Julie, if any of us can offer any comfort, know that you did the right thing.

5. God, is Leif ever a shithead, further down the comments thread. Ugh.

   Yup!

6. I’m fairly familiar with the prolife movement and I don’t recall ever once seeing a position paper on a woman having an early induction at 27 weeks when her child has a fatal condition, especially a condition which may be causing the child pain

   I remember seeing literature from Operation Rescue stating that abortion by any method, including early induction, was immoral in any situation, including to save the mother’s life. I also remember a bill proposed by a “pro-life” legislator that would make it illegal to allow a baby who “survived abortion” (ie was born alive after an early induction) to die naturally and would demand that aggressive measures be taken, no matter what the situation. In this example, Julie’s child would have died after a painful stay in the NICU instead of peacefully in her arms. Few in the pro-life movement (I hope) are out there saying “let’s torture women and babies” but poorly thought through legislation can have that effect nonetheless.

7. Few in the pro-life movement (I hope) are out there saying “let’s torture women and babies” but poorly thought through legislation can have that effect nonetheless.

   It’s not that they want to torturne women and babies, they just don’t *care*. This isn’t an issue for them of real people and real situations – just an abstract moral principle that sounds really good when you hang out in church and the capitol. And don’t listen to doctors.

   In the most generous terms, babies are sacred, therefore, they must be protected. It doesn’t matter if the protection does more harm.

8. Jill,
   Could you please substantiate your charge that “anti-choice advocates” would work to make an early induction like Julie’s illegal? I’m fairly familiar with the prolife movement and I don’t recall ever once seeing a position paper on a woman having an early induction at 27 weeks when her child has a fatal condition, especially a condition which may be causing the child pain.

   Answer one: Basic logic. If terminating a pregnancy is illegal and the fetus is given greater rights than women, then it will also be illegal to induce labor early when it is known that the fetus will die during or immediately after the procedure, when it would have been more likely to live longer had it stayed in the womb. Anti-choice activists argue that induced labor is abortion. Therefore, it should be covered by anti-abortion laws.

   Answer two: See here (second item from the bottom), here, here (refers to it as the “induced labor abortion procedure”), here, here, and here. Not enough? Google “pro-life early induction.”

9. Mikey S. nails it. They don’t care. It seems as if most anti-choicers are more concerned with appeasing their god then with any real world consequences if their (wrong) opinions were law.

   They aren’t concerned with facts; they are concerned with emotionalistic nonsense that makes them *feel* like they are helping out where they are only hindering.

   After all ins’t “what about the children? won’t someone please thing of the children” a non-sequitir? 😉

10. I can’t believe that there are sickos in this world who can read that woman’s story and continue to badger her with their nonsense. GAWD. Just agree to disagree, Leif. Ugh.

11. When you lay out the reality of health issues that women like Julie faced and women continue to face it juuust sharpens the picture of how incredibly arrogant the pro-life/fundies are.

    If only they would keep their hands out of peoples’ pants.

12. Jill,
    Could you please substantiate your charge that “anti-choice advocates” would work to make an early induction like Julie’s illegal? I’m fairly familiar with the prolife movement and I don’t recall ever once seeing a position paper on a woman having an early induction at 27 weeks when her child has a fatal condition, especially a condition which may be causing the child pain.

    Actually, there was a whole to-do in the Catholic blogosphere about women who induce early due to anencephaly. A woman was having that done and the pro-life blogosphere literally attacked her while she was at her worst and saddest.

13. Jill,
    1. Only extremely poor attempts at logic filled with hasty generalizations and unsubstantiated generalizations will get you there. I don’t think prolifers want to make every termination of pregnancy illegal or else they’d be opposed to birth since birth terminates a pregnancy, right? Fetus given greater rights than women? When was any such proposal put forth?

    When have prolifers argued that every induced birth is abortion? They’ve pointed out an abortion procedure usually used in the second trimester whose goal is to kill the child by inducing early birth but I’ve never seen prolifers opposed to every form of induced labor – especially since induced labor is often used to protect both the child and the mother.

    2. Are you kidding me? Jill those are abortion procedures, correct? Where as Julie’s induced labor wasn’t an abortion, correct? You’re equating things which are by no means equal in terms of actual procedure and the intent of that procedure.

    Prolifers are certainly opposed to abortion procedures whose sole goal is to kill the child but you’re taking some huge leaps and bounds to equate second trimester abortions with inducing the labor of a woman who was 27 weeks pregnant.

14. Jivin,

    1. Don’t be purposely obtuse. And I never argued that anti-choicers opposed every form of induced labor — I argued that they opposed forms of induced labor like Julie’s, which inevitably result in fetal death. See? I even said it in the post:

    f anti-choice advocates have their way, procedures like the one Julie had — which is not abortion — will be nearly impossible for women to obtain.

    Yay! 5th grade reading skills are awesome!

    2. No, these are not abortion procedures. Can you read? Really? There is no abortion performed, but these anti-choicers are using the word “abortion” anyway. Here’s what’s happening: A fetus will be serverely deformed, or have some sort of complication that’s incompatible with life. However, the fetus will remain alive in the womb. Some women choose to have dilation and extraction abortions to remove the fetus; others (like Julie) choose to induce labor early. That is, there is no fetal dismemberment and the fetal life is not terminated in utero. Instead, labor is medically induced, and the fetus is born. Either during or soon after its birth, it dies. No abortion, but fetal death. That’s what’s being discussed here, and it’s what these anti-choicers oppose. Really, read the links. From the Jill Stanek article:

    Loyola Health System in Chicago, and Providence Health System on the West Coast and Alaska, both commit live-birth abortion.

    But they don’t like the word, “abortion.” They call what they do, “early induction of labor.”

    Webster’s Dictionary defines abortion as, “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.”

    So now “termination of pregnancy” is called “early induction of labor.” Euphemisms … what would abortion proponents do without them?

    She’s calling it abortion when there’s no abortion involved. Labor is induced. Fetus is born. It dies naturally. This is exactly what Julie had done. Anti-choicers want this outlawed. Still confused?

15. Only extremely poor attempts at logic filled with hasty generalizations and unsubstantiated generalizations will get you there.

    I’m sorry. Have you met Dawn Eden?

16. Oh, and as another example, here’s a bit of what Marian was referring to — the viscious attacks on a pro-life, Catholic blogger who had an early induction because her fetus had abnormalities incompatible with life:

    Example One.

    Example Two (the Catholic requirements of induced labor. Important bit: “Lastly, induction of labor before term performed simply for the reason that the child has a lethal anomaly is direct abortion.”)

    Example Three, from the woman in question.

    Example Four: Another post from the woman in question, including comments from anti-choicers like:

    Anne – have you talked to your pastor about this yet? This is technically a live birth abortion at this gestational age……. inducing labor at 21 weeks should only be done if the risks to the mom from carrying the pregnancy any further are fairly grave.
    Please, please, don’t rush into this.
    I have a patient who went through this – she is willing to talk to anyone who wants to talk to her. I will email you privately with her contact info.

    Please read this article regarding early inductions. I do not believe you have considered this step completely. God Bless you -my prayers are with you.

    I HAVE gone through this. My daughter was diagnosed with no brain, a hole in her head, and no chance at a normal life. We carried to term. The Catholic Church says delivering early in this situation is an abortion. Two of the other posters said they had gone through the same thing and carried to term. I am familiar with the condition Anne’s baby has, and it does not pose any more threat to her health, life or fertility than an ordinary pregnancy with a healthy baby. It’s a hard induction on a body that is not ready to give birth. There may be damage to the cervix because it is not ready.

    She has to make her own choice, true, but by the same token, it must be an informed choice made from a position of strength and not desperation for the pain to stop. Everyone agrees the pain does not stop the instant the pregnancy does.

    Carrying this beautiful person is an honour. Grieve for the fact that our baby will die. We wouldn’t wish away the time we had with Benedict, and also this time we are now experiencing with Charlotte, just to save us the pain of losing them. I’ve always thought of it like this; if your 3 year old was diagnosed with untreatable, fatal cancer and had only 4 months to live; would you prefer the doctor kill your child straight away so that you didn’t have to wait for his/her impending death? Or would you prefer to spend as much time as you could with your child and love him/her for as long as you had

    Example Five

    Example Six

    Example Seven: “A real revelation to me this weekend is that some people DO NOT consider early induction to be an abortion!”

    Example Eight.

    Sufficient?

17. My favorite bit from Jill’s last post – from a link about talking to women considering early induction:

    They need our prayer (and fasting). They need good spiritual and psychological (as well as medical) care. But they don’t need to be told that it’s okay to undergo EIFWAIL.

    Fasting? Huh? Also, how does being told taht early induction is murder help their spiritual and psychological condition?

18. This comment on Eden’s blog by L. is so telling:
    ” Julie, sorry for your loss.
    I don`t think preterm induction leading to a live birth is medically considered to be an abortion.”
    ditto for Jivin’s comment to Jill:
    “Could you please substantiate your charge that “anti-choice advocates” would work to make an early induction like Julie’s illegal? ”
    The point of Julie’s post was not about whether what she did constituted an abortion or not. It was about how her very painful experience opened her eyes to the experiences that others have had. It wasn’t about which choice she personally made; she just realized that, when others are faced with a hard deciscion like this, she could not hold it against them if they made a different choice than the one she made. She was talking about gaining compassion and seeing the gray area in her ownsense of right and wrong, and all these guys see is the black and white “was it or wasn’t it an abortion?”.

19. Thank you Jill… your kind words (and everyone else’s) are very appreciated. It’s still hard to talk about, so it’s much easier to see it over here where I know people will be understanding. I have shared this story in bits and pieces before in different places and it’s always amazed me how the pro-choice people will say “I’m so sorry, that must have been awful, etc…” and the pro-life people are by and large like “yeah, that’s sad, now back to my argument” without taking the time to even acknowledge that there are real women with real stories out there.

20. The same thing happened to me – a CVS showed that the baby I was carrying had Trisomy 13. The diagnosis is considered incompatible with life – most Trisomy 13 pregnancies result in late term miscarriage or stillbirth. The babies born alive tend to die before they’re a year old, even if they survive the many heart, lung, and brain surgeries they’ll need. I was pregnant because I wanted to be pregnant, but I couldn’t bear to force a child to be born into nothing but suffering and death simply because I didn’t want to make the decision to end the suffering before it began. I had a D&E at 14 weeks.
    My insurance company said it was an elective abortion and refused to pay for it. After posting about my experience on a messageboard, I received so much hateful email from people who disagreed with my decision that I had to change my email address. I’m still appalled that so many people think that they should have a say in a decision that had no good outcome and could have no happy ending, a decision that concered them not in the least. I now co-moderate a discussion forum for women who’ve made this decision and we’ve all faced people who’ve said horrible things to us. The truth is, very few of these “pro life” whackos are willing to say to our faces that they want to force us to give birth to dead or dying babies, at the risk of our health, our sanity, and our future fertility. They won’t say it to our faces, but they’ll try to pass laws that force us to do it.
    I was lucky. I live in a large city where CVS tests (which can be done as early as 12 weeks) are common. Many women don’t find out about fatal conditions until they have an amnio or a Level II ultrasound, and then have to travel hundreds of miles and pay thousands of dollars to terminate a doomed pregnancy. It’s like rubbing salt into an open wound – not only do you not have a viable pregnancy, but you’re forced to rush to a clinic you’ve never been to and a doctor you don’t know to end it.

21. Wow… I just clicked on that first example you listed Jill. Anne and I are friends, actually, I found her when I was found out I was losing Kyle and she walked me through it, encouraged me when I was down and helped me pick myself up after Kyle died. I spent a great deal of time torturing myself by reading the horrible things people said to her. She asked me not to, told me that the things she had deleted would tear me apart, but understood my need to read them anyway. I never saw that one though, what an absolutely cruel woman.

22. I’m sorry you had to go through it too Absentia.As if the decision isn’t hard enough, the nasty comments are appalling. I was fortunate that my doctor was willing to induce labor, so I got to stay at the hospital by my house with my husband with me the whole time and I was in the hopital for almost three days. My doctor actually stayed by my side through my morphine induced hallucinations, she was wonderful.

23. Julie, I really appreciate hearing your story. I’m sorry that what you experienced was so painful, and I’m sorry that as a result of your telling, you have been attacked by those who should be supportive. I’m glad that you were strong enough to tell us your story, because it helps me understand in a way that a statistic or a doctor never can, just how important a choice it is.

24. I had my third child by having the labor induced. I was in an intensive, exhaustive labor for 21 hours at the hospital, not counting the 2 hours of contractions prior to arriving.

    My water never broke and of course dilation had stopped. I could have died from infection and a host of other problems had labor not been induced.

25. Oh and yes, julie, thank you for sharing, every woman’s experience is important. I am very sorry for your loss.

    My pregnancy I spoke of above was term and the child was born healthy. I don’t want anyone to think that I was making a comparison or attempting to. I cannot even begin to imagine what your experience must have been like.

    My point was that if a quandary exists about when and how to use induction, then where is the line drawn? If induction becomes parsed out and controlled by a third party, then the resulting reduction in the practice could lead to lack of availability and familiarity with the practice on the even the most rudimentary level, causing suffering and complications where none would have existed.

26. Julie, you are a very couragous woman. I was physically sickened reading some of the “counter-points” and base attacks leveled against you on that thread.

    When you wrote that “no one is more entitled to make a decision concerning my health and future than I am” it was spot-on with my philosophy that women know (and they can only know when they are in the situation) whether or not they are capable of being a mother: physically, emotionally, financially. When most women discover they are pregnant, and they decide that they are capable of caring for a child, they usually do so under the assumption that the baby will be 90-100% healthy and normal — but if something changes during the course of a pregnancy, like the horrible thing that happened to you, that basic answer may change, and we shouldn’t force a woman to do something that she is not capable of.

27. Julie, I was raised hardcore prolife – my mother had me out there with a signboard protesting Roe vs. Wade when it was first passed – and passionate because “unborn babies are stuck in limbo 4eva” Catholic – but when she had four miscarriages in a row (and had to have 2 D&Cs, which confused the heck out of me as a child b/c she had taught me that D&Cs were eeeevil) , all her friends in the Movement just shrugged it off and said “You can have another!” or even “God took your baby because He wanted it to be happy in heaven!”
    She never confronted this contradition, however, just went into deeper self-harming Catholic penitentials, until she died of cancer misdiagnosed in no small part because of her last, successful pregnancy (the doctors went “Oh, chronic bleeding is to be expected when you’ve had 7 kids” and she was into suffering for the salvation of the world, so by the time they caught it it was too late.

28. Julie, I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope you find some healing and support here or elsewhere, and I’m so sorry you were verbally assaulted after sharing such a personal and traumatic story. You and your family are in my thoughts, as are all the women who have had to face tough decisions like you did.

29. Jeez, bellatrys. I’m sorry. My mom died of undiagnosed cancer, too.

30. Jill,
    1. You claimed that prolifers would be opposed to the procedure like the one Julie had (which wasn’t an abortion) and you try to prove this by providing evidence that prolifers oppose a certain type of abortion which involves induced birth. This isn’t basic logic. This is a basic fallacy. It’s obviously a hasty generalization.

    You haven’t provided a pinch of evidence that prolifers would oppose a situation like Julie’s where the intent isn’t to kill the child but to bring the child (which is past viability, has no amniotic fluid, etc.) to birth.

    2. Are you actually trying to claim that when Christ hospital used a technique which typically kills the second trimester child before it is born (and not naturally) via induced birth and that this isn’t an abortion? Of course, the hospital doesn’t like to use the term “abortion” but that’s clearly what this is. It’s a procedure designed to kill the child (and has a different intent than the procedure Julie had). What next? Will you be claiming that RU-486 isn’t an abortion but rather it’s just inducing birth early?

    The intent of Julie’s procedure wasn’t to kill the child but rather bring the child to birth.

    There are obviously different types and intents to inducing birth. To equate them all as being the same (and prolifers being opposed to all of them and working to make them illegal) is simply not true. I sincerely doubt the vast majority of prolife people would be opposed to early induction at 27 weeks in Julie’s situation. I guess the vast majority, like myself, would feel truly sorry for her situation and mourn the loss of her child.

    Example 1 : Some prolifers Catholic bloggers are mad that a woman would induce labor at 21 weeks (before viability).

    Example 2. So then Catholics aren’t opposed to induced birth if the desire isn’t to kill the child? Julie was dilating and there was no amniotic fluid (which could possibly bring the child pain). Both of these seem like reasons to me to induce birth besides the fetal anomaly. Did you miss this quote – “For a proportionate reason, labor may be induced after the fetus is viable” – while Julie’s child Kyle wouldn’t have lived regardless of when labor occurred – Kyle (27 weeks at the time) was past the point of viability. Therefore, I don’t see how the church or anyone could claim Julie’s induced birth was an abortion.

    Other examples you provide – some prolifers bloggers say mean things and/or opposed to women inducing early.

    How does this prove your original argument? That’s like me taking some quotes from random bloggers and then saying – “see what those pro-choicers want done.” It’s a hasty generalization. It’s a textbook case of it. It’s like me saying, “Atheists hate Christians” and then providing a couple of examples of atheists who hate Christians or me saying “Non-Christians don’t really understand the Bible” and then quoting a couple of non-Christians who don’t understand the Bible.

31. The thing that struck me about this was the statement that “sometimes in life, we have to make hard
    choices in life, choices that we don’t want to make, choices that
    we wish we had never been faced with.”

    This always seemed to be lost completely on the pro-life crowd. They act like because choosing an abortion can be a hard, wrenching decision that no one should ever make it. They seem to think that life is composed of Good decisions (that leave you skipping along with flowers in your hair and humming show tunes) and Bad decisions (that make you suicidal). They never grasp the fact that very often doing the right thing still hurts. That’s just life. Life often presents you with choices that are shitty, and slightly less shitty.

32. 1. You claimed that prolifers would be opposed to the procedure like the one Julie had (which wasn’t an abortion) and you try to prove this by providing evidence that prolifers oppose a certain type of abortion which involves induced birth. This isn’t basic logic. This is a basic fallacy. It’s obviously a hasty generalization.

    You haven’t provided a pinch of evidence that prolifers would oppose a situation like Julie’s where the intent isn’t to kill the child but to bring the child (which is past viability, has no amniotic fluid, etc.) to birth.

    I call bullshit. Read the commenters at Eden’s place, the ones who were telling Julie that inducement — the very inducement she had — was tantamount to abortion.

    You asked for evidence, Jill gave you evidence, and now you want to dismiss the evidence as “hasty generalizations,” whatever that means.

33. Julie, Absentia, bellatrys, and all the other women who’ve gone through similar situations, my heart goes out to you.

    My wife & I went through a much less severe, but similar situation, so I can’t read the negative comments. Even though we now have a healthly baby, the losing the first one is still painful. Most folks we know were simply told “we lost the baby”. They don’t need to know the details and we didn’t want to deal with any non-supportive comments. I don’t know how people can say a woman should carry around a dead or dying fetus. I admire your courage for publishing your experience.

34. Jivin, try and read this slowly.

    The websites I referenced are talking about early induction of labor. They consider certain types of early induction of labor to be abortion. There is no medical backing for this, so your RU-486 analogy isn’t the same. Abortion terminates fetal life inside the uterus. Early induction has the woman give birth to the fetus without terminating it inside of her uterus. Many pro-lifers — and Catholic theology — apparently consider this abortion. But it is not abortion according to any medical definition. They call it “abortion” because that’s a loaded word. In fact, it is birth and then fetal death. Understand?

    I have given you my evidence. According to these pro-lifers, Catholic theology states that you may only induce birth if the point of doing so is to preserve the life of the pregnant woman and the fetus. If by inducing birth you are hastening the death of the fetus, for no other reason than to hasten its death (the Catholic church doesn’t consider non-life-threatening health issues, financial issues, or mental health issues sufficient reasons) then you have committed abortion. From my understanding of Julie’s situation, her pregnancy did pose health consequences, but not the type that were likely to kill her (i.e., they were not “pathological” according to church doctrine). She and her doctors were aware that early induction would result in the death of her baby. She made her choice based on a variety of circumstances, as Anne (the woman in the above examples) also did. I’ll quote again from that post:

    However, early induction of an anencephalic child when there is no serious pathology of the mother which is being directly treated is not morally licit, emotional distress notwithstanding. Early induction of labor before term (37 weeks) to relieve emotional distress hastens the death of the child as a means of achieving this presumed good effect and unjustifiably deprives the child of the good of gestation. Moreover, this distress is amenable to psychological support such as is offered in perinatal hospice. Lastly, induction of labor before term performed simply for the reason that the child has a lethal anomaly is direct abortion.

    I’m not sure how much more evidence I could present.

    As for hasty generalizations, you should note that many of the links I initially provided came from mainstream pro-life organizations. Many of the pro-life individuals I quoted are basing their beliefs around Catholic doctrine, and believe in a political agenda that would define “abortion” according to their beliefs — that is, encompassing these kinds of non-abortive procedures, as well as some types of birth control. Do I have a direct statement from the National Right to Life Committee about what they think Julie should have done? No. But I think I’ve provided a pretty solid body of evidence here.

35. Here’s one more Jivin:
    http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/val/val_24prematureinduction.html
    Note especially this section:

    However, in 1996, the U.S. bishops issued a statement titled “Moral Principles Concerning Infants with Anencephaly” that declared, “it is clear that before ‘viability’ it is never permitted to terminate the gestation of an anencephalic child as the means of avoiding psychological or physical risks to the mother. Nor is such termination permitted after ‘viability’ if early delivery endangers the child’s life due to complications of prematurity….Only if the complications of the pregnancy result in a life-threatening pathology of the mother, may the treatment of this pathology be permitted even at a risk to the child, and then only if the child’s death is not a means to treating the mother.”3

    I’ll be very clear here… my life was not at stake when Kyle was delivered. Nor, for that matter, was his. He could’ve lived for the remainder of my pregnancy. I was looking at bedrest and being pulled from work, but dilating at 26 weeks is not life threatning. I started dilating and having contractions with my third child around the same time and was pulled from work at 29 weeks to go on modified bedrest and Shawn was born ten days before his due date at a very healthy almost 9 pounds. My doctor, who is a wonderful, compassionate woman, warned me ahead of time that the chances of Kyle surviving labor were slim due to the extent of his issues. My labor induction was done because my husband and I sat down and talked about it and agreed that for us, for our family and for Kyle, we had to let him go. That we couldn’t hang on out of a selfish desire to prolong his life, we needed to start healing. And we couldn’t do that while I was still carrying him. A far as individual pro-lifers, I do tend to agree with you, there are many pro-life people (my parents, my sister, my extended family) who were very supportive. But in general, the pro-life position considers elective early induction to be immoral and wrong.

36. Thanks everyone. Ron, I’m so sorry to hear about your first child. I know a lot of people thought that once Shawn was born, my husband and I would just magically be ok again, but of course it still hurts.
    Bellatrys, I’m so sorry to hear about your mom. I was also raised hard-core prolife, complete with being brought to abortion protests as early as age 9 and my dad encouraged me to “just put it behind you and forget what happened, concentrate on this baby” when I got pregnant again. My mom told me she didn’t think everyone needed to know about him, it should just stay in the family. Yeah, that shows me that you think unborn babies are people.

37. The fact that Jivin and others have to spend long posts talking about what abortion is and isn’t, medically and morally, pretty much proves the point that no third party should be in charge of deciding these issues. Everyone disagrees about what even constitutes an abortion, and while the doctors and lawyers argue, and Shrub finally returns from pulling weeds in Crawford to sign executive orders, women will suffer and some will die as others fight over what they can do with their own bodies. And some of those women will be pro-life, and their poor deluded families and churches won’t even see then the destruction that no abortion except with a so called “health exception” has wought on themeselves and society.

38. Word, bmc.

39. Jill,
    No medical backing for this? Really? The abortions performed at Christ hospital which Jill Stanek talks about and your links to prolife organizations discuss weren’t designed to bring a born child to birth. The child is supposed to die before birth.

    If second trimester early inductions aren’t abortions then why does the National Abortion Federation label them as abortion. On page 19 of their Clinical Policy Guidelines describes the procedure as “Second Trimester Abortion by Medical Induction” and provides various standards and recommendations. These types of procedure can be performed with or without injecting chemicals into the amniotic fluid.

    There are also a variety of studies on different types of second trimester induction abortion (some which insert drugs into the aminiotic fluid and others which don’t). They label all kinds of induction abortion as abortion.

    For example:Late midtrimester medical pregnancy terminations.

    Any induction of Julie’s child (term or early) would have resulted in the death of child – but the intent of the procedure wasn’t to kill the child as far as I can from what Julie wrote.

    Julie,
    Did your child have anecephaly? I thought it was another condition. I’m not sure if you can’t take what the Catholic bishops say about one condition and put it on Kyle’s condition. Maybe I’m mistaken, though. I’m not sure if the Catholic bishops have addressed after viability early delivery for children with a condition’s like Kyle’s. Maybe they’d be against it- I don’t know – I’m not a Catholic – but it seems to me that your circumstances differ (after viability, Kyle’s condition, the intent of the procedure etc.) differ from the circumstances they describe.

    Zuzu,
    The fact that you don’t know what a hasty generalization is speak volumes. Especially since you just made another one. Some commenters at Dawn Eden’s don’t necessarily represent “anti-abortion advocates” just like random comments on your blog don’t represent “pro-choice advocates.” If Jill wanted to write “If some random Catholic bloggers got their way…” that’s would probably work better but she can’t take a couple of examples and then generalize in the way she has.

40. Sweetie, you *do* know what “advocates” means, right?

    You’re moving the goalposts in insisting on policy papers of nationally-recognized right-to-life organizations. Julie was told directly by people who style themselves as pro-life advocates (in that they advocate an extreme anti-choice position) that the procedure she had done was an abortion.

    The movement isn’t just the people at the top, putting out the position papers that contain code words and CYA. It’s the people who believe in that stuff and who will tell a grieving mother who had to make an impossible decision that she is evil for having aborted her baby.

    This is your movement. Not pretty, is it?

41. Also, Jivin, I find it very interesting that you’re splitting medical hairs on induction when leaders of your movement have done their very best to blur the lines between contraception and abortion with Plan B by completely ignoring the medical definition of pregnancy.

42. I’m thrilled to think of Jivin and her ilk discussing various medical opinions, position papers, and the Bible while I bleed to death waiting for other people to decide whether I am trying to have an impermissible abortion or something that they find it convenient to label something else. The debate on the floor of Congress as the South Dakota governor decides whether the send in the national guard to rescue my fetus from the doctors trying to save my life as I lie in the emergency room on life support while my husband desprately tries to carry out my written health care directive should make for high ratings on CNN. However, I won’t be happy until Shrub has my womb delcared a national monument so it can be subject to federal protection. But how is it that Cheney is going to send me to Gitmo for seeking a medical proceedure to save my life, while simultaneously placing my womb in the Smithsonian, since it is now public property anyway? That part I haven’t figured out.

43. Julie,

    I am so sorry for your loss. What emotional and spiritual agony you must have gone through. I’ll be praying for you and your family.

    To those who posted this as a springboard for your culture of death viewpoints, shame on you.

44. Tony, pray for yourself. Those who attempt to take away reproductive freedoms are the ones with the disregard for human life.

45. No… he didn’t have anencephaly, he had renal agenesis (in addition to some other treatable issues which make up a defect called a limb wall body complex). Here’s a paper that directly addresses renal agenesis as well as anencephaly:
    http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/szy/szy_01prenatalethics.html
    This should clear up any remaining confusion… they mention that it’s done after 23 to 26 weeks, that the child often lives and is allowed to die in it’s mother arms, they mention both opposition to it as well as support for it, but the overwheming tone of the paper is disapproving, especially if you read the story at the end. I was told by several people who were pro-life that what I was doing was abortion, that I was killing my child. Right around the time that I started considering early induction, I read an article that said it was worse than abortion, because women who did it actually acted like they were doing “the right thing” while they were in fact killing their babies. No, the intent of my induction was not to cause Kyle’s death, but he could have easily been born stillborn, In fact, it’s what we thought was going to happen due to the extent of his defect. We were happy that he wasn’tm but what we did is no different than if it had been done at an earlier time. I was only a few days out of my second trimester. Do I believe it was necessarily an abortion? No. But the fact of the matter is that it was the right decision for me, my son and my family, and that if roe vs. wade was not the law of the land it would not have been legally allowed.

46. Last night I watched this great film called Nobelity which is being screened in New York and other cities soon. In the film, various Nobel laureates discuss the major challenges facing humanity and how to overcome them. Of course, one of the problems is preventable diseases which kill millions of children world wide before their 5th birthday. On 9/11 more people died world wide from AIDS than from ALL forms of violence. The total lack of fundie interest in helping solve these problems when they claim to be promoting a culture of life is infuriating, and one of the main reasons why I’m not interested in their how many angels dance on the head of a pin arguments about conception, pregnancy and birth control.

47. Zuzu,
    There are certainly individuals who are prolife who do things and say things which I disagree with. But that’s the same with basically every movement. Again, it would be wrong for me to take so anti-child quote from some child-free hardcore advocate and then use that quote to attack the pro-choice movement.

    I’m not insisting on policy papers. I’m just hoping Jill would refrain from taking the words of some random bloggers and then painting the entire prolife movement with that brush.

    The “medical” definition of pregnancy was actually changed in the last 30 or so years. But regardless, some prolifers are opposed to Plan B because they think it prevents implantation. Unfortunately, many individuals and even leaders of some prolife organizations have declared that Plan B prevents implantation without having the scientific information to back them up. Other prolifers, including myself, are trying to help prolifers understand what the scientific research regarding Plan B says.

    bmc90,
    Not that it really matters but I’m a man not a woman. And I didn’t know I had an “ilk.” By the way, individuals who use the word “Shrub” to identify Bush are typically seen as individuals who aren’t worth responding to.

    Julie,
    Thank you for posting that information. I think it shows a lot of debate/ambivalence even in the Catholic community about early induction but I would agree with your conclusion about it.

    I think your procedure would have been allowed if Roe v. Wade wasn’t in place. If Roe v. Wade was overturned then individual states would decide abortion policy and I can’t imagine a state passing a law declaring that the procedure you had at 27 weeks was an abortion and should be illegal.

48. I’m not insisting on policy papers. I’m just hoping Jill would refrain from taking the words of some random bloggers and then painting the entire prolife movement with that brush.

    But you were asking for policy papers:

    Could you please substantiate your charge that “anti-choice advocates” would work to make an early induction like Julie’s illegal? I’m fairly familiar with the prolife movement and I don’t recall ever once seeing a position paper on a woman having an early induction at 27 weeks when her child has a fatal condition, especially a condition which may be causing the child pain.

Comments are currently closed.