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There’s a heartwarming story this week in the Chicago Sun-Times about Amanda Schulten, a 21-year old woman from Marengo, Illinois, who is seven months pregnant with conjoined twin daughters, whom she has already named Faith and Hope.
In spite of her daughters’ very low chance of survival, Amanda’s Catholic faith guides her to believe that there is no other option but to let nature its course. In the article, she is quoted as saying, “He has a plan for me, and for them. We never know when our last day will be. We have to enjoy it, and appreciate health while we have it.”
(Reading these words of Amanda’s, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the beautiful video “99 Balloons” — which has received nearly 3.5 million views on YouTube) about a young couple who gave birth to a son with Edwards Syndrome.)
What struck me most about the article was the stunning contrast between, on the one hand, Amanda’s attitude of selflessness and unconditional love for her daughters, and, on the other, the absolutely cruel and heartless comments that she has had to endure from others who think she should just get an abortion instead. [Continue reading ...]
Kameron and Kaydon Manns
On March 31, 2010, Kameron and Kaydon Hayes were born to Brianna Manns at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago.
They were identical twins—closer than most. Kameron and Kaydon were conjoined twins, joined at the thorax and sharing a heart and liver. From the beginning their mother and medical professionals knew that their lives would be short and fraught with difficulties.
But Kameron and Kaydon defied odds. Everyone was surprised that they survived to celebrate their first birthday. But on Friday, August 13, they finally lost the battle they had fiercely fought. Their heart was beating erratically, and there was nothing more that the medical team could do.
When doctors discovered the complication during Brianna Manns’ pregnancy they talked to her about aborting them. But their mother said abortion was never an option. “I am a strong believer in not having abortions — very, very strong,” said Manns. “They are my babies. I had the feelings that any mother would have,” I wanted my children to experience life to the fullest, to whatever extent that it might be.” [Continue reading ...]
This week the New York Times Magazine has a long article entitled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” about women who are pregnant with twins after undergoing IVF, and who decide to have one of them aborted.
The painfully obvious subtext of the article is to get you to believe that women “need” this particular type of abortion to be better mothers — a talking point the “pro-choice” movement has been using more and more in recent months.
The first thing that struck me as I was reading the article was the verbal gymnastics employed by the writer, Ruth Padawer, in referring to what is so coldly called “selective reduction” (but which in laymen’s terms might be better called “killing one or more babies in a multiple pregnancy”).
In the opening paragraph, we’re introduced to a 45-year old woman named “Jenny,” who was “choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion.”
Wow. It’s bad enough that the word “abortion” is so often replaced by vacuous euphemisms like “termination of pregnancy” or “voluntary interruption of pregnancy”, but it’s perhaps even more insane to see a professional writer speak of an abortion of a human baby er, fetus “almost [!] as if” it’s “half an abortion”. [Continue reading ...]
With the judge’s ruling to block the new law taking Medicaid funds from Indiana’s Planned Parenthood, there has been some discussion about the impact the law was having on Indiana doctors.
As I wrote previously, this article by Heather Gillers caught my attention because it contains several statements that just don’t ring true to me.
After doing some searching of my own, though, it seems that it’s actually the Indiana University School of Medicine that is to blame for causing the confusion over the impact of this law.
This sentence by Gillers has caused me quite a bit of confusion:
Since the law took effect six weeks ago, The Star has learned, doctors at IU and Wishard hospitals stopped offering to terminate pregnancies for about 70 patients, including many with complications that put the patient’s health at serious risk or where there was no possibility the fetus would survive. (emphasis added)
I wrote to the author and asked what it means to “stop offering” to do abortions. She replied, “There were 70 women that they weren’t able to offer abortions to” since the bill went into effect. [Continue reading ...]
Indiana’s new law which aims to take Medicaid money from Planned Parenthood has been put on hold by a federal judge who doesn’t believe the restrictions will pass muster in the end.
Two articles I’ve come across are attacking the law from the perspective of doctors at two Indiana hospitals who have stopped doing abortions because they’re afraid the new law prohibits them from doing abortions if they also receive Medicaid funding.
Heather Gillers, writing for The Indianapolis Star published “A Law of Unintended Consequences”. Gillers writes that doctors at Indiana University and Wishard Hospitals fear they don’t fall under the law’s “hospital” exemption. However, the next sentence indicates that these doctors may have overreacted, since both the author of the bill and the state Medicaid agency disagree with this interpretation.
But I love this line in a story by Indianapolis’ local Fox affiliate:
Senator Schneider said the bill exempted hospitals, but that is where doctors and some lawmakers disagree. The bill exempts hospitals from performing abortions, not the doctors who actually perform the procedures. (emphasis added)
Seriously?
Last week the an AP article highlighted possible new methods of prenatal genetic testing, speculating on the effect these might have on pregnancy. Upon reading this, “Sophia,” a writer for the Abortion Gang blog, reflected:
Genetic testing, now and in the future, is an issue that is worth consideration and public acknowledgement, but getting lost down the rabbit hole of spooky unknowns is a waste of time and distorts the reality of women today.
But are fears about genetic testing leading to abortion for the creation of “perfect” children really going down the rabbit hole? Are these fears something we ought not worry about yet based on the “reality of women today”? [Continue reading ...]
A woman is carried into an ambulance behind a sheet at Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois [Photo by Eric Scheidler, 4/1/11]
Reading yesterday’s Chicago Tribune article about the lack of oversight of abortion clinics in Illinois, a couple things in particular stuck out in my mind:
Also unknown to officials are the types of abortion-related problems experienced by women. Nearly 4,000 reports of abortion complications involving Illinois residents in 2009 were missing the required description.
That’s nearly 4,000 complications in one state, in one year.
Even worse, the article highlighted the deaths of six (6) women, and in at least four of these cases, the abortion facilities “could not confirm” whether they had reported these deaths to the state, as required by law.
Unbelievably — or not, I suppose — Planned Parenthood “said it had no reason to believe the 2002 death [of Maurice Stevenson's wife] was not reported but that the records were in storage” [emphasis added].
The records were in storage? Seriously? [Continue reading ...]
Shortly after an investigation earlier this year by Live Action revealing that Planned Parenthood does not, in fact, provide mammograms, Susan G. Komen for the Cure issued a statement [PDF] implicitly acknowledging as much, but still making it clear that Komen has no plans to discontinue the grants that a “limited number” of their local affiliates give to PP so it can play the middleman and refer women to some place that actually does them.
After reading Komen’s statement, I wondered: what if you contact Komen and ask them directly if Planned Parenthood provides mammograms—what do they say then?
So I filled out their contact form and asked them: [Continue reading ...]
Along with the news of Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s death on Friday, also released last week was a related story from Gallup, which reports that doctor-assisted suicide is the single most controversial issue in the U.S. today. (Not surprisingly, abortion is in the #2 spot.)
Since Kevorkian’s death, pro-choice writers like Slate’s William Saletan have been making comparisons between assisted suicide and abortion. And to be sure, there are some gobsmackingly obvious similarities between the two.
But as far as legality is concerned, it’s interesting to see those on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate make the comparison between abortion and assisted suicide, current U.S. law treats these two issues very differently. [Continue reading ...]
Yesterday, Psychiatric Times released a short video of Dr. Nada Stotland — a former APA president and former board member of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health — explaining why she believes there’s no direct link between abortion and psychiatric illness:
Her central claim comes at the 0:30 mark, when she says, “The fact is that there’s no good evidence that induced abortion causes psychiatric illness in any meaningful numbers.”
Really? [Continue reading ...]