If you don’t want your child to suffer, you don’t choose Partial Birth Abortion (Intact Dilation and Extraction or “D&X”) and you certainly shouldn’t complain about State laws concerning prevention of fetal pain during the abortion.
msnbc.com and Self Magazine have teamed up to discuss “When there is no good choice.”
In the story, we read about abortions – one at 22 weeks and and one at 30 weeks pregnancy, after two mothers learn that their babies have severe birth defects. While the story spends a lot of space trying to explain that the mothers are having the abortions because they don’t want their babies to suffer, the story condemns laws requiring anesthesia, informing the mothers that their children may feel pain during the procedure, or mandating lethal injections to kill the child before dismembering him or her. Of course, we are told how wrong it is to call “D&X” “partial birth abortion,” or to ban the procedure itself.
This is a story about the politics of an election year, written to tug on our heart strings rather than inform.
Obviously, I am pro-life, and so, I must be one of those the article calls “anti-abortion.” The story claims that I “demonize” the mothers who have abortions at 28 weeks, and mentions that because of George Bush, the Republicans, and “red staters,” these women have troubles and the doctors claim that they worry about being charged with breaking the law. However, each woman does abort her child.
The author doesn’t seem to notice the irony that she is practicing demonization, herself.
The good news is that the article reports on perinatal hospice, now available across the country:
Today some 60 U.S. hospitals, hospices and crisis pregnancy clinics offer perinatal hospice services; in Minnesota, women seeking to abort fetuses with fatal anomalies are required by law to be informed about hospice as an alternative. “Women appreciate the grieving process and being able to spend time with their babies,” says Dr. Calhoun, vice chair of obstetrics and gynecology at West Virginia University School of Medicine in Charleston. “Perinatal hospice gives women an alternative that is a better choice than abortion.”
As a mother who was faced with knowing I was carrying a child who would not survive, I have to say that there is a distinct lack of perinatal hospice programs and a definite need for more. The hospital I was transferred to, being a Catholic institution, was as helpful as possible in allowing me to hold my daughter and even allowed me to speak with one of the sisters who was on the ethics committee that approved her early cesarean delivery (there was a risk to my health as well as a definite end to future fertility if I carried her to term). However, that hospital was an hour away from the town where I lived. Had I delivered at home, who knows what type of support, if any I would have received? My hometown hospital is the same one which refused to let me have my child's remains after a miscarriage in 2005. Perinatal hospices are needed whether or not abortion is legal, is what I suppose I am trying to say – because there are families, and sadly, always will be families who need the support.
Posted by Anonymous | May 9, 2009, 8:04 pmI'm so sorry that your local hospital made it hard for you. Believe it or not, they may have thought they were following some law.I may have mentioned it before, but the Tyler Texas medical community gave me so much grief over natural childbirth and nursing (in '77 and '82) that I decided to go to medical school. That punished them!
Posted by LifeEthics.org | May 12, 2009, 11:25 am