Pre-Roe Doctor recounts experiences before abortion was legal
June 03, 2008 10:36:00
by Karina
Web Editor
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund
Just wanted to call your attention to a very powerful essay from a Dr. Waldo Fielding, a doctor who treated "almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure."
He writes:
The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous "coat hanger" - which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in - perhaps the patient herself - found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it…
...Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion - darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.
Making abortion illegal is not going to stop abortions from happening. He concludes with a discussion about the importance of the Roe decision and what it meant for women:
What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens - and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.
Dr. Fielding's essay is another reminder of the importance of keeping abortion safe and legal. If you ask me, we shouldn't be in the business of making laws that interfere with these personal, emotional decisions. The decision of whether or not to have a child is a very personal decision for women and their families to make—government should have no role in this moral decision.
Please take the time to read his entire essay in the NY times. And check out StandUpSD.com for how you can help fight the abortion ban in SD.
Trackback: http://www.plannedparenthoodadvocate.org/trackback/374/cZDplROd/
You say that whether or not to have a child is a decision for women and their families to make, yet in reality you really don’t want anyone involved who might have any wish for the baby not to be aborted. You certainly don’t want the parents of minor children to be involved, because YOU know than they do. Very hypocritical.
By the way - doesn’t anyone read these blogs? I’m the only person who leaves comments.
By Jeff on 03/06/2008
Wth… do you even read what you write? Or do you just spout misinformation?
By Johanna on 03/06/2008
Hey, I finally got someone’s attention!
Nice - All you can do is respond with insults. Of course I “read what I write. Here is one of many references:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53807
That undercover project involved Life Dynamics arranging for an adult volunteer to pose as a 13-year-old and call every Planned Parenthood clinic in the United States. She posed as that young teen, pregnant by her 22-year-old boyfriend, and asked for help because she didn’t want her parents to know. Almost without exception the recorded responses from the clinics advise her not only how to obtain an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, but also how to protect that adult boyfriend who is guilty in any state of statutory rape on child.
“While many clinic workers can be heard on the tapes telling the caller that this situation was unlawful and that they were legally mandated to report it to the state, 91 percent of these facilities still agreed to illegally conceal it,” Life Dynamics reported. “So it’s no wonder that abortion clinics are refusing to cooperate with law enforcement efforts to investigate child abuse. In Kansas, abortion clinic representatives have even gone so far as to state in published reports that they will not comply with the state’s mandatory reporting laws.”
Crutcher said in his investigation, clinic workers even have been taped telling a person they believe to be a pregnant 13-year-old to have her “boyfriend,” a statutory rapist, take her across state lines without her parents’ knowledge for an abortion.
“What we have is a conspiracy to cover up the crimes that are being committed across the nation by sexual predators on behalf of the abortion cartel. Their love for money, their love for abortion is greater than their care for what actually is happening [to children],” said Newman.
By Jeff on 03/06/2008
Jeff, did you even read the article? I fail to see how your original comment had anything to do with the horrors of reproductive choice before legal and safe abortions. You just wanted a forum to repost your article.
The thing is, there are women out there - 13 or 33 - who died because abortions were not safe or legal. They died in horrible, painful ways. Maybe they chose the abortion, or maybe their 22 year old boyfriend threatened to beat them with a baseball bat to cause an abortion/miscarriage if they didn’t do something about it. Who knows? The point is, I (as well as the doctor who wrote the NY Times article) want to prevent these types of deaths. Making safe abortion illegal will cause more of these deaths to happen.
You and I probably agree that the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Hopefully, we’re all working to make that a reality - where all children are welcomed into loving, stable families, and no one has to even consider abortion. But that’s not yet the case, and outlawing abortion (or placing undue burdens on a woman trying to get one, like parental consent) only makes the sorts of scenarios outlined in the NY Times article more common. You seem like the sort of person who values life, so I hope you understand how making safe abortions illegal does not save lives.
By Allison on 04/06/2008
Jeff, what are you going to do to pay for the baby once it is born? I mean, it’s well and dandy that all these “Christian” ministries help with pre-natal care and L&D, but once that baby is out, we all know the woman is abandoned with a newborn.
By Kathleen on 04/06/2008
Allison: I’d be really interested to know how many abortions occurred before Roe v. Wade. Got any numbers? How does that number compare with the number of abortions performed today? By the way, abortions may be legal but they are not safe for 1.2 million babies per year.
Kathleen: There are an estimate 1 to 2 million families waiting to adopt a baby. In another comment I gave facts on Planned Parenthood’s deplorably poor statistics on abortion referrals. All the evidence indicates that Planned Parenthood is only interested in aborting babies and does not care about any other solution.
By Jeff on 06/06/2008
My previous comment should have said “adoption referrals”, not “abortion referrals”. I apologize for any confusion the mistake might have caused.
By Jeff on 12/06/2008
