“Nobody is for abortion,” at least one speaker will intone at any pro-choice rally. The implication is that decent people will always disdain it. That is precisely the attitude we should be fighting to change … We must be for abortion …”
Tom Flynn. “‘Pro-Choice:’ Wrong Turn for Abortion Rights?” Free Inquiry (“An International Secular Humanist Magazine”), Winter 1991/92, pages 6 and 7.
Katyia Rowe was 20 weeks pregnant when her ultrasound showed problems with her baby. The doctors told her that he had a brain disorder and would not live very long, and, if he did, he would need around the clock nursing care. She considered abortion, but changed her mind when she saw her son, who she named Lucian, smile on the ultrasound screen.
‘If he could smile and play and feel then despite his disabilities he deserved to enjoy whatever life he had left, no matter how short. Just because his life would be shorter or different, didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to experience it….
I was told he would never walk or talk yet the scans showed him constantly wriggling and moving.
‘As I watched I knew that while I was carrying him he still had a quality of life and it was my duty as a mother to protect that no matter how long he had left, he deserved to live….
‘I researched all his disabilities to prepare myself fully for his needs. I never had a moment of doubt. I only had to look at the scan pictures of him enjoying life in the womb to know I was doing the right thing by giving him a chance.
‘Not knowing how long he would live meant we were determined to enjoy him for as long as we could. We learned he loved the shower and would kick when I sprayed the water on my tummy.
‘As he grew bigger I could see his little feet and hands prodding through my bump when he wriggled. He may not have been born but he was already our son and I took each movement as a sign we had done the right thing.
‘I would talk to him and play him music because I wanted him to experience as much as possible.’
Lucian could not swallow amniotic fluid like a normal baby, so Katyia had to submit to painful procedures to drain the fluid. However, she never wavered in her desire to give birth to her son.
‘It was agony and I knew some people questioned if it was worth putting myself through all this for a severely disabled baby that may not live for long.
‘But I never ever thought like that. As a mother you will do anything for your child and for me I became a mother as soon as I fell pregnant, that job had started already.’
When Lucian was born, the doctrs placed him in her arms.
“It was without doubt the happiest moment of my life. Lucian could have died at anytime in my womb but he held on long enough for us to meet properly.
‘My son looked utterly perfect.
‘The love and joy I felt the moment they put Lucian in my arms told me it had all been worth it.’
… ‘I thought I didn’t want to be a mother but Lucian taught me it is the most wonderful job in the world and I will always be grateful for that.’
Larisa Brown “The 3D scan of a disabled baby’s smile that convinced his mother not to abort him – and why she is grateful she was able to cuddle him with joy for a few precious hours” Mail Online, Jan 14, 2013
“The term conception refers to the union of the male and female pronuclear elements of procreation from which a new living being develops. It is synonymous with the terms fecundation, impregnation, and fertilization … The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life.”
J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Freidman. Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Publishers. 1974 Pages 17 and 23.
This is an old reference, but scientists have known that life begins at conception for a very long time. See newer references here.
A doctor who performed late-term abortions said the following about the partial-birth abortion ban:
“Now, it’s like the Stone Age, it’s like a Muslim country here…this is the most backward law, it is not for civilized country. If this was Iran, Iraq, I wouldn’t be surprised. But to pass this law in the United States, what is this government doing?”
Gretchen Voss “My Late-Term Abortion” Boston Globe Magazine, January 25, 2004
Here is a diagram of the partial-birth abortion procedure, in which the baby is delivered up to the head and then killed by crushing the skull and suctioning the brain. This abortionist says that a law against this procedure is not appropriate for civilized country.
From one clinic worker, in an article about abortion stigma.
“I wish we could stamp out all the negative connotations about abortion and instead show the truth: someone you love has had an abortion. It’s not uncommon. Regular girls have them. It takes strength, courage, bravery, and determination. There’s nothing irresponsible about it and it’s not a frivolous choice. People who have abortions think about the future. They think about now. They think about others.”
Does it really take bravery to kill an unborn child like this one?
From a woman who aborted a down syndrome baby – she expresses negative feelings towards a woman who asked her when she was going for the “abortion”.
“The truth was, until I heard the word “abortion,” it hadn’t occurred to me that I was actually having one.
I was, of course. But we’d been using euphemisms for days, ever since my doctor called to say my amniocentesis results “weren’t good.”we’d say “when we go to the hospital” or “the appointment” or “after procedure, we can try again….
I’m quite certain that I made the right choice for the three of us. [Her, her husband, and the unborn baby]”
16 week old unborn baby
The woman maintains that she made the best decision for her baby, who was a boy. Since Down Syndrome is not detectable until 16 weeks or so, the baby was at least 16 weeks old when she had her abortion. At this stage, abortion is done by D&E, where the baby is torn apart with forceps, the doctor first extracting an arm, leg, etc. Read more about D&E abortions here. And watch a video of the procedure here.
It is interesting to note the distortion of language that takes place to justify the killing, and the brutal killing, of the baby.it reminds me of this quote by a Nazi.
Hermann Pfanmuller, who ran a hospital for the disabled and decided which of his patients would die in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, declared that he:
“worked… solely in the interest of the patients in [his] care.”
Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany 1900 – 1945 (New York: Cambridge University press, 1994) 129
and
One Holocaust scholar observed that, after poring through thousands of Nazi documents, he happened upon the word “killing” only once – in an edict concerning dogs.
Raul Hilberg, the Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meiers, 1985), volume 3, 1016
Nazi quotes from James F Bohan. The House of Atreus: Abortion Is a Human Rights Issue (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1999)
Deborah Kendrick is a mother who is blind due to a rare form of cancer that strikes in childhood and is hereditary. A doctor expressed sorrow that a prenatal test to determine whether the baby was susceptible to cancer had not yet been perfected. In the article “Life-And-Death Decisions Are Made to Easily” Kendrick speaks out against eugenic abortion. At the end of the article, she says:
“If my position on these issues seems uncharacteristic of other opinions expressed in this column, well, maybe it’s because it’s so personal. Had the tests been available when my mother was pregnant with me, I might not be here.
My daughter is the light of my life. She doesn’t know, unless she reads this, the Dr. once told me that her birth shouldn’t happen.”
“Today, though, there are so few providers who will perform terminations that the people who do agree to provide them end up taking the bulk of procedures. It can be hard… Doing them over and over and over again can be really taxing. All of us who provide abortions believe in what were doing and think it’s a good thing and a right that needs to be available. But when you’re in the clinic and in that group of people doing it, it can be tough, and you can get really tired. I don’t think it will ever make me stop doing terminations, but it can move people to tears. And it’s not just me – it extends to the nurses and the people who help us in the operating room… I even know people who feel they can’t tell their families what they do; their families think they work on labor and delivery.”
Cheryl Alkon “Confessions of an Abortion Doctor” Boston Magazine, December 2004
Under current US law, an unborn baby only becomes a person when he or she is born. Traveling down the birth canal a few inches means the difference between murder and simply a medical procedure. One pro-life activist makes the following argument:
“Recently, in San Francisco, an unborn child was partially removed from the womb in order to have a renal tract obstruction repaired. After the surgery, the child was replaced in the womb to continue the pregnancy. Was this a person while out of the womb and then a nonperson again when back inside? Or, since the procedure involves the removal of the lower half of the body from the womb, did the child achieve personhood for its buttocks but not for its brain? These are the scientific anomalies of the Supreme Court’s decision. No wonder [former Supreme Court] Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that Roe versus Wade is on a collision course with itself.”
Eugene F Diamond, “an Open Letter to the Open-Minded” Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly volume 27, Winter 2004
