Sarah, Author at ClinicQuotes

Republican versus Democrat – Which Is More Committed On the Abortion Issue

Pro-Choice author Melody Rose put together a table with statistics on how important the abortion issue is for Republicans versus Democrats.

The author examines the voting records of Republicans and Democrats on abortion related legislation between 1994 and 2005. Mathematically, she calculates that the average party unity score (instances of Republicans voting pro-life and Democrats voting pro-choice) was 87% for Republicans and 71% for Democrats—meaning that Republicans more consistently voted pro-life than Democrats voted pro-choice. She makes the point that the Republican Party is more committed to its antiabortion stand than the Democratic Party is committed to the pro-choice platform.

Melody Rose “Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States” (Washington DC: CQ Press) 2007

The table can be found on page 172

Doctors Don’t Want to “Get Their Hands Dirty” with Abortion

“There are a lot of people who love us, but don’t want to do [abortions] themselves… They’re certainly happy that I’m well trained, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty – and that’s okay.”

Late-term Abortionist Paul Temple

week20-sex-organs — 20 weeks – a baby that Dr. Temple would kill

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 158

This quote offers insight on why there are so few abortion providers – many OB/GYN’s (and others– Roe V Wade did not specify that abortions have to be performed by OB/GYN’s who are trained, anyone can technically do them, as long as they have a medical license or nursing degree)many people do not want to get their “hands dirty” with abortion, especially late-term abortion.

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Parental Notification Laws Lead to Decline in Teen Abortion Rate

Parental notification laws decrease the number of abortions in the states where they are enacted. pro-choice author Melody Rose gives the following statistics:

“The teen abortion decline coincides chronologically with the rise of parental notification and consent laws nationwide, which may have diminished the adolescent abortion rate.

She notes that between 1994 and 2000 the abortion rate of 15 to 17-year-olds decreased from 8.8 to 6.5. The rates of abortion for children under 15 decreased from 1.2 to .07.

Melody Rose “Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States” (Washington DC: CQ Press, 2007) 35 to 36

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Abortion Provider Faces Discrimination in the Military

Caleb Barrington, who tried to arrange approved abortions for nurses and Army dependents while serving in the military:

“I was the only guy that wasn’t decorated out of my group of OB/GYN’s. It was because of abortion.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 156

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Academic Careers Are Not Made around Abortion

Daniel Fieldstone, professor in a medical school,:

“There is virtually no chair [in departments of obstetrics and gynecology] whose career was made around contraception, sterilization, and abortion… These are really regarded as trivial issues in OB/GYN. Molecular genetics, endocrinology, steroid chemistry, cell biology on the academic scale are considered to be more important than this kind of thing.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 152

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Abortionist: Most People Could Not “Get Their Hands Dirty” with Abortion

An abortionist, after explaining the stigma attached to providing abortions, explain the following:

“Definitely then, and even maybe more so today, the academic people saw you couldn’t afford to get your hands dirty with this stuff unless you were an extremely powerful person and just happened to be enough of humanist…”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 152

He was talking about how performing abortions could ruin a person’s reputation and lead to persecution.

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Abortionist on Why His Colleagues Won’t Do Abortions

Dr. Barry Messinger, abortionist, discusses one of the reasons why there are so few abortion providers:

“I knew that not very many of my academic colleagues were interested or willing to put time into doing abortions… I also became aware of the fact that the technique was rapidly becoming simple and one would not be able to write a lot of papers about its complexities and advances and permutations – things like that. So from that point of view, it’s not a very intellectually challenging deal… I think that limited the kind of academic people who would be interested in it.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) Page 151

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Providers Who Dealt with “Unpleasant” Aspects of Abortion Have Less Positive Outlook

A body of research that was done in the first years of legal abortion:

researchers found

“that attitudes toward abortion work were more positive among groups such as social workers and lay counselors who had extended verbal contact with the patient than among physicians and nurses. The argument is that those who had more experience with the “whole” woman were more likely to focus on her and see the procedure in light of her particular situation – in contrast to doctors and nurses who dealt with the more physically unpleasant aspects of abortion, without any mitigating sense of the individual patient.”

Judith Bourne, “Influences on Health Professionals’ Attitudes Towards Abortion,” Journal of the American Hospital Association 46 (1972): 80 – 83; FJ Kane et al. “Emotional Reactions in Abortion Services Personnel” Archives of General Psychiatry 28 (1973): 409 – 411; Howard D Kibel, “Staff Reactions to Abortion,” Obstetrics and Gynecology 39 (1972): 128 – 133; and Marianne Such–Baer, “Professional Staff Reaction to Abortion Work,” Social Casework 55 (1974): 435 – 441

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To Save Money in Abortion Clinics, Patient Contact with Doctors Is Limited

One abortionist explained the rationale behind why doctors see patients for such a short time in clinics:

“They [doctors] are expensive tools and should be used for what only they could do, and everything else should be done by people that cost less.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 149

He did not comment on how this lack of doctor-patient contact affected the quality of abortion care. Here we also see that abortion clinics or unlike any other business, to maximize profits.

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Doctor: The First Abortion “Accident” Would Be the Toughest to Defend

Shortly after abortion was legalized, abortion clinics were set up throughout New York City. Many of them were not run by qualified providers, in fact, many of the back alley abortionists simply hung up their shingles and started performing abortions legally. The state did not take any role in regulating these clinics. One abortionist and abortion-rights crusader said the following:

“What I realized was that the first accident would be the toughest to defend, and the longer we could put off the first accident, the first death, the first perforation, the first infection, and get more experience and credibility under our belt, the better off we were going to be.”

He knew it wasn’t a matter of whether there would be complications, but a matter of when.

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995)

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