Early Abortion Clinic Is Not Safe for Women

Abortionist who set up a clinic shortly before Roe versus Wade, when abortion was only legal in a few states:

“We did about 60 abortions a day. It was a wonderful service, and women were coming from all over the United States where it was illegal. They traveled long distances… And then the problem of getting care for them after they’d go home. They’d call up and be in trouble and we didn’t know where to send them. There were no doctors to take care of them. It was quite an experience… Back in the early days, the clinic had an ambulance that was kept on hand all the time. It was rarely, if ever, used and finally they got rid of it. It just fell apart from no use but we didn’t know if it might be necessary if a woman started bleeding in the clinic and we had to rush her to the hospital…”

Sending women home without follow-up care and operating without a means of transportation for injured women put women’s lives and health at risk in his clinic.

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) page 18

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The Reasons Why There is a Shortage of Abortion Providers in America

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

She discusses the fact that there are so few abortion providers, and puts forth the theory that it is stigma within the medical community and not pro-life activities or violence, that causes the shortage.

“In seeking to explain this puzzle – a high degree of support for legal abortion by both the general public and the medical specialty most directly affected, yet so little commitment by this specialty to provide necessary services and training – it is tempting to point to the violent wing of the antiabortion movement… There is no question that the climate of violence surrounding abortion facilities, and especially the murders that occurred, have had a chilling effect on abortion provision. But it is a mistake to overemphasize the role of the terrorist wing of the antiabortion movement in the current crisis… It is the medical community itself, and not Operation Rescue, that bears chief responsibility for the present marginalization of abortion provision.”

 

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In the Past Few Decades, Abortion Providers Have Been Hard to Come by

“… The struggle facing this branch of medicine [providing abortions] is most evident in the enormous difficulty many facilities have in finding an adequate supply of abortion providers. At the NAF [National Abortion Federation] meeting, some clinic administrators told of being able to offer abortion services only every other week. Other administrators recounted how they are forced to fly in physicians from halfway across the country in order to hold regular clinics. The director of one clinic related to colleagues that she recently sent out letters of inquiry to every single graduating resident of obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) programs across the country and received no replies.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) page 3

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Planned Parenthood Statistics

The most recent statistics from Planned Parenthood come from 2009. In 2009 Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than ever before: 332,278, 2.5% more than in the previous year. Abortion rates at Planned Parenthood have risen for the 15th straight year.

During that time, it has gone from committing 9.3 percent of all abortions in the United States to committing 27.5 percent.

Income from abortion accounts for 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual clinic income.

97.6 percent of pregnant women going to Planned Parenthood are sold abortions while less than 2.4 percent of pregnant women received non-abortion services including adoption and prenatal care

There are 340 abortions for every one adoption referral

Read some women’s testimonies of Planned Parenthood’s biased and coercive abortion counseling:

Jennifer Clifford’s Story

Alicia’s story

Kathy Walker’s Story

Anonymous Story

Source for these statistics: Planned Parenthood Report here.

Cited in LifeNews “New Planned Parenthood Report: Record Abortions Done in 2009” Steve Ertelt Feb 23, 2011

 

 

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Genetic Testing and the Coercion to Use It

“The mere existence of a [genetic] technology contains an implicit coercion to use it… Sometimes the coercion is more than implicit.”

Lori Andrews, Future Perfect: Confronting Decisions about Genetics (New York: Columbia University press, 2001), 63

Paige Comstock Cunningham, Esq. “The Supreme Court and the creation of the two-dimensional woman” Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion” (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004)

Read an example of such coercion here.

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Medical Professionals “Discourage the Birth” of Children with Deformities or Handicaps

“Through the gradual introduction of new forms of technology and testing, the medical establishment and the public health sector have been developing subtle quality-of-life standards and not-so-subtle ways of discouraging the birth of those who do not measure up.”

Elizabeth Kristol. “Picture Perfect: the Politics of Prenatal Testing” First Things 32 (April 1993): 22

Quoted in Paige Comstock Cunningham, Esq. “The Supreme Court and the creation of the two-dimensional woman” Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion” (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004)

Read an example of such coercion here. 

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Counselors Expected to Help Women Abort

Counselors are often made available to pregnant women who are being tested to see if their babies have health issues. Author Paige Comstock Cunningham quotes writer Elizabeth Crystal saying:

“Within the medical literature there is a clear assumption that counselors are there, in effect, to help patients through the difficult process of agreeing to be tested and agreeing to abort in the event of a diagnosed defect….”

Elizabeth Kristol. “Picture Perfect: the Politics of Prenatal Testing” First Things 32 (April 1993): 24

Quoted in Paige Comstock Cunningham, Esq. “The Supreme Court and the creation of the two-dimensional woman” in Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion” (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004)

The implication is that a woman who has an amniocentesis or other test and discovers that the baby has a handicap will abort, and the counselors are there to guide her through the process. As you can see by reading other quotes in this section, women often feel coerced into aborting babies with defects, as medical personnel pressure them to do so.

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Pro-choicers Blast Bill Providing Pre-Natal Care and Health Insurance for Women

The Department of Health and Human Services clarified its policy to include unborn children In (S–CHIP State Children’s Health Insurance Program) thus, prenatal care would be provided for the unborn babies of mothers who otherwise would not qualify for aid. The bill would allow these mothers to receive pre-natal care that they would otherwise be unable to get, and would help poor or uninsured women give birth to healthy babies and get the medical care both they and their unborn children need. It would help women with wanted pregnancies.

Rather than welcome this measure as a way to help poor women and their families, abortion advocates attacked it as:.

“a ploy to create new grounds for outlawing abortion”

Clarence Page, “Playing Politics with Prenatal Care,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 2002

and:

a guerrilla attack on abortion rights”

(Bob Herbert of the New York Times)

and

 “another way to undermine the rights of women.”

(Jocelyn Elders former Surgeon General)

Jefferson Morley, “Fetal Mistake: the Abortion-Rights Crowd Squanders a Victory,” Slate February 14, 2002

The pro-choice lobbyists defeated the bill and left poor women unable to get prenatal care- even for their wanted, planned pregnancies. It was more important that women be left without health insurance than that unborn babies be given any recognition under the law.

 

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Bob Phillips, MD, on the term “Abortionist”

From one abortion provider:

“Well, you know, every now and then you get labeled an “abortionist,” which is a term I don’t really enjoy… At a medical meeting, something like that, as soon as you become identified with the [pro-choice] movement, you become an “abortionist.” Now that to me is an unpleasant term… “Abortionist” carries a still unpleasant connotation. It carries the connotation of a sleaze.”

Bob Phillips, M.D.

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 152-153

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Abortionist Calls Aborted Babies “A Few Cells”

Abortionist Dr. Jane Hodgson:

“I am personally not concerned as to whether life begins with the two cell, four cell, or eight cell division but I am extremely concerned with the quality of life that will result from the division. We should be more concerned with the welfare of living teenagers and women than with the future of a few embryonal cells.”

Jane E Hodgson, “Therapeutic Abortions in Medical Perspective,” Minnesota Medicine 53 (1970): 757

Quoted in Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 12

Abortions generally take place long after the “embryonal cell” stage. This picture of an abortion at seven weeks is more accurate as to what Dr. Hodgson does in her clinic:

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