The NF Guestbook archive II
February 25 1999 - February 25 1999
Read what others had to say, or put an entry in the Nuremberg Files Mirror Guestbook yourself. Because the guestbook is quite large, I have cut it up into smaller files:
- Archive I: entries Feb 22 - Feb 25 1999 (36k)
- Archive II: entries Feb 25 - Feb 25 1999 (52k)
- Archive III: entries Feb 25 - Feb 27 1999 (37k)
- Archive IV: entries Feb 27 - Mar 1 1999 (39k)
- Archive V: entries Mar 1 - Mar 14 1999 (34k)
- Archive VI: entries Mar 14 - Aug 9 1999 (34k)
- Archive VII: entries Aug 9 - now.
From: bouwhuistermaat@wxs.nl [dv0031-1.dial.wxs.nl]
Date: Thu Feb 25 08:10:07 1999
Karin Spaink,
Ik ben het niet eens met je beslissing de Nuremberg files te publiceren. Naar mijn mening heeft de Amerikaanse rechter gelijk en roept de site zeker wel op tot moord. Hier bereiken we aan de grens van het recht op vrijheid van meningsuiting.
Jan Bouwhuis
Nijlandstraat 34
Rijssen
From: bleating1@yahoo.com [host-209-214-29-30.bct.bellsouth.net]
Date: Thu Feb 25 01:53:49 1999
Your decision to mirror the site was a difficult one, I'm sure. By doing so, you have placed yourself in the middle...both sides(ie. pro-life and pro-abortion) see you as a near adversary. Your decision seems to be a statement about the freedom of speech above your abortion posturing. For your recognition and excersize of this unalienable right you are to be commended. We Americans should be ashamed that we have allowed our unalienable rights to be taken from us and are relegated to foriegn nations to express what we cannot express.
I am appalled to hear those, who, after seeing the pictures your site mirrors, are merely concerned about the potential threat posed to abortion providers who have thier names posted. Has the world become so depraved that there is no crying for the babies that were exterminated and shown in thier lifeless state? We Americans are guaranteed the right to life....these babies are not given that right. Why? Because the court has ruled them to be "non-persons" and therefore have not the same rights as real persons. I am forced to ask, as should all Americans: "Who will be the next group declared to be 'non-persons'?". In the nazi regeme, the murder of innocent people was legalized with this exact same declaration of "non-personhood". Millions were mudered. Our Constitution recognizes that individual rights come from the Creator, not from the state, however, we are seeing a movement away from that very foundation. Now we see the granting and removing of group rights. The babies are a group that have no rights. The Christians have no right to assemble in front of an abortion clinic as there is a perceived threat of violence at the scene....how ironic that if your union wishes to picket your job-site, the police will come to defend the picketer's rights to picket, even though hundreds of people have been killed at these such assemblies. This is another example of group rights being removed. Jack kervorkian is now moving to force the court's hand on another group's rights, namely, the old and terminally ill. We must ask ourselves who the next group will be that loses thier rights...to speak...to be secure in their possessions...to travel about....or to life itself.
As far as the abortion providers are concerned, I have no hate. God's judgement is certain, upon them and upon me, though He is longsuffering and merciful...our fate is in His perfect hands. As far as the irrationale of: "oh, we don't want to put the doctor's life in jeopardy by posting the lists.." I have this to say... There have been at least 38,000,000 million babies murdered in the U.S. alone since the Roe-v-Wade decision (over 1.2 billion by recent estimates-world wide) and there have been aproximately 30 baby aborting doctors murdered or injured in the same span of time (in the U.S.). One does not justify the other, but, where is the outcry for the babies? Where is the dread that comes from seeing these helpless ones so abused and tortured? Why are the advocates of the abortion provider's list so afraid to have the information posted? They rage against the messenger who tells the truth and slaps the pictures of contorted faces of mutilated babies in their face because their consciences are seared by the shock of those images. The cry is to not tell. "Let us do these things in dark and in secret, lest the truth be found out and we be shown for the depraved hearts that we have in us." May God have mercy upon us all for the murder that is in ALL of our hearts.
I close with two final thoughts... At 17 years old, my girlfriend and I murdered our child. Not for health reasons, but for convenience purposes. God has shown me the blackness of my own heart and how vile is my selfishness. My heart is broken over our decision those years ago. I can only pray that His eyes see my broken sprit over that decision and that He will forgive me for taking a life that was not mine, but His to take. Today I reap the consequences of that "choice" by having no children of my own...and probably never will have. My only child, I killed. Today, I saw a picture of what I have done. God please have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon us all.
The last thought I have to offer... A friend just found out she was pregnant. She came excitedly into the room with a beaming grin on her face saying: "I'm having a baby!" A thought struck me as i heard her words. She is having a baby. She is not having a fetus. She is not having a "blob of flesh". She is not having an accident. It's a baby. Ten fingers...ten toes...two ears etc. exactly as those pictures show. A baby. It's only when the child isn't wanted, that the baby is called some distant sounding term that detracts from the truth of what it really is...a baby. Those other terms are merely a way for us to rationalize the actof what abortion really is....as I have come to find out...it is the act of killing your child...your baby.
i have attempted to post this in love and repentance and to the glory of the Lord in whose hands even my fate awaits.
His sheep
From: Katz001@aol.com [mnet01-82.dallas.texas.net]
Date: Thu Feb 25 01:37:33 1999
Why Abortion Must and Should Remain Legal and Accessible
(The text of a letter to George W. Bush, Governor of Texas)
As a fourth generation Texan, a lifelong citizen of Texas, and a physician, I want to attempt to express to you a deep concern I have about certain bills before the legislature that threaten the lives, health, and well-being of Texas women and teenage girls. The proposed legislation I fear and oppose consists of those bills that would impose unnecessary and burdensome restrictions and limitations on women's constitutionally guaranteed rights to choose abortion. I beg your indulgence as I attempt to explain my concern in as few words as I can. I have attempted to moderate the language and emotion expressed herein, but I ask for your understanding if some of what I have to say comes across as less than polite. After years of constant insult, harassment, violence, and relentless threats of violence against my family and myself, civil discourse on this issue does not come easily to me.
I am a long-time pro-choice physician, and I perform abortions out of a deep sense of moral conviction that some cannot, or will not, comprehend. In my opinion, abortion can serve either good or evil, but is itself intrinsically neither. I will try to explain this. Abortion can serve evil if a woman is required, pressured, or even forced to have an abortion against her will. It can also serve unequivocal good, in my opinion, if women and teenage girls (many of whom throughout human history have sought abortions for unwanted pregnancies and always will, regardless of the law and therefore regardless of the risk) have the freedom in this citadel and role-model for the rest of the world of individual liberty, the United States of America, to choose abortion if they themselves so decide for their own reasons and of their own responsibility and in tune with their own conversation with their own conscience and/or belief and understanding of the laws and nature of God, and to do so in a society in which abortion is legal and therefore (though no more or less risk-free than other medical or minor surgical procedures of like magnitude and though it comes with no more or less guarantee of personal success than any other major life decision) vastly safer than in a society that has outlawed it and forced it underground into the hands of often uncaring and incompetent criminal practitioners.
I have strong feelings about this issue . . . strong feelings resulting not only from my sense of the importance to women of freedom from unwanted pregnancy and of having an option to free themselves from what is often a desperate and potentially life-derailing situation for them, but from the many terrible tragedies of illegal abortion I personally witnessed and heard about first-hand as a young physician in a large city-county hospital ER prior to the United States Supreme Court's 1973 decision in the case of Roe v. Wade that resulted in the legalization of abortion throughout the United States. Sometimes, despite my profound respect for the rational and the logical, I must admit I am tempted to say, like many do to justify their personal religious beliefs and other strongly held opinions, "Forget rationality and logic! That's for school kids! Let's do what's right!" My sense of "what's right" has been forged and tempered on the anvil of what I have experienced first-hand in the world of undeniable and sometimes unthinkable stark reality, not hunched over a Bible or a study of logic. However, after long and thorough study, I have found no truly sound reason to reject either logic or the understanding and compassion exemplified by our great spiritual teachers, certainly including Jesus Christ, in order to defend the option of abortion as a legitimate, proper, and fundamental right of women and teenage girls.
Perhaps an example from my personal experience is the best means of introducing my views on abortion and its morality and legality. There were certainly other cases . . . many others . . . but one leaps most vividly from my memory as representative of the desperate tragedy of them all: a vivid and painful memory of an all too brief encounter with a sixteen year old girl.
It was 1962. I saw her the moment she was wheeled through the swinging double doors of the ER, pale, motionless but for weak gasps for breath, and comatose, the sheet under her and the blanket over her stained red with still wet blood. Several of us physicians gathered around her, quickly assessing her condition, and found her to be in profound shock, her breathing rapid and shallow, her pulse irregular and weak. With my stethoscope on her chest, I heard her last heartbeat, then saw the flat line on the EKG tape, observed that her pupils were dilated and fixed, and pronounced her dead. We stood helplessly around her, clenching back our emotion and looking at her pale, small, young, lifeless body and at each other in mournfully frustrated resignation only momentarily before rushing to the next case. I was told her parents were in the waiting area, so went to inform them that their beloved young daughter had just died from the complications, in this case profound shock from massive blood loss, of an incompetently performed illegal abortion.
Though devastated, they were in the kind of denial I perceive in many of today's anti-abortion ("pro-life") advocates. They protested meekly, but with that kind of obstinate firmness that indicates that one is not willing to even consider the possibility of being wrong, that it just couldn't be so, that their daughter was a good Christian girl from a good Christian home, that something like this simply couldn't have happened to her, that they "knew" she was a virgin, and so on.
Obviously, I think, their beloved young daughter had just lost her life in a desperate gamble to protect and preserve the denial of reality upon which her parents and family were so dependent. In her desperation and emotional isolation with an explosive, inescapable secret that she feared nobody she knew could accept or forgive, she had knowingly risked death and lost . . . and thus sacrificed herself in an ill-fated attempt to sustain their idealistic illusions about her and preserve the appearance of unruffled peace and harmony in the family. As still and always so, there were many teenagers willing to take such risks with their lives and health.
It was over now for her. I could do nothing. I just briefly reinforced the factual truth of what I had already told them, that their daughter was dead and that what was the cause of her death was an incompetently performed illegal abortion cloaked in secrecy and shame that prevented her from telling her desperate secret and seeking competent medical treatment in time to save her life, then left them with the chaplain and the social services caseworker and rushed back in to the next case.
"Pro-life" advocates often assert that such tragedies never happened or that they were few and far between . . . that their frequency has been exaggerated to justify the legality of abortion. But I was there. I saw it. Night and day it happened, so commonly that we had an acronym for such cases . . . "RBC" ("red blanket case"), referring of course to the profuse stains of blood so often visible on the bedcovers of these patients as they were wheeled into the ER. There were also the many terrible cases of slower, even more agonizing deaths from infection and septic shock.
It has already started happening again with parental notification and consent laws in several states, which, as was predicted and as anyone should have known, are only driving many teenagers not only across state lines, which in our state would often mean to illegal "Boys' Town" butchers in Mexican border towns, but into the hands of local illegal "back alley" abortionists.
This ongoing tragedy is made all the more heinous by the realization that we had virtually done away with its terrible danger by making a simple minor surgical procedure legal and available . . . and therefore vastly safer than if criminalized and driven into the hands of criminal abortionists. I sometimes wonder how many babies and grandbabies that now long-gone but unforgettable, then 16 year old, girl would have had by now if safe, legal abortion had been available to her. She could have chosen to free herself from compulsory childbearing at so young an age, if the option had been available to her, by legal, safe, uncomplicated abortion, to continue her education and become a schoolteacher, or a nurse, or a doctor, or both mother and career woman. However, "She committed a sin", some would say, demanding that all aspects of their own personal morality be required by secular law, and she might have developed what "pro-life" propaganda describes as "postabortion syndrome"! That is, she might have had emotional problems after her abortion. That is, she might have later regretted having chosen to have an abortion and felt bad about it, so . . . what? Is it better she died? (The unconscionably tragic answer to that question from the "Pro-Life Movement" is "yes", and their successful efforts to get parental consent or notification for minors required by law in some states have already started "paying off" in the death and maiming of teenage girls.) Would it be better that all women should be deprived of this fundamental human right because some women subsequently regret their choices? Should such restriction be placed upon other personal liberties that might be deemed by some as immoral as well? For men, too, or just women?
Extensive surveys and objective psychological studies have established that the vast majority of women who have had abortions adjust well and do not subsequently suffer significant psychological/emotional problems. However, I do not deny the existence of relatively infrequent negative psychological/emotional disturbances serious enough to conform to the descriptions of what some in the "pro-life" movement have termed the "post-abortion syndrome", that they spuriously claim afflicts all women who choose to have abortions. Serious and objective psychological studies of representative women in this group have demonstrated that their emotional problems actually result from exacerbation of preexisting emotional dysfunction by the totality of the stressful circumstances surrounding unwanted pregnancy, not from just the abortion per se. Furthermore, serious psychological illness is much more common following full-term childbirth than elective abortion, so a case could quite reasonably be made for abortion as an effective preventive measure for emotional distress and mental illness in many women, as it surely is, and has been unequivocally demonstrated to be, for the vast majority of women who choose abortion of their own free will.
I completely and unequivocally agree that women will sometimes make mistakes they will later regret if allowed the freedom to do so. Like men do. Such is the nature of freedom. It inevitably carries the burden of personal responsibility and the risk of mistake or failure. I can think of no example of freedom that does not carry the risk of, and personal responsibility for, mistake or failure. Should women thus just be made to forfeit all their freedoms because they might fail or make what they will later look back on as mistakes and feel bad about them? In that case, who should step in and decide for women? Men? Male judges? Pandering (predominantly male) politicians? The Pope? Celibate male priests? Men and women who think all should be required by secular law to think, feel, believe, and behave just like them? Who? Whose responsibility would then be the mistakes these others make in women's behalf?
If individual freedom of choice in so profound and personal a matter is ever again abolished by oppressive law, how could women then ever again hope to rise above the status of dependent pawns and victims in a society thus again heavily stacked in favor of men in virtually all pursuits of education, professions, careers, and desirable jobs? Shouldn't men also be protected from the downside of their freedom? They make mistakes, too . . . and regret them later. If so, who would make decisions, including major life choices, for men? Should we just erase the hard-won gains of centuries of heroic struggle and the agonizing sacrifice made by our forebears for individual liberties, including the mass emigrations to this "New World", the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War against the tyranny of the Soviet Union, and reinstitute the old systems of absolute church/state monarchy with subjection and slavery for the vast majority that was for many unenlightened centuries regarded as "biblical" and considered justified, and even required, by selected (and dubiously and politically interpreted) scriptural references, that were overthrown by these great struggles to free humankind from tyranny and oppressive ideology? If those who call themselves "pro-life" were not so prejudiced in their opinions that not only abortion, but many pregnancies as well (and, actually, when their surface is scratched, typically also including sexuality in general, women's equality, and many other personal freedoms we cherish and take for granted in this nation), are terrible wrongs, they would transmit something more positive and life-affirming to the women they influence and these women would likely fare much better after having abortions. More would likely even choose not to have abortions, which is not something likely ever to be achieved through restrictive law.
As a physician I know it would not improve the condition of a wound to inject flesh-eating bacteria into it. Even dogs don't learn by having their noses rubbed in their "mistakes". Women would be much better off protected from anti-abortion prejudice and misinformation . . . from deliberate efforts to engender shame, fear, and guilt . . . than from freedom of choice . . . better allowed the degree of self-determination guaranteed all citizens by the covenant upon which this nation was founded than "saved from themselves" by sanctimonious, self-righteous know-it-alls who are deluded that they know what is best for everyone else and demand that their prejudice be mandated on all by oppressive law.
In regards to laws requiring parental consent or notification in the cases of minors seeking abortions, it is obvious to me that such laws are not needed and would have only tragic results, since the vast majority of such minors who get abortions already do so with the consent of their parents or legal guardians and those who do not generally have very good reasons, such as extremely dysfunctional families and/or real fears of severe physical injury from abusive parents. Furthermore, the fact must be realized that, unlike other medical treatments and surgical procedures, parental consent is not legally required for other kinds of medical intervention and assistance related to pregnancy, including even major surgery such as cesarean section. Parental consent is certainly not required to get pregnant or to have a baby, although many parents doubtlessly wish it were and although having a baby is much more dangerous than having an abortion, and I know of no proposals to legislate this. In those states in which such laws have been enacted relating to abortion, underground criminal abortion has again begun to flourish with injury and death to teenage girls, as was easily predictable. I can only assume that those otherwise reasonable and caring persons who advocate such laws requiring parental involvement with teenagers' abortions are misinformed, naive, or cynically and callously political in their motivation.
I have often been asked (usually by an anti-abortion protestor wearing a smug, derisive sneer) a question that I regard as simplistic, ignorant, and misleading: "Just what is the magic of passage through several inches of birth canal that makes the difference between abortion and murder?" My answer to that question is to just state the honest, plain, simple, obvious truth, as far as I can know it: "Nothing". No magic. Implied in this answer is that I am no strong defender of unrestricted elective third trimester abortion, or unrestricted abortion after the age of independent viability of the fetus. For propaganda advantage, "pro-life" advocates like to perpetuate the myth that abortions are performed on viable, healthy, fully developed fetuses right up to the moment of birth, which of course they never are.
Actually, at least 89% of abortions are performed in the first trimester, or the first twelve weeks of fetal development, and less than 1% are performed in the third trimester, these invariably for reasons of gravely serious medical considerations. The deceptive and inflammatory term, "partial birth abortion", invented by "pro-life" propagandists, that has been the subject of so much misguided, rancorous political posturing and the passage of unconstitutional restrictions by a number of state legislatures refers (loosely) not to third trimester, or late term, abortion at all, but to a specific technique of abortion that is usually employed, when at all, infrequently in the second trimester and only very rarely in the early third trimester. The term itself is inaccurate and misleading because it carries the false and misleading implication that fetuses aborted by this procedure are normal, healthy fetuses that are far enough along in development that they could simply be born instead, which is virtually never the case. So far (at this time, January, 1999, in eighteen states), all state laws banning "partial birth abortion" have been struck down in federal courts as unconstitutional. If such a law ever stands, it will prevent no abortions at all. It will merely require physicians to use other methods that in some cases will present higher risks to the women involved.
Let's go to the other end, to the beginning, of this 38 weeks-long period of fetal development deep inside the corporeal domain and jurisdiction of a woman's body, and consider the same question from the other direction. The question becomes: "What is the magic that makes its destruction murder in the estimation of some when the DNA of a sperm and the DNA of an ovum share a common cell membrane when just a moment ago, before the event of conception, or fertilization, the same two clusters of DNA were just as alive, and each, one a living sperm and one a living ovum, had its own cell membrane . . . and their destruction would have borne no moral significance whatsoever, or relatively very little?" I think the honest, obvious answer is the same: "Nothing". No supernatural magic.
Is a newborn baby a person? Yes. Of course. It has developed into a person.
Is a fertilized egg, or zygote, two DNA clusters occupying the same intracellular space in a single cell shortly after conception, a person? No. Of course not. It can and might develop into a person, although most probably do not under natural circumstances. Probably only about 40-60% of all zygotes do actually develop that far and yet we still have . . . although many are in denial of it . . . an ongoing worldwide crisis of human overpopulation, progressively more catastrophic in its effects, that is already posing a severe threat to all forms of life on the planet.
As for the belief that there is no difference, or no difference in value, between even a very early fetus and a baby, please consider this analogy. What do you have if you have a bowl containing a mixture of flour, sugar, shortening, baking powder, and eggs? Cake batter. Not a cake. It has all the ingredients, but it is only a potential cake . . . a cake-to-be in the making, not a cake. It must be placed in the proper atmosphere in the proper vessel and subjected to the proper conditions for the proper span of time before it can be considered a cake. A bit simplistic perhaps, but a fetus is a baby-to-be in the making, not a baby. It is human life, but not a person . . . not until it becomes ensouled at the time it takes its first breath some think, while others think ensoulment takes place earlier, even as early as conception, and still others determine the emergence of personhood upon other criteria that are more objective than varied and conflicting religious beliefs about ensoulment. Similarly, we differentiate between an acorn and an oak tree, a tadpole and a frog, a caterpillar and a butterfly, and so forth. Scrambled eggs is a popular breakfast entree, not scrambled chicken. There is a difference between prenatal and postnatal life that we acknowledge in various ways every day. (Note: I intend these to be taken as conceptual analogies, not direct comparisons. I am making no judgment pertaining to the relative moral value of human fetuses compared to cake batter or other forms of life.)
Therefore, I do not consider the concept of attained personhood, which underlies the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, frivolous or unsubstantial. I agree with the court that it is of central importance to this controversy. A zygote can become a baby, but is not one now. A baby was once a zygote, but is not one now. Between these two extremes, personhood is attained as the result of slowly progressive development and differentiation of what did indeed begin as what, at the beginning, could reasonably be called "just a blob of tissue".
Should we be obligated to fully include a baby in the social contract that defines the legally protected rights of all persons and grant to it a right to life? Yes. Of course.
Should we be obligated to include in this secular social contract and grant a right to life, independent of the pregnant woman's consent, to a zygote, a single cell composed of two DNA clusters sharing the same cell membrane, insensate, visible only with the aid of a microscope, that is totally dependent for that life upon the "24/7" donation of one specific woman's body? In my opinion, no. Of course not.
The consideration in deciding whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy at any stage of fetal development places the rights and conscious desires of the pregnant woman directly in conflict with any rights her fetus might be considered as having. Legally, I think the principle of an individual's right to bodily sovereignty, a fundamental principle of personal liberty firmly grounded in United States law, along with consideration of the biological and legal status of the fetus in relation to developing personhood, should be applied in resolving such conflict.
This principle prohibits an individual's being required, or forced, to donate an organ, even a pint of blood, to another, even if the other would die without it and even if the donation would represent a negligible degree of risk or inconvenience to the donor. Viewpoints may be argued concerning the morality of such refusal, and honest civil attempts at moral persuasion should continue to be freely allowed and deemed completely appropriate. However, the law is clear, and should remain so, that no person shall be required to donate the use of any part of his or her body to any other person, even if the other person would die as a result of the refusal, and even if the granting of this use would entail only minor or temporary inconvenience and minimal risk to the prospective donor.
The issue in abortion is whether or not one person (granting only for the sake of argument that the unborn fetus even is a person) has the right to use another person's body to sustain his or her life, whether or not that other person is willing. If such a right is granted to fetuses, it would be a special right that unequivocal persons, such as you and I, do not have. If such a special right were granted to embryos and fetuses, shouldn't the law, to be even-handed and consistent, force donations by others, and the dead bodies of others who have died, of blood, bone marrow, livers, hearts, lungs, kidneys, eyes, and other organs, whether or not the prospective donor or survivor is willing? If one unequivocal person does not have the right to use another unequivocal person's body for sustaining or improving the quality of his or her life without consent, then the law should not allow it for a fetus whose personhood is not yet established and is at best controversial. It seems only reasonable that a woman should have the same right in regards to either permitting or refusing an unwanted fetus the use of her body for its development, even if the fetus would die as the result of her choosing to refuse it that right. At stake is no less than her dominion over the insides of her own body. It must be her choice, unintruded upon by government and unhampered by law or the opposition of others who hold different views of its morality, if personal liberty is to be at all meaningful.
The central questions in this violent controversy are [1] at what point in development would it be reasonable and just to consider the developing fetus to have attained sufficient attributes and characteristics of personhood to be fully included in the social contract of rights and legal protection of those rights that binds us all and [2] when should the developing fetus be granted a legally protected right to life independent of the consent of the woman in whose body it resides? This would have to be somewhere between two clusters of DNA sharing a common cell membrane at conception and the birth of a baby, normally about 38 weeks later. But when? When morally? When legally? At what point in time should the line be drawn? The answer to such questions cannot be found in strictly scientific fact or expert medical opinion, since such disciplines are essentially mechanistic in their consideration of the objective nature of factual reality. The question requires its answer not just from accurate knowledge and understanding of objective scientific fact, but from the inevitably subjective philosophical, religious, political, and legal considerations of how the moral and ethical significance of those facts should be adjudicated by law in a free and pluralistic society. Various factual considerations, all with superimposed moral and legal substance, must enter into this determination . . . sentience (determined by the progressive capability of the developing fetal brain for conscious awareness and volitional behavior), independent viability (the ability of the fetus to live apart from the woman's body), the will and state of health of the pregnant woman, and the health of the fetus.
I think the point, of necessity subjectively determined and arbitrary to a large extent, at which all these considerations would be reasonably balanced is the junction between the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, or at about 24 to 26 weeks gestation. At this point, contrary to the sensationalized misinformation common in "pro-life" propaganda, the developing fetal brain is still developmentally at least several weeks short of sentience, and it is extremely rare for a fetus at this stage of development to survive physical separation from the mother's womb, or birth, with even the most advanced neonatal care. I would personally support the legality of late term (third trimester) abortion only in those cases in which the fetus is discovered to have severe anomalies incompatible with life outside the womb, in cases in which the life or health of the pregnant woman would be seriously jeopardized by continuation of the pregnancy, and in some cases of rape or incest in which women's awareness of being pregnant is occasionally delayed by psychological denial related to their post-traumatic mental states.
I hope for a future neither of abortion being outlawed nor of abortion being casually and recklessly chosen, but of a rational balance wherein tolerance, and even acceptance, is widespread for elective abortion in the first and second trimesters, well prior to fetal sentience and independent viability, and reserved for only very serious circumstances in the third. I of course would defend the right of any woman or girl not to be forced against her will to have an abortion at any time, and it strikes me as just one step from government seizing the jurisdiction over the insides of women's bodies that would enable law to prohibit abortion to that same government being empowered to exercize that jurisdiction to force women to have abortions under some circumstances, as is the reality in China today, for example, and as was also so in some cases in this country prior to Roe v. Wade . . . so all earnest "pro-lifers" had better be careful about what they wish for from government. If they wish for governmental control over women's insides they might just get it, and it could go either way.
To attempt to justify their opposition to legal abortion and to inflame the issue and demonize legal abortion and its supporters, some "pro-lifers" like to indulge in false historical analogy. Many uninformed, misinformed, unthinking, irrational, or just plain dishonest "pro-lifers" like to simplistically compare pro-choice advocates to Hitler and legal abortion in this nation to the Holocaust. It should be remembered that Hitler was fiercely anti-abortion for the humans he acknowledged as even being human, and the only woman in modern history known to have been executed by the state for having an abortion was a citizen of Hitler's Third Reich. The way considerations of the incomprehensibly terrible travesty of Hitler can be enlightening to this controversy is not by falsely comparing purely elective, state-allowed, individually and freely chosen abortion of preconscious, insensate embryos inside the bodies of the women allowed to make that choice to the state-ordered enslavement, brutal torture, and genocide of entire racial and ethnic groups of unequivocal conscious, thinking, feeling persons in Hitler's Holocaust, but by reminding us of the horrors that can happen, even in the twentieth century, when absolute authoritarianism (whether secular or religious, or, as in the case of Nazi Germany, a complex interplay of both) takes over even one of the most civilized and culturally advanced nations on earth . . . when government seizes absolute control over the bodies of its citizens, which is the goal of the "pro-life" movement and the direct opposite of what it means to be pro-choice.
One of the "pro-life" movement's most prominent "stars", a physician, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, exemplifies well the bizarre hypocrisy of this false analogy. Although he claims responsibility for being instrumental in getting abortion legalized in this nation and personally performing about 75,000 abortions, he has been forgiven and virtually canonized by the "pro-life" movement because he has turned coat, "repented", and become a major "star" of "pro-life" propaganda, best known for the sham propaganda film, "The Silent Scream". Needless to say, it is not likely that a Nazi war criminal who had been instrumental in setting up the Holocaust and who personally murdered 75,000 people, even a repentant one, would receive such forgiveness and even adulation as a hero, so the "pro-lifers" who venerate Dr. Nathanson are at the very least markedly unfaithful to their own patently false analogy.
Similarly, the freedom to choose abortion for an unwanted pregnancy is falsely compared to the once constitutionally supported right to choose to own slaves, and the Roe v. Wade decision is speciously compared to the pre-Civil War Dred Scott decision that justified the dehumanization and perpetuated the slavery of African-Americans. This analogy might make some sense and have some validity if all the slaves in the analogy were insentient, nonviable, potential persons who were biologically able to live only inside and totally dependent upon the bodies of individual persons who were the only ones granted the right to make that choice. Such was obviously not the case with the many generations of African-Americans in this country who were subjected to slavery, and the only legitimate comparison to slavery in the abortion controversy is the other way around . . . "pro-lifers" push for coercive laws to enslave women and teenage girls to relinquish their autonomy over their own bodies, and often their life ambitions and dreams, to unwanted pregnancy, regardless of how adversely it might affect their lives, their health, their families and other relationships, their educations, and their careers. Furthermore, just as the institution of slavery (and subsequently racial discrimination and segregation) was piously defended from pulpits across the land and spuriously "justified" by selected and twisted biblical references, the enslavement of women to compulsory childbearing is being championed by similar passionately sanctimonious religious bigotry now, with total disregard for religious freedom.
In recent years, much publicity has been directed at the specious claims in anti-abortion rhetoric that abortion increases a woman's risk of developing breast cancer. This never actually amounted to more than a tenuous suggestion that there might be an association of slightly increased risk of breast cancer with delaying first pregnancy until the late 20s (possibly implicating abstinence no less than abortion). Anti-abortion propagandists jumped on this and twisted and distorted what meager suggestions there were into a big scare campaign. There are simply no reputable scientific studies that support this. However, even if it were true, the best even they could come up with was a possible, highly questionable increase that was small when the statistical results were truthfully examined . . . sort of like doubling your chance of winning the lottery if you buy two tickets instead of only one. Though twice as likely, which sounds like a lot when stated in that way, the likelihood is still minute. That's hardly a reasonable argument for banning or restricting abortion. Some studies suggest that just one alcohol-containing drink a day, or even less, might carry a similar or even greater increased risk of breast cancer than that claimed for abortion, but no knowledgeable and sane person is calling for prohibition of alcohol as a public health measure to reduce the incidence of breast cancer as far as I know.
Another question I have been asked by sneering anti-abortionists is, "Do you deny a connection between abortion and rising rates of infanticide? How do you explain to a teenager that it is okay to have a doctor kill her 'child' before it is born, but it's murder if she does it herself a few moments after it's born?" First of all, there they go again, falsely implying that abortions are performed on late-term, healthy, viable fetuses that could simply be born instead. Furthermore, it is just another of their unexamined assumptions that the rate of infanticide is rising. There is really no clear indication that that is so. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume it is so. Then let's assume even further (their "logic" requires a lot of unexamined and preposterous assumptions) that there is a link between legal abortion and this supposed increase of infanticide. What could the link be? I think it is much more likely that this hypothetical confusion between abortion and infanticide, if it exists at all to any significant extent, would be linked to the pervasive "pro-life" rhetoric that blurs that critical distinction between abortion and murder in the confused minds of immature and emotionally stressed young women. If there is no difference in infanticide and abortion, as "pro-life" rhetoric trumpets from the rooftops, and abortion is legal, why not kill a newborn? On the other hand, pro-choice philosophy and rhetoric preserves very clearly that distinction between abortion and infanticide or any other form of murder and is thus much more likely not to cause such lethal confusion in fragile, impressionable, and frightened young minds.
I certainly agree that women should be counseled in order to assist them in making informed decisions prior to having abortions, but I do not agree that this should be accomplished by arbitrary governmental regulation, especially since there is so much hysterical political clamor that the content of required counseling include much of the florid misinformation derived from sensationalized, flagrantly misinformed, and deliberately fraudulent anti-abortion propaganda . . . or that waiting periods mandated by law are anything more than insulting invasions of women's liberty, privacy, and autonomy that are designed solely to harass and intimidate women choosing abortion and to make abortion unavailable to women of meager means who have to travel long distances to get to a clinic and have neither the funds nor the freedom from work, family, or other responsibilities to spend two or more days away from home. I think abortion providers in general do a good job of counseling for informed consent, charges from anti-abortionists that they don't notwithstanding, and most were doing an even better job of that and moving towards doing it still better and more comprehensively before they came under siege and caught up in the polarity of protest and counterprotest, with constant fear and preoccupation with security and survival in the climate of violence and fear created by the "pro-life" movement.
For this reason and all of the above, I regard the "pro-life" movement to recriminalize abortion as a markedly dishonest and tragically regressive campaign to revive massive tragedy for American women and teenage girls and their families at best, albeit that many of its advocates may be well-intentioned and sincere. At worst, it has manifested itself as an agent of intimidation by terroristic threat and violent acts including even direct and deliberate murder . . . as a dangerous and sometimes violent threat to our fundamental rights and liberties as United States citizens and disruptive of the peaceful, reasonable, thoughtful, and cooperative attitudes so essential to the integrity of the social and political fabric of our states and our nation, as well as the public safety of all citizens.
After years of trying to reasonably discuss this issue with sanctimonious anti-abortion bigots, I have realized it to be as futile as the attempts I once made, as a naive first year trainee in psychiatry, prior to my training in obstetrics and gynecology, to have rational conversation with frankly psychotic mental patients. They invariably display an uncanny ability to stare obvious factual reality squarely in the face and completely ignore and deny its very existence unless it confirms and conforms to what they want to believe. I have learned from experience to expect only a knee-jerk outpouring of the same tired, mindless old "pro-life" rhetoric of extreme, intolerant, misguided, misinformed, self-righteous, and rageful denial of reality, with substitution of unfounded opinion masquerading as factual truth, demanding that their beliefs be empowered by coercive law to tyrannize all of society . . . the rhetoric that inflames some of their more deranged comrades to the harassment, terrorization, and violence that has already struck my family and me more than once and seems destined to get worse. If they refuse, as they invariably do, to at least acknowledge the simple and obvious facts that regarding a developing fetus as a person is a matter of opinion, not fact, and that the peculiar and unique nature of fetal existence inside the body of a person (where the government has no right to intrude if individual liberty means anything at all) is of profound significance in this controversy, what could I ever say that could have any impact upon their prejudice? And why would I, a "wanton murderer of innocent children" in their ignorant, obstinately prejudiced, and twisted opinions, waste time and effort in discussing it with them? I have tried. It does not work. It is pointless. I can only hope to appeal, with truth and reason, to the more honest and rational minds that I hope and believe constitute the majority of the American public.
Abortion is here to stay, all the more so with the development of oral abortifacient (abortion-causing) medication that can easily be made available in underground black markets. No matter how successful their dishonest, sanctimonious bigotry might be in getting laws changed, abortion will not go away with prohibition any more than did the drinking of alcohol. At issue is only whether it will remain legal and accessible and thus relatively vastly safer than if outlawed and driven into the purveyance of underground criminal practitioners. We learned this long ago over the bodies of injured and dead women and teenage girls. We now have starkly tragic reminders in those countries in which abortion is illegal and forced into a criminal underground by just the kinds of laws that anti-abortionists seek to revisit upon this nation. It is estimated by the World Health Organization that more than 200,000 women and teenage girls (roughly one every 2 1/2 minutes) die each year as the result of criminal abortions by often well-meaning but incompetent practitioners, and many more than that are seriously injured.
Is our memory of this history so deficient, cynicism and apathy so prevalent in our nation, sanctimonious bigotry so influential, our love of individual liberty so jaded, our gullibility to inflammatory misinformation and histrionic exaggeration so great, and the lack of integrity, understanding, reason, and sincere compassion in our lawmakers so pronounced, that we are doomed to repeat it?
I fervently hope and pray not.
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