Invisible wounds
By Miguel Guanipa (03/13/06)
When a woman goes to the doctor’s office, she defers to the wisdom of the physician to prescribe a remedy. If she is coming with the intention of having an abortion, there is a host of fundamental patient/healer paradigms which have to undergo a dramatic change. Unless the woman’s goal is to remove the baby because she has been informed her life will be in serious jeopardy should she carry it to term, both woman and physician have to yield to the conviction that what is really being removed is nothing that rises above the status of a dispensable appendage or at the most a non-sentient pseudo-person that will not even feel any significant discomfort as it is being evacuated.
But consider what happens during the procedure which the Supreme Court is scheduled to revisit in the very near future, known as partial-birth abortion.
In a sworn testimony in an Ohio lawsuit on November 8, 1995, Dr. Matin Haskel who is very familiar with the procedure also known as Dilation and Extraction, explained it thus: “.., the surgeon uses his fingers to deliver the opposite lower extremity, then the torso, the shoulders and the upper extremities. The skull lodges at the internal cervical os [the opening to the uterus]. Usually there is not enough dilation for it to pass through. The fetus is oriented dorsum or spine up. At this point, the right-handed surgeon slides the fingers of the left hand along the back of the fetus and "hooks" the shoulders of the fetus with the index and ring fingers (palm down).... [T]he surgeon takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. He carefully advances the tip, curved down, along the spine and under his middle finger until he feels it contact the base of the skull under the tip of his middle finger.... [T]he surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull or into the foramen magnum. Having safely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. The surgeon removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents."
It should be noted that if the live child is allowed to come out of the mother before the brain matter is removed, this procedure would be considered infanticide. There are very few alternatives as to how one views someone who performs such a procedure with the full knowledge of what is actually taking place and does not feel at least a tinge of moral trepidation.
Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse from Dayton, Ohio, once stood at Dr. Haskel’s side and witnessed one too many such procedures in 1993. According to Mrs. Shafer, the baby was still moving as Dr. Haskel: "delivered the baby's body and the arms-- everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus. The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp."
The ensuing argument is that this is a very rare procedure which is only performed on women whose lives are placed in an unacceptable medical risk. Unfortunately the doctor himself testified that this was a “purely elective” procedure for 80% of women with perfectly healthy babies.
A 1987 survey by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an organization which makes no qualms about it’s pro-choice stand, revealed that between 26% and 76% of the women who chose abortion listed reasons that ranged from their partner wanting them to have it to their personal concern about how having a baby could change their lives.
Another recurring subtlety that pro-choice advocates continue to advertise in support of their ideology is that this procedure must be performed in order for the woman to regain the autonomy she once had prior to the series of unfortunate circumstances that led her to make this agonizing decision; and there should be no residual remorse which will haunt her anytime in the foreseeable future after she has made this self-emancipating choice.
If you speak to a majority of the women who have had abortions at various stages of pregnancy you will find that this is one of the many lies perpetuated by the Pro-choice lobby. Only in the last few years has the ugly truth about post-abortion depression become increasingly evident. Social ills like spousal abuse, child abuse and illegitimacy, which pro-abortion advocates assured us would be alleviated by “choice” have instead become exacerbated in the decades following Roe Vs. Wade. They are nothing more than the harvest from the seeds of that ruling’s utopian promises.
At roughly 46 million abortions, 33 years ago to date since Roe V. Wade and Doe Vs. Bolton codified the right to virtually unrestricted abortion, there is no other way to view this situation as anything less than a national tragedy.
But there are also other considerations which can not be ignored when it comes to reassessing the manner in which opponents of abortion have handled this tragedy. Failure to achieve their desired ends point to the fact that nothing short of a cultural revolution will need to take place in order to implement a wholly ecumenical solution to this tragic state of affairs.
First and foremost, women who have had abortions can not be viewed as the ones who should bear the whole burden of guilt, for sadly, they have been ensnared by the grandiose promises of the pro-choice movement.
Even today they have intellectually surrendered to what is at heart a very absurd dichotomy, where some believe it is intellectually plausible to be both pro-choice and personally opposed to abortion.
They have also been beguiled by a false hope that they can sleep much better at night once they are able to substitute the cruel dismembering of an unborn baby with dignified catchphrases like Reproductive Freedom or the Right to Choose. These conscience appeasing euphemisms help only to temporarily assuage the pangs of a guilty conscience by masking the brutal reality of abortion with empty abstractions.
There are women who would have benefited from the option of having late term abortions (a predicament which statistically only accounts for about one percent of the 1.5 million abortions which are performed yearly in this country alone). These extreme and rare exceptions may provide ethical grounds to avoid making the procedure illegal under every circumstance. But rather than focusing our efforts on preventing restrictions from being implemented we should consider endorsing some type of regulations to an industry which is in dire need of them.
The few who grant the tenuous justification to act with immunity regarding such a decision is steadily decreasing given the advances in genetics and embryology, and can not compare with the many that cry for the moral imperative to regulate and ultimately eliminate abortions performed simply as a means of birth control.
While it is easy to recognize that anybody with half a moral compass would be morally opposed to abortion on demand, conglomerates like Planned Parenthood find the choice not to abort to be an unfamiliar concept.
The only choice that the abortion industry is willing to accord a mother faced with an unplanned pregnancy is the choice to terminate it. Having the choice to conscientiously object to offer that grisly service or to even enjoy the chance to exercise the right to live is a commodity the abortion industry does not feel morally compelled to impart to those who can not speak for themselves.
That is why I often sympathize more with those who are appalled that some people would actually protest against a ban which prohibits doctors from killing a baby fresh out of the mother’s womb. I also realize with great sadness that these protesters often refuse to allow dissenters to have any kind of platform that exposes the cold hard facts about abortion, as this would have the potential of effectively obliterating their baseless ideology.
Those who stand privately opposed to abortion often suffer from a socially induced fear of appearing too judgmental. Others who have been personally affected by this issue feel an equally justified reluctance to endure the disdainful contempt of overzealous defenders of the pro-life side. Which is why this is a fight that will require both perseverance and compassion.
It truly defies reason that in a so called civilized society educated men and women have to actually sit down and debate the merits of pulling the body of a viable baby through the birth canal, inserting a tube into his cranium and sucking the brain matter out in order to ensure a comfortable delivery of a lifeless newborn.
To those who think the moral conundrum presented by the issue of partial birth abortion is any more intricate than I’ve stated above I can only encourage you to do more research before you settle into a firm moral stance.
Only the most hardened, ignorant or mentally disturbed person would disagree with the notion that there is no life which can be considered as supremely innocent as that of a baby fresh out of a mother’s womb, and there can simply be no political imperative, no individual’s arbitrary claim to self-autonomy, and no internationally agreed upon statute that justifies or warrants the taking of that baby’s life. No abstract line of reasoning on which highly subjective moral dilemmas are entertained for discussion by the gatekeepers of society will dissuade any well informed individual from the fact that this is a truly abhorrent and profoundly evil procedure.
To the emotionally torn woman who is thinking about abortion and is faced with a decision filled with fear and uncertainty, consider the fact that only God knows the future and you should not, even with the best of intentions, take upon your shoulders the awesome burden of arbitrarily determining someone else’s fate.
If this baby was the product of a less than honorable union, redemption lies with the choice of giving another human being the greatest gift you could give anyone: the gift of life.
If the choice has already been made, waver not with the apprehension that a loving God would ever spurn the plea of forgiveness from a wounded soul.
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