:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Sunday, March 07, 2004 ::

Thanks, Emily for this link:

Forced Abortions Legal in the U.S.

It's not the first time; it won't be the last...

"PRI has recently learned of another forced abortion in
America. A 25-year-old Maryland woman, four months pregnant, changed her mind about having an abortion after being taken to the procedure room. She ran back to the clinic entrance where her boyfriend stopped her. You have to get an abortion, he told her. I?ve already paid for it. Three clinic workers and the abortionists surrounded the women, sedated her by injection, and then took her back into the procedure room. After the forced abortion, she awoke in a closet."

The idea that forced abortion is legal in America is an EXTREMELY scary thought for anyone but particularly for women like me who suffer extreme illness during pregnancy. During my five week hospital stay for a pregnancy-related illness, I had doctors enter my room and advise me to undergo tubal ligation as soon as the baby was born to prevent me from ever having to suffer such hell again. And when I hit the $65k mark, my insurance called me in the hospital just to make sure that I "understood" that I had a right to abort. If I had had a different doctor, s/he might have decided on her own that I "needed" an abortion. Knowing that s/he could legally perform such a grizzly task against my will just infuriates me and absolutely chills me to the bone.

There are times when doctors sternly advise patients to abort and patients refuse. I met a friend in the hospital who had the worst case of life-threatening placenta previa I've ever heard of. She was passing baby-sized clots and had two near-death experiences when she lost so much blood that she actually registered no blood pressure. This woman was as good as gone TWICE! She went down the tunnel, saw the light, the whole nine yards. Aside from being pregnant, she had other children to take care of and also a husband. Her doctors assumed she was going to die and even told her husband as much. The medical pressure to abort was great, but it was ultimately her right to make her own health care choices and there was nothing they could do about it. My friend eventually had her baby at 25 weeks of pregnancy and both survived. Had doctors had it their way she would have been the only survivor.

Doctors do not always know best, and women should have the right to choose to carry their children against a doctor's advice. Evidently American courts don't see it this way, and that, my friends, is terrifying.

:: ashli 8:24 AM # ::
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