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

:: Friday, November 19, 2004 ::

In the id skid of the century a spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood Mid-Michigan Alliance refers to pregnancy termination as "a tragedy".

The whole article is really BEE-zarre. Apparently, a 16-year-old girl and her boyfriend participated in a do-it-yourself abortion via several purposefully-aimed baseball bat whacks to the stomach. This made for an interesting womb environment and eventually caused the intended "miscarriage".

Now, it seems, there is some legal question about the child's death. Was it murder? Michigan law considers whether the child was quick or not. Roe v. Wade defined a quick child as one at 16-18 weeks. Some Webster definitions for "quick" or "quickening" are: alive, pregnant, speedy and able to cause detectable movement in the womb.

We all know that a gestating child is alive before 16-18 weeks, is not pregnant and is not particularly speedy. So Roe v. Wade legislators must have been referring to detectable movement "quickening". But I felt Elise move at 13 weeks. Mind you, I was on tube feedings and was skin and bones, but I FELT her move and that satisfies the definition of a quick child. Of course, she was moving way before that as was detected by sonogram.

So does "quick" mean "detected by maternal nerve endings" or "detected by sonogram"? Could it be that 16-18 weeks is just some arbitrary number some malevolent ignoramuses pulled out of their big fat butts? Boy, I'm so glad a law that kills millions of kids and hurts millions of survivors is based so heavily on well-defined, rational facts.

While I was reading this article I honestly wondered for a moment if it was a joke.

It's the new millennium. George Tiller is a red, white and blue late-term killin' machine. Hollywood is out and proudly donating to his cause. The partial birth abortion ban can't even pass when it already has. Abortion is as sacred as ever.

Am I reading the article wrong? Can people actually get in trouble for willingly killing their unborn child? I mean, if this country loves and protects abortion, then who cares? Who cares if sister-girl was 9 months along, in labor, jumped off her roof and did a belly flop onto her driveway to abort her baby? Or tied a pork chop on her abdomen and got a pack of wolves to eat through to the chewy baby center? Or got a guy to shoot poison into the baby's heart with a syringe? Or got someone to enter her womb, poke a hole in the delicate fetal skull, and Hoover out baby brains? Or got her boyfriend to hit her in the stomach with a baseball bat? Who in the legal world cares? When a mom willingly kills her gestating child, that is just legally fine and dandy in this country.

You can't have it both ways. Either it's acceptable or it's unacceptable.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Jacobs said the case obviously "would be hard to take to a jury because it shows a complete disregard for human life," and added that it sets a new standard for self-centeredness. What? How is this "obvious" in a Roe v. Wade worshipping society?

And why did a Planned Parenthood spokesperson call the termination of this pregnancy a tragedy when her own abortion business makes a killing off of the premise that no pregnancy termination is a tragedy? Is it because her organization didn't turn a profit in this case?

It can't be because abortion is cruel. After all, friends of the deceased child's family tell reporters how kind and selfless the involved parties are and how they would never hurt anybody intentionally. I guess repeatedly using his girlfriend as a pinata was an accident. Oopsie.

Maybe the PP rep's comment was in reference to maternal health.

"'Any miscarriage can have serious health ramifications', said Buccellato, the obstetrician and gynecologist."

As can any abortion. Which is why it is important for parents to be informed about surgery on their teens.

In the article the PP rep insinuates that parental consent laws caused the baseball bat tragedy. In the same breath she also talks about how teens can hide an unplanned pregnancy from parents for many months and believes that: "Teens are still kids, and if they can convince themselves [pregnancy] is not happening, they think it will go away."

Well, with that kind of clear-headedness it is no wonder the PP chick thinks a teen can handle the "hardest decision a woman ever has to make" all by herself.

Still, I don't really know what PP's beef is with parental consent. The grandparents of the battered baby helped to give the little slugger a proper Zip-Lock burial in the back yard, uh huh.

:: ashli 4:59 PM # ::
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