When I was a student midwife in the North of England, UK, and working
in Outpatients, I booked a patient in for an abortion. She was 17 years old,
and 12 weeks gestation. I hadn’t the courage to say ‘no’ when I was handed the
chart by the staff midwife. I remember she looked very unhappy when I called
her in from the waiting room. I remember her mother and another older woman
looking grimly on. I hadn’t enough sense to wonder if they wanted this, not her.
I was too young and inexperienced to ask her who wanted this. I didn’t know
about Coercion[i]
then. Now, after decades of studying the abortion culture, I know it’s very
common. I’ve read hundreds of testimonies about women being bullied, threatened
and pushed towards a ‘choice’ they did not want. I will never forget her eyes,
there was such unhappiness there that day. It was her 2nd abortion.
This has haunted me. A baby died that day, a baby who was
able to move, kick, suck his thumb. And I had a hand in it! God has forgiven
me. It’s much harder to forgive oneself. I felt I let that girl down too. I
knew no better. And I never judge anybody. I can’t.
I came up against abortion on and off after that. One night
on the ante-natal ward, I heard sobbing. A women who had been admitted with a
late miscarriage (about 16 weeks) was blaming it on the fact that she had had a
termination before. I told her that couldn’t be the reason. (after all, I
hadn’t ever seen anything in my midwifery book about it) She said that God was
punishing her. I said God isn’t like that. (which I believe, God is loving and
merciful and she was very regretful) However, the laws of nature can be less
merciful. Years later, I found out that a termination can cause damage to the
cervix and affect subsequent pregnancies. Several studies have borne this out! [ii] This is not, however,
common knowledge, though neonatologists have made a strong connection between
surgical abortion and premature birth. [iii]
One time I
met the Culture of Death and I was too innocent to even see it. How do carers
turn into killers?
It was 1979
and I was a pupil midwife in the Neonatal Unit in a hospital in the north of
England. It was time to do the evening feeds, and our side of the unit was
quieter than the other, so as per normal we went to help the nurses on the
other side finish feeding. I went into a room, there was one incubator there
and a baby a few days old – she was in the Neo because she had spina bifida.
There was no
sign on the incubator saying what she was to be fed, so that meant she got the
normal feed, baby milk. Nobody had left a bottle ready in the room so I went
and got some from the milk kitchen. In spite of her disability, this baby
seemed healthy, she had a great colour and had no tubes or IVs and she took
most of her feed. She had a strong suck, but fed a little slowly all the same.
Just as I finished, a staff midwife appeared at the door.
‘Oh!’ she
said. And I knew from the way she said it that something was wrong. ‘She
doesn’t get milk!’ she said.
I
immediately felt terrible at doing the wrong thing, but I pointed out that
there was no sign on her cot, and didn’t that mean that the baby was to be fed
as normal?
‘We feed
her, yes but she gets this,’ said the midwife, holding up a bottle half-filled
with a clear fluid.
‘Water?’
‘No, it’s
chloral hydrate,’ said the staff midwife. Then she went away, taking the bottle
with her.
I hadn’t
heard of infants being fed chloral hydrate, but soon forgot about it, I was
learning a lot about midwifery and neonatology and never thought of asking and
it never popped up in the lectures.
Some years
later I was reading a book about abortion in the UK, and in there I learned
that babies whose disabilities had been missed before birth sometimes were
starved to death in the neonatal unit. They were fed chloral hydrate to sedate
them.
I was
utterly horrified. This had never occurred to me. It had been the furthest
thing from my mind that death was the intended outcome for this healthy baby
who had a disability. Were they really starving her to death? Things fell into
place. A room to herself. No sign on the incubator, no feed left in her room as
per practice. Two ounces of chloral hydrate was her 4-hourly feed. It was, of
course, illegal. I don’t know if her parents were aware of this, or not.
Infanticide
– because she hadn’t been aborted.
In the USA, I retired from the front line of health care,
and worked in medical records processing patient charts. I had to examine the
doctors’ notes to determine the patient’s hospital course and index it
accordingly. Sometimes I had to read the notes carefully to find out if the
patient was transferred rather than discharged; there was a different indexing
code.
On one chart, I saw that ‘Mary’ (not her real name) had been
admitted in labour at 23 weeks. The obstetrician determined that delivery was
inevitable. He then outlined a
long list of conditions that the premature baby could have, and offered her an
abortion in case of these 'handicaps of prematurity'. This baby was maybe an
hour or even minutes from enjoying the full protection of the Law! How could he
have changed from having two patients just hours before, to this? And how was
he going to accomplish it? I don’t even want to think about that. Thankfully ‘Mary’
was not frightened enough by the list to take him up on the offer, and she was
transferred to a high-risk hospital for the management of her labour. To the
doctor, killing the unborn baby was quite a reasonable course to suggest. In
fact, he may have suggested it to ensure he would not be subsequently sued for
not doing so. ‘Wrongful Birth’ lawsuits have happened. Doctors shouldn’t have
to live and work under the spectre of ‘wrongful birth’.
This is another story, more
painful – but I have to tell it, because people have to know what could well in
store for Ireland if the 8th goes and all protection is stripped
from preborn children.
In the State of Washington
where I live, abortion is legal for any reason until 24 weeks and then for
‘mental stress’ until birth.
This is not a nice story but
I have been careful with language.
A woman 28 weeks was admitted
in labour on a Saturday. She had seen an abortionist two days before, and he
had ‘caused fetal demise’ through lethal injection, inserted luminaria (a type
of seaweed package to dilate the cervix) and told her to come back Monday when
he would ‘remove the pregnancy’. As can happen, she went into labour. She tried
to contact him but he was nowhere to be found, and in great distress she came
to the hospital to deliver the little one. He was perfect (except for the large
chest bruise caused by the needle). The mother didn’t want to see him. But
after counselling, she decided that she would allow burial (rather than have
the remains go in the hazardous waste).
A compassionate funeral
director took the baby and buried him free of charge.
I was curious about a couple
of things, and later checked the abortionist website –and saw a warning there
that even if the woman went somewhere else after the initial visit to 'deliver
the fetus', she had to pay in full...over $2,000 - it figures, the abortionists
are in it for the money and they don't care about the women.
I hate what they do to women.
Abortion is an industry. Another chart – a 21-year old woman, left sterile due
to infection after a safe, legal abortion at Planned Parenthood. When abortion
becomes legal and easily accessible, the rate of termination goes up rapidly, and
therefore more woman are at risk from infection and other complications.
[i] Coercion – liberal Guttmacher Institute put the
number at 30%. Other, independent studies report figures nearer to 65% . Most
women have abortions to please other people.
[ii] Finnish Klemetti Study, TOP = termination of
pregnancy In one of the larger and most
comprehensive studies published to date, Klemetti et al. recently reported that
in first-time mothers, TOP was associated with preterm birth, particularly “very
early” preterm births at <28 weeks gestation. Using the Finnish Medical
Birth and Abortion Registries to link 300,858 records, they not only showed an
association between TOP in a first pregnancy and very early preterm birth, but
also showed a “dose response” effect with more TOPs increasing the strength of
the association. They call for health care professionals and the public to be
warned about the risks. This phenomenon is of great importance in perinatal
epidemiology..
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12777435 China Study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12777435 China Study
[iii] American paediatrician Dr. Martin McCaffrey who cancelled
his planned presentation to the Oireachtas Committee after they prematurely
voted to Repeal, wrote a stinging letter to the Irish Times calling the
Committee a ‘kangaroo court’. Also, the documentary HUSH (titled because of the
impossibility in having a meaningful conversation about abortion in the public
forum) makes the connection between abortion and adverse health effects on
women. HUSH is available here http://hushfilm.com/ Made by a prochoice journalist, it has, like all studies that show
abortion in a less than harmless light, been dissed as pseudoscience, also the testimonies
of women, scientists and doctors who speak and show their evidence.
Conversation was shut down. ‘There is no such thing as a bad abortion’.
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