Abortion.

[Spock]

...Lewis? You mean Al Lewis, grandpa of the Munsters?

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

As Lewis says, if the time is incorrect, then it is sometimes very wise to turn the clock back

but if you turn the clock back you might miss the bus

[Rían]

nah, busses are always on the right time



right?

[Lotesse]

Originally Posted by inked

BJ, what precisely has changed SO MUCH that comparisons between abortion in the early 1900s and the early 20's are that different? Not in the performance but in humanity per my quotation? That was the mushroom I was referring to growing on the predigested material. (And what did Nurv mean about fruiting bodies and all that botanical stuff?)

This one's 4 U, Inked.

[inked]

Oh, I see, now: like this enlightened attitude

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...4583414B7F0000

Does that come with "Du vill do dis und du vill like it!" and a swastika on the side because it is "society's determination that this is 'right' "? Or does depriving people post-utero for NOT participating make it correct? Hmmm...when do morals really count?

Inquiring minds want to know since this is on the other end of the forced abortions in China for society's good!

edit: remember http://www.time.com/time/archive/pre...103579,00.html

[Lotesse]

What?

[Rían]

I've been wondering recently how long it will be until doctors will be forced to do abortions, even if they don't want to or more cleverly, they can't get their medical license unless they do some abortions ...

Open society, indeed! *snort*

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

I've been wondering recently how long it will be until doctors will be forced to do abortions, even if they don't want to or more cleverly, they can't get their medical license unless they do some abortions ...

Open society, indeed! *snort*

Frankly, I can't see that ever happening. Doctors are far too powerful a group. It's hard enough to get them to change their behaviour when it's demonstrated that it's killing people.

It's an interesting question, though. What right should a doctor or pharmacist have to withhold treatment from a patient? What right should a patient have to demand a treatment that the doctor regards as unethical? Remember, this would affect contraception as well as abortion.

IMO, the answer to both questions is "none". The patient should always have the right to go to a different professional to get the service they want. Certainly, that's the case in this country.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

I've been wondering recently how long it will be until doctors will be forced to do abortions, even if they don't want to or more cleverly, they can't get their medical license unless they do some abortions ...

Open society, indeed! *snort*

that's ubsurd... no doctor in the US is forced to give any specific treatment

[Spock]

Indeed but they should be familiar with the proceedure as it is necessary in some cases and desired in others; as the law permits.

[inked]

Okay, here's al ittle personal history about "freedom" among doctors, particularly residents. It is merely an excerpt of a longer paper for a class.

Doctors can be forced, coerced, intimidated, and treated just like any other person.

Spock, anyone who can do a D&C can do an abortion. As a person who cared for many complications of the local abortion clinic during 4 years of residency and 7.5 years after that attending the residency program, I've got plenty of experience to do the procedure or follow it up. The issue is whether I should be forced to provide services I find unethical.

"The most disenfranchised members of our society are those in utero who, prior to Roe versus Wade, were protected members of society by statute in this country. The unborn since 1973 have been at the mercy of personal convenience in most acts of abortion in this country.

The struggle began for me when interviewing for residency positions in my elected field of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Ob/Gyn). Of the ten potential sites in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee to which I applied and at which I interviewed in 1983, I was flatly told at seven programs that the participation in elective abortion services was a requirement of the program and that my moral, ethical, and religious objections would not be tolerated or acceptable. (The usual phraseology was, “If you feel that strongly about abortion, this is not the residency program for you.�) At two of the remaining sites, I was informed that, while there was not an absolute requirement to participate in elective abortion procedures, my failure to do so would put extra work on the residents who did work those clinics and thus strain the “collegiality� of the program. (The usual phraseology was “We don’t require our residents to perform abortions, but it is a service we provide. Your position would mean extra work for other residents.�) This left one residency program in which such participation was not a stated or de facto requirement. Thus, I was faced with the pervasive reality of abortion requirements in training for a specialty in medicine which ostensibly favored life. Most training programs paid public lip service to the moral, ethical, and religious sensibilities of the practitioners or residents but in reality required participation in providing elective abortions. Determined to become an Ob/Gyn and committing my way to the Lord, I rated those programs and submitted my list of choices for the match. The intervening months were months of much prayer and contemplation before the Lord in seeking to conform my will to what He would bring about for me. There was the frightening realization and possibility that I might not match in my desired area of medicine for two reasons. The first was that 70% of my potential programs were insistent on requiring the procedure for residents without provision for conscientious objection on any grounds and 20% of the programs would theoretically allow it but had no practical provision for such objections. I harbored no doubt that by bringing up the subject during interviews and being honest about my position, I had been effectively jettisoned from consideration in seven programs and severely limited in consideration for two others. That left one program out of the ten with which I could possibly match that would make provision for my conscientious objection to elective abortion. I was just as familiar then as I am now with putting all one’s eggs in one basket, but I knew Who was in control and trusted to the best of my ability and then relied on faith. By grace I matched at the one program which did not require participation in elective abortion! Great was the rejoicing over that!

When I received my Roanoke, Virginia match assignment, I was very pleased and greatly relieved, but not out of the woods completely. This particular program had a six-months- long external rotation at the University of Virginia Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency Program ostensibly in Oncology, Obstetrics, and Reproductive Endocrinology. There certainly did not appear to be any problem about abortion in those areas of training. But, in reality, I found out from residents who preceded me that Roanoke residents were expected to participate in providing abortion services by performing physical examinations upon prospective aborturients and placing laminaria in the cervix to initiate the process. I discussed this with my Residency Director who agreed to address the issue with the Director in Charlottesville. Thinking the matter dealt with, I entered my six-months rotation at UVA without any expectation of problems. None occurred until my first full weekend on call when I was called Sunday afternoon to perform a physical examination and place a laminaria on a patient scheduled for a D&C termination the next morning. This was an unexpected demand about which no forewarning had been provided by the off-going residents or upper level residents on call that weekend. Since this was my third year of residency that left appeal only to the Chief Resident on call and the covering attending. I do not know that this situation had been designed as a test consciously by the attendings and residents in Charlottesville, but it certainly felt so at the moment. I had to explain my stance to the Chief Resident who discussed it with the Attending. I then had to discuss it with the Attending. Those two conferred and I was informed by the Chief Resident that I should perform the physical exam and that he would come in to place the laminaria. Either my position had not been made known to the residents, or, more probably, they had forgotten. Since I did not consider that performing the physical was participatory in the abortion procedure any more than a pre-operative physical for an Attending patient’s hysterectomy I would not perform or even be present to assist in, I readily assented to this arrangement. The following day the Chief Resident and I went for a meeting out of the campus and had reason to discuss the issue. He stated that he had initially thought I was shirking work but that he appreciated my stance after our previous day’s conversations and that the situation would not recur. I assured him that I would be willing to do the physicals but could not in good conscious take part in abortions except to save the life of the mother or in the presence of incompatible with life syndromes. We agreed to disagree about our stances and to work the agreed accommodation. Intriguingly enough, I was never again faced with even the need to do the physical examinations for potential aborturients while at UVA. "

[Spock]

Originally Posted by inked

Okay, here's al ittle personal history about "freedom" among doctors, particularly residents. It is merely an excerpt of a longer paper for a class.
Doctors can be forced, coerced, intimidated, and treated just like any other person.

I understand but I never said or thought they couldn't be.

Originally Posted by inked

Spock, anyone who can do a D&C can do an abortion.

Ok but again I didn't say as I didn't know so I miss your point.

IMO and not for debate or argumentation, if a woman chooses to use the proceedure it's a doctors duty to see that it's performed safely. I understand your reservations and beliefs and hope that any woman needing such services goes to a facility with professionals who can and will help her.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by inked

Doctors can be forced, coerced, intimidated, and treated just like any other person.

i agree in part... i do a lot of work for drug companies and they have a tremendous influence over what doctors choose to prescribe... but doctors still have the right and ability to just say no

[Rían]

Thank you VERY much for that first-hand information, inked. From things I've read, I'm not at all surprised.

Since it's hard to boot out already-qualified doctors that don't want to do abortions, it looks like the battle is starting to shift to the med schools, where there's been pressure in some places to not grant a degree to anyone who has not participated in an abortion.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

that's ubsurd... no doctor in the US is forced to give any specific treatment

but they might be forced to do a treatment to get a job...

...but doctors still have the right and ability to just say no

If they can get a residency and then a job, that is ...

Inked, do you have a list of doctors that perform abortions (that you know and whose medical abilities you respect) that you can refer your abortion-minded patients to?

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

but they might be forced to do a treatment to get a job...

If they can get a residency and then a job, that is ...

i'd have to assume that inked's post of one example is not the norm, but i am curious... my sister is in med school doing residency in germany... i will ask her how they treat opting out of things like abortion over there

[Rían]

that would be interesting to hear!

I'll try to find a reference for the med school thing.

[The Gaffer]

That's a very moving story, and congrats on sticking to your principles.

[brownjenkins]

i was looking for info on med school practices and came across this article that gives an interesting perspective on what might occur if abortion was made illegal

[Rían]

I rarely post entire articles, but this has been concerning me for years - how in some states, abortion clinics are UNregulated and UNlicensed

An Industry Most Foul
The abortion industry is frantically seeking to block government oversight — and making a mockery of its claim to care about women's health.

by Karla Dial

In the years before Roe v. Wade, feminists cried out for legalized abortion so that no more women would be mutilated at the hands of unqualified “doctors� in “back-alley� clinics. But abortion has been legal for 31 years now — and the unsanitary conditions, maimings and deaths haven’t ended.

Rusted surgical instruments. Doctors who were kicked out of medical school. Lacerated cervixes and wombs. Blood on trays, floors and sheets, days after the abortion took place. Fetuses ground up and flushed away in common garbage disposal units. Abortionists who perform so many procedures so quickly that they don’t take time to scrub themselves or sterilize their equipment between patients. News cameras and print reporters have recorded it all for posterity.

And along with those details, there are names.

Denise Doe (not her real name) is one of the lucky ones. Her 1998 abortion at a Louisiana clinic left her with a 2-inch gash across her cervix and an infection so severe it sent her into a coma for 14 days. For the next six months, she couldn’t even use the bathroom — she had to rely on a colostomy bag. An emergency hysterectomy at a nearby hospital saved her life.

Lou Anne Herron wasn’t so lucky. Her 1998 abortion in Phoenix left her bleeding, unattended, in a recovery room while Dr. John Biskind ate his lunch, then left the clinic while she screamed for help. When an administrator finally called 911 three hours later, she asked emergency workers not to use their sirens and to come in through a side entrance. They did — but Herron had bled to death already. She left behind two children. Biskind, who killed another patient in 1995, is midway through a five-year prison sentence and was fined $12,000.

You’d think that, in light of these episodes, state health inspectors would have shut the clinics down faster than you can say “a woman’s right to choose.� But that wasn’t the case — because, at the time, the abortion industry was unregulated in Louisiana and Arizona. There were no state laws imposing standards of care upon abortion clinics, and there were no visits from health officials making inspections.

The Doe and Herron cases led directly to the passage of clinic regulations in Louisiana and Arizona — making them two of a handful of states serious about protecting women inside abortion clinics. As of Jan. 5, 2004, none of Louisiana’s 12 abortion clinics can operate without a license — any that do will be fined $1,000 to $5,000 a day. All are subject to regular, unannounced inspections.

But in Arizona, clinic regulations have yet to be enforced. That’s because abortionists and advocacy groups sued the state in 2000 to prevent them from taking effect, claiming they create an unconstitutional “burden� on women; the notoriously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case Dec. 4.

That argument — which is being used in several states to oppose regulations — represents the height of hypocrisy for an industry that claims to care about women, said Denise Burke, an attorney with Americans United for Life (AUL).

“What I found really callous in Arizona was that they argued there’s not a public health problem because one woman died,� she told Citizen.

“They’ve never told us how many have to die before there is.�

The Haves . . .

Twenty-three states have some kind of regulations for abortion clinics, each varying in degree of intensity and enforcement. Some of the strongest are found in South Carolina, Texas, Michigan and Arizona, where abortion facilities have to meet all or most of the health standards imposed by the state on hospitals and other freestanding clinics. Some were passed after reports of gross negligence; others have been around since Roe v. Wade, but have only recently been amended or enforced.

That was the case in Michigan, where a 1978 law regulating clinics was struck down as unconstitutional; courts said abortion clinics were being subjected to excessive scrutiny by the state. But in 1999, the Legislature lifted the enforcement ban and required the Department of Health to begin licensing and inspecting clinics doing 15 or more abortions a year. Since then, a few have shut their doors, saying it wasn’t profitable enough to pay for a license. The rest have fallen into line.

“We already had the structure in place, so we just had to go back and undo what the courts had done,� said Ed Rivet, Right to Life of Michigan’s legislative director. “There’s been a mix of responses to it, but they’ve made no attempt to challenge it in court. They can’t show that it’s unconstitutional to protect women having abortions when we have to protect everybody else.�

But in other states, getting clinic regulations enforced is an uphill battle. For all the progress made in Louisiana, the abortion industry there dragged its feet until the last minute.

Since 1976, Louisiana law had regulated every kind of ambulatory surgical center — but included a loophole that gave abortion mills a free pass.

Michael Johnson, the Alliance Defense Fund attorney who argued Denise Doe’s case, said legislators “had always intended to go back and do something specifically for abortion clinics, but they never did.�

So when Doe’s story — along with the Department of Health and Hospitals’ (DHH) inability to do anything about it — was reported by Baton Rouge media, government officials were appalled. Gov. Mike Foster issued an emergency executive order allowing inspectors inside clinics to clean them up until legislation could be passed. An abortion-advocacy group, the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP), struck back by suing him.

Nonetheless, the Legislature passed a law regulating abortion clinics in 2001, and the licensing rules took effect in May 2003. The DHH gave the clinics a six-month grace period that expired Nov. 20 to apply for and complete license applications; halfway through, not a single clinic had requested an application packet.

A reminder letter from the health department resulted in a slow trickle of application requests — but by Nov. 20, only three had been returned, incomplete. The CRLP called just as the deadline was about to expire to say “they had gathered the remaining applications and they were on their way — maybe a little late, but in,� Johnson said.

He was pleasantly surprised; rather than rounding up the applications, he’d expected the CRLP to file a lawsuit at the last minute to block the regulations.

That’s what happened in Texas and South Carolina, where regulatory laws were passed in 1985 and 1996, respectively. Texas’ 1985 law said abortion clinics had to be licensed; it took until 2001 for all the court challenges to be resolved, with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually upholding the regulation. South Carolina’s laws began to be enforced in June 2002, after being upheld by the 4th Circuit.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined appeals from abortion advocates in 2002 and 2003 — but may yet hear a regulations case, depending on the 9th Circuit’s decision in Arizona.

. . . and the Have-Nots

But horror stories aren’t always enough to pass regulations.

Several years ago, an 18-year-old had an abortion at a clinic in the Denver suburb of Aurora — and came away a paraplegic and mentally handicapped as a result of injuries done to her there. State Rep. Dave Schultheis, R - Colorado Springs, cited the case last year when he sponsored an abortion-clinic regulations bill.

“We also had a signed affidavit from an abortionist up in Denver who claims that fetal body parts were being ground up in a meat grinder and then being put down the garbage disposal where he worked,� Schultheis’ aide, Dave Crater, told Citizen.

But the bill never even reached the House floor for a vote: It was killed 8-3 in a committee.

Meanwhile, the state’s 35 known abortion clinics are raking in a combined $7 million each year; the average abortion in Colorado costs $468. By contrast, a license would cost each abortion facility $5,500 — roughly 2 percent of the average clinic’s annual take, and less than that for large chains.

“Twelve to eight dollars per abortion for a licensing fee to make sure [women] are safe and conditions are sanitary is hardly too much to ask,� Crater said. “Any other procedure of this magnitude, this level of invasiveness to women, would have been regulated a long time ago. The only reason this hasn’t is that it’s abortion, and that’s a sacred thing.�

It wasn’t that sacred to lawmakers in Kansas last year, where a clinic-regulations bill passed both houses of the Legislature. But it was to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who vetoed it.

Sebelius has a long track record of abortion advocacy, and helped write Kansas’ 1992 abortion law. Campaign-finance records also show she received $13,000 from late-term abortionist George Tiller in 2002.

Last year’s vetoed bill was the farthest clinic regulations have gotten in Kansas, where similar legislation has been introduced each of the last 15 years. Rep. Peggy Long-Mast, R-Emporia, sponsored the bill in the House last year — and from the floor testimony she heard, said it’s long overdue.

“I heard stories about women being victimized sexually and humiliated by abortionists,� she told Citizen. “It’s really deplorable to me that the very people who say they want to protect women will not support a healthy environment.�

One of the standards Long-Mast proposed was that another woman be present during examinations and procedures; abortionists said they were “appalled.�

“They said the minimum standards we proposed would shut down four out of seven abortion clinics in the state,� Long-Mast said. “That tells me they’re not qualified to operate in the first place.�

In the upper chamber, the bill received support from the Senate’s only physician, Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Wichita.

“I thought it was a balanced and fair bill that really tried to address concerns related to patient safety,� he said. “In internal medicine, we’re highly regulated. So it didn’t seem foreign to me to regulate [abortion clinics]. It’s a very common medical procedure that’s being performed.�

Barnett believed in the bill so strongly that he spent weeks shuttling between the pro-life and abortion advocacy camps, trying to reach a workable solution. But when he took the final version of the bill to the abortion lobbyists, his eyes were opened: They told him not to bother. They would never support clinic licensing and regulation, no matter what.

Smoke and Mirrors

What’s ironic about abortion advocates’ strenuous objections to clinic regulations is that most of the proposed rules come from their own ranks: protocols published by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the National Abortion Federation (NAF). Regulations passed in South Carolina, Texas and Arizona, as well as the failed legislation in Colorado and Kansas, all drew from them liberally.

But in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade, when states were reluctant to regulate for fear of trampling on the newly won “constitutional right,� the abortion industry grew fat and happy with its special status. And it will use any argument available to keep it.

“What’s frightening is that they equate women’s health with the availability of abortion,� said Denise Burke, the AUL attorney. “So in lawsuits, they argue that these laws will hurt women’s health because that will drive abortion providers out of business — but all they will do is run substandard abortionists out of business.�

Abortionists’ objections to regulations usually take one of three forms: They’re unconstitutional denials of women’s access to abortion because they drive the costs out of many women’s reach; they violate abortionists’ rights to protection from unlawful search and seizure; or they’re too vague to be enforced.

Yet court records have shown those arguments to be full of holes, and they are rarely successful when used against existing law.

In Colorado, abortion advocates made the price argument, saying the increased costs of licenses would be passed on to patients, thereby creating an unconstitutional “burden� on them. Yet “the Roe decision does not say a woman has the right to a free abortion, or access to abortion services below a certain cost,� Crater said. “It just says she has the right to do it.�

That argument was deflated in the initial rounds of the Arizona challenge: The groups filing it said flat out they didn’t want to pay the extra money it would cost to hire fully trained nurses or physician assistants, rather than the relatively inexpensive medical assistants they prefer. Moreover, AUL proved that the most significant influence on abortion costs in any location is simply the presence of a Planned Parenthood facility.

“In the six months between them filing their lawsuit and when we deposed them, all four [abortionists] had reduced their prices, because Planned Parenthood had reduced theirs,� Burke told Citizen. “So even in anticipation of having to raise their prices, they were dropping them, totally contradicting themselves.�

Some abortionists boldly argue that it’s their constitutional rights, not the patients’, that regulations violate. They claim that minimum safety requirements unfairly single out abortion clinics because other freestanding outpatient clinics aren’t required to meet them.

If a state doesn’t regulate any outpatient centers, that claim would be true — but few, if any, are that negligent. In most states, the government regulates everything from tattoo parlors to veterinary clinics — and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey verdict that “abortion is a unique act … fraught with consequences for others.� Having an abortion is nothing like having a mole removed, a cervical biopsy, or ear, nose and throat surgery — all outpatient procedures that abortion advocates have tried to use as grounds for their arguments in court.

As for violating the Second Amendment’s prohibition of “unlawful searches and seizures,� the Fourth Amendment says clearly that state governments have a compelling interest and the authority to inspect businesses without a warrant.

Abortion advocates’ other favorite argument is to say clinic regulations are too vague to be enforceable. Yet copies of regulations obtained by Citizen from North Carolina, Michigan and Arkansas proved to be exceptionally clear — telling clinic operators everything from the mandated width of their doorways (two feet, eight inches) to what color ink to use on medical records (blue or black). North Carolina’s sanitation regulations are seven pages long; Michigan’s are 16; Arkansas’ are 59.

“They lodge complaints against things such as, ‘You must maintain a smoke-free environment,’ � Burke said. “These are doctors, saying they don’t know what ‘smoke-free’ or ‘vermin-free’ means. It’s amazing how dumb they become when we’re talking about a set of regulations.�

It’s also amazing that, after 31 years, the abortion industry’s mainstream acceptance has not translated into mainstream standards.

“It’s not an undue burden on women — it’s a burden on the providers,� Burke told Citizen, pointing out that five different federal courts have upheld clinic regulations.

“The desire to avoid oversight is incredible. They process these women like an assembly line. What these regulations try to do is make sure these women get the counseling and attention they need — during the procedure, and after.�