Oh bother. Canada’s aging feminist movement is going to to to launch another lame campaign to legalize RU-486 in Canada. We’d like to yawn, but since 29 REAL women died (including one in Canada) after taking their “safe and legal” pill, we would rather not.
In fact, the Dad of one of RU-486′s victims has a web site that documents just how “safe” RU-486 is.
We guess when you’re an abortaholic, there just never enough abortion to go around.
In the meantime, read Holly’s story.
How sad.
In 2007, Bertha Wilson’s 1988 Supreme Court decision “…was far-reaching and visionary, going beyond the other justices”. – Joyce Arthur, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.
We agree. As the world continues to be horrified by revelations coming out of the Kermit Gosnell abortion provider trial, and the total failure of pro-choice agencies to properly abide by safety regulations, it is timely to remember what Canadian Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson wrote in the landmark Morgentaler decision of 1988. She wrote in part:
“As Professor Sumner points out, both traditional approaches to abortion, the so-called “liberal” and “conservative” approaches, fail to take account of the essentially developmental nature of the gestation process. A developmental view of the foetus, on the other hand, supports a permissive approach to abortion in the early stages of pregnancy and a restrictive approach in the later stages. In the early stages the woman’s autonomy would be absolute; her decision, reached in consultation with her physician, not to carry the foetus to term would be conclusive. The state would have no business inquiring into her reasons. Her reasons for having an abortion would, however, be the proper subject of inquiry at the later stages of her pregnancy when the state’s compelling interest in the protection of the foetus would justify it in prescribing conditions. The precise point in the development of the foetus at which the state’s interest in its protection becomes “compelling” I leave to the informed judgment of the legislature which is in a position to receive guidance on the subject from all the relevant disciplines. It seems to me, however, that it might fall somewhere in the second trimester. Indeed, according to Professor Sumner (p. 159), a differential abortion policy with a time limit in the second trimester is already in operation in the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, the Soviet Union, China, India, Japan and most of the countries of Eastern Europe although the time limits vary in these countries from the beginning to the end of the second trimester (cf. Stephen L. Isaacs, “Reproductive Rights 1983: An International Survey” (1982-83), 14 Columbia Human Rights Law Rev. 311, with respect to France and Italy). Bertha Wilson in -R v Morgentaler 1988
Given what we know then, about the nature of late-term abortion, Joyce Arthur’s (Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada) words are prophetic and ring true.
It is time for restrictions and even a ban on late-term abortion in Canada and the USA.
Just as Madame Justice Bertha Wilson suggested.
From the Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger:
News outlets have been struggling to explain why until now there’s been so little coverage of the murder trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of delivering live, screaming children and then beheading them.
The Post and other mainstream news outfits are on the story now, belatedly, so maybe critics like me shouldn’t act like the mother who, when you do call her, spends half the conversation asking why you haven’t called.
But, why wasn’t more written sooner? One colleague viewed Gosnell’s alleged atrocities as a local crime story, though I can’t think of another mass murder, with hundreds of victims, that we ever saw that way. Another said it was just too lurid, though that didn’t keep us from covering Jeffrey Dahmer, or that aspiring cannibal at the NYPD.
Yet another said it’s because the rest of the country doesn’t care about Philadelphia — that one was especially creative, I thought. And a friend argued that any “blackout” boiled down to the usual lack of media interest in the low-income community Gosnell “served.” (While he routinely turned poor, black patients over to assistants who lacked even a high school education, according to court testimony, the white patients he seated separately, and treated himself.)
I say we didn’t write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it’s genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news. That’s not so much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the effect is one-sided coverage.
Now, I assign plenty of “rights under threat” stories myself, for She the People, and see them as perfectly valid. But we in the news business do cover the extremism of some who oppose abortion rights — attempts to run after pregnant women with transvaginal probes, for example — far more than we do the extremism of some who favor abortion rights, as per the Planned Parenthood’s Alisa LaPolt Snow, who said recently that when a baby somehow survives an abortion, it’s up to the woman, her family and her doctor to decide that child’s fate.
Two years ago, I wrote about the good doctor Gosnell’s “pro-choice enablers,” for Politics Daily:
“The ultimate non-partisan body – a criminal grand jury – has supplied us with the graphic, 261-page horror story of Kermit Gosnell, M.D., who stands accused of butchering seven babies – yes, after they were born alive — and fatally doping a refugee from Nepal with Demerol in a clinic that smelled of cat urine, where the furniture was stained with blood and the doctor kept a collection of severed baby feet. As often as possible, the report says, Gosnell induced labor for women so pregnant that, as he joked on one occasion, the baby was so big he could “walk me to the bus stop.” Then, hundreds of times over the years, he slit their little necks, according to the grand jury report:
[He] regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.
And the kicker? This nightmare facility had not been inspected in 17 years – other than by someone from the National Abortion Federation, whom he actually invited there. For whatever reason, Gosnell applied for NAF membership two days after the death of the 41-year-old Nepalese woman, Karnamaya Mongar. Even on a day when the place had been scrubbed and spiffed up for the visit, the NAF investigator found it disgusting and rejected Gosnell’s application for membership. But despite noting many outright illegalities, including a padlocked emergency exit in a part of the clinic where women were left alone overnight, the grand jury report notes that the NAF inspector did not report any of these violations to authorities.”
My point, then and now, is that I am a big fan of regulation; wasn’t it the loosening of regs in the financial world that led to the meltdown of ’08 and in the oil industry to the BP spill of ’10? Those who normally agree with me about the need for oversight, though, make an exception when it comes to the abortion industry, which they feel should be self-regulating even when what that gets us is the likes of Kermit Gosnell.
The counter-argument, then and now, is that it’s the restriction of abortion rights that creates such shady operators, though there are other clinics in Philadelphia — and if his practice was restricted in any way over the years, I can’t see how.
Which “side” was Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Gosnell? Well, there’s no mystery about where Gosnell could have gotten the idea that his youngest victims weren’t human, or entitled to any protection under the law. There aren’t just two sides, though, but a whole continuum of points of view, from those who see several cells as a legal person to those who insist that even a baby who could walk Kermit Gosnell to the bus stop is only a person if his mom says so.
Gosnell himself seemed confused, when he was charged with so many counts of murder, as to how that could be. Because even at that point, he didn’t appear to see the children he’s accused of beheading as people.
Planned Parenthood’s Snow was similarly obtuse, either willfully or out of habit, in testifying against a Florida bill that would have required medical care for babies who survive abortions. “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion,” she was asked, “what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”
Her answer was a familiar one: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family and the physician.”
Though it pains me to say so, that’s the same stand Barack Obama effectively took when he voted against a similar Illinois bill — even after the addition of a “neutrality clause” spelling out that the bill would have no bearing on the legal status of the (you say fetus, I say unborn child) at any point prior to delivery, and thus could not be used to outlaw abortion.
Recently, MSNBC host Melissa Harris mocked those who see a fertilized egg as a fully human person: “I get,” she said, “that that’s a particular kind of faith claim that’s not associated with science.”
But I wish she and those who agree with her also got this: To insist that a baby born at 30 weeks, as one of Gosnell’s victims was, only qualifies as a person if his mom decides to keep him is also “a particular kind of faith claim that’s not associated with science.”
Posted by Melinda Henneberger on April 15, 2013 at 7:00 am
Melinda Henneberger is a Post politics writer and anchors She the People. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC
This report documents why late-term abortion should be banned. Everywhere. Including Canada.
Former Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson supported a ban on late-term abortion. Perhaps she saw what would happen if it was allowed to continue?
In the meantime, everyone, everywhere needs to read this report.
Spread the word.
Dammit Janet is in full PR Disaster Control.
The Borg Collective is now blaming pro-lifers for Kermit Gosnell and his little shop of horrors.
Naturally, the evidence says otherwise. In fact, a Grand Jury says otherwise.
But, as they say, liers gotta lie.
A Grand Jury found evidence that it was “pro-choice” politics that was responsible for what abortion provider Kermit Gosnell was able to get away with. It seemed many people knew what was going on, but no one had the testicular wherewithal to do something about it.
“Pro-choice” politics
Why?
…[t]he Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety. Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer. (Investigation of Women’s Medical Society: Report of the Grand Jury)
In fact,
So too with the National Abortion Federation. NAF is an association of abortion providers that upholds the strictest health and legal standards for its members. Gosnell, bizarrely, applied for admission shortly after Karnamaya Mongar’s death. Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused. It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected. Of course, she rejected Gosnell’s application. She just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen. (Investigation of Women’s Medical Society: Report of the Grand Jury)
And this was the problem. Because pro-choicers NEVER met an abortion they didn’t like, many folks knew something was wrong. But, you know, it was abortion…and since they LOOOOOOVE abortion, it didn’t dawn on these space cadets that maybe they should address the numerous complaints.
And then there is the little issue of the babies killed. The ones that were born. Dammit Janet is silent on these.
Naturally. Wanna play blame the pro-lifers again?
But the blame for Gosnell, and the cheap view of human life, and we do mean cheap, needs to be placed squarely where the Grand Jury says it should be placed.
The pro-choice movement.
Ask Karnamaya Mongar. You probably don’t know that name. The pro-choice movement would just as soon want you to forget. No candle-light vigils remember her. Why you may ask?
As journalist Melinda Henneberger wrote:
Shortly thereafter the department received an even more disturbing report – about a woman, years before Karnamaya Mongar, who died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus. The woman was 22 years old. A civil suit against Gosnell was settled for almost a million dollars, and the insurance company forwarded the information to the Department of State. That report should have been all the confirmation needed for the complaint from the former employee that was already in the department’s possession. Instead, the department attorneys dismissed this complaint, too. They concluded that death was just an “inherent” risk, not something that should jeopardize a doctor’s medical license.
Ah, yes.”inherent risk”.
Was it the pro-life movement that made physicians hide the crimes of abortion provider Gosnell, aka “inherent risk” of abortions provided by Gosnell?
We learned of at least five of Gosnell’s patients who were treated for serious complications at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) or Presbyterian Hospital, the two closest emergency rooms to the Women’s Medical Society clinic. We heard evidence of many more women, whose names we did not learn, who also had to seek emergency care after undergoing abortions at Gosnell’s facility. Yet we received no complication reports when we subpoenaed documents from DOH. (Investigation of Women’s Medical Society: Report of the Grand Jury)
Based on the evidence we heard regarding state officials’ procedures and practices, it is doubtful that reporting under that act would actually have triggered any kind of action from the state. Staloski, the DOH director in charge of abortion facilities, told us that she did not even get – or ask for – complication reports. It seems that they were treated as statistical information rather than as a means to uncover problem facilities. (Investigation of Women’s Medical Society: Report of the Grand Jury)
And why is that?
“Pro-choice” politics.
As the trial continues, look for Dammit Janet et al to attempt to point the finger at the pro-life movement.
“Pro-choice” politics means that the only blame to be found, is to be directed to those who oppose abortion.
But we all know otherwise.
So apparently, did a Grand Jury.
And eventually, she has admitted, she snipped the necks of “a good ten” fetuses.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A woman who once worked in the West Philadelphia abortion clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell was on the witness stand today. This cooperating witness has previously admitted killing viable fetuses while in Gosnell’s employ.
Gosnell is charg
ed with murdering seven born-alive babies and an adult woman who died during an abortion (see related stories).
(Adrienne Moton, in file photo from Phila. DA’s ofc.)
The testimony and evidence have been gruesome. Adrienne Moton (in file photo at right) broke down several times as she recounted her work at the clinic.
Untrained, she says, she was doing ultrasounds and administering anesthesia within months. And eventually, she has admitted, she snipped the necks of “a good ten” fetuses.
She says she didn’t know why that was the practice but she saw Dr. Gosnell do it countless times.
And she broke down — and the court took a break — after she recounted the time a very large baby was born and allegedly murdered by Gosnell. Moton said she took a picture of the boy, and that dreadful picture has been shown to the jury.
Think Canadians support this? Not!
The “pro-choice” boys and girls at the University of Waterloo thought it would be hilarious to try to keep MP Stephen Woodworth from speaking. Even the never-ending cry-babies over at DAMMIT JANET! thought the forced censorship was great fun.
The video of the event, which can be seen here, raises an interesting point.
They’re losing. And they know it.
The video really sums up the ability of the “pro-choice” to state their case.
No wonder they are afraid to debate. The cowards. This is all they’ve got.
We think it’s time to join hands and give a shout out to the many abortion providers out there who, no matter what, enjoy the love and support of the “pro-choice” movement in North America.
Because, when you think about it, these abortion providers REALLY could not do the things they do, without that love and support.
So, we stand and shout out with our foes:
Abortion Providers you are INDEED amazing!!!
Here are are only a few that we think are AMAZING:
“These terminated babies had problems, defects … doctors said they were going to die anyway. Sure, I think it should have happened on its own, and maybe the Down’s (syndrome) babies would have lived decent lives … but some people don’t want babies that aren’t perfect and `normal.’” – Employee of BC Women’s Hospital (BC Catholic: April 19, 1999)
Left wing narcissist bloggers are in a literal tizzy over the debate, raging in Canada, over abortion.
This “settled” issue seems to keep popping up in Canada quicker than one of those “Hit a Mole” games at an amusement park.
The latest nightmare to hit them is over late term abortion. More specifically, the discussion over babies that survived their abortion, were born, breathed, became “legal” persons, and then at some point died shortly after.
Canada’s abortion cabal, who never met an abortion they didn’t like, shrieked.
The shrieking abortaholics such as Dr. Dawg, and the every truthful and friendly Frau fernhilll (and the Borg Collective over at Dammit Janet), are up in arms over the discussion.
Their shrieking headlines:
Amateur Statistics and Pro Grandstanding
Demonizing Late-Term Abortion Must Stop
If you repeat a lie often enough …
How many ways does the National Post get it wrong?
Jonathan Kay Explains Lying
More Mansplaining on Superb Owl Day
Jonathan Kay to the rescue of patriarchy!!!
Jonathan Kay Still Ignoring Women
Wow…8 stories…so far…on one issue…and it’s only Monday!
Me thinks that thou dost protest too much. Really.
A sore spot has been touched. A weak link. The key card in the house of cards.
Even Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett says she is ” fed up with ‘lawyered’ assertions that totally misrepresent the facts.” (Although Bennett DOES appear to be backtracking and might allow for some reasonable restrictions, or at least have some dialogue)
Bennett insists: “No physician in Canada can terminate a pregnancy over 24 weeks without serious indications: the life of the mother at risk, or the fetus has very serious malformations.”
The only problem, is just not true.
A REAL ethicist, not the narcissistic bloggers at Dammit Janet, has publicly stated that late-term abortions in Canada have INDEED been done for “social” reasons.
In other words, for “non-medical” reasons:
No life of the mother was at risk.
The “fetus” did NOT have serious malformations.
It was for social reasons, plain and simple.
Of course, abortaholics don’t want you to know that.
Shrieking and shrieking, they don’t want ANY questioning of abortion in Canada.
Why?
Because you won’t like what you find.
REAL ethicist Margaret Somerville writes:
In discussion of abortion in classes in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, taught by faculty with relevant knowledge, no one challenges statements that there is a special clinic for post-22- weeks gestation abortion in downtown Montreal and that there is one designated hospital for abortion of 20- to 22-week gestation pregnancies. It’s also been reported in the media that the Quebec government sent a specialist obstetrician to the United States for training in late-term abortion. Although these facts are only circumstantial evidence, they hardly make it seem likely that late-term abortions are truly rare – at least in Quebec.
Anecdotally, as an ethicist, I have been consulted in a professional capacity on two late-term abortions, both of which were carried out. One involved a 34-week gestation pregnancy, where the mother was an unmarried graduate student from a foreign country; the other a 32-week gestation pregnancy, where the married parents did not want to have a “defective child” – the baby had a cleft palate (a relatively minor physical deformity that can be largely corrected with surgery). (Margaret Somerville: Busting the Abortion Myths: Special to National Post | May 11, 2011)
In another comment by Somerville, she describes a late term abortion done because:
I’ve also been consulted on late term selective reduction of multiple pregnancy in which one or more fetuses are killed in utero with a lethal injection of potassium chloride into their heart and the dead fetus(es) delivered at term with the living one(s). In two cases I know of involving twins, one twin was killed. In fact, I wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine on an early case in which this was done because the woman did not want to have twins and said she would abort both babies unless one was killed. (“Margaret Somerville on late-term abortion” March 26, 2008
http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2008/03/big-blue-wave-exclusive-margaret.html
)
Cleft Palate abortion?
An “inconvenient” twin?
Wow…such noble reasons for taking a life.
But to the abortoholics, you can kill any fetus, for any reason, at any time.
Remember they themselves said:
“As fern hill said, there is no LAW regulating abortion but there are medical protocols, procedures and RESTRICTIONS that our public health care system has established with regard to the termination of gestation.”
Yes, protocols that allow abortion for cleft palate.
Yes, protocols that allow for abortion for in inconvenient twin.
Abortion for Down Syndrome? There’s a protocol for that!
In a 1997 UBC Medical Symposium on Abortion, Vancouver Doctor Jonathan Cope stated some of the reasons why women have late term abortion in Canada:
“women are awaiting results from genetic testing, women don’t know they are pregnant, woman are abandoned by the father which is a common reason, particular areas (of British Columbia) give women difficulty getting referrals (for an abortion), (there is) fear of parental retribution, or that the husband (of the pregnant mother) wants a boy.”
He continues:
“…in British Columbia tend to be concentrated in just a few hands because late-term abortions are physically unpleasant. They aren’t popular among surgeons” because, as he described in his symposium presentation Secrets for a Successful Evacuation, infants are almost fully developed, clearly look like babies, and can survive outside the womb.”
Ah, yes….the results of “…medical protocols, procedures and RESTRICTIONS that our public health care system has established with regard to the termination of gestation.”
Canada’s abortaholics are either naive, evil or just plain incredibly stupid.
Frau fernhill writes: “It is a woman’s decision. Not anyone else’s, whether elected or unelected.”
Babies aborted because they have a cleft palate? “It is a woman’s decision. Not anyone else’s, whether elected or unelected.
Babies aborted because they have Down Syndrome? “It is a woman’s decision. Not anyone else’s, whether elected or unelected.”
Babies left to die after their abortion for less than savory reasons? “It is a woman’s decision. Not anyone else’s, whether elected or unelected.”
But we started this essay with a quote about how some abortions are being done in Canada for less than savory reasons.
Wikipedia’s definition of eugenics is:
“Eugenics is the applied science of the bio-social movement which advocates practices that improve the genetic composition of a population, usually a human population. It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of more desired people and traits, and reduced reproduction of less desired people and traits”
Who knew that in their literal frenzy to support any and all reasons for abortion in Canada, the abortaholics would be advancing another failed social experiment where that nations’ medical community also had lots of “medical protocols, procedures and RESTRICTIONS.
