Criminalizing safe abortion leads to criminal results. For example, " . . . a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional."The Coat Hanger "May Be The Symbol, But Is In No Way A Myth," Says Pre-Roe OB-GYN
Thanks to SHE
8 comments:
Oh, yeah, legalizing abortion made things ever so much better. For abortionists.
Jammie Garcia drowned in her own feculent fluids because her abortionist had shoved her fetus into her bowl and left it there to block things up. Her abortionist was never punished; after all, her abortion was safe and legal. No harm done.
Carolina Gutierrez endured the amputation of her gangrenous limbs in a futile attempt to save her from abortion-related sepsis. Safe, legal. No harm, no foul.
Lawson Akpolonu was raping patients in his filthy clinic -- something Diane Sawyer considered "a non-story" when we tipped her off. A non-story. Because hey, he was providing vital reproductive health care services, right? He's entitled to extract a bit of extra payment, right?
The double standard you prochoicers have is infuriating.
Disemboweled patient? How about Scott Barret's patient. He pulled out her innards through her vagina then sent her to the hospital in a friend's car.
How about Andre Nehorayoff's patient "Brandy" -- Nehorayoff pulled a loop of Brandy's bowel through her cervix through a 2.5 cm tear he'd made in the back of her uterus. Instead of stopping the procedure and transferring Brandy to a hospital, Nehorayoff just pushed the loop of bowel back through the hole and continued with the abortion. Only after the abortion did he hospitalize Brandy. Surgeons there found "a 6.5 segment of devascularized bowel" which they had to remove.
And Saihb Sinuhe Halil bent his forceps pulling on a patient's pelvic organs and finally tried to finish the abortion with a desk scissors -- Halil pulled out Thelma's right ovary and fallopian tube, severed her left fallopian tube, and caused a large uterine rupture, left about four feet of her small intestine lacerated and necrotic.
Oh, but those abortions were SAFE and LEGAL, so it's all okay. Trivial. Not worth getting upset about.
Vivian Q. also underwent an abortion by Halil. "[Halil] halted the procedure because he suspected he had perforated the patient's uterus." Halil performed an ultrasound, which "determined that the pregnancy was still intact (albeit with a maimed fetus)." Rather than accurately charting this or informing Vivian, he discharged her. On November 7, Vivian was admitted to the hospital, suffering from a perforated utuers and a necrotic sigmoid colon. She required a colostomy and surgery to repair her uterus. (Los Angeles Times 7-6-93; California medical board Case No. D-5193, OAH Case No. L-60576)
How about patient Marcia -- First the abortionist perforated her uterus and intestines and "shoved the aspirator in more" after she screamed and begged him to stop. She was hospitalized and her abortion completed by another doctor, who then discharged Marcia despite persisting pain and vomiting. Marcia suspected that she was suffering from a perforated uterus and stomach, but Rand diagnosed indigestion. Marcia refused to go home. A barium enema showed intestinal blockage, but Rand discharged Marcia anyway. Three days later Marcia returned and she saw different doctor. Marcia underwent immediate and subsequent surgery which removed 2 1/2 feet of intestine. She required the insertion of a 35-foot tube from her throat to her anus, and was hospitalized for 60 days. She also was left infertile. (San Diego Superior Court Case No. 640957)
Safe and legal. Everything's fine here, folks! Nothing to see here! Just go about your lives, citizens!
How about Steve Brigham's patient Anne? Brigham removed a fetal arm and part of the placenta, then detected a perforation. Although he was reaching for bony parts of the fetus and instead grasping soft tissues, he continued to grasp and pull with his instruments. Brigham admitted that he did not know what he was grasping with forceps, "the ultrasound picture was not consistent with what he felt," but he "opened his forceps wider and grasped again, with force." This caused an 8-10 cm uterine laceration. Brigham perforated Anne's sigmoid colon, and caused extensive cutting of the connective tissues of the colon. Anne required a colostomy, and the removal of a 16 cm segment of her colon. Doesn't Anne matter? Was what he did to her okay, because he did it safely and legally?
Rosa Naperstek-Taft, a Chicago-area attorney, was very politically active in championing legal abortion. She and her friends had actually celebrated the night before her abortion, because she was the first among them to have one of the new safe-n-legal abortions instead of the old-fashioned illegal kind. She certainly got to reap what she'd sown. Rosa said that she screamed in pain during the abortion, and a staffer responded by stuffing a tampon in her mouth. The abortion was so badly botched that Rosa lost all her reproductive organs and her spleen. She had to undergo a colostomy and tracheotomy, and suffered damage to her heart, lungs, kidneys, and vocal cords. She was hospitalized for eight months, with three of those months spent in intensive care. After her injuries were repaired, Rosa had to undergo intensive therapy to learn to walk and talk again. Rosa said, "I don't have my normal body. My abdomen looks like a sky map of the Grand Canyon. ... My voice is totally changed, and I have a lot of psychological scars that will be with me forever." (Chicago Sun-Times 11-15-78; Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 73 250 920 CM)
And what about Magdalena Rodriguez, whose safe and legal abortion mangled her uterus, vagina, bladder and colon so horribly that the surgeons couldn't save her? Her abortionist admitted that he knew he'd "screwed up" when he pulled out her bowel instead of featl parts, but he left her unattended anyway for half an hour while he performed other abortions. Yeah, he was a huge improvement on the uncaring pre-Roe abortionists!
Granny:
It's true, that things go wrong even with proper medical care and that there are some incompetent, unscrupulous docs out there. It may be that many marginal docs do abortions because there is less competition because doing abortions is dangerous. Nut jobs harass and threaten the docs and their families and, sometimes, even kill. It's still safer than it was before.
Granny's stories sound strangely like the horror stories of the past, when abortions were performed illegally and often by unscrupulous individuals with no medical training. Granny can multiply these stories by several thousand and perhaps understand why so many of us are prochoice.
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