I fully support a parent's right to choose whether to bring a child into the world

and it's stories like this that reiterate to me why. Some people reduce the abortion debate into a black and white issue, good vs. evil, etc., etc. Some people are supposedly so concerned about the life of the child yet the quality of that life is often ignored. I don't think the decision to end that life is ever really that easy. I've known two women in particular who went through abortions, where I was with them right afterwards. One was told not to have the child based on her own health and the damage it could do to her. One did have a major health issue with her heart and blood pressure but I don't think that was part of the decision so much as the fact she was at a point in her life where she would not have been able to support a child, and she was neither maternal nor particularly stable emotionally. Neither made the decision lightly. Both cried afterwards. Both had the relationships they were in fall apart. The latter even named her foetus and marked it's death for years. I've never been in a position to have to consider the decision myself, but each of them, and their experiences, affected my feelings on abortion. While I do recognise that the foetus is alive, I don't believe that it has a preeminent place above the mother's life. I don't think women who have suffered from rape or incest should be forced to have a child resulting from that. And I think the best persons to decide whether they can take up the challenge of a severely affected child are the parents. And yes, I think the father should be involved, but that in the end no woman should be pressured or required to have a baby she doesn't want. Does that mean I always agree with that decision? No. But it's not my decision to make, or my consequences to live with. Does that mean that I think all foetuses with medical conditions should be aborted? Of course not. I work in a hospital that every day treats children with various congenital disorders, making strides to help them live life to the fullest. But not every person is up to the challenge of raising such a child, and in some cases, such as the one below, the quality of life is minimal, because the situation is so severe. I once stumbled across a blog of a man in Malaysia whose wife and he were travelling to Australia to obtain an abortion unavailable to them in their home country. The reason? Ancephaly--the baby was missing most of her brain, and if she even made it to term, she would likely live only a few days. They believed it was kinder to end the pregnancy, and I agree, not that it matters if I do or not. But that one blog post haunted me in terms of just how difficult and what lengths they had to go to to ensure what they thought was best for their child. The options available should be weighed, but in the end, the decision to carry to term or abort should be between the parents and their medical team, not legislators or screaming protesters shouting 'baby-killer!' It is the parents who must live with either decision. And while, yes, adoption is an option, the pool of people wanting to adopt children with severe medical challenges and who are capable of dealing with them as well is small.

Abortion is a messy and complex issue, and I think this writer did an excellent job of conveying the difficulty of the decision, and I think in the end she and the father made an important choice that was best for the child. It's well worth a read, wherever you fall in the abortion debate. My heart goes out for those who must make this sort of choice, who grieve for what was lost, but in the end, make a decision based on love as well as logic.

A Peaceful Death: Aborting my son was not about when life begins, but how to end it humanely. By Phoebe Day Danziger

My story is not unique—I am part of a group of 20-odd other mothers who have also terminated pregnancies for medical reasons, and many of us have shared remarkably similar reflections and perspectives—and yet there is not an easy language for situations like ours. These types of late-term abortions for medical reasons occupy an uneasy place in the mainstream dialogue about abortion. Opponents of abortion may argue that terminating my pregnancy violated our baby’s human rights and that if anything, we should have continued the pregnancy and opted for palliative care at birth. The more surprising and hurtful responses, however, have been from people like my staunchly pro-choice friend who told me that she was jarred by my use of the word son to describe our fetus, as though the moral basis for abortion depends on denying the fetus any semblance of humanity, no matter how close it is to the point of viability, no matter how the woman herself chooses to define her relationship to the fetus. I’m not sure I explicitly thought of our fetus as our son until the day of that ultrasound, but after entering a situation in which we had to consider medical decisions that included imagining our long-shot, best-case scenario as trying to get our little boy through a year or two of preschool before getting a kidney transplant and starting on lifelong immunosuppressive drug therapy, there was no way to think of him otherwise.

Why does any of this matter right now? In recent months, there has been high-profile legislation across the country seeking to ban abortion after 20 weeks or earlier. This is precisely the point at which many fetal anomalies are diagnosed in a pregnancy. My own state, Michigan, recently passed a bill prohibiting insurers from providing coverage for pregnancy termination, with no exceptions for circumstances like fetal anomalies or rape, unless women have purchased a special policy in advance, as though this is a situation anyone would anticipate and plan for. The rhetoric surrounding abortion focuses primarily on the question of when life begins—is the fetus a baby at six weeks? 12? 20?—and whether women have the right to make choices about their pregnant bodies. In our case, abortion was a parenting decision—the most important and powerful one I have yet to make. This might not be comfortable or convenient for the pro-choice narrative, but it’s the truth. Some aspects of abortion might rightfully be best considered in the context of when life begins, but in situations like ours, the most salient fact was how and when life should end.

Anyone who thinks abortion is cut and dried should read this

'I'm showing my son mercy'
No matter how you feel about abortion, I think most compassionate people would feel for this couple's situation. It is so wrong that they had to go through so much just to do, what in my opinion, in this case, was absolutely the right thing to do. I am so sorry that they had to go through such a difficult decision made more difficult thanks to badly-considered legislation.

Shameful

Abortion debate flares in Ireland after woman denied quick termination dies

Savita Halappanavar was in agony but her doctors remained obstinate.

The 31-year-old dentist was 17 weeks pregnant on Oct. 21 when her husband Praveen rushed her to a hospital in Galway, Ireland. After an examination at the coastal city’s university hospital, Halappanavar was told she was miscarrying.

Over a three-day stretch, Halappanavar and her husband asked repeatedly that her pregnancy be terminated.

Doctors refused, saying that they could still detect a fetal heartbeat. At one point, Halappanavar was told, “This is a Catholic country,” according to The Guardian.

Halappanavar was neither Irish nor Catholic, but died due to a constitutional amendment passed in 1983 that states that one is an Irish citizen from conception. Thousands of Irish women go abroad to end their pregnancies in a country where abortion is not available. She did not have that recourse, as she was undergoing an emergency miscarriage. Now she is dead, her case mishandled by a profession that promises to 'do no harm', who in turn are bound by a backwards property of the constitution that means choosing a dying foetus over the health of the mother.

No one likes the idea of abortion. I certainly don't care for the idea of abortion in place of birth control. [And I stress that birth control is a better option. It amazes me that some people oppose that, as well, even though I understand their reasons. But it does prevent the more invasive abortion.] But I think that's relatively rare that you have women who just abort at the drop of a hat. The two people I have known to have had one made very difficult decisions and were certainly not doing so blithely. But I think women have a fundamental right to safe medical services for abortion, no matter what the situation. And the idea that a woman should carry a pregnancy to term in the case of rape or incest is insulting to women everywhere. Or, in this case, risking the life of a woman, I think it should be criminal.

I hope this case will open up a dialogue in Ireland and other places about providing the medical services needed to save lives despite, and providing abortion services to women who need them.

Please tell me he did not just say that

Rick Santorum On Opposition To Abortion In Cases Of Rape: 'Make The Best Out Of A Bad Situation'

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum explained his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape during an interview Friday, saying that women who face such circumstances should "make the best out of a bad situation."

Asked by CNN's Piers Morgan what he would do if his own daughter approached him, begging for an abortion after having been raped, Santorum explained that he would counsel her to "accept this horribly created" baby, because it was still a gift from God, even if given in a "broken" way.

I think the Republican field is a bunch of yahoos, but this takes the cake. And as I get older, I find myself just as liberal as I was in my youth, just more of a realist rather than an idealist. I try not to break things down to black and white. But I don't want this guy in charge of my country, or anyone's country.

Go Obama 2012.

What a massive regulatory failure (and if true, a horrible man)

'House of horrors' alleged at abortion clinic: Doctor charged with killing patient, 7 babies; no staff had medical training

Words fail me. I am pro-choice, but these were illegal abortions and allegedly, downright murder of living, breathing infants in many cases. The allegations include extremely late abortions and also inducing labour, producing live children whose spinal cords were cut with scissors. Techniques were used to delude women concerning the length of their pregnancies. The wife (a cosmetologist) supposedly performed them one day a week, and the place reeked of cat urine and had horrific sterilisation practices and no medical training beyond the doctor (who was not even an OB/GYN). Unfortunately, I suspect as abortions get harder and harder to come by safe and legally, people like Dr Gosnell will cash in on performing illegal abortions for desperate women in similar circumstances, and there will be more deaths as a result.

PS Mea culpa. The grammar gods should strike me down for the use of 'fail' as a noun. Although it has become commonplace today, it is, indeed, incorrect, as YKWIA pointed out to me. Fail is a verb; failure a noun. I am embarrassed that someone as touchy about grammar as I would use a word in such a way. I will avoid its usage in the future.

Hmmm...

Why Abortions Are Down in America

No one really knows, but both sides of the abortion debate are claiming victory, because let's face it, whether you support the right to have an abortion or not, no one really wants there to be a lot of abortions out there. That's why pro-choicers support things like contraception and family planning, and pro-lifers support getting clinics to close down and providing alternative services that encourage women to keep or adopt out their babies.

It does seem like women are exercising their right to choose to have an abortion or to choose to have the baby; that's a good thing. It does trouble me that 35% of women do not have local access to a clinic--87% of counties in the country do not have one.

I'm one of those people who doesn't think abortion would be my choice personally, and it shouldn't be used instead of birth control, but I think it's an important option to remain available especially for women who are unable to care for a child, raped, endangered by the pregnancy, etc. I'd rather have each child loved and cared for rather than neglected, resented, or abused. I don't think having an abortion is an easy decision; I've known three people who had them. I think in two of the cases they made the right decision at the time. The third I'm not sure about; she was married with children and just got pregnant at the drop of a hat, which indicates that something wasn't working with family planning. Still, fewer abortions--that's a good thing.

I direct you to two articles

from this August 6th issue of Newsweek

Anna Quindlen's How Much Jail Time?, where she looks at the unwillingness to take the anti-abortion line to the logical conclusion of jailing women--or treating them like they aren't responsible because they're incapable of making decisions.

and

Gorilla Warfare: Even after 10 years of war, rangers are stunned by the mysterious killings of great apes in Africa's oldest park.
It's well-written and discusses the political and environmental factors in bringing mountain gorillas closer to extinction. The gorillas referenced were not killed for their fur or meat, as the animals were left intact but dead and in one case burnt. It may be a way of intimidating park rangers who have spoken out about rapid deforestation in the area due to charcoal industry. It's an incredibly dangerous job--about 120 rangers have been murdered since 1994, and they patrol with AK-47s now. And one of the rangers who has been very vocal against the charcoal interests in now under arrest because the gorillas were killed under his watch, something the killers may have planned all along. For more information on how you can help, visit Wildlife Direct, the organisation that pays the salaries of most of the rangers, rather than the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of the 12 members of the gorilla group, only 5 remain, mostly young males (the alpha male was one of the ones killed, along with a pregnant female. Other females and infants were killed or are missing.) For those of you who care about animals (including gorillas), the environment, or for that matter the survival of the human population in the area, whose resources are already stretched due to the influx of refugees (the deforestation will do no good to them, either, in the long run), please let others know about these events.

I'm more than a little concerned

High Court Upholds Curb on Abortion

Roberts Court Moves Right, But With a Measured Step

I don't favour abortion as a means of birth control (I think birth control is a good candidate for that, and I find it interesting that many who are against the former are also against the latter). I would not normally have one myself except in the case of severe birth defects, or if my life were in danger, or perhaps rape, but I do believe there are times and places for abortion, and most of all, I believe in a woman's right to choose what happens to her body. I don't believe the so-called 'partial birth' procedure is something that is undertaken lightly...from my understanding it is usually a last-ditch effort done to protect the woman's health. And I find it more than a little scary that the law banning that procedure has been upheld by the Supreme Court in a step towards the right, a step that may be the harbinger of other victories for abortion foes, even to the point of reversing Roe vs. Wade. That scares me. I don't want my country to be a place where women in desperation undergo back alley abortions that threaten their fertility and their lives, or where children are born unwanted. I think we all should be paying attention, because this decision is a wake-up call, and there's no telling how wide an area of effect the changes in the court will eventually involve.