[+/-] Remembering America before Roe v. Wade
Dr. Elizabeth Connell tells a compelling story from before Roe v. Wade. She saw firsthand the devastation and loss of life before abortion was legal in the United States. Today, Connell is blunt about the worsening state of reproductive rights for women, a cause she has championed for more than 50 years:
"It’s hard to conceptualize what it was like before Roe v. Wade unless you were actually there," Connell says, barely containing her anger. "In the large hospitals, ward after ward was filled with women suffering and dying from botched abortions. In some hospitals, it was the job of the first-year resident to sleep all day, because he would be up all night scraping out the remains of illegal abortions, giving blood to the women who were bleeding, trying desperately to keep them out of shock and treating their infections. This was the norm until we got Roe v. Wade and the New York law that preceded it. I’m very much afraid that the way things are going now, we could go right back to that again."...
"What I remember so clearly—every day and every night—was the constant stream of women coming in for help with their botched abortions. Over time, we saw the patterns," she says. "You got to know pretty quickly who had done the abortion. We knew who was out there," including one man who did 'nice clean abortions,' putting a little red rubber catheter into the uterus to start the abortion. "We also knew the absolute butchers. The women ran the gamut of circumstances, but they kept coming into the Philadelphia hospitals, and we had to deal with them. It made me sick at heart but also very angry."
Roe is 32 years old today. For the humanist take on abortion, please refer to my earlier post.
posted by Nanovirus @ 22:09 permalink
your thoughts? 3
3 Comments:
But what they don't understand is that if they ever succeed in reversing Roe vs Wade, abortions wont' suddenly stop. Women will go back to getting them illegally.
for Electro again: "Exterminate the brutes!"
Values: already-existing humans with lives of connections vs. possible, hypothetical lives. Winner: the one with the power to decide, so that she then has a chance to be the responsible person you want her to be.
I think that's what you want to hear.
We know you want person status for the fetus so that abortion fits the category murder. That would be a hell of a situation for tax exemption, though, eh? I guess I'm entitled to a slippery slope argument--when do we start prosecuting women for flushing away an egg every month--you know those eggs are forms of life, too.
As for this post: you're only preaching to the choir. The absolutists will counter with, "what about the horror for the aborted..."
Electro seems to be one of the "head in the sand" folks that tolerate malpractice and abuse as long as it doesn't upset HER set of values....
My first born was delivered by a OB/Gyn that was called in from a night out and not until after delivery when his mask was off did several of us detect his having been drinking. Only a bigot would pin this type of activity to the "EVIL" ones doing lawfull abortion procedures. Only a bigot thinks that abortion is a method of birth control being used by 'druggies'. Just as prohibition didn't work, doing away with roe/wade will not serve to end abortions. Both my grandmother and mother were RNs and my sister is a nurse-practitioner in ob/gyn, and believe me they are personally against abortion but they all are definately pro roe/wade......show a little compassion if it's within your person.
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