I'd like to briefly address a couple of important but complex points you've raised, That Pale Chick:
I understand that the state wants to protect unborn children, and I agree that partial-birth abortion is wrong.
I think I (at least somewhat) understand your aversion to partial-birth abortion; it's a graphic term, that was often illustrated by graphic pictures in the mainstream media newsreports when it was regularly in the news a few years back. And both the term and the pics were selected by people with excellent marketing skills to make a sometimes necessary medical procedure sound completely and utterly depraved.
I accept that, in the end, people of good will may simply disagree on some parts of this subject. But, I do think it's important to note that the term "partial-birth" abortion is problematic, in that the legal description of it describes something that is close to something that exists, but not something that actually medically exists:
Here's the testimony of Dr. Warren Hern, who is probably the leading specialist on abortion care and services (in fact, he and his Boulder colleagues perform the majority of all late-term abortions in the US), before the US Senate while they were debating this bill:
The bill under consideration, S. 939, is called the "Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act," but there is no such thing as a "partial birth abortion." This is an operation which has never been described in the medical literature, and as far as I know, it does not exist. The bill's sponsors describe some procedures which have been performed for many generations in the case of obstetrical emergency. The operation mentioned in the Senate bill contains some elements of a procedure called an "Intact D & E," or "Intact Dilation and Evacuation" by some physicians during the course of scientific discussions of late abortions, but I have never heard the term, "partial birth abortion" in these discussions. As written, the bill describes aspects of an operation which is performed routinely by some physicians currently, but they are procedures with a long history and wide application by other physicians on a sporadic and unpredictable basis. The bill's language could be interpreted to refer to virtually any second trimester or later abortion. If made more specific, it has the potential to single out and discriminate against specific doctors, some of whose procedures may be alleged to be consistent with the language of the bill. Doctors are poor judges of these subtleties when presented with the exigencies of patient needs. These circumstances mean that the bill can produce a "witch hunt" atmosphere that chills medical practice and interferes with good patient care by conscientious doctors.
Now, the procedures actually used for such extreme late-term abortions are not exactly pretty, I'll grant you (surgery rarely is, and this surgery is particularly open to sensationalizing), but the implication in most attempts to limit these abortions is that the procedure is typically sought by ditzy young things who just are too lazy, foolish, or indecisive to make up their minds.
However, the reality on the ground is more complex, which leads me to suspect that the real problem is people still, by and large, don't trust the judgement of people with female bodies, and don't see us as full moral beings. I know people who have had such abortions--a woman in my athletic club, aged 45, with 3 kids already, had a "surprise" post-tubal ligation pregnancy; she found out late in the pregnancy she had developed a dangerous medical condition; the best way forward, for her to live healthily was a late-term abortion.
These abortions are often sought in pregnancies that were very much desired, sometimes by people opposed to abortion, who found themselves facing grave health risks near the end of the pregnancy. Dr. Hern's words, again, are helpful, because he talks both about the very rarity of these abortions, and about the specific instances where he's performed them.
First, his statistics: While about 1% of all abortions are performed after about 20 weeks of pregnancy, only about .03%, or fewer than 500 [that's the total per year in the US--with a population of almost 300 million], are performed after 26 weeks. The majority of these are now performed by me or one of my medical colleagues. These abortions are almost always performed for the most tragic reasons of severe fetal anomaly, genetic disorder, or immediate risk to the woman's life. They are not performed for frivolous reasons, contrary to statements by those opposed to abortion.
WARNING: The following excerpt has some slightly graphic descriptions of some medical crises which Hern felt required late-term abortions, which some may find difficult to read if you're sensitive. (My partner's a fainter, so I like to warn others).
For example, one woman was recently brought to me by air ambulance from Rapid City, South Dakota for an abortion because she was about to die from her pregnancy, which was desired. She was a diabetic and had developed hyperemesis gravidarum (uncontrollable vomiting from pregnancy). She was starving to death. Her doctors were having difficulty keeping her alive. Her blood chemical balance was severely altered to the point that her heart could stop at any time. She was profoundly dehydrated. She was critically ill and could barely speak. Since she and her husband wanted the pregnancy, they tried everything to get her through it, but she was finally advised that she must have the abortion. While being flown to Boulder so that I could see her, she almost died in the airplane. I began her treatment immediately and performed the abortion by one the techniques I have described here two days later. She recovered completely and felt healthy again the next day. Without this operation, she would have died.
Another woman with an advanced pregnancy was referred to me by a colleague in northern Colorado because her fetus had been found to have a severe genetic disorder. She and her husband both wanted the pregnancy to continue. The fetal disorder also caused a serious disease of the placenta, which, in turn, caused the woman's blood pressure to go up. When she arrived at my office, her blood pressure was starting to go up at an alarming rate. I put her in the hospital as I continued my treatment. Her urine output diminished. She became edematous. Her electrolytes (blood chemicals) were out of balance because she was not excreting urine. She developed pulmonary edema (water on the lungs) and began having difficulty breathing. Meanwhile, I was trying to prepare her for the abortion, which promised to be extremely dangerous because of a large placenta that obstructed the opening of the uterus and threatened to cause catastrophic bleeding. We crossmatched blood for her. At 2 AM on the second night, before her cervix was completely prepared for the abortion I needed to perform, I had to act. She was deteriorating rapidly and it was clear that she would die before morning if I did not perform the abortion. This operation took every bit of my skill and experience as a surgeon and everything I have learned in 22 years of performing abortions. Although she was ill for some days from the effects of the pregnancy, the patient recovered fully.
On another occasion, a woman had been referred to me from Michigan for a late abortion because the fetus had a severe anomaly. The pregnancy was complicated by polyhydramnios (too much amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus), which was the result of one of the fetal anomalies. She was resting in my recovery room in preparation for her abortion, accompanied by her husband, when suddenly, without warning, the woman developed signs of shock, and I made a diagnosis of placental abruption. The placenta had torn away from the wall of the uterus and she was bleeding to death into the uterus. I carried her into my operating room without waiting for assistance, placed her on the operating table, and assembled my surgical team. My nurse held her fist on the patients aorta to keep her from bleeding to death while I did the abortion. As I began the procedure, two units of blood (about a quart) spurted out of her uterus, and she lost another unit during the operation. Without our preparations and my skill and experience, that woman would have died within minutes.
Mr. Chairman, I did not have time with any of these cases to consult the United States Senate on the proper method of performing the abortions.
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Second, on the other hand, this point about adoptive options for birthmoms: ... the child will likely end up being shuffled around in the system for years. The government may think that they are protecting the child by making sure it gets born, and I suppose a life in the foster care system is better than no life at all, but life with loving parents who actually wanted you is much better.
You'll be relieved to learn, I think, that the system basically doesn't work this way. Newborn infants are relatively easy to find adoptive families for; if the birthmother genuinely desires to relinquish her rights to raise her child (although it's true that in all or most states the birthfather needs to be found and consulted as well, to protect), then its unlikely that the infant would ever enter the foster care system.
The foster care system usually only kicks in if the parent(s) want(s) to raise the child but is viewed as not being capable of providing an essentially safe environment for a child--a history of abusing children, etc. An exception to what I've just said might possibly apply in cases of a child relinquished for adoption but born with serious birth defects, for instance, but I confess that my knowledge of the specifics of those situations is not complete.
I'm quite sure, however, that even birthparents (or even adoptive parents) who find themselves in over their heads with reasonably healthy infants and toddlers they thought they wanted to raise themselves, but now find they can't do it, can still relinquish directly to adoptive agencies/parents, rather than to the foster system, and increasingly all these birthparents can have some say in who they would like to parent their child, as adoption has become much more "open" in the last 20 years. Here's a link, written by an organization that advocates open adoption as the "the healthiest form of adoption" (which I suspect some would dispute) explaining how open adoption works, if you're interested.
Older children, children with special needs--especially emotional or mental disabilities--are the ones who are most likely to be caught in a foster care system that is different in every state, but, in the US, universally underfunded, understaffed, inevitably burdened by lots of bureaucratic problems and redtape--and only visible to most of the wider public when there's a scandal.
I hope this is helpful.
Foster kids, are, of course, wards of the state and, as minors, are extremely subject to state authority, so they're a very interesting addition to this subject. |
