abortion doctor etc

I have a question as all these news about the murdered abortion doctor is going on.
I'm pro choice. I feel very strongly about this view, both as it is a woman's rights issue and even more because I do not think anyone should bring children into the world that they don't want.
A baby is 100 procent dependent on it's parents, I have seen children who have parents that are not good caregivers, and I would never want a child to live with people who don't love them or care for them.

But the news are saying that this murdered doctor performed abortions in the third trimester. (I hope you understand that I'm not condoning his murder). Who has abortions in the third trimester?
Are they special cases where the babies are severely deformed and wont survive after they are born?
In that case I have no problem with it at all. That is obviously understandable, there is no need to prolong suffering neither for the mother or the baby.
But are there other reasons for why someone would want an abortion that late?
I don't think it's right to have such a late abortion just because someone doesn't want to be pregnant and has not bothered to get an abortion earlier. But is that ever the case?
Are there any statistics on this?

The news are not talking about this, they just keep saying that he performed abortions in the third trimester (6-9) months.

Maya

Yes, sometimes a woman's life is in danger. Preeclampsia is one of the biggest causes.
What is Preeclampsia?

Preeclampsia is a disorder that occurs only during pregnancy and the postpartum period and affects both the mother and the unborn baby. Affecting at least 5-8% of all pregnancies, it is a rapidly progressive condition characterized by high blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine. Swelling, sudden weight gain, headaches and changes in vision are important symptoms; however, some women with rapidly advancing disease report few symptoms.

Typically, preeclampsia occurs after 20 weeks gestation (in the late 2nd or 3rd trimesters or middle to late pregnancy), though it can occur earlier. Proper prenatal care is essential to diagnose and manage preeclampsia. Preeclampsia, Pregnancy Induced Hypertension (PIH) and toxemia are closely related conditions. HELLP Syndrome and eclampsia are other manifestations of the same syndrome. It is important to note that research shows that more women die from preeclampsia than eclampsia and one is not necessarily more serious than the other.

Globally, preeclampsia and other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are a leading cause of maternal and infant illness and death. By conservative estimates, these disorders are responsible for 76,000 maternal and 500,000 infant deaths each year.

http://www.preeclampsia.org/about.asp

Gilly covered it.

The only abortions done that late are of medical NECESSITY.

That's what I thought. Why isn't the media mentioning this?
They are slanting the facts by keeping this important fact from the public.

Maya

Because the media leans toward right wingnut politics...?

Yeah most of it, but not Rachel Maddow, (at least that what I thought) she interview a friend of the doctor yesterday, a woman who is the head of a women's health organization.

Maya

Personally I think that it is a combination of the refusal to believe that medicine can't cure everything and an avoidance of the ethical question that some people have difficulty with, deciding who dies and who lives. They don't want people with terminal diseases to have the right to die when and how they choose either.

gilly,
Definitely and also trouble thinking through that sometimes living is NOT the best alternative. The question I always ask is this:
"There is a young family down the street, they have four children already that they are not taking good care of, you see the children run around in tattered clothes, they look hungry, the parents are often drunk or high, you hear screaming from their house on a daily basis.
Now picture that you yourself will give birth in an hour. Would you give your newborn baby to this family to live with them until adulthood? You would never see this baby again, he/she will live with this family now. you will not know if he is fed, changed, touched or loved.
Lets say that you had no choice, you HAD to give the baby to this family. The only other choice would be to go back in time and have an abortion two weeks and two days after conception.
Those two alternatives are the only two, which one of them would YOU choose for your baby?

Maya

tmarie64 wrote:Because the media leans toward right wingnut politics...?

maya3 wrote:Yeah most of it, but not Rachel Maddow, (at least that what I thought) she interview a friend of the doctor yesterday, a woman who is the head of a women's health organization.

Maya

Marie,
I have to agree with maya on this plus expand on it some. IMO, MSNBC is certainly not leaning to the right, wingnut or otherwise. Besides Rachel Maddow they also have Ed Schultz who is also on Air America radio, Chris Matthews, and Keith Olbermann in their prime time lineup. These people, especially Olbermann, are extremely critical of the right wing. You may be interested in listening to some of Olbermann's special comment segments which you can find on Youtube.

I love Keith Oberman!

Maya

My only problem is he's on at the same time as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I have to watch the repeat of one or the other.

really? Where do you live? Here they show the daily show at 11 PM and the Colbert at 11.30, oberman is on at 8 and 10

Maya

I lived in Wichita until last October, and I assure you that everything I heard about Dr. Tiller's practice was that it was entirely legal. Kansas law definitely did not permit late-term "birth control" abortions.

In fact, shortly before his death, Dr. Tiller had been cleared of all charges brought by former attorney general Phil Kline alleging that Dr. Tiller did not follow legal strictures that require a second opinion from an independent doctor before a third trimester abortion could be performed.

The cases that I heard about were heartwrenching. For instance, one woman who had such an abortion had learned that her fetus had a severely deformed skull and only a partial brain. These were the types of things that were eligible for late-term abortion since it can be very difficult to determine the extent of some birth defects until late in the pregnancy as I understand it.

I agree that media coverage hasn't been very clear in some instances just how stringent the requirements were for the late-term abortions done by Dr. Tiller.

DirecTV has the Daily Show at 8:00 and 11:00 and Colbert at 8:30 and 11:30.

I heard on the news that Randall Terry of Operation Rescue wants to buy Dr. Tiller's building and use it for his group's headquarters. Seems to me that he wants a trophy to show the world how wonderful his pathetically sick little group is.

Dot,
Nobody should have to be forced to carry a baby to term that is so severely deformed.
My own mother was pregnant, I think in 1960 (8 years) before she had me, and my brother was stillborn.
My parents never speak much about it but my mom told me once that when she was pregnant with me, she could tell that there must have been something wrong with her first pregnancy because it had felt completely different.
This was at a time when we did not have the diagnostics that we have now, had she been able to have an ultrasound for example they probably would have known.
It would have been a lot less traumatic for my parents if they did not have to carry this baby to term only give birth to a stillborn baby boy.

TPaine,
Oh that is sick. OMG!

Maya

TPaine wrote:DirecTV has the Daily Show at 8:00 and 11:00 and Colbert at 8:30 and 11:30.

I heard on the news that Randall Terry of Operation Rescue wants to buy Dr. Tiller's building and use it for his group's headquarters. Seems to me that he wants a trophy to show the world how wonderful his pathetically sick little group is.

Terry and crew made asses of themselves harrassing women during his much-touted "Summer of Mercy" some years ago. What a lot of people don't know is that Dr. Tiller's clinic truly was one of women's healthcare services and many pap smears and other such medical services were performed there.

Terry's cohorts made it appear that every woman entering was going in for an abortion and were absolutely horrid to each and every one regardless. Federal laws were passed subsequently that required protestors to keep a specific distance from patients entering such clinics largely as a result of the ugly behavior of those protestors.

I can't imagine that Wichitans would stand for the building's being sold to Terry. He proved himself to be a blowhard that summer. I'm guessing this is simply more of his bragging and arrogance.

DotNotInOz wrote:
Terry and crew made asses of themselves harrassing women during his much-touted "Summer of Mercy" some years ago. What a lot of people don't know is that Dr. Tiller's clinic truly was one of women's healthcare services and many pap smears and other such medical services were performed there.

Terry's cohorts made it appear that every woman entering was going in for an abortion and were absolutely horrid to each and every one regardless. Federal laws were passed subsequently that required protestors to keep a specific distance from patients entering such clinics largely as a result of the ugly behavior of those protestors.

I can't imagine that Wichitans would stand for the building's being sold to Terry. He proved himself to be a blowhard that summer. I'm guessing this is simply more of his bragging and arrogance.

IMO, Terry and his group qualify as domestic terrorists. Stating that any Senator who votes for SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor will have the blood of dead babies on their hands and comparing Dr. Tiller to Nat Turner show that he is totally intolerant of any position but his own
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/terry-video-a-vote-for-sotomayor-means-dead-baby-blood-is-on-your-hands.php
but worse than that there is a connection between alleged assassin Scott Roeder and Operation Rescue despite Terry's lame denials.
http://pushingrope.blogspot.com/2009/06/scott-roeder-and-operation-rescue.html

Okay, you lost me there, Paine. What is the problem they have with Sonia Sotomayor?

I had to take a friend of mine from work in for an abortion of her hydrocephalic foetus. Not a pleasant day for anyone, and I ended up walking over top of one of the protestors who thought that she was "winning" because Rachel was crying when the protestor called her a baby killer.

Life isn't fair, some babies never stood a chance. Nature aborts most of them, but leaves enough wreckage behind for medicine to clean up that even today pregnancy cannot be free of fear to any who are less than totally ignorant of the possible outcomes.

High risk groups are screened early, but not all developmental defects occur in high risk groups, and not all are detected early. Later is more tragic, but just as necessary. Letting a woman be at risk to deliver one already dead, or incompatible with life, is unjustifyable.

Those who deal in absolutes are simply willing to accept more human beings suffering for their beleifs than I am.

sacrificialgoddess wrote:Okay, you lost me there, Paine. What is the problem they have with Sonia Sotomayor?

They don't believe that Judge Sotomayor will join the four Religious Reich fascists on the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. In his rant, Terry was targeting Senators McCain and Brownback basically saying they better vote against her if they know what's good for their re-election chances.

Crazies.