Heartbreaking Thread: Pro-lifers don't like complexity.

[Nevilledog]

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Pro-lifers don't like complexity. At 17 weeks my placenta detached and he was much too small. I thought I felt my baby's frantic attempts to breathe. My OBGYN advised me to terminate the pregnancy, there wasn't much time. But I couldn't.

Every doctor told me it would only get worse. And it did get. But I already loved him. I'd waited 8 years for him. They saw on the Ultrasound that his umbilical cord was yards long.

An umbilical cord spinning out a lifeline helplessly. He'd stopped growing. But his heart continued to beat even as his movements - frantic at first when the oxygen cut off, slowed, and he became horribly still. I hated the doctors who couldn't save him.

An infection spread from the placenta to him. I began to understand, to believe them - that I would die too. I felt that we were dying. But selfishly I waited for more tests, and more tests, dozens of them.

In a natural world without medical science, fluid tests, ultrasounds, in a world like the one God may have intended we would have died without the nightmare of knowing beforehand. But we are in this world. When my fever rose my family insisted. I was a mother already.

My child needed me. My family arranged with New York Presbyterian Hospital for us to fly to Kansas because I was now in my 24th week and he would not have filled my palm.

I dreamt of being filled with ice, and death. His organs were shutting down so there was no amniotic fluid. He was in a dry and poison uterus, suffocating. I was panicked by the thought of his suffering.

We arrived in Kansas - an arid place I had only imagined through "The Wizard of Oz". I was delirious, things were getting worse.

The doctor in Kansas was kind, but sad. He carried a shotgun because he'd once been shot in both arms. Our taxi driver slowed to a crawl and rolled all the windows down as we arrived at the clinic. I didn't know why. My son was in the car with us.

I hadn't realized we were coming to one of those places from TV with angry people outside. They brandished signs cruelly displaying the bodies of tiny fetuses. Pumping the signs up and down and shouting.

They saw my son in the car and began shouting at him, "Your mother is killing her baby!". A nurse pushed through to shield us and guide us into the clinic. A psychologist spoke to my son. The process took a week. There is no such thing as "partial birth".

I held his tiny body. We had a private service with a minister. He was like a bird in my hands. My son. I had never felt so empty. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose and I wiped it. Back in NYC some too observant people in my building knew. My milk had come in.

The mail carrier who delivered his ashes to me knew, and I could see she wanted me to know that she disapproved. I saw she also felt sorry, but like she was supposed to despise me. We'd always gotten along. I closed the door and held the box under my robe and sobbed on the floor

"Don't worry, he just forgot something. He has to go back to get it, then he'll come back." my son was wise. I felt so much sadness. 15 months later I had a baby.

I was nursing him in the glider, and the song "Frankie and Johnnie", was playing. I picked up the NYTimes. On the front page I saw that the doctor from Kansas had been killed while ushering in church.

Abortion Doctor Shot to Death in Kansas Church (Published 2009)
A suspect was in custody in the killing of George Tiller, a doctor in Wichita, Kan., who survived a 1993 shooting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html

Murdered by a man who traveled miles to kill the baby killer, hunting him down on a Sunday morning. People think of abortion as ending life, but it saves women's lives, mothers' lives. There is life today because of Dr Tiller. Where there would have been only emptiness and death.

#RoeVWade #AbortionRightsAreHumanRights #WomensRights #SCOTUS There is a complexity in the decisions a woman makes when the situation is impossible to fix. Women should be treated like humans.

[LonePirate]

1. There are going to be thousands and thousands of stories like these in the years to come.

[Jade Fox]

2. Most of the women I know who had or considered abortions.....

were dealing with complicated, unexpected circumstances (not as dire as this woman).

That's what right to lifers don't get: Grown up life is complex. Stuff happens, and you have to make decisions you didn't anticipate.

[crickets]

3. Thank you for posting this. nt

[JoeOtterbein]

4. Thanks for posting once again. With...

...tears.

Joe

[keep_left]

5. Wasn't Dr. Tiller the one that Bill O'Reilly attacked over and over on his program...

...calling him "Tiller the Baby Killer" or something similar? That name is really familiar. I remember that Media Matters discovered that O'Reilly said that phrase 28 times. And then Dr. Tiller is murdered. What a surprise.

[AZ8theist]

7. O'Reilly is one of the most disgusting humans on Earth....

Thankfully he's long gone off the air....
Due, of course, to his vile treatment of women.

[MustLoveBeagles]

10. Yes

You got the horrible nickname exactly right.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. My wife's placenta had attached too low

I came home one day to find her on the floor in a pool of her own blood. I thought she was dead. She was 5 months pregnant with our daughter. The hospital was only a 10 minute drive, especially at the speeds I drove. She lived thanks to modern medicine.

Mother and daughter lived and thrived. But she always said that she would never have made it through if she didn't know she could reach out to the lifeline of an abortion. Knowing she could ask the doctor, at any time, for an abortion to end the constant loss of blood, passing out and fear of death gave her strength to hold on just one more day. And each day accumulated until our daughter could be born.

This is why I am so determinedly against forced birth. Abortion saved my wife's sanity, gave her strength and brought us our beautiful girl.

Now Imagine being forced to experience that edge of death over and over again knowing each time could be the last. Knowing you have no choice, against your will, with no escape, to suffer and possibly die just because you were an American woman.

[calimary]

8. It's just nobody's damn business. Nobody's business to judge. Nobody's business to condemn.

It's not just that some people don't understand. Some people just WON'T understand.

Ironic that some radically "pro-life" assholes think that killing a doctor is the answer. "Pro-life," 'eh?

[Nevilledog]

9. They. Don't. Care.

They have no interest in facts, evidence or consequences. The cruelty is the point.

[Farmer-Rick]

12. Yup

It's just a pretty little pony for Christian GOP voters.

Women in America will still get abortions, it will just go underground and create a lot of pain and suffering. Just what Cristian Fascists love, hypocrisy, magical thinking, suffering, sexism, misogyny, abusive patriarchy and free babies to adopt, abuse and sell.

[Rhiannon12866]

11. And this woman would have been sentenced to death under this ruling

No exception for the life of the mother. And there will be many more.