A 4th year university student from Montreal, Quebec wrote a guest blog in which she denounced the “ever-limiting title of ‘feminist’.” Here’s why: over the the Christmas holidays, there was a news story that two abortionists in New Jersey and Maryland would be charged with multiple counts of murder for committing illegal late-term abortions. Authorities reported that, in addition to having broken the law regarding abortion post-viability both within New Jersey and Maryland, Steven Brigham and Nicola Riley allegedly also kept the corpses of the children they had murdered at their abortion facility in freezers. The guest blogger that brought this story to my attention, said only one site, Jezebel, covered the story and that’s why she’s done with being a “feminist.” Well, now she has two sites covering it.
This is a disturbing story, and it gets worse – the reason these two doctors are getting attention is one particular case – the case of an 18-year-old woman, identified only as “D.B.” D.B sought an abortion at 21 weeks gestation, which is three weeks later than the upper gestational limit in New Jersey. D.B went to the New Jersey facility where the procedure was to be completed. The procedure outlined that it would induce immediate fetal death via injection of digoxin into the baby’s heart, and it was to be completed the following day at the facility in Maryland. D.B., who was accompanied by her mother “C.B.,” was then “operated on” by Riley.
Like someone out of a movie, D.B.’s mother reported that she heard her daughter “screaming and hollering” for two hours. As reported by Live Action, while Riley was trying to find fetal cranial tissue from what she had removed from D.B., she discovered that she had “perforated D.B.’s uterus, shoved the remains of [her] baby into her abdominal cavity, and pulled out part of her bowel.”
D.B.’s mother, requested that …
… Riley and Brigham call an ambulance. Instead, they initially wanted to transport D.B. to the hospital by wheelchair, finally settling on driving her in a private car without an I.V. or monitoring of any kind. Once they arrived at the hospital, they refused to cooperate and give their names, and then left D.B. after ten minutes. They went back to their clinic to work on other girls who’d had appointments that same day. Emergency staff examined D.B., but found her injuries to be so severe that she had to be transported by helicopter to John Hopkins Medical Center. There, doctors removed the parts of the aborted fetus from D.B.’s abdominal cavity, removed part of her small intestine, and then repaired the tear in her uterus.
This is a horror story. This was extremely dangerous, and the complications could have been deadly. You would think that feminists as a whole would be infuriated by this. One would imagine that they would be on the front lines, screaming about how this woman almost died and it’s all because of the societal stigma against abortion. But you know what? There hasn’t been the slightest of peeps.
In Jezebel’s report of the abortionists’ arrests, D.B.’s complications are described as just that – complications. They do not call them “catastrophic,” or “deadly” or even “severe.” There is no follow-up report, and in fact, she comes across as a minor detail in their report: just another complication.
The guest blogger was extremely angry at the Jezebel writer’s stance on things. The writer said, “So is that attitude really the best answer feminists have for women like D.B.? Silence and/or a call for more abortion? Is this what feminism is now, just a mindless and rabid abortion-pusher? Toward the end of the article, the writer even laments that pro-life activists will use this story as a way of pushing for more abortion restrictions, when she believes that what we need is the exact opposite. On top of everything else, the article is tagged “Roe vs. World.” Presumably, we’re supposed to believe that Roe is the real victim here. What these feminists need to remember is that they’re supposed to be advocating for WOMEN. Not only the hypothetical women who they seem to believe will die by the dozen in back-alleys if abortion is abolished, but real women, like D.B., who are being butchered and cast aside in the name of choice.
I can see both sides of this story, and I don’t think this calls for more late term abortion clinics. I also don’t think it calls for stricter regulations on abortions. I think it calls for dialogue. I think an open discussion on safety practices, and the implementation of well-established, safe clinics that are allowed to be viewed as “real” medical facilities.
I think, to perpetuate the stigma, and continue the fear-mongering, needs to be removed from abortion. The bottom line is that it should be a personal decision – no different than going to a doctor and getting anti-anxiety meds. It’s your business. If you don’t want to advertise to the world that you’re having issues, you shouldn’t have to, nor should you be judged if something goes wrong. It’s a medical decision and a medical procedure one way or the other, and it is nobody’s business but the person who’s deciding.
In fairness, I saw this story on MSNBC and heard it on NPR.
This will happen more and more frequently as states chip away at reproductive rights. The back alley abortions are already starting up again. It’s sickening to me that it takes this kind of thing to make some people realize that making abortion illegal just makes it more horrible. It does nothing to stop abortions from being performed, it just changes the credentials of the people performing them. I know that in some twisted logic, there’s a segment of people who say “good, those women deserve to die,” but the rest of us can’t look at this and say it’s somehow a triumph that tougher abortion laws are being enacted all over the country. It’s not – how many women have to die before that’s clear?