In 2012, a pregnant 16 year old girl was denied treatment or an abortion when she was diagnosed with cancer. She was denied life saving treatment for weeks, for fear that said treatment would terminate her pregnancy. She was also denied the right to an abortion so that she could start life saving treatment. She was 9 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed.
She died.
In 2010,
a 27 year old woman, a mother to a 10 year old girl, had to draw international attention and pleas from 11 member states of the UN to grant her life saving cancer treatment, after doctors refused to treat her or allow her to have an abortion for her 10 week long pregnancy for fear of being prosecuted by laws that banned all abortions, no exceptions.
In 2012, a 31 year old woman miscarried in Ireland, where at that time, all abortions were illegal. Her foetus still had a heartbeat, despite the fact that it was a clear abortion. She was denied all treatment, because what is naturally and normally classified as a medical procedure after a miscarriage, would, under Ireland's laws, have classified as an "abortion". As the miscarriage caused an infection, which entered her blood stream, and after much protest, she was granted an "abortion".
She died a few days later because said treatment came too late.
And if you think her case cannot happen in the US?
Think again.
Because the fetus was still alive, they wouldn't intervene. And she was hemorrhaging, and they called me and wanted to transport her, and I said, “It sounds like she's unstable, and it sounds like you need to take care of her there.” And I was on a recorded line, I reported them as an EMTALA [Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act] violation. And the physician [said], “This isn't something that we can take care of.” And I [said], “Well, if I don't accept her, what are you going to do with her?” [He answered], “We'll put her on a floor [i.e., admit her to a bed in the hospital instead of keeping her in the emergency room]; we'll transfuse her as much as we can, and we'll just wait till the fetus dies.”
[...]
I'll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we're going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I'm on call when she gets septic, and she's septic to the point that I'm pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she's 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn't let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let's go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can't do this. I can't put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That's why I left.
This is what happens when abortion is banned without exception. Do you think this is acceptable? Look, I could go on and on and list you with case after case to show just how wrong you are that it is an argument of little validity.
Women die due to childbirth and pregnancy (even leaving things like cancer out of the equation) every year in the US. If a woman's life is in danger, do you think it is acceptable to force her to continue with a pregnancy that could result in her death?
Do you have any alternative that would prevent this sort of thing from happening?
Do you think it is acceptable to force a woman to remain pregnant to the man who raped her?
Could you cite where you got that figure from?
Because here is what the
CDC have on file:
In 2011, 730,322 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate was 13.9 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years and the abortion ratio was 219 abortions per 1,000 live births.
Compared with 2010, the total number and rate of reported abortions for 2011 decreased 5%, and the abortion ratio decreased 4%. Additionally, from 2002 to 2011 the number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions decreased 13%, 14%, and 12%, respectively. The large decreases in the total number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions from 2010 to 2011, in combination with decreases that occurred during 2008–2010, resulted in historic lows for all three measures of abortion.
