Coathangin' em high!
Apr. 14th, 2013 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThere's a vast left-wing media conspiracy in the news this month. Of course you haven't heard of it, since the vast left-wing media conspiracy is keeping you from knowing about it. But Newsbusters is all over it. Likewise, the Daily Caller. I'm sure the Blaze and Fox Nation are bucking the lamestream media trend against it, too, but I won't even scan those sites until I've been drinking heavily for hours.
The left-wing media, you see, is keeping you from knowing about the horrors in the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. If they cover it at all, they do so with horrible euphemisms like "fetuses" in place of "OMG the ded babbeeeezzzz," and not even using the "A"-word in most of their stories. These terrible liberal media outlets don't want you to know how hideous abortion is, or about the dangerous and even deadly things that can happen to these unsuspecting mothers.
Know what? However accidentally, these nutballs are absolutely right. Every media outlet, from left to center, should be giving this story the same amount of coverage that the Vatican Militia is reveling in. Because, rather than pointing to the evil in this extreme manifestation of a woman's right to choose her own reproductive destiny, it foretells what lies ahead once we confront the elephant-sized coat hanger in the room and recognize Gosnell for what he is.
He's the 2013 return of the 1963 back-alley abortionist- the one that our parents and grandparents knew all too well.
----
I'm a bit too young to remember it in real time, but I know more about how things were back then than the average 53-year-old. Both of my sisters worked in hospitals in New York State in the early 1960s- before New York's decriminalization of abortion in 1967, and well before the Supreme Court both settled and unsettled the issue for the whole country in 1973.
They knew- what all doctors, and nurses, and well-heeled and well-connected women of that era knew. There were phone numbers. And after-hours appointments. No records were kept, no insurance claims submitted. Cash was king, and you'd be expected to have a decent chunk of it. If complications ensued, you were on your own. On the other hand, there were no waiting periods, no mandatory disclosures of all the (alleged) alternatives and (alleged) risks. No flights on Trans-Vaginal Airlines ("something special up in there!"). You came, in shame, and left considerably lighter in many respects than you arrived.
To those who didn't have this kind of information or connection, there were scarier alternatives. Even less scrupulous practitioners. Home remedies. And yes, back alleys. All with the risks of self-harm and potential prosecution attached to them. And all because these women, be they 16 or 43 or anywhere in between, just couldn't make a lifelong commitment to a child at that particular point in her life. The fewer Benjamins you were carrying, the less likely it was you were getting a competent and sympathetic after-hours medical professional, and the more likely it was you were going to run into the 1960s likes of "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell.
----
So, yes. Shout his story from the mountaintops. Just be sure it's the straight story- that he was, and is, a butcher, a relic, a prophecy of what we will get once again if they win.
If you think this all sounds personal to me, it's because it is. Eleanor knew, and worked at the home of, a local obstetrician named Dr. Barnett Slepian, in the summer of 1998. In the fall of 1998, he was gunned down in his own kitchen, in front of his own children, by a lunatic anti-abortionist who said he was saving babies.
Mister Gosnell, my wife knew Doctor Slepian. Doctor Slepian was a friend of hers. You are no Barnett Slepian. And you, and his killer, can die in the enternal fires of hell.
The left-wing media, you see, is keeping you from knowing about the horrors in the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. If they cover it at all, they do so with horrible euphemisms like "fetuses" in place of "OMG the ded babbeeeezzzz," and not even using the "A"-word in most of their stories. These terrible liberal media outlets don't want you to know how hideous abortion is, or about the dangerous and even deadly things that can happen to these unsuspecting mothers.
Know what? However accidentally, these nutballs are absolutely right. Every media outlet, from left to center, should be giving this story the same amount of coverage that the Vatican Militia is reveling in. Because, rather than pointing to the evil in this extreme manifestation of a woman's right to choose her own reproductive destiny, it foretells what lies ahead once we confront the elephant-sized coat hanger in the room and recognize Gosnell for what he is.
He's the 2013 return of the 1963 back-alley abortionist- the one that our parents and grandparents knew all too well.
----
I'm a bit too young to remember it in real time, but I know more about how things were back then than the average 53-year-old. Both of my sisters worked in hospitals in New York State in the early 1960s- before New York's decriminalization of abortion in 1967, and well before the Supreme Court both settled and unsettled the issue for the whole country in 1973.
They knew- what all doctors, and nurses, and well-heeled and well-connected women of that era knew. There were phone numbers. And after-hours appointments. No records were kept, no insurance claims submitted. Cash was king, and you'd be expected to have a decent chunk of it. If complications ensued, you were on your own. On the other hand, there were no waiting periods, no mandatory disclosures of all the (alleged) alternatives and (alleged) risks. No flights on Trans-Vaginal Airlines ("something special up in there!"). You came, in shame, and left considerably lighter in many respects than you arrived.
To those who didn't have this kind of information or connection, there were scarier alternatives. Even less scrupulous practitioners. Home remedies. And yes, back alleys. All with the risks of self-harm and potential prosecution attached to them. And all because these women, be they 16 or 43 or anywhere in between, just couldn't make a lifelong commitment to a child at that particular point in her life. The fewer Benjamins you were carrying, the less likely it was you were getting a competent and sympathetic after-hours medical professional, and the more likely it was you were going to run into the 1960s likes of "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell.
----
So, yes. Shout his story from the mountaintops. Just be sure it's the straight story- that he was, and is, a butcher, a relic, a prophecy of what we will get once again if they win.
If you think this all sounds personal to me, it's because it is. Eleanor knew, and worked at the home of, a local obstetrician named Dr. Barnett Slepian, in the summer of 1998. In the fall of 1998, he was gunned down in his own kitchen, in front of his own children, by a lunatic anti-abortionist who said he was saving babies.
Mister Gosnell, my wife knew Doctor Slepian. Doctor Slepian was a friend of hers. You are no Barnett Slepian. And you, and his killer, can die in the enternal fires of hell.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 08:36 pm (UTC)There were accidents. In 1967 I spent my early career as a night shift computer operator at the largest municipal hospital in Atlanta. When women miscarried the ER admission diagnosis said "aseptic AB". The infrequent botched abortions were "septic AB", i.e., infected, or "UT bleeding". Our attitude was that they all needed care, despite how they came to need it.
The hospital had a Federally-funded maternal and infant care project. This took care of the many teen mothers who came to deliver. Before they left the hospital, they were provided with basic education on how to care for their babies. In too many cases, they also learned how it is they came to be pregnant.
Now, 45 years later, things have vastly improved. The one constant seems to be a vocal minority that persists in shaming people who have obvious sex.