I’ll point out, the second time someone has in this thread, that this is a strawman. I don’t see anyone asserting there is some sort of organized effort, some conspiracy, to keep this story quiet. The suggestion, which seems plausible to me, is that this story doesn’t dovetail with most reporters’ and columnists’ sensibilities. It’s inconsistent with the narrative that makes sense to them. Consequently, a story whose elements suggest sensational, scandalous, national-level fascination, is met (at least in many instances) with a shrug and a lack of interest.
And, ISTM, very little misty-eyed, “those poor children, we must do something!” laments, such as those that dominate the national story of Newtown. And this board, I think. People sobbing over Newtown, comments here and elsewhere that months later people still couldn’t think of it without intense emotion. This event? Never heard of it, and when they do, a shrug, despite all the dead babies. This is interesting.
Please explain how this has anything to do with “criminalizing abortion.” Abortions are not hard to get in Pennsylvania where they are legal, which means in the first and second trimester. Later-term abortions are very rare, something like under 2% of all abortions are after 21 weeks of pregnancy. In most of the United States doctors do not perform late term abortions at all because in many States they are illegal except in cases where the mother’s health is at risk and even a substantial number of abortion doctors have a moral opposition to performing elective abortions on viable fetuses.
The United States literally stands alone in the whole world in the fact that we have some States where late term abortions are legal at the whim of the mother. In France for example no abortion is legal after 12 weeks, in Italy 13 weeks, in Germany 14 weeks, in Sweden 18 weeks (all of these countries have exceptions for health of the mother.) Note that all of these countries actually prohibit abortion several weeks before any recognized medical cutoff for fetal viability.
In the United States, after abortion rights were confirmed yet clarified in the Casey case the Supreme Court stated that States can prohibit abortions after fetal viability. Many States decided to continue on with their existing trimester based laws, while a few enacted laws reflecting the new constitutional thinking.
This guy was performing illegal abortions, many times 30+ weeks or more in the pregnancy. Is it your contention that those abortions shouldn’t have been illegal in the first place? I always find it amusing how little perspective most Americans have on issues. We’re far more conservative on most issues than Europe, but we always take things to extreme. Our States that allow basically unrestricted abortion as late as 27 weeks would be considered essentially barbaric and immoral in most of Europe.
By not being Planned Parenthood. I honestly don’t know how much abortions or abortion counseling takes place at PP, or what percentage of abortions are performed completely unrelated to PP, but the only anti abortion protest I’ve ever seen that was at an actual business location was outside a PP.
That may be the only one you’ve seen, but you are mistaken if you think that only Planned Parenthood centers draw protestors. In Chicago and suburbs every kind of abortion clinic has protestors at least some of the time.
I really don’t see that there’s a moral to be drawn for either side on the abortion debate here. I would assume that all pro-choice people are as horrified as I am to read of such abuses and malpractice.
It is interesting that such a horrific story has had relatively little attention in the media, which is so prone to jump on horror stories. Perhaps as Brickbacon said this one is just too awful, as well as difficult to spin or treat as controversial.
Just want to point out that’s not really true. Our neighbors to the North, Canada, have no legal restrictions on abortion. There’s some province specific laws but in general, looks like they allow late term abortions on the federal level. Wikipedia has a pretty lengthy articleon the subject.
This is true. People who call themselves pro-life often do not care if women die from an abortion. They don’t want women having them in the first place. The attitude is that a woman who has an abortion is an immoral, evil slut who deserves to be hurt or even die as a result of her attempt to kill the innocent fetus.
Sure; I’m just saying that he could have been not PP without being not hygenic. Protesters outside PP had no influence over how Gosnell ran his clinic.
My bad, I shouldn’t have said “literally alone” but by and large among OECD countries we have extremely permissive laws as compared to the rest of the OECD. So much so that they would be consider out of the norm. It is not considered legally or morally acceptable by either doctors or society in most of the OECD to have very late term abortions.
These countries we’re talking about are also places that are generally more progressive on women’s issues than America. Sweden for example, doesn’t have the vitriolic pro-life/pro-choice situation like we do, women who want/need an abortion can easily get them and people aren’t going to call her a babykiller and her doctor isn’t at danger of being shot or having his clinic blown up. But their society says basically no to later term abortions, it’s widely recognized in the civilized world women have no right and should have no right to terminate viable fetuses “at whim.”
Our abortion issue is one of those things liberals often pain America as being “out of sync” with the world on. I would agree our attitudes are out of sync with the world in how vitriolic we are about abortion and attempts to block all abortion continuously going on etc, but the actual state of our laws is basically far more liberal than the rest of the OECD aside from a few exceptions. Canada is one of them, and UK is another (UK allows it legally up to 24 weeks which is a little later than the “viability” standard based on how you argue viability, but most States in the U.S. never adopted viability after Casey and still use trimester language in their laws.) But note that while late term abortions are rare in the United States they are almost unheard of in the few other OECD countries that allow them “at mother’s discretion.”
In Canada for example:
So due to moral reservations of doctors in Canada you basically need to go to another country to have a very late term abortion.
I’m generally legally pro-choice (for a variety of societal reasons and persuasive legal arguments), but morally I don’t really think highly of any abortion. But I think there is real moral hazard to elective abortion of viable fetuses, and I’m not alone in this nor do I stand with just American fundamentalists on this. There is a good company on that side of the argument, like most of the doctors who work in the OECD outside of the United States, for example.
A bit of an aside, but I would give thanks that the media was finally coming to its senses about what are, in fact, local crime stories. I’d wish MSNBC would get on board. Not only does the massive amount of over-coverage mass shootings get cause a climate of fear by exaggerating the threat, I suspect it might actually encourage more of these deranged mutants to commit these acts.
I used to be an escort at a women’s clinic. This was not a Planned Parenthood clinic, though it offered similar services. That clinic performed abortions on a specific day of the week, and there were always protests on that day. Operation Rescue was very active in getting a lot of protesters out at that clinic.
I will say one very negative effect of our attitudes on abortion in the United States is we do not conduct them very well. We’ve passed a lot of statutes mostly stripping away any public funding for abortion (some States still help fund them), and that means it creates bad situations.
Most of the OECD for example, abortion is understood to be a routine and relatively safe procedure but still a medical procedure that needs to be either done in a hospital or the equivalent of what we’d call an outpatient surgical center here in the United States. (This is opposed to “doctor’s office” procedures like minor dermatological work, dental work, etc.)
But the U.S. doesn’t allow public funding of abortion at the Federal level (even Medicaid won’t support it) and there is usually no State funding either. That means if abortion is going to be available for lower income people (the people who typically most need and use abortion services) it needs to be kept cheap since the patient themselves has to pay for it. This has lead to abortions mostly being done in non-surgical settings in facilities more akin to a doctor’s office or a community clinic. This isn’t the end of the world, as I said it’s a fairly routine procedure, but it also isn’t quite as safe as it should be and is out of sync with how abortions are done in most of the world.
There’s also some truth to the claim that the best doctors generally do not do abortions. They may be pro-choice or not, but the simple truth is the best doctors like to make as much money as possible. The cushiest doctor jobs typically involve some degree of office politics and such, cozying up with hospital administrators etc, or you’re running a highly respected practice of your own. The last thing those people need is to take a very visible, professional stance on the abortion issue. It alienates too many people and hurts their ability to advance in their chosen profession. Now, some good doctors understand the need for abortions and make it their trade, but it’s also true because a lot of the most respected doctors won’t touch it that some of the seedier ones are attracted to performing them.
I think that means abortion providers really do need to be scrutinized and should be held to the same standard as an outpatient surgical center. We are talking about something that sometimes has serious complications, and definitely attracts to some degree “marginal” physicians. While there is an obvious need for oversight and regulation, pro-choicers will claim any attempt at regulation is an attempt to end abortion access. (Not a bad argument, most attempts at regulation are exactly that.) The real answer would be for the State to require abortions be performed in facilities that comply with the standards for an outpatient surgical center, but pay for the cost to upgrade extant clinics to those standards and also agree to subsidize abortions for low income women. (Neither of those things is likely to happen in most red states.)
But the article about Grosnell shows the problems with doing abortions in sub-optimal settings. When Virginia passed regulations requiring abortion providers to basically structure and run their facilities like outpatient surgical centers one of the big areas where pro-choicers cried foul was in its architectural requirements. The new regulations required widened hallways, which many pro-choicers say means none of the extant Virginian clinics would be in facilities that could comply with that without extremely expensive reconstruction. But one of Grosnell’s patients who died, at least part of the reason she was never able to get to a hospital in time is because when EMS was called (probably after Grosnell had allowed her to suffer brain death so possibly moot) it took them over twenty minutes to get the woman out of the clinic because the hallways were so narrow and jammed full with junk.
As a pro-choicer, I want abortions to be SAFE as well as legal, and yes, that does mean that the providers and clinics should be held to certain standards, and I’d also agree that abortion clinics should be held to the same standards as any other outpatient surgical center. So I’m OK with certain kinds of regulations…but not the rules that require doctors to lie to patients about risks, or that require procedures that are simply a way of harassing the patients.
Some of the regulations for outpatient surgical centers should not apply to abortion clinics- things like hallway width, and other logistical requirements that aren’t necessary, but are really the things that are extremely difficult to adhere to.
Gosnell’s patients were interviewed and actually said they didn’t want to go to Planned Parenthood because protesters, and Gosnell’s clinic had none. People saying that’s what happened aren’t just speculating. Uniquely? Maybe not, but that’s the protester-less clinic these people knew about and could afford.
Also, given the position you appear to be taking on the issue, is “safe from protesters” really the phrase you want to use?
There are regulations applied specifically to facilities where abortions are performed. Sometimes these are presented as safety measures (though sometimes the people imposing the regulations say, at least in informal settings, they are trying to make it difficult or impossible for the facility to perform abortions). Some of those ostensible safety measures do little to increase safety, or are more burdensome than is necessary for the safety they provide. So “abortion clinics aren’t regulated and what regulations exist aren’t enforced” is not true as a general rule.
I certainly didn’t understand this to be true. My understanding has been that pro-life activists think viable babies are routinely killed and that they think this will become the norm if abortions are legalized, but my understanding has been that at present, abortion is regulated so as to prevent the killing of viable fetuses, and that these kinds of things, when they happen, happen at unlicensed clinics. This story does nothing to contradict that, but other stories I’ve seen recently have caused me to realize viable fetuses can be killed. So that’s progress I guess.
Yes that sort of thing is a result of the Casey ruling, I generally don’t think doctor patient communication should be mandated in a certain way based on statute. The sort of regulations that are necessary are regular inspections, facility and staffing requirements that normal medical facilities in many states require. Many States abortion clinics are regulated like a GP office.
Gosnell’s clinic was located in a neighborhood that protestors may not want to enter. It’s not the worst of neighborhoods, but it’s not the best either, 38th and Lancaster in West Philly. My feeling (not backed up by any evidence) is that local residents would make the environment uncomfortable for protestors. Gosnell’s clinic catered to
the poor minorities that populate West and Southwest Philadephia.
There were three abortion clinics in Philadelphia when Gosnell’s clinic was operational. Gosnell’s clinic was easily accessible for residents of West and SW Philadelphia. There is a clinic in Center City and another in Northeast Philly (PP). The Northeast Philadelphia clinic is 20 miles from Gosnell’s clinic, over an hour by public transportation (subway and two buses). The CC clinic isn’t that far away, but it is my understanding that that clinic was more expensive.
The PP in Philly that does abortions is not in the greatest of neighborhoods, but it is more industrial than residential. Protestors are a regular occurrence there. I am not familiar with the CC clinic and have no idea if there are regular protestors there, but I imagine there are.