Typically after removal what is the procedure normally followed after surgical removal to final ‘disposal’?
Also
Is the woman (normally/seldomly) told of any characteristics such as apparent gender or deformities?
OK, part of this I can semi-factually answer (meaning: the answer was factual 15 years ago; whether it still is, I dunno), the other part, I have anecdotal evidence about, but no more (and it’s second-hand anecdote, at that).
Part one: About 15 years ago, my hubby had a job that he despised (but it paid relatively well) driving for Waste Management. His sole job was to drive to doctor’s offices, clinics and hospitals picking up potentially hazardous waste. This included the gall bladders that had been removed, fetuses that had been aborted, limbs that had been amputated, babies that had been still-born (if the parents didn’t want it for burial), etc. After his truck was full, he would drive it to the crematorium, where it all became part of the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” circle of life. I can’t guarantee that’s still what happens, but it’s what happened at the time, at least in and around Baltimore, MD.
Anecdote about your second question: when my FIL’s mother was pregnant for the third time, she was told that, without a doubt, delivering the baby would kill her. Abortion was illegal at the time, but her doc gave her the name/address of a “back-alley woman” and told her to go there, then come back to him to get “patched up”. She went and got a back-alley abortion. According to what my FIL says, she was told the baby was a girl (she already had two boys). However, also according to my FIL, she was only about 7 or 8 weeks along, which, IMU, is much too soon to determine gender.
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Don’t know, but I’d imagine it’s what norinew said.
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No.
WARNING POSSIBLY TMI
What comes back from the OR is a jar full of red slurry. Nothing in there is grossly identifiable as human. I’ve been told that the operation to do it is similar to taking a wet/dry shopvac to the woman’s uterus. The remains are dealt with in the same way surgical specimen is destroyed: incineration.
I cant speak about stillborn and late abortions, but a typical abortion is the scrapping of the uterine walls. There’s nothing there but cells. I think the idea that typical abortions lead to identifiable “little people” is ridiculous on its face and a product of the propaganda of the anti-abortion crowd.
[Barth Bagge]What do you think’s in the burgers?[/BB]
And I’m officially old.
When I went in at five weeks, during the ultrasound I was asked if I wanted to know the gender. According to the doctor, it is apparent after just a few weeks. Surprising. And, of course, that early on, the “remains” take the form of rather large clots that get flushed down the toilet.
My experience goes back further than norinew and Nunavut Boy but what I saw is simiar. It was not recognizable as anything, much less an embryo or fetus.
As to disposal, it’s typically incinerated at a facility licensed to accept medical waste.
As far as I know, all non-radioactive medical waste is incinerated. Where I grew up, you could sometimes smell a kind of sweet-funky odor near the hospital in town. I was told by a cardiac surgeon (my best friend’s father) that I was smelling the incinerator.
Any information about the fetus would be revealed during pre-abortion procedures, not after. Most people go through some kind of abortion counseling and pre-natal tests. If they want to know things about their baby, they’ll ask then. It’s not likely that the abortion doctors could learn much (as others have pointed out, there’s often not much that’s identifiable in early abortions), but even more that it would serve no purpose to provide that information after the fact.
The first question having been answered, I had an abortion after which the nurse told me it was black. Not as in “African American” but as in already dead. I think that was supposed to be a comfort(?)
Um, no. At five weeks, all that was visible on my wife’s ultrasound was a “yolk sac”, to which was attached a tiny cluster of cells about the size of a grain of rice. This was a vaginal (not external) ultrasound, which shows more detail.
For those early weeks, we referred to our growing youngling as “Basmati.” After that, it was “Peanut.”
I suppose the answer to the questions depends on what kind of abortion it was. When my wife had a D&C after a missed abortion (otherwise known as a miscarriage), the doctor suggested that the fetus be analyzed to see any problems with it that could have caused the miscarriage could be found.
So in our case the remains underwent a series of tests on its chromosomes.
(Nothing significant was found.)
Um, as I said, I was just stating what the doctor (nurse? It was at Planned Parenthood) told me. In any case, as someone said before, it doesn’t much matter at that point anyway.
And, Max, I am sure it wasn’t your intention, but prefacing your statement with “um” is often seen as rather smart assed. Future reference.
Point taken, I apologize for the snark. Having just read an earlier debate thread about abortion, I read your comment as an attempt to inject some misinformation about how soon a developing zygote shows certain characteristics. So, I jumped a bit quickly and harshly, sorry again.
No problem. I probably should have checked up on that “fact” before I posted it, anyway. I didn’t give it much thought at the time she told me about it, other than a brief “oh, that’s interesting”.
That’s probably the first time I have been thought of as being a hard core pro-lifer, though. Harf!
I had 2 what you would call abortions, dead fetus that had to be removed as they had died and were killing me. Both were male, and I requested them to be cremated so i could put the remains in my plot at the family cemetery. The third was a straight out abortion, as I had no option, I would probably have died if it had been allowed to progress [and I had gotten my tubes tied to prevent such an occurrence, but had a failure of the tie job on one side] and it was a female. I had her cremated as well.
The medical staff were very respectful for the second and third one, but on the first one the frelling hospital let some right to lifers at me to lecture me about the evils of abortion, may they rot in fucking hell. My OBGYN severed his practice with that hospital as a result of that.
That’s because a lot of the time, miscarriages/ stillbirths can be caused by chromosomal abnormalities. The most common cause is FULL Trisomy 16 (when all the cells have an abnormal 16th chromosome) Some other commonly seen chromosomal disorders that can also cause miscarriages/stillbirths are Trisomys 18 and 13 (although those can be compatible with life)
Honestly…prolifers don’t get it at ALL. With most early abortions, it’s not neesarily a fetus that can think and survive out of the mother…Rather it’s more like the POTENTIAL for a baby. For example, doctors who have perfomed autopies on the remains have found 100% incompatible with life conditions.
WIth the later abortions, it’s b/c the baby has died in utereo. It’s THE SAME as someone deciding to turn off the machines on someone who’s been in a pvs!
The external genetalia don’t start developing until about seven and a half weeks. Take a look at this website which is very informative about development. The photos show the development of an embryoes at five weeks. And they would be so small at that point. If you scroll down and look at the chart, you can see that external genetalia continue to develop for about the next twenty weeks or so.
Well, I have to admit I happen to personally be a right to life - if I could actually manage to carry and not die, I would have 3 kids right now. I don’t believe in abortion as birth control though I do agree that everybody has the right to control their own body. I would be horrified to lecture someone else on what to do with their own bodies 
as it is NOT my business. If I was a man, I would like to have at least a say in keeping the baby [by signing paperwork to support the mother during pregnancy and taking the child exclusively, absolving the mother of any rights or responsibilities to the resulting child] but it is down to the choice of the one person who has the womb. Anything else is chattel slavery.
Honestly, lecturing someone is the worst way to try and change their minds …