…after you read this article?
http://www.ashevilletribune.com/consentpage.htm
There are pictures, but please take the time to read the ENTIRE article, before responding. It’s very well documented and investigated.
And your point is…?
Esprix
Well, I’m still pro-choice. And I see nothing ethically wrong with using fetal tissue. What’s the difference between using fetal tissue and using donated organs from a dead car crash victim? It’s not as if the doctors are dragging women into the clinics and forcefully aborting them to sell off the fetus.
Tassey’s right, there are pictures – rather icky-looking ones of dead and dismembered fetuses. But I noticed none of the pictures had captions explaining what we were seeing, how the dead fetus got that way, or why it was dismembered.
These uncaptioned pictures smack of the shock tactics used by the anti-abortion crowd.
Posting such pictures without any form of commentary or the establishment of context constitutes pure propaganda. How did they die? They seem too well developed for first or even second term abortion.
For what purpose were they apparently mutilated? Autopsy? The mutilation seen is not consistent with any sort of harvesting of tissue.
This looks like the standard Jesoid/anti-sex propaganda ploy of presenting stillborn babies, accidental deaths and autopsies as “ordinary abortions”. It is as exploitive as any legitimate medical use, and in the use of no purpuse but the propagation of lies.
I don’t see a problem here, either.
You have a series of stories that talk about fetal tissue gathering, and the government and Planned Parenthood’s take on it. You have interviews with people who don’t like it.
And then, to top it all off, you have a story with statments by people who work for anti-abortion groups, a nurse who doesn’t realize that there is no such thing as a “partial birth” abortion, and an “eyewitness” to the killing of babies.
I don’t mind the stories about fetal tissue gathering, but the tone “In their own words” story brings to mind the quality of reporting normally found in tabloids. What is the Asheville Tribune, anyway?
I swear, it must be the job market. J-schools are having to take the bottom of the pile these days if this is now considered good journalism. 
So it’s a blatantly anti-choice site putting up graphic pictures of an unpleasant procedure in hopes of grossing people out to the point that they outlaw abortion. Gee, what a shocker. :rolleyes:
Tassey posted in the wrong forum to begin with, and entered little more than a link without offering his/her thoughts on the subject. My guess is this is a drive-by trolling by a person who can’t articulate their own thoughts on the matter but depends instead of sensationalist tabloid journalism to scare or disgust people into agreeing with them.
I overreacted slightly. With all the underlining on the page, I missed the link to the actual story. Still the presentation of the pictures without specific explanation or context is still sensationalistic propaganda and not argument or journalism.
After looking at that, I’m still pro-choice.
In addition to the other comments on the photographs already posted, the photographs on page 2 appear to be of an adult.
It’s worth noting that all the inflammatory material came from Life Dynamics, Inc. Life Dynamics is known to have been involved in some questionable tactics in its anti-abortion fight.
There are opposing viewpoints. From Pro Choice Press: Winter 99/00:
“[in Canada] the lurid stories being spread by the mainstream media are based on a single source: an August 30, 1999 article in the right-wing Alberta Report magazine. The Alberta Report in turn got its information almost entirely from Life Dynamics Inc. (LDI) of Texas, an extremist anti-abortion organization that specializes in using deceit and harassment to discredit and vilify abortion providers. It is chilling to think that mainstream media would present without question information from a group as sinister as Life Dynamics.”
“… Profiting from the use of fetal tissue is illegal and unethical. A few clinics and hospitals across North America do donate fetal tissue to research institutions like universities, but no money changes hands, except sometimes a nominal handling fee to cover costs.”
“The only allegation currently under investigation by a U.S. Congressional committee is that two biomedical companies, acting as third parties in the collection of fetal tissue, are charging inflated handling fees to research institutions – more than what is needed to cover costs. Let there be no doubt as to the unanimous pro-choice position on this – if any type of illegal activity is happening – and nothing has been proved as yet – let’s root it out and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law.”
"As for the vicious gossip about doctors killing babies to “harvest” their organs, such hearsay is more suited to publication in the Weekly World News. These rumours originate from a single, anonymous source – “Kelly,” who claims to be a former worker at an organ donation company in Maryland. The scenes she describes constitute criminal behaviour, and a gross violation of medical ethics. If her claims are true, why is she hiding behind a pseudonym, instead of helping bring the perpetrators to justice? Why did she go to Life Dynamics with her “evidence”, instead of the police? These stories and their source are simply not credible, and abortion providers are outraged by even the suggestion of such barbaric practices.
If anyone in the anti-abortion movement knows of criminal activities involving fetal tissue in Canada or anywhere else, we urge them to report the evidence to the appropriate authorities immediately. But we doubt this will happen. Instead, we suspect that the anti-choice movement’s motive in spreading these stories – unencumbered by facts or evidence – is to incite hatred against abortion providers. Unfortunately, by publishing articles that rely entirely on an unprincipled lunatic fringe as a source, the mainstream media actually help condone and encourage harassment and violence against abortion providers."
That’s quite a fascinating little paper they’ve got there. And those “investigative journalists” they have really know how to grab a scoop.
For example, I never knew that the government was using military planes to spray poisons on us as part of a medical experiment, or that the government is chasing ranchers off their lands in order to prevent foreign owners of treasury bonds from calling in the U.S.'s debts. And I’m really looking forward to the upcoming special report: “SOCIALISM’S NEW AMERICAN FRONT.”
Boy, there’s nothing like unbiased, objective journalism, is there?
I’ve had a really slow day today, so I read the article until I could stand it no more.
It never fails to astound me what people will believe and repeat as fact. Drownin’ babies in a bucket. What’s next? Putting them in a sack with a brick and tossing them in the lake? Jesus Christ on a piece of toast, people. Evidence?
Gawd, I am so friggin’ tired of all of this partial-birth abortion clap-trap. First of all, IIRC, there were only six or seven preformed nationwide last year. A partail-birth abortion is only preformed in extreme cases where the mother’s life is in danger, or the fetus is severly deformed. It’s not as if thousands of women are getting late into their pregancies and then saying “Gee, maybe I don’t want a kid after all,” and running to the clinics in droves. Most abortion facilities won’t even preform a late-term abortion-- it’s something you have to go to a hospital to have done. Yeah, there’s a bald-faced lie here, a LOT of them, in fact, but they came from that crummy, sensationalistic, piss-poorly written article.
What’s most irritating is that most of these pro-lifers don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about 99.99% of the time. They hear it from their pastors, a friend, or off of a web site and take it for Gospel. They don’t know the facts, or even care to hear what’s the truth . . . they just spout second-hand rumors, repeating them as fact. That’ll get your ass soundly kicked here on the SDMB. Be prepared.
[evidence police]Now, say what again?[/evidence police]
Wow. This newspaper’s version of “objective journalism” makes Handgun Control, Inc. look like a bunch of meticulous fact-checkers.
Um, OK, so aborted fetuses look disgusting. Is that relevant to anything? Brain surgery probably looks disgusting as well. Let’s make decide major political and social issues based on what pictures look like.
Hmm… at least then we wouldn’t have to put up with Janet Reno anymore.
See? Got my ass kicked.
I’m thinking that I read that in * Time * Magazine. I’m going to root through them and see if I can’t find the article. Not saying I can’t be wrong (remember, I put in the “IIRC”) 
But I will try to find the article.
Hey, Lissa, that just looks like a little butt bite to me.
There is a lot going one in this area right now. It is explosive. From hospitals taking “ownership” of body parts on autopsy for no known reason to these unreleased parts being put to good use and without profit. It’s not going to go away and eventually there will be legislation. But it won’t be about the use of those body parts, it will be about permission, when it’s needed and when it isn’t.
There’s no question about waiting for a will to be read and the dead person’s wishes being known. The cornea transplants have to be nearly immediate. (Altho this is one area where a synthetic is quickly coming into being if not already in use.)
Those wallet cards aren’t enough.
Lissa, I took the liberty of looking up some statistics.
One problem is defining “partial-birth”. It is not a generally accepted medical term. It looks as if it’s a term introduced mostly by “pro-life” organizations, and it means different things to different people. The Center for Disease Control search function returns 842 documents for “abortion” but zero documents for “partial birth” or “partial-birth”. There is an interesting article from 1998 in the New England Journal of Medicine, which includes some definitions proposed by various organizations. There are many claims that “partial-birth” means a procedure called “dilatation & extraction”, but this apparently has not been the wording used in the various attempts to pass laws to ban “partial birth abortion”.
Be that as it may, it appears that your numbers are a little low. Pro-Choice Press: Spring 1997 (aCanadian organization) claims “The U.S. has recently voted to outlaw a controversial late-term abortion procedure, so-called “partial-birth abortions”. The correct medical term for the procedure is intact D&X (dilation and extraction). … About 500 or so intact D&X’s are performed every year in the U.S. for women in the third trimester (this amounts to a mere .04% of all abortions).” The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy claims in a report dated December, 1998 that “the procedure abortion foes feature in their rhetoric is extremely rare … AGI researchers have determined the D&X procedure amounts to less than 0.05 percent of all abortions in 1996, a total of about 650 of the 1.37 million abortions performed. It is estimated that only 14 facilities nationwide perform the procedure.” Both these organizations are “pro-choice”. I find similar numbers on other sites, both “pro-choice” and “pro-life” (although it appears that all the “pro-life” sites proceed from there to argue that the numbers should be much larger).
As far as the number of partial-birth/D&E abortions go, here is some of what I’ve picked up from newspaper editorials. I realize the next step is to reference these numbers. I’ll look into it.
"Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (a coalition of 200 independently owned clinics), acknowledged that he had “lied through his teeth” during the recent partial-birth abortion debate that went down to defeat with President Clinton’s veto of the ban.
“Mr. Fitzsimmons was always quick to offer the party line, namely that partial-birth abortions were very rare (only 400 or 500 per year) and were performed only to preserve a woman’s health or when the fetus had severe abnormalities. However, Fitzsimmons, citing a guilty conscience (about lying that is, not about abortions themselves), recently admitted that partial-birth abortions are not nearly as rare as had been presented-–Fitzsimmons estimated that there are between 4000 and 5000 per year. This figure may be much higher, as just one clinic in New Jersey performs 1500 partial-birth abortions every year.”
Does this New Jersey clinic really exist? As I said; I’ll look into it. I’ve heard the Fitzsimmons revelation admitted by just about every paper/source I’ve read, regardless of ideology. I get the impression that even the pro-choice movement is embarrased by him.
Well, that didn’t take long. This site references a February 25, 1997, New York Times article (but I think you have to have a password to get into the archives), and an article in the March 3, 1997, American Medical News journal. It also links the Fitzsimmons revelation to a 1995 Nightline interview.
The site is maintained by the Lutheran (Missouri synod) Office of Government Information.
Tassey, I’ve never known anyone to change their minds on this subject. I’m against abortion, and I’m against fetal tissue research. It is a very different thing to * donate re: choice * your organs after your death than it is to take a child that’s been killed and take it apart.