Safe, Legal, and Rare?

Former USA President Bill Clinton used this phrase to express his abortion position. He stated that he wished abortion to be safe for the women, legal, and to take place only very rarely.

Abortion is still legal in the United States, and 1,200,000 abortions took place in 2008. Legal yes, rare...no. How about safe for women?

Dr. Warren Hern, a leading American abortion doctor, told the 18th Annual Meeting of the National Abortion Federation: "I have to say this: There's a lot of crummy medicine being practiced out there in providing abortion services, and I think that some of the stuff I see coming across my desk is very upsetting...We have to do this right or we shouldn't do it."

The state of New York (USA) legalized abortion in 1970. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a medical doctor instrumental in legalizing abortion in the state, was challenged with preparing a recently-opened abortion clinic for inspection. The administrator of the clinic told him that the doctors there were "atrocious...sadists, drunks, incompetents, sex maniacs, thieves, butchers, and lunatics...half of them don't even wash their hands anymore before doing an abortion...they refuse to use masks or caps, and their mustaches are dragging into the suction machines." Nathanson then toured the clinic and, according to the book Lime 5, found it "chaotic, crowded, inadequately lighted, ill-equipped, poorly run, poorly staffed, dirty, and operating with no back-up emergency hospital". Nathanson did manage to improve standards at the clinic in time for the inspection. After one incident-free abortion performed for the state inspector, the clinic received approval. Unfortunately, the next woman who underwent an abortion at the clinic suffered a perforated uterus and was rushed to a local emergency room. Nathanson himself grew increasingly disillusioned with abortion and became a pro-life advocate.

The problems at the clinic Nathanson so briefly improved continued. In 1988 a 19-year-old woman died after an abortion at the clinic. That same year health department inspections concluded the clinic regularly put its patients at "continuing and serious risk" by using "procedures and equipment that were grossly irresponsible and in contravention of accepted medical practice". The 1988 inspection listed over a dozen other deficiencies at the clinic, including expired emergency medicines, a lack of hand-washing sinks in the examination room, and no staff qualified to give anaesthesia.

Such is the state of abortion in the most medically-advanced nation in the world. It is hard to imagine that health care systems in developing nations like Swaziland would provide vastly better abortion care.

Instead, let us support mothers and children in life-giving ways during pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond. Let us work for healthy moms and children. No to abortion, yes to life.

Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com