Salon writer showed pro-abortion “recall bias”
Pro-abortion ideologues have been known to blame “recall bias” on stories or studies that don’t go their way.
But here I believe we have an actual case of pro-abortion recall bias.
Recall that on May 26 liberal online journal Salon published the 1st person account, “Abortion saved my life,” by writer Mikki Kendall.
Kendall claimed she almost hemorrhaged to death because a hospital doctor “didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever.”
Along with several other people, I questioned many aspects of Kendall’s story, particularly her accusation that a physician would stand by and watch a patient die rather than provide life-saving treatment, only because he “decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that was going to die anyway,” as Kendall wrote.
This was a very serious charge, amounting to gross medical negligence. I pressed Kendall (pictured left) to name the doctor.
And in a follow-up blog post Kendall – who, again, had based her entire Salon piece on the allegation that an anti-abortion doctor refused to commit a life-saving abortion – admitted:
Some say I should name and shame the doctor that refused to do the procedure. If I knew why he refused I might have done just that, but since I know that there are many possible reasons that he did not do it? I’ve left him to deal with the internal procedures in place.
In other words, Kendall really had no clue why the doctor did not provide the treatment she already had scheduled (more on that in a minute): abortion. She was projecting.
In fact, when Kendall detailed this medical emergency on her blog in real time, in September 2007, she never mentioned she had been mistreated. In fact, she implied the opposite.
Kendall was at that time, as she is now, politicized and racist. She mentioned more than once she planned a career as a lawyer – as recently as a week after her abortion. She also had the wherewithal to go on a grand tirade against her parents for supposedly neglecting her during her medical crisis.
Given all that, Kendall failed to mention being neglected by a doctor during the same medical crisis? Odd. Unlikely.
It turns out Kendall thought she miscarried earlier in the month, on September 6. (See also paragraph 5 here.)
When Kendall experienced bleeding around September 19 she discovered she was still pregnant, speculating with a twin, and opted for an elective dilatation and evacuation abortion after a diagnosis of placental abruption, which she said was scheduled for “next week.” If this had been deemed medically necessary, the decision whether or not to abort would not have been left to her:
This scenario was far different than that which Kendall described in her Salon piece:
When the abruption apparently worsened on September 20, it was still not so bad that Kendall called an ambulance. She wanted to bypass the nearest hospital, Provident, which she thought was inferior, so she had her husband drive her. (Minor point, but she also contradicts this in her Salon piece.)
Then Kendall described her hospital care as nothing other than competent, timely, controlled, and even a nonemergency – during the very period of time she later claimed receiving negligent care and almost dying. Kendall also described being cared for by a team of doctors, not a solo anti-abortion nutcase…
Kendall’s story on Salon is so far different than her description of events at the time, the two cannot possibly be harmonized….
… So close to death was Kendall that she went home the morning after her midnight abortion, a day earlier than expected.
I again call on Salon to retract Kendall’s story. It is at best exaggerated and at worst invented.
[HT for Kendall blog posts: Anonymous L; Kendall photo via her Twitter page]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
you rock Jill.
Oh, I didn’t realize it was karnythia, lolz. She always was an attention seeking nut with a serious entitlement complex.
Hi Jill,
Though I always maintained Mikki’s story had more holes than swiss cheese, I thought I should give her the benefit of the doubt. I know only too well, and with my own experience with placenta previa, that a patient perspective can differ markedly from that of medical personnel.
The more I read of this woman the more holes the swiss cheese has. I don’t believe this will ever be resolved with actually viewing medical records. There is another side to this story that we are not hearing. Because of patient confidentiality the hospital is not at liberty to speak up or show her records.
It reminds me of the situation with the Indiana teenager who was alleged to have died of an “illegal abortion”. There was the usual hysteria, media hype, and the parents presented no medical records to back their account. As more investigation was done, including an analysis of the autopsy report, the more it became apparent there was no medical evidence to support her parents’ claims. I suspect this to be the situation with Mikki.
Well, there’s an LJ that’s fixin’ to get f-locked leik woah. ;)
Wow. And look at all the trolls coming out to play.
Seriously, Jill? This is getting tired and you need to stop. You’re not proving anything, except that you’re effing certifiable. But what can you expect from a woman who believes that asians eat their babies?
Told you to fall back, right? Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I don’t see how Mikki had an abortion at all. She refers to her baby/fetus as a corpse a few times. Abortion involves destroying a live human fetus, not removing a dead one.
Is this another case of proaborts conflating forced abortion with spontaneous abortion to blur the act of killing?
Way of id, maybe someone should point out to you that the last person who threatened Jill on her blog is in jail. Just sayin.
Wayofid, care to comment on the actual content of the post? If you have an alternate explanation for the conflicting accounts, I’d be interested to hear it.
um, your highlighting skillz are a little off.
Good grief, Jill, you’re still at this, digging through entries four years old from a private journal? You really have too much time on your hands! I still don’t see the contradictions you claim Mikki is making, even with your highlighting. She went to the doctor while hemorrhaging and couldn’t get treatment because treatment was a D&E, which the doctor wouldn’t/couldn’t perform. You really need to work on your reading comprehension.
Beth, I’m sorry, but where in the journal excerpts does Mikki state the doctor would not perform the D&E? Could you point it out? I don’t see that anywhere.
Joanna, the details of the surgery are in the Salon piece. Her journal excerpts barely touch on the actual surgery experience other than saying it took a long time and they gave her a transfusion first, which is exactly what she said in her Salon piece. She doesn’t talk about her friends who came to visit her in either piece, you know? But they did. Someone should tell Jill Stanek so she can write more smears and accuse my friend of misremembering because she didn’t name her hospital visitors!!!
Beth
Your rebuttal isn’t helping your case its just making you look immature. You sound like I did lying through my teeth at 14 when clearly I was guilty of what ever I was being accused of
Neither one of those story’s sound anything alike.
This just adds.
“Told you to fall back, right? Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Sad really no way to show your right so you resort to threats just screams GUILTY!
So it WASN’T a complete emergency as in life/death situation and she made a CHOICE to abort her child while he/she was still alive instead of giving him/her a best possible chance… Well, I suspected as much. Thank you Jill for clarifying that.
I loved watching Total Recall when I was young!
Beth,
Take my word for it as a medical person for over 40 years. Mikki’s account is full of holes. You want to believe this woman so badly that if she told you she kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, you wouldn’t question it.
Unlike Mrs.Arnott I do not believe you’re lying, only badly misinformed and intensely loyal to your friend. Open up your ears and your mind to some other possibilities here Beth.
The problem, Beth, is the that LJ account directly contradicts the Salon account in several places, which is troubling. Maybe it’s just me, but if I’d been through an incredibly traumatic experience that involved being neglected nearly to the point of death my medical professionals, some of that would have been reflected in my initial journal accounts. I mean, there’s a world of difference between “it took a long time and they gave her a transfusion first” and “a doctor refused to do a necessary procedure to save my life, and I nearly died as a result of his negligence.”
If the two accounts were of the same event, they would complement each other, not contradict each other, even if they were of differing perspectives.
As for her visitors, that’s really irrelevant to her claim in Salon that abortion saved her life.
I know you are loyal to your friend, and that’s an admirable quality, but an objective reader looking at the two accounts can see some major discrepancies. It casts some serious doubt on her claim that a doctor refused to perform a procedure necessary to save her life due to his objections against abortion.
Jill,
Given that Mikki has publicly impugned a physician, and by extension the hospital employing that physician, a lawsuit needs to be brought against her for libel and slander. She has very publicly waived her right to privacy, and now the physician and hospital need to clear their good names.
…”(according to my cousin who has caught the [pro-life] religion I should have gone thru the labor anyway to deliver an intact dead baby rather than have the doctors intervene in a way that meant the corpse did not remain in tact.”
[Given Kendall’s manifest tendancy to massage her memory, it would be helpful to hear her cousin’s version of events. I suspect it would add some much needed balance to the narrative.]
Sounds to me like it was Kendall who was the one who got ‘religion’.
I am of course referring to the liberal feminista ‘dead babies r us’ religion.
From Kendall’s own ‘chosen’ words, “Per her [Kendall’s doctor’s] instructions I took it easy because I wanted to give the BABY the best possible chance.”
Then in retrospect, after having contracted an acute and chronic case of ‘feminitis’ or maybe it was a relapse, Kendall’s BABY is reverse anthro-morphed into a non- person ‘fetus’ who, along with the Taliban doctor, is out to kill her.
[Kendall’s uterus is a dangerous place to be.]
My wife experienced a spontaneous miscarriage/abortion. Her ob/gyn who is pro-life met her at the hospital and performed a d&e on the already dead child. There was no handwringing, pontificating or crisis of conscience on the part of anyone involved. My wife and I grieved the death of our child and doctor expressed his heart felt condolence for our loss.
Liz,
Isn’t it annoying to make up one’s mind and then be presented with inconvenient facts?
Mary,
Isn’t it pathetic to keep harping on something that is over and done with?
Love and kisses,
Liz
Interesting, Liz. So you believe that sites such as Salon should be allowed to print fabricated stories, claimed as fact, with no repercussions? Do you believe other sites should be able to do the same?
It is important that the facts of these extreme cases are clear. Why? Because we’ve seen before where the proaborts, those in the industry itself, trot out and use these women and their accounts as “proof” to keep laws in place that allow healthy mothers to kill their healthy babies at any time for any reason.
We’ve seen it before with the Campbell twins and Danielle Deaver.
After decades of hearing proaborts highlight the most extreme situations to fuel their bloodlust, wanting abortion on demand and without apology, Jill is 100% in the right to call out discrepancies.
It is not paranoia to believe the abortion industry is looking for women like Mikki to use, they say it in their own words [empahsis mine]:
“But abortion-rights advocates tell Mother Jones they do intend to fight the 20-week bans—they’re just waiting for the right test case. “I think they are really trying to bait us into rushing into court,” says Janet Crepps, deputy director of the US legal program at the Center for Reproductive Rights.”
from http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/fetal-pain-bills
Keep up the good work, Jill. Those of us who understand what is at stake know this is not “personal” in the petty way other posters have so maturely expressed, but personal in your commitment to defend others who could die as a result of this story.
JoAnna,
Where did I say that? Oh wait, I didn’t.
Love and kisses,
Liz
Liz,
You said, “What do you want to happen?” and repeatedly urged Jill to “let it go.”
To me, that indicates that you believe Salon should not face any repercussions for printing a seemly fabricated story and claiming it as fact. If Mikki’s story is fiction or a mix of fiction and fact, it was irresponsible and unethical of Salon to present it as 100% fact.
Do you believe that media outlets such as Salon should be able to print falsehood presented as fact? If not, why do you think Jill should “drop” what seems to be very pointed evidence of a fabricated story?
Ah, so the crux of your argument is that you believe that Salon should face repercussions for printing something that Jill and her followers believe to be false.
If that’s your beef, there are several options you have. You seem pretty internet savvy. Why don’t you google it?
Love and kisses,
Liz
Jill, bravo. You’ve obviously hit a nerve here, as evidenced by all the vicious comments from the pro-aborts. This woman’s story is full of inventions and lies just to make some good anti-life propaganda.
God bless you!
No, Liz. I’m saying that Salon should retract the story given the obvious discrepancies in the two versions (the LJ version and the Salon version) that Jill has pointed out.
I’m sure Jill and her moderators are already doing what is necessary behind the scenes. I’m just curious as to how you can read both stories and come to the conclusion that they are both a retelling of the same event. There are marked conflicts.
I agree that we should just give this one a rest . . .
Philly, we cannot give lies and/or inaccuracies a pass. Pro-abortion ideologues use stories such as Kendall’s to jam legalized abortion down America’s throat. People who don’t think about this topic as much as we do feel compassion for mothers in hard situations and aren’t sure what to do other than leave abortion alone, as much as they consistently poll they dislike it.
It is up to us to push back against these tabloid stories, which I’ve more often than not found to be fraudulent. Kendall used her tragedy to inaccurately push the abortion agenda. I’ll not give that “a rest,” sorry.
Phillymiss,
I agree with Jill. The proaborts love to distort what we say, put words in our mouths, and then beat the drum incessantly about how we “lie”.
So, unless and until Mikki admits to her actual lie, why should we turn a blind eye? In a political climate where doctor’s conscience rights are in danger of being outlawed, am I the only person who sees where filthy lies such as Kendall’s fuel this fire?
Keep going, Jill!
Jill,
You’re exactly right. You can’t “give it a rest” because these stories are used to push the abortion agenda. It would be bad enough if fabricated/exaggerated stories were only used to preserve abortion in similar “hard-cases” but they use it as a sleight of hand to promote and protect all abortions for any reason.
Good work, Jill.
Well said, Dr. Nadal. The proaborts are still harping on Scott Roeder how many years later-but that’s all different, isn’t it. Despicable that ‘Mikki’ has so used her dead baby to get her fifteen minutes. I hope it was worth it.
Good work, Jill. ;)
Whoa! A thumbs-up from LaShawn Barber! I’ve only scanned these stories, but then I’ll have to throw my support to Jill’s work too. :)
Mrs. Arnott:
Beth
Your rebuttal isn’t helping your case its just making you look immature. You sound like I did lying through my teeth at 14 when clearly I was guilty of what ever I was being accused of
Neither one of those story’s sound anything alike.
This just adds.
“Told you to fall back, right? Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Sad really no way to show your right so you resort to threats just screams GUILTY!
Where exactly did I say “Told you to fall back, right? Don’t say you weren’t warned.” Those are not my words, showing once again that the folks on this site lack basic reading comprehension (not that I should be surprised given your lack of basic grammar skills). I never threatened anyone, and never would. Don’t attribute things to me falsely. I know that’s how things go around here, and you follow the lead of Ms. Stanek and her misreadings/misattribution, etc., but seriously. Learn to read. And write. They’re useful skills in the world outside of pointless blogs.
Beth, can you back up your accusations of Jill with documented proof?
Also, how do you account for the discreprancies between Mikki’s two stories?
Beth,
So you can read and write, but you evidently have difficulty reading two different stories critically. You also seem to be challenged when it comes to obstetrical literacy, something Jill has all over you.
Perhaps in your obstetrical illiteracy you failed to pick up on the improbability of Kendall’s story? Perhaps that’s where you can’t see Jill’s assertions? Perhaps that also contributes to your inability to pick up on the differences between two stories?
I’m sure that your proabortion/prodeath proclivities have not blinded you to Kendall’s lies. And as for “pointless blogs”, you seem to be squandering precious time and energy on something that you have labeled pointless.
Thanks, also, for inferring that we are all a herd of dumb sheep, following Jill’s lead mindlessly and uncritically. You are typical of the imperious proabort left, the self-anointed intellectuals whose scientific and philosophical illiteracy is stunning.
Get Well Soon.
JoAnn, she’s documented it all here herself!
As for the “discrepancies” – what I see is much like the two accounts in Genesis of creation- one is a shorter, less-detailed version, and the one in Salon, explains the situation in full. There are details in the Salon piece that I was unaware of until it was published. I don’t understand what “discrepancies” Jill thinks she’s seeing. I don’t get it at all.
She thought she had miscarried, but wasn’t sure (I’ve been there, done that). When she went in to get the dead baby/fetal tissue cleared out (also been there, done that), the doctor couldn’t or wouldn’t perform the procedure. Instead, Mikki suffered through a long, awful night, and still wound up with a dead baby and a lot of heartache. She went home the next day- big whoop. I went home the *same day* they scooped the remains of my dead twins out of me, too. Mikki is pretty tough, in case you haven’t noticed. Of course she went home… to be with her two living sons.
Gerard,
In case you didn’t realize it, the only reason I’m responding to this is that Mikki is my friend, whose good name is being dragged through the mud by Jill Stanek. You don’t know what my stance on abortion is at all. I was adopted, I struggled with fertility, and until I ran into this blog and its heartless commenters who are too busy trying to figure out how they can discredit a woman who lost her *baby* and suffered through an emotional trauma- someone who I care about deeply- I would have considered myself pro-life. Jill Stanek and her commenters have changed my opinion on abortion from undecided to pro-choice. If this is what they do to my friend, someone who had a miscarriage and nearly died, I sure don’t want to be “pro-life.”
Beth, Nikki is not getting harshly treated due to the loss of her baby. She is being treated critically because she is lying about it to push her culture of death agenda. If you do not like the treatment she is getting, maybe you should talk to her about setting the record straight with the truth instead of complaining about the legitimate criticism being leveled at her.
Beth,
Do you have specific links to Jill’s alleged misreadings and misattributions, with documented proof of wrongdoing?
As for Mikki’s stories, they are not complimentary, they are contradictory. In the Salon article, Mikki says she showed up at the ER, bleeding, and was left alone for hours on end — except to be harassed by medical students — because the doctor wouldn’t do abortions for any reason. At some point, the hospital managed to find a doctor to perform a D&E when she was at the point of death.
In her LJ account, she says she woke up on the couch bleeding, had her husband drive her to the hospital, received timely and appropriate treatment, including a blood transfusion, and ended up staying the night. She had a D&E that night, so it appears, and went home the following day.
Do you not see the conflict in these two accounts?
Again with the reading comprehension. Her name is Mikki. With an M. I can’t take you guys seriously anymore. And I have my own children to tend to. I’ll leave the goofing off and making false accusations to those of you with more time on your hands.
Beth, being pro-life doesn’t really have anything to do with who you think is heartless. It has to do with your belief on whether preborn humans should have a right to live.
If our beliefs are subject to things like personality and issue conflicts with others, then they probably were not ingrained or based on truth in the first place. Either you believe preborn children have the right to live, or you don’t. The commenters here are no more responsible for your belief system than the man in the moon.
Beth, while we’re being nitpicky, you called me JoAnn here when it’s actually JoAnna. Pot, meet kettle?
Beth:
Regardless of the muddled details of your ‘good friend’s’ story, what is being exposed here is her motive for capitalizing on the death of her child. Unless you are totally ignorant, or intentionally obtuse, you cannot fail to realize that the intent of her blogpost as reprinted on Salon is to promote abortion – and for nothing more than that, she should be called to account for the myriad inaccuracies of her illegitimate story.
In the Salon piece, she is promoting abortion – yes or no?
Beth,
I am truly sorry about your struggles with fertility. Having tried for four years to no avail before my wife became pregnant, I know all too well the heartache that comes with that territory, and what the stress can do to marital intimacy.
That having been said, how firm were your pro-life leanings if for the sake of your friend being called to task for a first story that was medically improbable, and then a changed story when confronted, you would become pro-abortion? You are so enraged that you would clear the way for babies to be butchered as retribution-by-proxy for Nikki’s having been called to task on this blog?? REALLY???!!!
Nikki is not the first woman to blame her physician for a baby’s death. She will not be the last. It is a terrible, terrible time in a woman’s life when she is in the process of losing her baby, and staring down her own mortality in the process. Many women in this extremely excited, tragic, and vulnerable moment can easily misinterpret a physician’s actions, substituting interpretation for actual motive and method of treatment. The same goes for the husbands in this moment.
I have, for the most part, refrained from commenting too deeply on this topic. However, Jill’s original critique is rock-solid from a medical perspective. If you are mad at the pro-lifers here, that’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinions. However, if your fury at folks here causes you to pick up the proabort pom-poms, that is anger that has metastasized into murderous rage, and is entirely disproportional to the events on this blog.
That’s frightening.
Beth -
Bottom line – your “friend” Mikki, like SD’s Tiffany Campbell, allowed and encouraged her child’s death story to be prostituted throughout the internet superhighway in the name of the “pro-choice” philosophy you recently adopted. I view that as completely despicable behavior. Anyone who denies that is what Mikki was doing has forgotten the headline to her Salon “based-on-true-events-but-changed-enough-to-demonize-prolife-doctor piece:” ”ABORTION SAVED MY LIFE.”
I contend – along with every medical profession who has weighed in – that the foundational premise of the Salon piece is patently false. If she is leading in with a lie, it is difficult to trust the veracity of anything Mikki has written.
Beth,
Yes one of the commenters did get mixed up and misquoted you when it was thewayofid that threatened Jill.
However, this is what concerns me:
If this is what they do to my friend, someone who had a miscarriage and nearly died, I sure don’t want to be “pro-life.”
If you believe that killing innocent children before (and after) they are born is wrong, then it won’t matter if pro-lifers are the most obnoxious creatures in this end of the galaxy. You surely can’t be saying that you would now support elective abortion, killing developing children for any reason, at any time, without apology, just because we can be obnoxious?
You can’t mean that, even if pro-lifers have mispelled your friend’s name, misquoted you, etc. I just don’t believe that. However, I do believe that you are angry, and that its understandable because you feel loyal to your friend. There’s a bigger picture here. Your friend wanted to use her story to promote abortion on demand. Sure, she’s getting chewed out by pro-lifers. Sure, it doesn’t feel fair or pleasant. But really, abortion is wrong no matter who says it’s wrong or who says it’s not wrong. It is.
Abortion advocates like the color gray. But it’s not a gray issue. Either you don’t interfere with the child’s life and you do your best, or you kill it deliberately. Abortion advocates would love if we didn’t know the difference between elective abortion and miscarriage. But there is a difference. Don’t let the abortion advocates fool you.
Jill, you need to stop this ridiculous hate campaign of yours. Seriously. Pouring through someone’s blog to get more dirt to use in this vendetta of yours is pathetic. You’re dangerously obsessed. Get help.
Lilly, care to comment on the actual content of the post? If you have an alternate explanation for the conflicting accounts, I’d be interested to hear it.
Given that Mikki is using her story to promote abortion on demand, I would think twice before using words like “hate campaign” and “vendetta.” They can also be applied to Mikki, and there’s ample evidence that she may have “embellished” her story to that end.
I have to agree: those who are decrying the “obsession” with Mikki’s story have been rather loath to fill in the holes in Mikki’s story. I’m also rather puzzled over their selective outrage over “criticisms levelled at a woman who lost her baby”, when part of the very story was Mikki’s anger at being denied an abortion (i.e. targetted killing) of that self-same child! Can someone on “that side of the issue” please explain this, for me?
Okay Lilly, I’m calling you out.
Define “hate,” because proaborts (as all liberals) brand any, ANY dissenting philosophy or speech as “hate” speech. The only hatred I see here is the hatred of the truth that Jill has exposed, which has had the effect of kicking over a hornets’ nest. I’ve seldom seen so many proaborts swirling so angrily around this blog.
The hate is yours, Lilly.
Explain how Nikki can at once be torn asunder with grief at having lost her baby, and being fllled with rage over having been denied an abortion. Forget Jill, and explain that to us.
And don’t forget to define “hate”.
I wasn’t miss-quoting her I was just throwing in that comment to show how weak the Mikki/Pro choice defense is I’m sure you have better then you were not there.
I knew who stated it I just didn’t feel the need to address that person since they stopped commenting on this thread.
The “this adds” was for the entire pro choice rebuttal to see how poor their defense was.
Liz 9:22am,
Over and done with? Its Mikki that wouldn’t let this be over and done with.
Lilly,
I would think someone who, to be charitable, greatly embellishes a personal experience, trashes people in the process, and can’t even keep her story straight, is the one with the problem, not someone like Jill who points this out.
Like I said to Liz, facts can sure be annoying. Does it in some way cause you great discomfort to have Jill point out Mikki’s inconsistencies?
Beth,
Loyalty, like love, can make one blind. Take a deep breath and be prepared to accept the fact that Mikki may not have been completely forthright. As a medical professional I did try to be charitable and give her the benefit of the doubt. But differing accounts is pushing my charitable inclinations to their limits. She can say whatever she wants. Any of us can embellish an event in our lives, even make it up. Hospital records, which are legal documents and which Mikki has not chosen to make public, would likely give us a far more accurate account. It is important that you keep an open mind on this Beth. There is another side to this story and you may be very unpleasantly surprised.
Wow I cannot believe Jill is still trying to squeeze a story out of this… Let it go, you got caught making false claims about another writer based solely on speculation of one article. Yes you have a small group of loyal followers on this blog that will defend you no matter how wrong or right you maybe but anyone reading this story with an objective eye can see your claims of fraud are baseless. Jill please keep going with your Glen Beck chalkboard conclusions, most of us see your over reaching bias and it discredits your opinion more each time you try to salvage a anti-choice story out of the facts.
Gerald Nadal wrote <i>Explain how Nikki can at once be torn asunder with grief at having lost her baby, and being fllled with rage over having been denied an abortion. Forget Jill, and explain that to us.</i>
As Ms. Kendall’s blog entries (that Jill Stanek has so obsessively pored over and extracted to try, unsucessfully, to support her claim that Kendall is a liar) show, she and her husband TRIED to keep the baby, they would have carried to term if at all possible. THEN, they realized that the baby was dead inside her. As she SAID, in the Salon article and her old entries, her choices were an abortion procedure or bleeding to death to deliver a baby which was DEAD. She had two sentient, living sons outside of her womb, but your “compassionate” ilk seems to think that they should have lived without a mother. You are definitely upholding the liberal stereotype that you are “pro-life” only until the life is outside the womb!
Many parents begin thinking of their “babies” as soon as they first suspect that a woman might be pregant. There is no contradiciton in calling the same entity a fetus or a baby. In fact, some statistics show a rise in the number of miscarriages. The number is just the same, but advances in pregnancy testing make it possible to detect pregnancies even before the woman misses her period, and at least 1/3 of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, to use the layman’s term. This can lead to emotional pain for the would-be mother, when 20 years ago that miscarriage would have seemed to be a late period.
In Ms. Kendall’s case, her pregnancy did not exit her body. She wrote a post in response to an unfeeling, unthinking comment that “no-one ever needs an abortion.” She needed one. She did not submit the piece to Salon, they approached her because it was well-written and NOT contradictory. Stanek can state as much as she likes that Kendall is a liar, but continuing to claim that the earth is flat doesn’t flatten it.
Saying that her womb is a dangerous place is another disgusting, unfeeling statement; she managed to have two beautiful, healthy, WANTED, LOVED children. I pity the children raised by people who consider it their mission to use other people’s pain to further their cause.
Wow, LittleZ, I can’t believe that you also can’t read or think critically!
Well, actually, that’s the hallmark of the narcissistic proabort; so, actually, I can. The sum total of proabort commentary here is “Jill lied! Jill lied!!”
Yet, none of you can account for Nikki presenting a medically improbable story, changing it when confronted, and simultaneously lamenting the premature death of her baby while raging at being denied an abortion of that same baby, and refusing to open her medical records to substantiate her story. If it were 1/10 as bad as she says, it would be a slam-dunk lawsuit.
This is actually a new low for the trolls.
Another Beth,
Puh-leeze. How many times must medical people on this blog, myself included, stress that Mikki’s story is full of holes? This includes people with experience in surgery, emergency, and labor and delivery nursing. Have you seen Mikki’s medical records? Did you read nurse’s notes, physician diagnosis, orders, and progress notes? Did you read the OR record? What were the surgical findings? What medications did she receive during her stay? So tell us Another Beth about your vast knowledge of the medical aspects of Mikki’s care, not her conflicting accounts.
Take the advice I gave the other Beth. Accept the fact this account of Mikki’s may not be completely forthright and there is another side you know nothing about.
I’m really getting curious as to how many of these trolls are retreads and sock-puppets, and how many are a genuine new brood that hatched. Troll-talk is usually tediously repetitive, but some of these are eerily similar in syntax, etc. (e.g. “You’re obsessed! Let it go, already! No, wait, keep going, since we can see through your lies!”) Not an ounce of critical thought (much less self-control) in the lot.
Hi Gerard Nadal,
Speaking of lawsuits, wouldn’t you think this situation would have some feminist lawyer salivating? I expect to hear that Gloria Allred is on this case any day now.
So, any untruth from prolife is a lie, but when proaborts lie it’s ‘recall bias.’ No double standard there, eh? ROFL.
Another Beth,
What you said would be great, except for a couple of things (well more than these, but let’s start with these):
1. If Ms. Kendall’s baby was dead when she arrived at the hospital or shortly thereafter, then what she sought and received was NOT, repeat NOT, an abortion, but rather, the medical completion of a miscarriage. No pro-life doctor would refuse to remove a dead child in these circumstances. I have no idea why Ms. Kendall’s doctor was MIA on her case, and by her own admission, neither does she. Stories that are not even about abortion should not be use to complain about doctors who won’t perform abortions, or to say that abortions are necessary, because if what you said is true, her story would not be in any way evidence for this.
2. After reading both the story and the blog entries, I am totally confused as to when, if ever, Ms. Kendall knew her child was dead. I don’t think this is likely something she could have determined by herself at home. If she got confirmation of this from a doctor during her earlier visit or on her emergency trip to the hospital, I’m not seeing it. In fact, in her Salon article, she even says that her baby died or was dying inside her why she was watching it on the ultrasound during her long wait, but only a few medical students were there, and this doesn’t seem like a firm diagnosis.
So was her child dead or not? Did she have an abortion or a miscarriage? And why are so many of the details changed or dropped by the time we get to the Salon article?
I think it’s reasonable to at least ask these questions.
So the problem here is that a mom (Mikki) tells all about her miscarriage story to promote abortion.
As another mom who has lost two children through miscarriage, I am sad for Mkki and her family. Still, I find this behavior from the prochoice crowd deeply despicable.
Pleeeease, someone reading this who is prochoice, tell me why this is done. What do you hope to gain? Conflating abortion with miscarriage is dishonest and offensive.
Even from the prochoice POV, a woman who suffers the loss of a child through miscarriage/spontaneous abortion is not ‘exercising her freedom’. Miscarriage is NOT A CHOICE. Abortion, when not coerced, IS A CHOICE. It is incredibly insulting to women to pretend the two experiences are the same.
Mary have you seen Mikki’s medical records? Did you read nurse’s notes, physician diagnosis, orders, and progress notes? Did you read the OR record? What were the surgical findings? What medications did she receive during her stay? So tell us Mary, about your vast knowledge of the medical aspects of Mikki’s care, not her conflicting accounts.
None of you have access to this information but you still think your keyboard diagnosis is solid…. You have no problem calling Mikki a liar before you have anymore access to her medical records than the rest of us. As for Jill all she has proved is that she can jump to conclusion without anything more than speculation. That is not journalism.
Another Beth,
I truly feel for proaborts. I truly do. You are so terribly, terribly ignorant and uneducated and try to argue with medical professionals such as Jill Stanek, using terms you do no understand and logic that wouldn’t pass muster in a seventh grade classroom.
School’s in session, so pay attention and you’ll learn something here.
First is the word “Pregnancy”. You state:
“In Ms. Kendall’s case, her pregnancy did not exit her body.”
Pregnancy is a term that describes the state of a woman’s body. Specifically, it relates to a fullness with child. In literature, we discuss a “pregnant pause”, meaning that the silent moment is filled with meaning/anticipation. The woman is pregnant with a baby. The baby is NOT a pregnancy. A woman who has in vitro fertilization may have 30 embryos in a Petri dish, but before implantation, she is not pregnant, as none of her offspring are within her womb to create the condition of the woman being pregnant.
The “pregnancy” did not exit Kendall’s body. Again, pregnancy is a state of being for a mother. She is pregnant WITH child.
Now for this little gem:
“THEN, they realized that the baby was dead inside her. As she SAID, in the Salon article and her old entries, her choices were an abortion procedure or bleeding to death to deliver a baby which was DEAD. ”
Abortion is a procedure that kills a living baby in the womb. You can’t abort a dead baby. To abort is to cancel a dynamic process that is already underway. If the baby is dead, depending on where the woman was in the pregnancy, the dead baby is either removed, or delivered as a stillborn.
Words matter, and in medicine we use very, VERY precise technical language to clear up any doubt as to what is being done. Proaborts have raised obfuscation of medical jargon to an art form. That stupidity doesn’t fly here. If I thought Jill were wrong in her reading of the story, or unjust in her treatment of Kendall, I would have engaged in a little fraternal correction. However, true to form, Jill has checked and double-checked and drawn on her considerable experience in OB nursing with this story. When one works for years in a field, a BS smear job is as glaring as a car’s highbeams.
Sorry Beth, but you simply are out of your depth on this one. You were never even close.
Biggz,
I take Mikki at her word when she says that her baby was dead. Don’t you? If her baby was dead, then she didn’t have an abortion. She needed a D&E to remove all the tissue from her dead baby/fetus, not to destroy a living baby/fetus.
(I’m using both ‘baby’ and ‘fetus’ because so does Mikki.)
If she never had an abortion, then how did abortion save her life? What does her miscarriage have to do with abortion, anyway?
Careful with tossing tid-bits to the trolls, y’all…
Biggz, 6:39PM
Please directly quote me making a keyboard diagnosis, verbatim. Directly quote me calling Mikki a liar. On the contrary I tried to give her every benefit of the doubt and allow that perhaps this was a patient’s perspective as opposed to that of the medical staff. Its like the police officer that listens to a suspect and knows his/her story is full of holes. They may not be able to prove guilt at that point, the police may have no evidence, but they are highly suspicious of the suspect’s story, especially if his/her story changes. Well, Biggz, medical people can do the same thing. As I pointed out, on this blog we have people with experience in surgery, emergency, and labor and delivery nursing. We are all raising questions here.
I argue there are two sides to this story and we have only gotten one. I want to see BOTH.
Hi Mary Ann,
Exactly. From what I have read so far this was an obstetrical emergency, not an abortion situation.
Gerald N. You made me smile on so many levels reading your last comment :D…
Now, I notice many pro-aborts trolling and saying things like “you are still at this?” and remarks hinting for her to get a job/life/etc…
When…. in all reality, I find that rather ironic if anything that someone who spends their time trolling article pages of others that they clearly don’t like, yet clearly obsess over enough to follow their every word and clearly have enough time in every day to do so… Are telling others what to do job/life wise? Really? That deserves a L-O-L.
I would be flattered if I were Jill, she obviously causes a stir, and obviously makes a whole heck of a lot more sense than the Mikki girl (who also stated on her profile blog page that she writes fiction) ….. hmmmm.
-Jenni Coffin -ProLife advocate.
And from my experience, this type of thing is why so many people identify as “pro-choice”. They know someone or have friends or family members that they just won’t let themselves think objectively about that have had abortions, and they can’t wrap their minds around how wrong the whole thing is, nor will they even let themselves consider it, so they embrace the euphemisms of “choice”, and defend those people to the end because they’re too afraid to give it any real thought. Sad.
Xalisae, that is sad. And what a pretty name you have :)
I think it is sad but you know, only 1/3 of people who are faced with child abuse will actually report it. Those who see their neighbor or know their neighbor beats their toddler, molests, etc… only 1/3 report it. It is that VERY same logic that defends it too, they don’t want to empose on others, or defend the innocent. Same thought process, I don’t sugar-coat what child abuse and child murder is, I pity those who can.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jenni-Coffin-Pro-Life-Educator/191344774243205
I’ve been reading the back and forth on this series of posts about Ms. Kendall’s experiences, and it has been quite interesting to watch the debate on both sides of the issue. (I have also read the Salon article which was the catalyst for this particular series of blog posts.)
I guess I’m a bit confused, though, at what the ultimate purpose actually is of the posts discussing Ms. Kandall’s medical procedures. Is it to get Salon to retract the article? To attempt to humiliate Ms. Kendall? (Although she seems like a pretty tough cookie to have dealt with the scrutiny from your faithful readers, so I don’t know how effective it would actually be.) To get Ms. Kendall to change her mind regarding her abortion? It appears — from where I sit, anyway – that perhaps the purpose is a little of all three, but I would appreciate any clarification in that regard.
Hi Eva D,
To begin with, Mikki made the decision to post her personal story on the internet. No one went prowling for information on her. I never heard of the woman until she did.
When you put your personal experience on the internet to be read by millions of people you have to expect some kind of feedback. Mikki chose to put herself in this position. She also chose to give only her side of the story, and not a consistent version at that, with no documentation to back up her claims. We have only one side of this story.
Keep in mind Eva that people can say anything and make any kind of accusations, especially when they don’t have to back it up. Expecting people to back their claims with evidence and documentation is hardly unreasonable or an attempt to humiliate someone.
Medical people on this blog, myself included, have some very serious reservations about her alleged experience, based on our own experiences working in surgery, ER, and labor and delivery. I have even tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, a patient’s perspective can be entirely different from that of the medical personnel, but her story remains full of holes.
Until I see medical documentation I will remain unconvinced where her personal account is concerned.
Eva,
The point in discussing Mikki’s story is to call out people who use MISCARRIAGE to bolster support for ABORTION. It’s not about humiliating anyone. It’s about a call for honesty. If you support abortion- defend abortion. But it’s dishonest and cruel to women who have had miscarriages to try to use personal miscarriage stories to blur the lines between miscarriage and abortion to rally for abortion.
Again, since MIKKI repeatedly says that, sadly, her baby/fetus had died inside her, she did not need or have or choose an abortion. Abortion does not happen after the baby/fetus has died, abortion is the act of forcibly destroying/killing the baby/fetus.
Again, defenders of the choice for abortion should be able to promote their cause by defending abortion if it’s truly a right, and a just cause. While I am sad about Mikki’s loss, her story is about miscarriage, not abortion.
Eva,
One great purpose of exploring this story and exposing the toxic brew of lies, distortions and ignorance is to keep the public dialogue on this matter dealing in the facts.
There has been a movement afoot by the proaborts for years to strip physicians of their conscience rights regarding abortion. If this is successful, pro-life OB?Gyn’s could be sanctioned and expelled from their governing body (The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists), loose their diplomas in OB/Gyn, and even be stripped of their medical licenses for refusing to perform abortions.
Stories such as Kendall’s, which asserts that a pro-life doctor refused her life-saving intervention, are meant to portray pro-life OB/Gyn’s as callous to women to the point of standing by and watching them die.
It is a vicious lie, and Kendall’s article was a series of distortions and outright lies meant to do just that. There is a great deal at stake here, and women deserve to have medical governance policy formulated in an environment that deals strictly in fact, not prochoice fiction.
Amen Gerald^ Exactly.
She is the one trying to “humiliate” or “change the views” of people with pure hot lies. Her blog profile says she writes fiction, and is a liberal, has plenty of angry cursing(I assume she needs anger management from what I see and hear, unless she thinks she is funny?) and even refers to her baby she -miscarried- or whatever as a corpse, not a baby. Pretty heartless, and sad attempt at a joke if it is one, pathetic even. If she didn’t publicly try to damn the Pro-Life movement with pure fiction, and get caught red-handed in doing so with her inconsistent words and obvious fallacies, then we wouldn’t be discussing this in the first place.
It is clear to me this is beyond the prochoice vs. prolife debate, and prochoicers with any common sense should see that as well. This is about making up lies to make others look bad and stirring up communities with fiction.
Moral of the story? We all learned it at about 3 years old or so…
Don’t lie.
-Jenni