Looking forward to some quiet family time over Thanksgiving weekend. Catching up with Dad and everyone.
~ President of political abortion advocacy group EMILY’s List, Stephanie Schriock, via Twitter, November 22
[Photo by Michael Schwartz via Politico]
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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.
kindly send me prolife video,flier and literatures.have been your been following yot in facebook.am working to see prolife at work in my country
Are pro-choice activists not allowed to have fathers then? Are they not allowed to give thanks with their family? Why the emphasis on Dad and Thanksgiving?
As I’ve said before — and even as conservative Maggie Gallagher believes — people who want abortion legal don’t hate families. They don’t even like abortion. They support legal abortion because they believe it is the lesser of two evils and that outlawing abortion means that your mother, sister, daughter, or wife is more likely to be killed by a back-alley butcher or commit suicide in despair if she isn’t psychologically equipped to carry to term.
I think the point is the breathtaking irony of someone who works full time to keep abortion legal being grateful that she can spend time with one of her parents, ie, the ones who didn’t abort her.
I wonder if there will be children at this family gathering. What do you tell kids you do for a living when you work for Emily’s List? “I work hard to make sure Mommy could have had a doctor snuff your life out! Now let’s all have some turkey!”
oh i misread the post. so she likes but she wants people to kill their children. its like the hollywood types who say ” im pro choice but i would never abort personally.” i see jenn aniston marlo thomas christina agulaira jessica alba and pink on that roster but none have ever had abortions. i guess its for the poor schlubs like us who dont make a million a movie. or a gazillion air like cher who wants your right to kill intact in case you decide murder is better because its not a good time. i respect actresses like julia roberts and gina davis and courtney cox who steer clear of the issue.
heather says:
November 24, 2011 at 9:54 pm
oh i misread the post. so she likes but she wants people to kill their children. its like the hollywood types who say ” im pro choice but i would never abort personally.”
(Denise) Heather, I read an anonymous article called “Confessions of an Abortionist” written back when abortion was illegal. He was a doctor in a small town and a young woman came seeking an abortion. She was unmarried and the daughter of a prominent and very conservative family. The doctor asked her why she didn’t marry the man who impregnated her. She replied that he refused and said it was her problem. She also said her family would never accept her if she had a baby unmarried. He warned her against an abortion.
A couple of days later, he read in the local newspaper that she had committed suicide. He was furious at everyone: the woman for involving him in her problems, the lover who exploited her, the family that was so severe.
What happened to the embryo or fetus? It died with her. The law could not force her to bear it since it couldn’t force her to live.
Of course, you could say the woman didn’t commit suicide because of the pregnancy but because society and her family had attitudes against it. Perhaps people who wanted all pregnancies to end in birth weren’t doing what they needed to in order to change those attitudes.
The man began performing abortions because he felt it was the lesser of the possible evils.
How could this woman’s life have been saved?
well denise i have learned that by reading (as i often do and i love to ) sometimes points are missed. if this man went on to kill babies then hes a liar. this girl probably had self esteem issues that drove her to her premarital sex to begin with. didnt think her dad would understand? she never told him. chances are had she killed her baby she probably would have killed herself anyway.
heather says:
November 25, 2011 at 7:22 am
well denise i have learned that by reading (as i often do and i love to ) sometimes points are missed. if this man went on to kill babies then hes a liar. this girl probably had self esteem issues that drove her to her premarital sex to begin with. didnt think her dad would understand? she never told him. chances are had she killed her baby she probably would have killed herself anyway.
(Denise) It wasn’t just her dad. I believe she was still living at home with her mother and siblings. The family was extremely conservative and this took place in the 1960s when having a baby out of wedlock was still severely stigmatized. I remember reading of an actress back in a previous era who committed suicide because she was pregnant and unmarried.
The time frame was such that this man had good reason to believe the pregnancy was the reason she committed suicide.
I think it is quite reasonable to believe that the suicide was caused because she could not carry to term.
Heather, he became an illegal abortionist because we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. You can’t assume the suicide was not connected to the pregnancy, particularly when she came to him begging him to end the pregnancy. He was left with the knowledge that, had he terminated the pregnancy, this young woman might have gone on to live a regular life — and that his refusal to terminate the pregnancy did not lead to birth. He was haunted by the knowledge that he had not saved the one who could have been saved.
Perhaps people who oppose abortion should have done more to ensure that pregnancy was never stigmatized or a cause for disappointment or disgrace.
denise this was an Excuse for him to start killing babies. i understand the stigma back then but did it ever dawn on you that by her having sex and risking pregnancy it was her problem????
denise i cant understand why he was haunted. i wouldnt have been. her suicide was not his problem.
heather says:
November 25, 2011 at 8:10 am
denise i cant understand why he was haunted. i wouldnt have been. her suicide was not his problem.
(Denise) Then you show a lack of understanding, Heather. I would definitely have been haunted by her suicide.
Again, this is not the best of all possible worlds. I wish that she had not been fearful of her family’s reaction or of social stigma. But the fact is that people like yourself had not done the work necessary to address those problems.
He was haunted by the knowledge that, had he terminated the pregnancy or directed her to someone who could, this young woman might well have lived out a normal life span.
Did his refusal to give her the abortion lead to a birth? No. It led directly to a death.
This was not an “excuse” but a reason. He recognized that he could have prevented her death — and that there was no way to have the embryo or fetus get born when the female carrying it dies.
I wish the pregnancy had never occurred. I wish she had not had any fears of stigmatization or her family’s reaction.
But I would have certainly preferred that the abortion have been performed than that she commit suicide. That would have saved the ONE LIFE that could have been saved. The embryo or fetus was doomed anyway.
heather says:
November 25, 2011 at 8:05 am
denise this was an Excuse for him to start killing babies. i understand the stigma back then but did it ever dawn on you that by her having sex and risking pregnancy it was her problem????
(Denise) “Let her kill herself” because she had sex is hardly a “pro-life” attitude. The abortion would have left her with scars. It wouldn’t have solved every problem but it might have allowed her to live. There was no way for the embryo or fetus to live.
That’s why he started performing abortions: lives were saved that could be saved.
All differences aside, I agree with Denise’s statement about ensuring that pregnancy is never stigmatized or cause for disgrace. But I have to ask, why does that burden fall only to opposers of abortion? Why does the blame for societal attitudes in the 1960s fall to pro-lifers?
Exactly, Hilary. When I was unmarried and became pregnant in 1989, it was those who told me to abort that were stigmatizing me (what would others think, better to just make it all go away) The prolifers were the ones willing to help me.
Hilary says:
November 25, 2011 at 9:12 am
All differences aside, I agree with Denise’s statement about ensuring that pregnancy is never stigmatized or cause for disgrace. But I have to ask, why does that burden fall only to opposers of abortion? Why does the blame for societal attitudes in the 1960s fall to pro-lifers?
(Denise) Good point — conceded. More should have been done by EVERYONE!
Here’s the article by the man who became an illegal abortionist: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/martin_avery/abortionist_confessions.html
Yes, the article shows its vintage. “Gay” means cheerful and there are terms like “caught” and “in trouble.” It may also be true that this man should have taken another route like working to ensure all pregnant women are treated with respect. However, it is a peek into the WHY of abortions which may help those who want to work toward eliminating them.
but denise….you are assuming she would be alive had she aborted. you do.not know that! what if he had killed the baby and she killed.herself post abortion? then what? i am indeed being pro life as one person always dies in abortion. the baby. oh and what if he would have butchered or killed her during this abortion? wouldnt he still have blamed himself? excuses excuses…..spare me.
but denise….you are assuming she would be alive had she aborted. you do.not know that! what if he had killed the baby and she killed.herself post abortion? then what?>>
(Denise) I read about a case of that happening about a year ago. The woman had a legal abortion. IIRC, the doctor told her she had been carrying twins. She committed suicide a few months later and left a note indicating she was killing herself because of the abortion.
Although there’s no way to know whether or not it was connected, the mother of Tim, the “Oldenburg Baby” who survived a saline abortion, committed suicide 6 years later. She didn’t leave a note.
The man writing the article believed that the woman in that particular case believed she would be publicly shamed, stigmatized and rejected by her family if she was seen to be pregnant out of wedlock. He believed that she committed suicide because she couldn’t cope with what would happen when the pregnancy became visibly apparent to those around her. It does seem to me possible.
i am indeed being pro life as one person always dies in abortion. the baby. oh and what if he would have butchered or killed her during this abortion? wouldnt he still have blamed himself? excuses excuses…..spare me.>>
(Denise) He wrote that he had performed them for years and never had a girl or woman die. During the first 3 months, the death of the girl or woman getting the abortion is unlikely. He had only dealt with deaths of the pregnant female due to butchery.
Again, I do support changes that would root out the reasons for abortion.
There’s blame to go around. The doctor attended the young lady’s funeral and saw her family sobbing and grieving. He felt understandably angry with them because their attitudes meant that the woman felt it was better to die than for them to see her with an expanded belly out of wedlock. He was also angry at the callous mistreatment from her lover and at the generally harsh attitudes society had at the time toward single women who were pregnant.
Maybe it won’t do good to consider discussing this Heather but it does seem perfectly reasonable to believe that this young woman, who came to a doctor in a panic because she was pregnant, committed suicide because she couldn’t stand the idea of completing the pregnancy. You can postulate any and every kind of scenario — I can too as we both possess fertile imaginations — but logic suggests the suicide was triggered by the prospect of continuing the pregnancy.
We can agree that the roots of that fear should have been dealt with by society as a whole so that no woman ever feels “disgraced” by pregnancy.
denise we could go on and on. what if she suffered from clinical depression? why didnt he help her to get other kinds of help? he just used her as an excuse to kill babies. sorry
I LOVE how she says she’s “catching up with everyone.” No, not everyone. Many are dead.
heather says:
November 26, 2011 at 10:14 am
denise we could go on and on. what if she suffered from clinical depression? why didnt he help her to get other kinds of help? he just used her as an excuse to kill babies. sorry
(Denise) Yes we could go on and on. There are always endless “what ifs.” There’s no reason to believe she had clinical depression. However, I don’t believe the pregnancy and the suicide were just coincidental being as she was in his office just a few days before.
He saw what he did as helping women. He didn’t go to them. They came to him because they were terrified and desperate. We can agree that pregnancy should never be a cause of panic.
We can agree that other types of help both were and are needed and that often women seeking abortions are women society and their families have failed.
heather says:
November 26, 2011 at 10:14 am
denise we could go on and on. what if she suffered from clinical depression? why didnt he help her to get other kinds of help? he just used her as an excuse to kill babies. sorry
(Denise) Yes we could go on and on. There are always endless “what ifs.” There’s no reason to believe she had clinical depression. However, I don’t believe the pregnancy and the suicide were just coincidental being as she was in his office just a few days before.
He saw what he did as helping women. He didn’t go to them. They came to him because they were terrified and desperate.
We can agree that other types of help both were and are needed and that often women seeking abortions are women society and their families have failed.
denises….the guy was a no good baby killer. period! i am not discussing.it anymore. guilty? okay. again would he feel guilty had he aborted.her and she would have killed.herself anyway? you have o proof she would be alive had she not aborted. im done with this thread and will address o further comments.
Perhaps the society that stigmatizes motherhood under certain circumstances should be viewed as “a no good baby killer.” Or the families that tell women they are “disappointments” for being pregnant. Or the society that fails to provide married but impoverished women with assistance to raise children.
The man was trying to help women who were victimized by their families in particular and society as a whole. The venom should be directed to those who created the circumstances that sent women to him for help.
Heather, let me ask you this: Do you support research into ways to transplant embryos and fetuses either into willing wombs or into artificial wombs?
The fact is that the law forbidding abortion is limited in what it can do. It can’t force the embryo or fetus to come to term if the female carrying it dies.