Life Links 11-28-11
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- The Washington Post is covering the case of the New Jersey hospital attempting to force nurses to assist in abortions:
One of the nurses, Fe Esperanza R. Vinoya, said a manager told her: “You just have to catch the baby’s head. Don’t worry, it’s already dead.”
The ACLU says who cares about conscience, nurses should be forced to catch dead baby heads:
“These are health-care professionals who work at a publicly funded hospital saying that they do not want to do the job they were hired to do, including caring for a woman before or after surgery,” said Jennifer Dalven of the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project. “People have a right to their beliefs, but that shouldn’t give them the right to discriminate against patients who need medical care.”
- A pro-life group in New Zealand used a location of statue featuring a large hand holding a tiny baby child to launch balloons and spread the pro-life message. The group which commissioned the statue and the clueless artist are upset:
Meanwhile, a surprised Mr. [Bodhi] Vincent said the anti-abortion group’s message was not the intent of his sculpture.
“Voices Against Violence was the organisation that commissioned it, and it’s about nurturing and protecting the most vulnerable in our community, which is children.”
- A Nashville woman has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit, alleging the treatment she received while in jail caused her to miscarry and then jail staff improperly disposed of her baby:
[Lisa Marie] Allison said prison staff denied her requests to take another test and other medical requests until Nov. 13, 2010, her birthday, when she began to experience “sudden and excruciating abdominal pain” during a Bible study.
Allison said she went across the hall to a bathroom, was bleeding profusely and miscarried into a toilet. She was later taken to Nashville General Hospital.
Prison employees were under instructions from paramedics and a doctor to preserve the fetus, according to the lawsuit, but their attempts to unclog the toilet destroyed it.
- The Californian has a long story on a couple whose child’s spina bifida was repaired in the womb.:
“The ultrasound tech was nervous; you could tell something was wrong,” Marriah [Peltzer] said earlier this year in the couple’s Winchester [CA] home. “She told us, ‘The fetus would have been a girl.’ People abort babies with spina bifida. That’s what you do. I said I didn’t want anything to do with abortion.”…
A team of 27 medical professionals performed the procedure. Marriah’s uterus was removed and placed on her stomach. Doctors entered the uterus and the still-forming fetal spine and attached fetal skin to the hole in the fetus’s lower back. The uterus then was replaced inside Marriah and she was sewn back up. After the surgery, she was bedridden for three months while her baby continued to grow….
Kaleah Erin Peltzer was born Oct. 18, 2010, by Cesarean section. Although premature, she was a healthy baby girl.
“She was our miracle baby,” Marriah said.
[Photos via stuff.co.nz and Don Boomer of NCTimes.com]
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.
When my wife worked at a public hospital (she retired about 20 years ago), she was given the choice as to whether or not to assist at abortions. Of course, she said she would not, and her choice was honored. My how things have changed.
“attempting to force nurses to assist in abortions” – not true.
From what can be read at more reliable media sources, they are not being forced to participate in termination procedures.
They are only being asked to provide pre and post procedural care just like with any other procedure.
pre and post care facilitate the procedure. That is participating. They shouldn’t have to do it. I wouldn’t do anything that helped an abortion occur.
Reality, really? Because every news article I’ve read about it, including direct quotes from the nurses and their lawyers, have stated that they were scheduled for manadatory ‘training’ that included attending and assisting in an actual abortion. That was what started this mess to begin with. They were forcing, against federal law, those nurses to attend an abortion or be fired.
Sounds like you’ve only been reading articles which repeat the nurses claims Jespren. They haven’t been forced to undertake the activities they claim, but what would you expect them to say?
So xalisae, if a women was transferred from an abortion clinic to the hospital because something went wrong these nurses would be within their rights to refuse to administer treatment?
Well let’s see, given that they had to get an injuction to avoid being fired or forced, and given that the hospital’s official statement was they would abide by the injunction ‘for now’ and the nurses are having to continue this fight in court…there isn’t a single reason why *not* to believe the word of multiple people who have no reason to lie. And, there is a huge difference between providing emergent care to a wounded individual, regardless of how that wounding came about, and providing standard ‘post op’ care for an immoral elective procedure. There is a world of difference between rushing to take a pulse on a woman who is bleeding out because some hack perforated her uterus, and attending a healthy woman to make sure and collect any passed ‘remains’ so the lab can verify the abortive woman didn’t retain fetal parts. One is saving a life (remember the whole ‘pro-life’ thing?) The other is actively helping facilitate abortions.
Before c-sections the only possible way to save the mother given certain fetal presentations was to disect the baby in the birth canal, it was a horrible procedure, that even the most pro-life doctor at one point in time would do, because it was the only option. The c-section and forcept delivery were specifically designed to make that necessity a barbarous thing of the past. Under no circumstance today does an abortion equal health care. Nurses and doctors are hired to proform health care. If someone lying dying, they are going to help. But if someone is trying to kill, any doc or nurse worth their salt is going to turn away and refuse to participate. This isn’t the middle ages, we don’t need to dismember living humans because they are stuck in the birth canal any more. And there has never been a need to dismember them before that point.
“multiple people who have no reason to lie” – ya think?
“a wounded individual, regardless of how that wounding came about, and providing standard ‘post op’ care for an immoral elective procedure” – abortion is not immoral or illegal. What about tubal ligation? Plastic surgery? Gay HIV patients?
“Nurses and doctors are hired to proform health care” – and abortion is a part of health care.
Reality, abortion is immoral, and a great many people agree with me. People do not wish to be involved in things which they deem to be immoral. And, while I wish the word ‘immoral’ was the important one in that sentence, it’s not. Rather “elective” is. Doctors already have wide latidute to turn down, refuse, or qualify elective procedures. Plastic surgery? Absolutely, no doctor is required to preform plastic surgery. They can and do deny the procedure to anyone *they* deem is a poor canidate, mentally instable, have unrealistic outcomes, has an addiction to the procedure, or has an unrealistic grasp on the dangers. People get turned away from: plastic surgery, bariatric surgery, sterilizations, pain management, in fact, abortion is the *only* elective procedure which ‘pro-choice’ people wish to force a doctor/nurse to perform. Because choice doesn’t matter, only abortion matters.
If people were really ‘pro-choice’ and wanted abortion to be looked at as just another elective procedure than no doctor would be forced to preform one, refer for one, or perscribe for one, furthermore, one could expect the same kind of pre-screening, and documentation that one finds with other elective procedures. Somehow though, a doctor refusing to preform an abortion and placing in the patients medical file “patient has unrealistic expectations of outcome following abortion and is not mentally stable for procedure, couseling recommended” would likely cause pro-aborts everywhere to go rabid. But the same thing on say, a repeat liposuction sugery, is just a doctor doing his due deligence and looking out for his patient’s best interest in recognizing possible existings factors. No one has to sue a hospital to avoid being forced to provide pain drugs to someone he doesn’t think will be helped by them, but let a health care worker tell an abortion seeker the same thing and all hell breaks loose!
“abortion is immoral” – subjective opinion.
“and a great many people agree with me” – not the majority apparently.
“than no doctor would be forced to preform one, refer for one, or perscribe for one,” – they’re not.
The nurses are not being forced to participate in terminations.
“Abortion is a part of healthcare”. That is probably the biggest bunch of BS I’ve seen posted recently. I’ve worked in healthcare for years, helped many women and their families; never helped pre-op, operatively or postop in “dialation, mutilation, search and destroy missions”, abortion isn’t healthcare. Goodnight.
Reality, poll after poll show the majority does find abortion, especially abortion on demand, immoral. Even a majority of doctors. Abortion was not something ‘the majority’ voted on. Quite the opposite, unable to change the law through popular opinion, because the majority, then and now, see abortion as immoral, activists had to overrule democatic populous vote by convincing 9 men to create a fictious ‘right’ not found in either history nor a plain reading of the Consitution. Not only that but they used admittedly fradulent statistics and poor science to do it. If ‘abortion on demand’ actually went for a vote in the U.S., polls say support is less than 30%. You *might* be able to pass legalization of abortion for rape and the every-ambigous ‘life of the mother’. But don’t fool yourself, there are more Americans than not that think abortion is wrong.
But as far as this specific goes. I suppose it comes down to, I believe what the nurses have stated in their sworn statements, having no reason to believe they are lying and no statement from the hospital contradicting them, and you choose to believe they are lying. I think that may say a great deal more about your mindset than the case itself.
Off to bed now, good night.
Killing children is immoral. It SHOULD also be illegal.
Tubal ligation is not. I have one, and as much as it sucks to have now, I’m glad I got it when I did. Plastic surgery-as stupid as it tends to be most times-is not something to crusade against because the only person being harmed is the one making the choice for themselves to be harmed in such a way so more power to ’em because they’re not harming anyone else unlike in the case of abortion. I think HIV patients should be quarantined on a tropical island somewhere and given care at a research facility but that’d make too much sense so liberals would call me “insensitive” because they get “having common sense” and “insensitive” mixed up.
Abortion isn’t health care. Health care heals human beings. Abortion kills healthy human beings.
‘Reality’ has officially graduated to troll status. Her comments are really nothing more than trying to get reaction. No reasonable person could ‘really’ believe that catching the dead baby is not participating in an abortion. On topic; I am glad the ACLU is challenging this cause there is no way it will stand and it shows the so ca;;ed ‘pro-choice’ movement is really a pro-abort movement and shows pro-aborts like ‘Reality’ in a bad light.
“No reasonable person could ‘really’ believe that catching the dead baby is not participating in an abortion.” – no reasonable person could ‘really’ believe that that is what was or would be forced upon these nurses.
At least I am in the light ;-)
We have ultrasound. We don’t need light to see where we are looking.
You guys are willfully blind, regardless of how much (bad) light is cast upon you.
Not so keen on that ultrasound when it’s used to detect fetal abnormalities though are you.
Then it’s three wise monkeys and ‘no, no, no, it’ll all be ok.
I stand in unlimited, unrestricted and non-shadowed light.
Reality, how do you know the nurse wasn’t asked to “just catch the baby’s head”? She said she was, the hospital hasn’t denied it, so what proof do you have that she wasn’t being asked to do that? You were there? How can the hospital agree not to force the nurses “for now” if they were never in the first place attempting to force the nurses? If I never once forced my children to eat chicken livers and never intended to, it wouldn’t make since for me to sign a paper promising not to force chicken livers on them “for now” now would it?
In your opinion, The person/people who drive mom to/from the “clinic”, the anesthesiologist, the person who prepares the mother, the person who catches/reassembles the dead baby’s parts, the person who handles the paperwork and/or the payment, the person who cleans up mom and the room, the person who hands mom the “aftercare” papers and prescription, non of these people are assisting in the abortion? Only the abortionist? None of these other people have a hand in it? You must believe that if you honestly believe these nurses aren’t being asked to participate in abortion.
And you thinking you stand in “unlimited, unrestricted and non-shadowed light” is hilarious! :D