The fact of life

In that New York Times Magazine cover story (see post below) “Is There a Post Abortion Syndrome?” there are a few more key points to highlight.

One is the abortion movement’s resistance to giving women true information about the procedure and its potential damage to them. It’s interesting to note that the Times story did include some abortion providers or supporters who at least tried to address the possibility of trauma to women, and that they were blocked by Planned Parenthood from referrals and support. It speaks for itself, and what it’s saying is ludicrous.

The country’s largest abortion provider, with more than 77 clinics around the country, Planned Parenthood has standards for informed consent, and these acknowledge that some women experience sadness or guilt, adding that “these feelings usually go away quickly” and that “serious psychiatric disturbances” occur rarely.

Pure fantasy. With the overwhelming evidence we have in the 34 years of abortion on demand since Roe, these claims are preposterous. Planned Parenthood doesn’t want informed consent, which is what started the legal battle in South Dakota (it’s all recounted here in posts under the ‘abortion’ category over on the right). And that grew from a similar lawsuit about informed consent in New Jersey.

In one suit in Middlesex County, N.J., Rosa Acuna claims that in April 1996, when she asked her doctor in the sixth or seventh week of her pregnancy whether “the baby was already there,” he answered, “Don’t be stupid, it’s only blood.” She is suing for emotional distress.

Acuna was told at the abortion clinic that she was carrying “a blob of tissue,” and the Times article reports “she went through with the procedure only because of this lie.” This is the foundation for the whole pro-life movement’s effort to protect women by requiring what’s required in every other medical procedure — information.

If what Acuna says is true, then her doctor may have breached his duty by lying to her about the basic facts of pregnancy.

Acuna’s suit makes the case that her doctor had a duty to tell her that she was carrying life, and that the embryo was an existing human being.

Stating the obvious here, informed consent is a requirement to make sure women receive information, not euphemisms and obfuscations of facts.

Later this year, the Supreme Court of New Jersey will review Acuna’s case. A key issue is whether her trial will include evidence about the human status of the fetus.

Acuna’s attorneys make the case that this is a medical fact.

The doctor’s lawyers say it is a religious and philosophical question.

No, it is not a religious, philosophical, theological or metaphysical question. It is a fact that life created in the womb – or the Petri dish, for crying out loud – is of the species Homo sapiens, which means human life.

South Dakota’s law also requires doctors to tell women that abortion will terminate a human life already in existence (instead of preventing life from coming into being). Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit immediately after the informed consent law in South Dakota, asking for an injunction against it.

A federal district judge agreed with Planned Parenthood that the law would force doctors to articulate the state’s viewpoint on “an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue, that is, whether a fetus is a human being.”

The state of South Dakota did not determine when human life begins. It’s settled and always has been, not by decree or edict or finding…or “viewpoint”. The blastocyst, the earliest form of life of any animal, is of the species of that animal. Planned Parenthood and all the other abortion activists can argue incessantly — and they do — about the ‘personhood of the fetus.’ But you can’t change the natural fact that human life from its conception is of the species Homo sapiens.

So let’s get the terms straight. The Oxford dictionary sitting open in front of me defines embryo as “a human offspring in the first eight weeks from conception,” and further down designates that it is “undeveloped.” An infant develops into a toddler, then an adolescent, then a teenager, then a young adult, and so on. We are always developing.

Some develop knowledge and wisdom more rapidly than others. But we all have human life, with its inherent dignity, from the very beginning. No matter what anyone’s “viewpoint” happens to be.