Foetuses are alive. The squamous epithelial cheek cells I slough off and swallow every minute are alive (and in this day and age have every potential to become children).
The difference I outlined in my original post. Late term terminations are not done on a whim. They are not like earlier abortions, where a mother simply does not want to have a child. These are terminations of wanted, eagerly awaited pregnancies. Pregnancies that circumstance has suddenly rendered untenable, even dangerous. They are also terminations for which the mother was in no fit state to undergo the procedure earlier, such as some victims of rape. The physical and psychological toll on the mothers is great: none of them ever wanted to be in that situation. Which makes it all the more commendable the level of after care their patients are given to help them through such a terrible time. If anything, late term abortions are far more necessary than earlier abortions.
Not that this matters at all to to the children of the foetus god.
:
In 1991 and until his murder, Dr. Tiller was one of the few doctors in this country who performed late-term abortions. Despite what Operation Rescue claimed, none of his clients were ending pregnancies on a whim. None of them wanted to be there.
Each case was a tragedy -- a much anticipated child discovered to have only a partially formed head, a baby that was dying in the womb and had to be delivered, a child with medical problems so profound as to be unimaginable, a diagnosis that meant a child's life outside its mother's body would be both brief and brutal.
Tiller's clients often included couples who had been hoping to become parents but had their hearts broken late in pregnancy when they received horrifying medical news about their much-wanted babies.
These people got no mercy from Operation Rescue.
They were hounded and harassed, shoved and shouted at on the most heart-breaking day of their lives. In order for patients to make it to their appointments, clinic supporters had to coordinate each woman's arrival with walkie-talkies. They shielded the patient by forming a flying wedge of bodies that rushed through the crowd to escort her into the building.
I watched one woman sobbing as she and her husband were helped into the clinic. Her tears went unnoticed by the hundreds of protestors surrounding her who shrieked and wailed and tried to trip the people escorting her to the door.
It was horrible.
|