[Vision2020] The Trials and Tribulations of Providing and Obtaining Legal Abortions

[Sue Hovey]

Thanks, Nick. I'm not home for the radio show, so I appreciated the 
commentary.  For those interested in reading further on the abortion rights 
issue, I recommend Alexander Sanger's, Beyond Choice:  Reproductive Freedom 
in the 21st Century.  Sanger is the grandson of Margaret Sanger and the 
President of the New York organization of Planned Parenthood.

Sue
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 8:34 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] The Trials and Tribulations of Providing and Obtaining 
Legal Abortions


> Greetings:
>
> This is my Roe v. Wade radio commentary for tomorrow morning.  My complete 
> article on abortion can be found on my guvmit supported vanity website at 
> www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm.
>
> Here is a toast to our women's reproductive freedom,
>
> Nick Gier
>
> THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF PROVIDING
> AND OBTAINING LEGAL ABORTIONS
>
> As we celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the granting of 
> reproductive freedom for America's women, it worth acknowledging the 
> sacrifices of those who have made this freedom possible.
>
> Dr. Susan Wicklund, who managed an abortion clinic in Bozeman, Montana 
> until 1998, has just released her book "This Common Secret: My Journey as 
> an Abortion Doctor."
>
> Wicklund tells about how she was forced to buy a .38 Special and a 
> bulletproof vest to protect herself from anti-abortion protesters. 
> Wicklund's daughter had to be driven to school in a police cruiser.
>
> Before Wicklund went on "60 Minutes" in 1998, she felt that she had to 
> tell her maternal grandmother, who did not yet know about her 
> controversial medical work.  Wicklund steeled herself for yet another 
> anti-abortion protest.
>
> Instead, Wicklund learned that many years earlier, her grandmother, 
> desperate to help a pregnant friend, tried to dislodge the fetus with a 
> wire, and then watched in horror as she bled to death.  The grandmother 
> was proud to know that her granddaughter was providing safe abortions that 
> were not available in her time.
>
> The Alan Guttmacher Institute has estimated that 4 million illegal 
> abortions are performed in Latin America each year, and approximately 
> 800,000 women are hospitalized because of complications resulting from 
> unsafe techniques.  It is estimated that 1,500 Mexican women die each year 
> because of clandestine abortions.
>
> Wicklund tells the story about a 14-year-old girl who came to her clinic. 
> It took her some time to elicit the truth about who had impregnated her. 
> Wicklund immediately called police when she learned that the girl had been 
> raped by her father, the person who had accompanied her to the clinic.
>
> Access is a major problem.  There is only one clinic in Mississippi, and 
> 89
> percent of U.S. counties do not provide this fully legal service. Many 
> women have to drive hundreds of miles to find a clinic, and then sometimes 
> wait, spending scarce resources on food and lodging, 24 hours before the 
> procedure can be performed.
>
> “It’s so incredibly insulting,” Dr. Wicklund said in an interview. “The 
> 24-hour waiting period implies that women don’t think about it on their 
> own. To me a lot of the abortion restrictions are about control of women, 
> about power.”
>
> Wicklund's policy is that she will not perform abortions after 14 weeks, 
> and 91 percent of U.S. abortions are performed this early.  This number 
> would be higher if it were not for a lack of access and a self-righteous 
> pro-life culture that prevents many women from having safer abortions 
> during the first trimester.
>
> When she was on the Diane Rehm show on Jan. 8, 2008, Wicklund answered a 
> call from a man who said he was surprised that she, unlike other abortion 
> providers, was a caring person and didn't do it for the money.  Wicklund 
> assured him that all the abortion doctors she knew were good people and 
> that they could make much more money in any other area of medicine.
>
> Wicklund did not defend herself very well when it came to questions about 
> the proper cut-off point for abortions.  She was quick to cite the many 
> studies that demonstrate that the early fetus does not experience pain, 
> but she did not respond well to the challenge that there is brain activity 
> very early on.  The best answer is that early brain activity occurs in all 
> animal fetuses, but we don't grant a serious moral right to life to them.
>
> The morally significant time is the explosive brain development from 25-33 
> weeks, the period that the Supreme Court decided that the state does 
> indeed have a right to defend the rights of the fetus.
>
> There is a compelling moral and legal symmetry between the end of a 
> person's life (the brain-dead Terri Schiavo, for example) and the 
> significant brain activity that signals the beginning of a person's life 
> in the third trimester.
>
> Our moral, legal, and religious traditions have always made a distinction 
> between a biological human being and a moral and legal person.  Christian 
> theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, followed the Greeks in holding 
> that a person is a rational being, and the great Catholic philosopher 
> Thomas Aquinas argued that such a being does not exist in the womb until 
> late in pregnancy.
>
> In 1973 the good justices were eminently conservative in following a tried 
> and true ancient tradition on the status of the fetus.
>
>
>
>
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