NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/talk/abortion/28488

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-22 | 18.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!deakin.OZ.AU!cs.uow.edu.au!cc.uow.edu.au!nyikos
From: [e-mail] (peter nyikos)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: COERCED ABORTION [Can you help me polish this up?]
Summary: One is described, and a long impassioned plea given.
Keywords: felony, sexual battery, coerced, abortion
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jul 92 07:03:22 GMT
Organization: University Of Wollongong
Lines: 371


For the better part of a week, I have agonized over the rough-hewn
document you see below.  I have even stopped working on the other
messages I have been planning and promising to post.  Some will
be posted in the next five days.  Others will have to wait until
after I return to South Carolina.

I am still far from satisfied with the present version, but rather
than continuing to rewrite it, I am letting you see it the way it is
and opening up the floor for recommendations. Since I have so little
time left here, please send all e-mail recommendations to my
permanent e-mail address:
    [e-mail]
For the next few days they will be forwarded here automatically, so
don't hold off!

DO NOT ASSUME THAT IF YOU POST A REPLY, I WILL SEE IT!  Although
I am able to send messages like this one, no news has been coming in
for a whole week now because "the disks keep crashing." [A blessing
in disguise, actually: had news been up, I might have dissipated
my energies.]  Doug Holtsinger has given me a set of ftp commands to
use and I have been working my way slowly through the numbered messages,
but the numbers give no clue as to the subject.  It's good to see that
my fetal RTL messages have generated some responses.  I hope this
message will generate a lot more.  The more the better.

My "snail mail" address is:
    Dept. of Mathematics
    University of South Carolina  (abbreviations: USC, The USC)
    Columbia, SC 29208
I am already indebted to Doug Holtsinger, who has helped me to see
that certain things I wrote in earlier drafts are, at best, foolish;
and, at worst, extremely derogatory and offensive.  For that, I am
very grateful.

                ********

The document that follows contains [along with much else!] a brief
but intense account of a coerced abortion, a particularly violent and
degrading form of sexual battery.  As is proper in such cases, the name
of the survivor [much, much more than a victim] is withheld.  When I
return to South Carolina I will ask her if she would like for me to
reveal her name.  I think she will, for reasons that will become
apparent.

                ******
    My starting point is a law governing 3rd trimester abortions
in SC, mentioned in a reply of mine to a posting of Melissa Faust on
the blockading of abortion clinics.  It says that, in case of incest,
unless the victim is deemed competent, her consent to an abortion
"must be waived."

    [Cut to Jane Fonda, raising clenched fist at DC national
pro-choice rally earlier this year: "Keep your goddamned laws
out of my womb!!"]

    Back a week ago, this message [which has metamorphosed into
something completely different than what I had intended] started out as
a short response to an oft-repeated and paraphrased statement of Adrienne
Regard, to the effect that if a woman wants something out of her body,
she is justified in using lethal force, if necessary to get it out.
I thought it would be fun to ask her whether such an incest victim
[usually not yet a woman], or indeed anyone subject to coerced abortion,
 would be justified in
using *lethal force*, if necessary, to get the abortionist's hands
out of her vagina AND WOMB?

    [Readers wishing to pursue this question should keep in mind that,
unlike in rape, what the abortionist is
doing is perfectly legal, abortion being in the "zone of privacy"
mandated by Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions, ostensibly to
safeguard "every woman's right to choose."]

    But the tragic fact is that, by the time the abortionist's hand
[or the suction curette, or speculum, or dilator]
 is in the vagina of the woman, it is too late to apply lethal
force.  Her feet are in the stirrups, her hands are held down by the
nurse(s),  quite often she is also drugged.

    Nor does there seem to be any clear-cut time prior to this
where the possibility of justifiable
 lethal force against the abortionist comes in.
Almost always, but with notable exceptions like the above, the woman
has to sign a consent form before even being admitted to the operating
room, and quite often will not even see the abortionist until a minute
or two before the procedure, when she is already helpless.

    I wonder--is it possible to obtain statistics as to how often
women having abortion are denied access to the abortionist until they
are helpless?  Think of the difficulties involved in gathering such
statistics.  About the only reliable source of more than a small sample
would be the abortionists themselves, and the only ones talking are
those who have regretted being abortionists [such as Bernard Nathanson],
and who are immediately "discredited" by the overwhelmingly pro-choice
media.

    [Cut to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, writing
in Roe v. Wade: "...the attending physician, *in consultation with his
patient,* is free to determine, without regulation by the state, that in
his *medical* judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated.]
  Comments:
         1. I wonder whether even Blackmun foresaw this "penumbra"
           of the "right to privacy": the right of the abortionist
       to be absent until the woman is in stirrups.  Surely he
       must know, after all these years, that this "right"
       is being exercised every day, hundreds if not thousands
       of times each day.
     2. Blackmun's dictum is often paraphrased: "The abortion
        decision is a private matter between a woman and her
        doctor."
        In almost any other context, "her doctor" is taken to
        mean, "her family doctor," or "her Ob/Gynecologist."
        I wonder just how often, and for how long a time, the
        average abortion patient sees this doctor who is
            supposedly "hers."

[Let's see a show of hands: how many of you, the very first time you came
across Blackmun's statement, or its paraphrasal, thought it really did
refer to the woman's family doctor or Ob/Gynecologist?  How many of you
STILL think that is what it means?  Before you answer this second question,
please take note of the word "attending" in front of "physician".]

   What sorts of protocols and safeguards have been set up to protect
women from abortionists, comparable to the sexual assault protocols
which are now in force all over the country, and the innumerable
publicly supported rape crisis support groups?  [I am involved in this
movement myself, as a member of the University of South Carolina
President's Sexual Assault Task Force, Subcommittee of Programs for
Survivors, established earlier this year.]  So far as I know, support
groups for women suffering from the after-effects of abortion, such as
WEBA, are pro-life
[Readers: are there any pro-choice national support groups?  I would like
very much to know!]
and are not publicly funded.

                *********

    The foregoing discussion, though impassioned, is still somewhat
removed from the reality.  The following account, of a personal friend,
is not.

    At the time the events happened, she was married to a student
at my University, having wedded in secret because he had gotten her
pregnant.  Only a few weeks later, he changed his mind about wanting
a baby and started pressuring her to have an abortion, threatening to
leave her if she did not.  She relented to the extent of seeking
counseling at the local Planned Parenthood, hoping they would see things
her way.  Instead she was lectured on how selfish she was for wanting
the baby, and was told that her twelve week fetus was "just a clump of
cells."

[look for a posting, no later than next Tuesday:  The real
lowdown on "clot," "clump of cells," and "fetus."]

    Rather than have it done at Planned Parenthood, which was reputed
to skimp on anesthesia, she agreed to have it done by her gynecologist,
who is also the biggest provider of abortions in Columbia, with over
1,500 a year.  [Since his office is only four blocks from campus, many
students get "fixed up" by him.]  Once inside, away from her husband,
she was given Valium and iv Demerol to kill the pain that was to come.
But she had done Valium and other drugs recreationally, so she was still
well aware of everything around her.

    Soon the screams of the other patients got to her, and as her
turn came, she announced that she had changed her mind and wanted to
go.  Instead she was forced to her back and her abort/gynecologist
began to go to work on her.

    Repeatedly she screamed, "Let me go! Don't kill my baby!"
"That's just the anesthetic talking through you.
You'll thank me when this is over," he responded, and he completed the
procedure, as the value-free terminology goes.

    Correction: the abortion was an incomplete one.
Bits of the fetus were left inside her womb, so that, despite her
taking antibiotics as prescribed, she developed pelvic inflammatory
disease and passed out while visiting her in-laws in Charlotte.
She was rushed to a hospital and, upon discharge, was told to call
the abortionist on returning to Columbia. She did, and he avoided her,
saying things like, "That's not my problem." and "Go to an emergency room."

    She divorced and remarried.  More than ten years have passed,
and despite having a loving husband and children,
she still has recurring nightmares of hearing a screaming baby and
finding a bassinet full of blood.


    Strange...when I signed up for the Sexual Assault Crisis
task force, abortion was the furthest thing from my mind, and,
although the many shades of meaning of sexual battery became firmly
impressed in my mind over a month of long meetings (including two
almost full-day), it was only after I started posting messages to this
network, and even after the first few versions of this very document,
that it dawned on me that the outrage suffered by this woman certainly
comes under the heading of felony sexual battery.  So resistant is
one's mind-set to combining previously disparate topics.

    I am afraid, though, that the statute of limitations on this
particular felony has expired; and maybe it was not even a felony
when it occurred.

    But now comes the most chilling [Thank you, Justice Blackmun,
for teaching me that word!] thought of all.  Is it possible that the
laws on felony sexual battery specifically exempt attending [There's
that word again!] physicians who force abortion on their patients if,
"in their medical judgment," the abortion was indicated and a signature
on a consent form was obtained previously? no matter how strongly the
patient protests?
    The very act of touching a person's genitals without her/his
consent is a felony sexual battery in South Carolina, absent such
loopholes as the above.

    As long as I am making these comparisons, let me throw out a few
more.
    1. There are documented cases of abortionists compelling their own
wives to submit to abortion.  At least one was convicted for sexual
battery, but I do not know whether it was judged a felony.  How does
that compare to marital rape?

    2.  The military definition of rape is delineated by the following:
"Any penetration, no matter how slight, is sufficient to complete the act."
Abortion does not work that way.  Not in the most violent rape (unless
objects other than penises are involved) is the woman penetrated so deeply
as in abortion.
[Don't get me wrong: I am not implying that rape is less traumatic than
coerced abortion.  Degree of consent is infinitely more important than
depth of penetration.]

    3.  The South Carolina Penal Code relating to rape says that
for the woman, no corroborative evidence need be given that events took
place as she says they did; the rapist can be convicted on the strength
of her testimony alone, provided she makes a sufficiently credible witness
for herself.  Would the same apply to a coerced abortion?
    If the answer to this is negative, just how is she to prove her
case, when all her Significant Others are in the waiting room, or further
away, unlike in childbirth, where now the SO's are not only allowed but
encouraged to witness and even to take an active role in the blessed event?
    [Even if the answer is positive, would not an SO who really cared
insist on being a witness to the abortion?]

    4.  In cases of rape, a woman has the right to change her mind
about having intercourse at any time, even if she may have initially
desired it.  If the man does not comply, it is rape.  What about
coerced abortion? Does the fact that my friend signed the consent form
mean that it was too late to change her mind and still have the attending
abortionist convicted of a felony?

    Before telling you more about my friend, I would like to address
a few words to any pro-choice escorts who may be reading this.
    The next time you escort a woman past the pro-life blockade,
will you have the courage to ask to accompany her to the operating
room and witness her abortion yourself?  And if permission is denied
by any of the intermediaries between you and the abortionist, or by
the abortionist himself, will you have the courage to stand by the
woman and not leave her side?

            ****************

    The story I have just related is a matter of public record,
given in testimony before a four-man subcommittee
of the SC Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year.
    ["Four-man" is not sexist: there were indeed women on the
Judiciary Committee, but they all excused themselves because they
had other legislative business to attend to.]

    My friend was testifying before the subcommittee in support
of the SC Informed Decision Bill, a bill that would today be consti-
tutional if it had passed, because it has no spousal consent clause.
It does not even have a waiting period.  Testifying on the opposing
side was the head honcho [I forget his title], male, of the South
Carolina State chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union

   [Civil liberties for everyone except women in stirrups]

who flatly stated that the bill was unconstitutional.

    My friend is, and was at the time of the coerced abortion,
an intelligent and articulate woman.  It is no reflection on her--no,
nor on the other women who spoke in favor of the bill, some of whom
had different but still similarly harrowing tales of deceit, coercion,
botched LEGAL abortions, and hellish psychological aftermath--that the bill
did not pass.  The bill was slowed down by a thousand underhanded tricks
that had nothing to do with discussing the merits and demerits, mostly
by self-designated pro-choice legislators and organizations like NOW
and NARAL. I say "self-designated" because several women, including
a middle-aged nurse who broke down and cried several times while telling
a tale every bit as harrowing as that of my friend, praised the bill as
being "pro-choice in the truest sense of the word."
    For one thing, it requires women, before abortion is performed
 to be given information about the medical
risks involved in the procedure.  There is no such requirement now.
All such requirements would be banned by FOCA, the so-called Freedom
of Choice Act, which Presidential candidate Bill Clinton supports.

[ASIDE: There is a law requiring us to be told, whenever our children
are vaccinated, that there is a 1 in 100,000 chance of a very serious
reaction.]

    My friend got no recompense from the abortionist who botched
her abortion, nor, so far as I know, was he ever legally charged with
wrongdoing in her case.

    Today my friend takes turns with several other women
walking the sidewalk in front of the clinic where the outrage was
was committed, telling their stories to any potential patient willing to
listen to them.  If they so much as set foot in the parking lot, they
risk arrest for trespassing.  Even on the sidewalk they are not safe:
one of them was chased by the abortionist himself, all the way into
an office of a doctor in a neighboring building.  [She could have him
convicted for assault, but she has a sick mother who would be too
upset by the subsequent legal quagmire.]

    Nor are they safe from the law, if the SC right-to-work
statutes read the way suggested in Melissa Faust's recent message
"Blockading abortion clinics."  They are just as much in violation
as if they were barring the way to the clinic.

    By the way, I read here recently a post-up claiming that pickets'
First Amendment rights were not violated by court orders requiring them to
stay 8 feet from the women entering the clinic, because signs can be
read at that distance.  Yes, but what chance would my friend then have to
tell her story to a woman being escorted past her, with even her view
of the woman she wants to reach blocked by the (sometimes) well-meaning
escort?


    My friend is not even the person most wronged by the abortionist
who committed the outrage on her.  That distinction may belong to a Black
woman who died as a result of an abortion at his hands. Her
relatives were awarded $80,000 in civil court for wrongful death.
The smallness of the amount is due to the brilliant legal counsel
this abortionist has at his disposal, on the one hand, and the fact that
the woman was Black on the other.
    Blacks who say abortion is genocide get short shrift
from the legal system, press, leaders of national Black organizations,
and Thurgood Marshall.

            **************

    In the light of what I have written, you can understand why I
now find abhorrent such passages as the one that follows:

    "There is another question I am not raising: whether a fetus
should be removed, *irrespective* of the preference of the mother,
when there is good reason to think the child will be seriously defective,
mentally or physically.  Since it is a grave responsibility to bring a
human being into the world, I think this latter is an important question;
but I do not propose to discuss it here."
            --R.B.Brandt, "The Morality of Abortion,"
            *The Monist* 56 (1972) pp.504-26
Some Understated Comments:
    1. Look up the word "insinuate" in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
    2. Can anyone think of a good expression for the relationship of
the part that precedes the colon to the part that follows?
    3. The article from which this quote is taken was revised, with
the quote still intact, in _Abortion: Pro and Con_ [Schenkman Publishing
Company, Cambridge, Mass., 1974.]
        90% Pro, 10% Con -- the same stacked deck the pro-life position
has been dealt by the media.

                        Peter Nyikos

   "I come again to contemplate all the oppression that is committed
under the sun.  Take, for instance, the tears of the oppressed, with
no one to protect them; the power their oppressors wield. No one to
protect them!
   "So, rather than the living who still have lives to
live, I salute the dead who have already met death; happier than both
of these is he who is yet unborn and has not seen the evil things that
are done under the sun."
                Ecclesiastes 4:1-4