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- From: dsholtsi@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger)
- Subject: Description of the Fetal Remains from an Abortion (was Re: DEEP SPACE 9 DRINKING GAME
- Message-ID: <1993Jan11.202214.18654@ncsu.edu>
- Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System)
- Reply-To: dsholtsi@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger)
- Organization: North Carolina State University
- References: <1993Jan09.073820.391066@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <1993Jan9.132210.19624@pixel.kodak.com>
- Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 20:22:14 GMT
- Lines: 34
-
- "It was easy to shrug off an aborted pregnancy as nothing more than
- a sack of blood and globs of tissue--as many pro-choice activists
- did--if one never saw fetal remains, or products of conception (POC),
- as they were known in medical circles. But the nurses, medical
- assistants, and doctors who worked inside procedure rooms knew
- that while an eight-week POC was indeed a sack of blood and
- globs of tissue, an eleven-week POC harbored tiny arms and legs
- and feet with toes. At twelve weeks, those tiny hands had tiny
- nails. Although the fetal head was too small at that stage to
- withstand the evacuation machine's suction, pieces of face--a nose
- and a mouth, or a black eye (all fetal eyes are black in the
- first trimester) the size of a pea--were sometimes found in
- the aftermath.
-
- Later abortions spawned even more gruesome fetal remains. Between
- the twelfth and the sixteenth week, early in the second trimester,
- the fetus almost doubled in length as its body caught up to its
- large head, and it filled out to the point where it looked like
- a human baby for the first time. Since the fetal skull was
- still soft, the head did not come out whole during the evacuation,
- but the legs and arms and rib cage made it through intact. The
- hand of a second trimester fetus, as a Preterm doctor described
- it, seemed big enough to shake.
-
- Most of Preterm's abortion staff didn't volunteer to work ``seconds''.
- Late first trimester POCs were hard enough. The counselor/medical
- assistants (CMAs) met regularly to discuss their feelings about
- their work, and often the discussion focused on the POC. Inside
- a procedure room, facing the contents of the uterus, there was
- no denying what abortion was."
-
- Sue Hertz, _Caught in the Crossfire: A Year on Abortion's Front Line_,
- Prentice Hall Press, 1991, pg. 104.
-
-