This Is My Body....

Bleat and howl all you want, but overturning Roe v. Wade comes at a high price.


What's your choice?

PI and The Baby Cudgel

CAUTION:

THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING IMAGES OF A DECEASED INFANT WITH PATAU'S SYNDROME.

Gary Graham, best known for his portrayal of a Vulcan in TV's Star Trek, is a man with a pricked conscience. Like an ex-smoker or someone who's suddenly got God, Mr Graham has suddenly decided that the most cathartic recovery from his past is to tell anyone who'll listen - loudly. Writing in a blog, he opines:

"No. I’m going to say it. I’m going to say what millions know in the front of their brains, and many, many more millions know in the depths of their hearts…but won’t allow themselves to think it, much less feel it. And believe me, I know I’ll be hated for saying it, I’ll be hated by people who don’t know me, have never worked with me, have never golfed with me, had a drink with me, shot the shit with me. They’ve never met me, don’t want to meet me…but they will hate me. I’m going to say it anyway: Abortion is murder."

I don't hate you Gary, I just think you're nerve-jarringly stupid and more than a little guilty of youthful hubris having paid for THREE abortions. Gary goes on:

"I have been on all sides of this issue for most of my life, and I can simply not escape the logic. That fetus a pregnant woman is carrying inside of her, regardless of the gestation stage, is a living, breathing human being. Yes, breathing – the amniotic sac forms 12 days after conception, and in the second trimester the baby is actually breathing the amniotic fluid. It’s not an ‘unviable tissue mass.’ Not a wart, a mole, a skin outcropping, a boil, or a bundle of uncoordinated cells. It’s not just a ‘fetus’."

Yes Gary, a foetus: not a baby. At 12 weeks (the end of the first trimester) the baby is no more capable of living outside the mother's uterus than (with apologies to Douglas Adams) a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster can survive being being bludgeoned by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. It's not viable and therefore, not a fucking baby so stop using the word like a cudgel - it's a red herring. Get over it.

What you call a baby, more correctly a zygote, embryo or foetus depending on the stage of development does not once breath until it leaves the amniotic fluid. Certainly, it inhales - and even swallows - large amounts of the stuff, but its lungs do not exchange oxygen and CO2: that's breathing.

If abortion is murder (as you say) then you are also admitting to being accessory to that - on three occasions by your own admission. You may now go to jail, do not pass go and do not collect $200.

The truth sometimes hurts. You used your good looks to bed at least three girls, failed to take even basic precautions and then left them to suffer. I could almost understand one mistake - but three! Fuck me - don't ask for my forgiveness or understanding because you won't get it.

By like the argument over evolution, a personal favourite of mine, it's not really that simple.

Pro-choice advocates want every pregnancy to reach a natural conclusion - and if every pregnancy was healthy then maybe they have a point, but this isn't that simple.

Let's put aside the proactive birth control that you paid for (I guess rubbers were really expensive in your day) and consider just a couple of examples.

What about an ectopic pregnancy? Should we let that mature until the foetus gets so large that the mother's fallopian tube ruptures and she bleeds internally to death in agony?

What about Patau syndrome? Look at this!
Should we allow this pregnancy to continue until what you call a baby spontaneously aborts - or lives for a few hours and days in agony? That's a baby Gary! "A" is his "face" and "B" is a closeup on his eyes - if they can be called that.

A 37 2/7 week gestational age male infant with Patau syndrome demonstrating alobar holoprosencephaly with cyclopia. A) Facial features included sloping forehead with a proboscis superior to a single central palpebral fissure. B) Close-up of the fused eyelids and proboscis showing a single nostril. C) Polydactyly showing six digits. D) Posterior view of the brain showing indistinct gyri, fusion of the hemispheres, and occipital encephalocele.E) Transposition of the aorta (A), and hypoplastic pulmonary trunk (P). F) Trisomy 13 [47, XY, +13] (karyotype by Giemsa-banding).

Chan et al. Diagnostic Pathology 2007 2:48 doi:10.1186/1746-1596-2-48

That's the choice - because like PI, it's not that simple.

UPDATE:

Therese in the comments has chided me (as is her absolute right) for pulling a particularly nasty example of Patau's and I agree with her that no woman should be forced to terminate any pregnancy. (Google for some more images if you can stomach them.)

Her own child is one of the rare survivors - and that's great. But Trisomy 13 is not just identifiable by blood-screening it can be visualised better than ever before on advanced ultrasound.

Yet I this isn't about Trisomy 13 - it's about choice; informed choice.

I am sick of being battered about the head by these lame "abortion is murder" arguments which rely on deeply held emotion and are invariably driven by religious belief. This unfortunate is the other side of that coin - if this poor creature had been terminated, would that have been better for mother and child alike?

Could you decide? Should you?

We should never, ever legislate the choice away: no matter how hard a choice it is, it's not ours to make.

Ah! The Sweet Sound of Spin!

Dakota Voice is running this story today, basically an updated version of an older anti-abortion argument. There's a beautiful irony here considering I found this on a Republican pro-life lobby and as ever it's loaded in favour of the pro-life argument.

When you think about abortion, think of something. Imagine a child…

This child’s future is a broken home…

He will be abandoned by his father…

His single mother will struggle to raise him…

Despite the hardships, he will endure…

This child will become the first African American president.

Life: Imagine the potential.

That's the thing about choice, President Barack Obama's mother didn't choose to terminate that pregnancy and if she had, history would be different.

What pro-lifers never get is that this is about choice - one option cannot fit everyone. For some women, abortion will be the wrong choice, for others, it will be the right one. We cannot judge what any foetus will become because we don't know how life will influence them; for every black president or musical prodigy, there will be many others which life leaves by the wayside.

We can know with a reasonable degree of certainty the outcome of many genetic diseases, however. We know the pain and suffering that some children will have to endure as they lose a desperate battle for life in the hours and days after they are born - sure to die.

Many others will have deprived lives, may die of starvation or suffer from malnutrition or disease. Still more will become petty criminals, living life on the fringes of society and spending much of their lives in an out of prison.

UPDATE:

Rowan Pelling's moving account (in the generally awful Daily Mail and right-wing) is an inspiration to those faced with the dilemma of termination. Of her first pregnancy, a child suffering with Patau syndrome, Pelling writes:

"I recognise that it can seem near impossible that anyone could terminate a foetus at this late stage, when its claims to existence appear so tangible. But I am certain that if my first baby had not been diagnosed with Patau syndrome until the 20-week scan I would have still made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

"This knowledge, which will be abhorrent to some, has brought home to me the fact that other people’s agonies, situations and choices are often impossible to imagine from any distance. Can I really understand, say, the dilemma faced by a pregnant woman who endures brutish social deprivation and domestic violence?"

This is the choice (and a future we can't predict) that pro-lifers want to take away.

Look at this picture and tell me your loving God made this I dare you.

Abortion Not Applicable, Marriage Optional

Funny story this - not ha ha, but a little odd.

A Portsmouth couple who have been trying for a baby for a reported seven years have finally conceived but in a cruel twist of fate, the twins Lisa Chamberlain is carrying are are conjoined with a rare form of the condtion called dicaphaly.

They have separate heads and brains but a single body.

Doctors have advised an immediate termination but 25 year old Ms. Chamberline is not interested, calling them a gift from god, telling the Sun:

"To me, my twins are a gift from God and we're determined to give them a chance of life."

You might expect a pretty sharp response from me being an atheist. But I'm also pro-choice and it's Ms. Chamberline's choice to keep the babies despite the overwhelming medical evidence.

US-born twins, Abby and Brittany Hensel have the same condition and survived not only birth, but recently celebrated their 18th birthday.

In reality most conjoined (Siamese) twins do not survive to term and to make a spectacle of these unfortunate children and this family is fucking disgusting. Still, the smiling Ms. Chamberline and partner Mike Pedace, 32 don't seem phased - so that's alright.

I am phased at the double standards.

Ms. (read MISS) Chamberline is not married to Mr Pedace - and that's no real news in the 2008 - or in 2001 when they started trying for a family. It's no news the couple have been trying for a family but then there's a small point of relgion:

Now Ms. Chamberline is supposed to be "staunch Catholic" which may be the reason she opposes the termination.

But hang on - this isn't entirely consistent.

Staunch Roman Catholics teach marriage before family.

And what sort of god delivers this cruel blow to these children? I don't really care what Ms Chamberline thinks - she has a choice - but to believe that a loving, caring god could deliver the gift of life so cruelly beggars belief. Should these babies survive to term, their chance of ultimate survival is poor; and even then, they are destined to live out their days as freaks.

UPDATE: 20:00

At just 25 she has years of childbearing left. The suggestion she has been trying for seven years speaks volumes - has she never heard of a fertility clinic; or even a GP? Hell's teeth, perhaps the poor girl is pre-disposed to produce faulty embryos - we just don't know.

Please, please someone tell me it wasn't the lure of a tasty packet from a tabloid (the Sun in this case) that forced their hand. Tabloids are known to promote these freakish incidents because people love the lurid details of how these "determined" women are going to keep the multiple foetus despite being told none are likely to survive.

Anyone else remember Mandy Allwood - back in the mid-90s, she had fertility treatment and ended up the talk of the nation after receiving money from the tabloids and even engaging Max Clifford to represent her. Refusing a selective termination which would have given some of the children a fighting chance, Mandy lost all eight. It caused a sensation at the time and irritated the hell out of me.

Human females are "designed" for singleton pregnancies - like Kangaroos. Twins and triplets are unusual, but as the number increases, the chance of any foetus surviving to anything near term drops away sharply. Eight was fucking ludicrous.

I just thank common sense that termination is still an option for those who choose it.

American Conservatives (Still) Don't Get It

I love Dakota Voice. Rather like Christian Voice, it claims to represent family values and so on but when it comes to the crunch it's a small band of ultra-conservative buffoons led by a bloke with far too much time on his hands.

Leading from a story in the Telegraph, and letting a few facts slip by, DV's Bob Ellis almost recites scripture in gleefully informing us of how us pro-choicers are wrong to give women the chance to decide what happens to their unborn children. Of course, he doesn't say that in so many words, what he says is this:

"Better to leave life and death up to the Author of Life, and not take death into our own hands by killing innocent children.

Which is clichéd and highly emotive rhetoric: and he knows it.

The problem with Bob is he just won't accept the simple fact that there probably is no god. Even an idiot should be able to see that nature is the author of life. Pro-choicers would no more go around "killing innocent children" than he would. If you believe in a god, you might accept that a superior being kicked life off, but there's no evidence at all - none - that we're controlled on a daily basis.

Bob and his followers (and there are many like him, mostly descended from Catholic tradition) believe that life begins at conception. Technically it does but that life does not become remotely sentient until many weeks and probably months later; moreover, that life is not capable of sustaining itself even aided current medicine comparatively late in the pregnancy. Even after birth, this child has to be provided for every hour of the day. It relies on its mother for everything: from heat and shelter to food and emotional warmth.

The Bob variety of pro-lifers are a pretty trenchant lot. Abortion is never an option. Not if the mother was a child who had been raped; or if the foetus was horribly deformed and already in great suffering; not even if the mother's life was at risk. We get the same line in entrenched bullshit from Alaska Governor, Palin - which is why she was so popular with right-wing America in the 2008 election - despite being a complete ignoramus who abused her power. The more informed, pro-choice America breathed a heavy sigh of relief when Obama defeated this creationist freak show, but the war isn't over yet.

The Telegraph article Bob alludes to goes into rather more detail that the Conservatives at DV would like, so I'll summarise some of it here.

First of the headlines:

Telegraph: "Mother has healthy baby boy despite abortion warning by doctor"

Dakota Voice: "Healthy Son Despite Doctors Advice to Abort"

Wait did I miss something here? From the headlines, things look pretty clear cut - they aren't.

The Telegraph doesn't have an axe to grind like DV, and continuess with the hint all is now what it ought to be:

"A mother who was twice advised to have an abortion by doctors has gone on to have a 'perfectly' healthy son."

Note how they've cautiously placed perfectly into single quotes? Wonder why - and I wonder why Mssrs. Ellis and co. missed that? Might this have something to do with it? This from the Telegraph:

"Further tests conducted a few days later on New Year's Eve suggested the baby could also have Edwards Syndrome - the presence of an 18th chromosome - with a life expectancy of only up to four months if birth is survived."

Words like "could", "might" and "may" are the sort no prospective parent wants to hear. Rather like life, medicine isn't black and white (oh, if it only were). The worst was to come as the Telegraph reports, contradicting its own headline:

"Kai was born six weeks premature on March 5 at Scunthorpe General Hospital weighing just 2lb 6oz and immediately admitted to intensive care, but was discharged within six weeks.
One side of his heart was slightly bigger than the other which may need an operation to correct in the future, but regular tests have been showing the condition is constantly improving."

Kai Purdy pictured with his mother, Gaynor. Photo: ROSS PARRY AGENCY

So in truth, little Kai Purdy was anything but a normal healthy baby boy.

Dakota Voice effectively lied by omitting these facts and the Telegraph wasn't entirely honest either.

It appears that he does have Edwards Syndrome (aka Trisomy 18) and his heart was abnormal. The little fella is a fighter though and everyone at Abusing the News wishes him well. This is a great story of survival against the odds and one where the right choice was made.

However, consider this sobering evidence from Wikipedia (backed up from other sources):

"The survival rate of Edwards Syndrome is very low. About 95% die in utero. Of liveborn infants, only 50% live to 2 months, and only 5–10% will survive their first year of life. Major causes of death include apnea and heart abnormalities. It is impossible to predict the exact prognosis of an Edwards Syndrome child during pregnancy or the neonatal period. Because major medical interventions are routinely withheld from these children, it is difficult to determine what the survival rate or prognosis would be with aggressive medical treatment. The median life span is five to fifteen days. One percent of children born with this syndrome live to age ten, typically in cases of the less severe mosaic Edwards syndrome."

Of course, this won't rain on Pro-Life's parade. They'll just happy that Kai was born.

Had things been different, and the evidence is strongly in favour of that being the case, this child would have died before being born or very shortly afterwards.

The medical advice given to the Mr and Mrs Purdy was, statistically and rationally, entirely correct. Kai isn't a miracle (because that suggests supernatural intervention) he's just 1 in a 100. The other 99 children born with this condition will either be dead already or suffer agonising deaths during their very short lives.

They made an informed decision and it paid off.

This is the nature of choice that Conservative America, the Catholic church and all the pro-lifers around the world don't get.

Pro choice doesn't mean "abort every faulty foetus" it simply means give women the right to make a informed decision about what happens to their children. No one held a gun to Mrs Purdy's head, they just gave her the evidence and she made the decision. The right one.

Regarding the other 99 other times the Telegraph won't report will be a rather different story.

Sarah Palin: MILF to GILF

Whore slapper tart Daughter of the one-time Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has given birth to a son, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, People magazine reports.

It's not particularly newsworthy that an 18-year old girl has a child - happens all the time. However, Sarah Palin is the moral voice of Alaska, an ultra-conservative right winger who opposes abortion and promotes family values such as marriage (man-woman marriage, not the other kinds) and the couple are planning to marry in 2009.

Hoopy-fucking-do!

Wait a minute - traditional family values? Marriage?

That makes poor little Trip Jnr. a bastard (as in born out of wedlock) a label he will have to carry for the rest of his life. If that wasn't bad enough, he's also likely to be a creationist-republican. I'd rather be a bastard - oh wait...

This stable door has been open so long, horse hasn't just bolted (to borrow from Douglas Adams) it's gotten buried in soft peat and been recycled as fire-lighters. In neo-Conservative eyes, you grow up THEN get married THEN you have sex (for the 1st time) THEN you have children. Unless you cut out the awkward middle-man (commitment) and just say, "fuck it, let's breed."

This Palin family reaction is typical goalpost shifting - while they preach one thing, when they are caught doing something else, they just sweep it under the rug and pretend it was all OK.

Staggeringly, this "private matter" is being ignored by conservative America which is a shame - if they would only pull their heads out of the sand they could actually see what a disgrace the people they vote for are.