"...illegal abortion made a lot of women sick. It was a problem because there were urban public hospitals, like Philadelphia General and Los Angeles County, in which entire wards had been ceded to patients trying to recover from illegal abortion; at Los Angeles County, on any given afternoon during the late 1950s and early 1960s, fifty to one hundred patients at a time were separated off into what the doctors referred to as Infected OB.Abortion is legal to prevent these deaths. I'm not interested in any version of morality that wouldn't prevent that shit.
Every one of these wards, over the years leading into the mid-1960s, produced physicians whose personal encounters with criminal abortion complications were to haunt them for many years afterward. 'Infected OB is what they called it, but it was mostly infected abortions,' recalls Gail Anderson, the Los Angeles medical professor... 'It looked like a set of intensive-care units, all full of abortion patients. If you can imagine walking into a room where there's anywhere from five to ten patients all attached to tubes of whatever—many times they were jaundiced from infections. You've got foul-smelling stuff coming from their uteruses. You've got shock. And in some cases you'd have patients in congestive heart failure. They'd die, in congestive heart failure, foaming at the mouth.'
Gail Anderson walked the Infected OB ward every working day of his tenure at County's obstetrical and gynecological service, and when he took over the hospital's emergency medicine department and people wondered how an ob/gyn man could switch so seamlessly to trauma, he would always say: Well, if you had been where I have for the last thirteen years, you wouldn't need to ask. And around the country there were other physicians like Gail Anderson, doctors who had seen enough abortion patients to accumulate detailed casualty accountings of their own: bicycle spokes, umbrella spokes, Lysol, burned holes in the rectum, feces passing through the vagina, the sickest women I ever saw (Cynthia Gorney, Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars: pp. 25–26).
Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid, far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon; but the best of their power was in nature, not in them.bevets : " Most people acknowledge the difference between 'a child' and 'a tumor'"
The girl learned she was pregnant two weeks ago and planned to have an abortion Tuesday. Her caseworker arranged for transportation and help. But the DCF asked Alvarez to block the procedure, citing a state law that says the agency cannot consent to any abortion.posted by warbaby at 9:22 AM on April 30, 2005
Alvarez granted the request, prompting an immediate appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU says Florida statutes protect a minor's right to decide on an abortion.
The 4th District Court of Appeal said it will make its decision soon.
Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.posted by Bugbread at 12:47 PM on April 30, 2005
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Anyway, I put a lot of work into my other posts.
posted by thirteenkiller at 12:45 AM on April 30, 2005