Shameless savagery

I must live an incredibly sheltered life. I just read this article linked over at HJW’s Orwell’s Picnic and could hardly believe my eyes. The article was published in the online version of the Boston Globe back in August of ’07 – received, no doubt, by most Bostonians as nothing more than a description of a “medical procedure”. I realize this kind horror has been “legal” for a long time now, but what caught me totally off guard is how brazen and shameless it has become – shameless enough to have the gruesome details broadcast far and wide without fear of an overwhelming and negative public reaction. Yes, Hilary, they are savages, and we are a nation of savages if we remain unrepentant and unmoved to put a stop to this human butchery. Not even the meticulous use of euphemisms – “fetus”, “procedure”, “provider” – can disguise the brutal inhumanity of abortion in this article:

“In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers in Boston and around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures.”

“The banned method involves partially delivering a live fetus, then intentionally causing its death. Even before it was banned, the procedure was exceedingly rare, accounting for a fraction of 1 percent of all abortions. Instead, doctors typically cause the fetus’s death surgically while it is still inside the womb and then remove it. But now, if the fetus is not dead as it begins to emerge, a provider may be accused of violating the law. So the lethal injections beforehand, carefully documented, are aimed at precluding an accusation and prosecution.”

“The injections are generally done in abortions after 18 or 20 weeks gestation. (Massachusetts bans virtually all abortions at and beyond the 24th week, except to protect the life or health of the mother.) Medical staff inject either the heart drug digoxin or potassium chloride, a potentially poisonous salt also used in state executions. San Francisco’s Darney and colleagues have studied both chemicals, long used in late-term abortions that involve simply inducing labor. Darney said his group concluded that digoxin was safe but offered no advantages in the actual abortion procedures, despite some clinical experience suggesting it made them easier. They found no safety record for potassium chloride, but a few case reports suggested that it could be dangerous if accidentally injected into the woman instead of the fetus.”

“They decided that whether to have an injection should be up to the patient; some are comforted by the idea that the fetus has died before it is removed.”

“Women’s Health Services, for example, decided against the injections because it does not perform the banned procedure and the risk of an accusation seemed low. But in another common response to the ban, the clinic has changed its counseling and informed consent procedure for later abortions, to spell out more clearly to patients that the fetus is dead before it is removed from the uterus.”

God have mercy.