Posted on 06/09/2009 5:10:38 PM PDT by madprof98
If I’d passed her on the street, I probably wouldn’t have known her. Her gait is a bit stiff and her left eye somehow different from her right. She’s not famous, exactly, but some people might know her name: Emily Lyons. She’s the nurse who survived the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham at the hands of Eric Rudolph.
I was 14 years old when that clinic was bombed, killing a police officer and spraying Emily’s body full of hot nails and shrapnel. Back then, I lived in a small Alabama town, went to church every Sunday and was adamantly opposed to abortion. But by the time I met Emily last year, I was president of the Birmingham chapter of Medical Students for Choice, a group supporting abortion rights. Watching her walk slowly into our fund-raiser on her husband’s arm —- a woman who’d endured more than 18 operations —- I thought of all she’d been through and knew that I’d come to the right decision in my support of reproductive rights.
That conviction only became stronger after I read that Kansas physician George Tiller had been murdered at his Wichita church.
I’m a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I plan to become an obstetrician-gynecologist. I dream of delivering healthy babies, working with families and supporting midwifery. But as part of my practice, I also envision providing abortions to women who need them.
The road I took to get here isn’t your stereotypical one. My parents are conservative Christians who believe abortion is wrong. Growing up, I naturally shared their view. But I’ve also wanted to be a doctor since I was 4 years old, and in high school, I began to feel drawn to issues of women’s health. In college, I designed my own major to broaden my understanding of women’s health by including psychology, sociology and women’s studies.
I also served as a counselor for a volunteer organization that helps victims of rape. I sat in hospital rooms with young women who would look at me and say, “I just couldn’t carry his baby.” I could feel their desperation.
At the same time, I found myself shocked at how little many of my friends —- women who were studying biology and planning to become doctors —- knew about their own sexual health. They didn’t know about or couldn’t get the reproductive health care they needed because of barriers put up by their culture, their religion and their parents.
I began to feel as if I were leading a double life. At school, the choices I saw women struggling with were forcing me to question my old convictions. When I went home, I’d go to church with my parents but would find that my views contrasted starkly with those I heard in the sermons. It was a difficult time, because I felt that neither my family nor my church would welcome my questions or understand my struggle.
For the most part, I don’t talk to my parents about those beliefs. They already feel as though I’ve turned my back on much of what they taught me because my husband and I bought a house and lived together for a few months before we were married. Two and a half years later, that rift isn’t fully healed. I know that my views on reproductive rights would be another blow.
But ultimately, we have more in common than they might think. I agree that ending an unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy. When I advocate for reproductive rights, for choice, I don’t claim that abortion is morally acceptable. I think that it’s a very private, intensely personal decision. But I was stunned when one of my professors, a pathologist and a Planned Parenthood supporter, told me that decades ago, entire wings of the university’s hospital were filled with women dying from infections caused by botched abortions. It’s clear that women who don’t want to be pregnant won’t be deterred by limited access to providers or to clinics. And I believe that it’s immoral to let them die rather than provide them with safe, competent care.
I still have a long way to go in my medical training. I’ve never witnessed an actual abortion procedure, though I have been trained, through my work in Medical Students for Choice, in manual vacuum aspiration, a simple procedure used for both incomplete miscarriages and elective terminations in the first trimester. I plan to choose a residency program that provides further training —- a place where I won’t worry that asking to be taught to perform an abortion could somehow limit my future options. At the start of medical school, I was very careful about how I presented my views to the faculty for fear that I could jeopardize my grades or hurt my chances for recommendations or of being accepted into a program run by any of the professors.
As I continue my education, my views on abortion are still evolving. Take late-term abortions. When I first heard about them, I was horrified.
It wasn’t until I spent time in ultrasound rooms in graduate school that I began to see late-trimester abortions in a very different light. In one case, the patient’s baby had just been diagnosed with a lethal congenital anomaly. The high likelihood was that it wouldn’t survive after birth for more than a few minutes. As long as the baby remained in her mother’s womb, however, she would live. I asked the physician what this woman’s options were. The answer was, not many. She could choose to continue the pregnancy, but then she might be waiting for almost 20 more weeks to give birth to a baby that would never take more than a few breaths on its own. She was past the point where she could legally terminate the pregnancy in Alabama. If she could get an appointment in Atlanta within the next week, she might be able to have the procedure there. Beyond that, there were only a few physicians in the nation who would perform an abortion in such a case.
I could hardly wrap my mind around the agony that this woman and her husband must have been facing. They needed a caring physician to help them through this dark moment, and if they chose not to continue the pregnancy, they also needed a physician who was both skilled enough and brave enough to provide them with the care they needed. They needed Dr. Tiller.
I can’t yet imagine doing the kind of work that he did. When I think about my future practice, I think about a doctor I met at a conference who spoke candidly about the harassment his children endured at school because of what their father did. I wonder what seventh grade might be like for my children if I choose to provide abortions.
I’m not the only one with questions. Once, after Medical Students for Choice co-hosted a panel discussion on reducing the number of abortions by providing better education on reproductive health, some of my classmates approached close friends of mine. They were puzzled that an abortion-rights group was talking about wanting to reduce abortions —- and that it viewed ending unwanted pregnancies as a tragedy. Mostly, though, they were confused about what I was doing there. “I know Roz goes to church every Sunday and that she’s a good person,” one classmate asked. “Why would she be involved in a group like this?”
I know my answer to that question. Someday I hope my classmates will understand, too.
Rozalyn Farmer Love is a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.
Documentation, please? Surely such a massive die-off would have been noticed by somebody.
“As I continue my education, my views on abortion are still evolving. Take late-term abortions. When I first heard about them, I was horrified.
It wasn’t until I spent time in ultrasound rooms in graduate school that I began to see late-trimester abortions in a very different light.”
And here we have prime example and confirmation that supports the arguments that the more education one gets, the more LIBERAL or LIBERALLY-inclined one becomes, for most anyhow. How quaint.
Adolf Hitler and George Tiller went to church every Sunday too. Did it make a difference?
BTW, Ms. Love's story is so formularic I suspect it's total BS. No doubt a pro wrote it up for her to see if she cold get some scholarship money from the baby killing industry.
Abortionists are (secretly) seen within the medical profession as the dregs of that profession.
In some fields maybe. I can tell you that at the engineering school I graduated from the faculty were pretty conservative, as were many of the students.
Don't forget the very different cultures of the times. You got knocked up back then, it was bad -- I had an 8th or 9th grade classmate who "disappeared" after she (reportedly) became pregnant; I never saw her again. Today, it's... so what?
Just one response out of many to this point.
There are still botched abortions...no one bothers to inspect some abortion clinics.
No mention of needing a caring and supportive minister. Only the "physician" would suffice!
Why isn’t the left at all concerned over the killing of some 60,000 innocent unborns?
Yahoo search results for “George Tiller” “60,000”:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22George+Tiller%2260%2C000&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2
More evidence that going to church and merely being a good person does not make someone a Christian. This woman intends to murder other people, because those people are silent, small, and inconvenient.
We need to ask God to intercede.
On a side note, if I were her mother, I would be having trouble with my relationship with her, too. Love unconditionally, yes, be proud of and supporting, no.
That kind of abuse of the English language should be punishable with jail time.
Agreed, I am in a doctorate program in International Studies and find myself fighting an increasing mass of liberal academics and students. You are fortunate, indeed.
Her last name is “Love”?
Her parents should disown her.
Proud little murderess.
I have delivered our last three babies. I could not imagine finding out there was a problem and then aborting the child. I think we would carry out the delivery and if the child died then so be it. But we would never be able to live with the fact that we chose to kill our child.
Any abortion is awuful and hurtful to more than just the child you are killing.
Late term abortions have absolutly no place in society.
If she were to ‘emulate’ George Tiller as he entered his 268th trimester, that would be just dandy. If she views death as so inconsequential, she probably wouldn’t have any problem in offing herself, and that would mean more babies would live, than would be killed by the likes of her.
I wish her all the bad luck in the world.
I wold greatly prefer that she, as our Book of Common Prayer says, "turn from [her] wickedness and live." Some of the strongest pro-life advocates have come from the pro-choice ranks.
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