Botched abortion kills both mother & baby

I have written only a handful of columns that required fighting back the tears. This is one of them.

I got a call last Thursday from a colleague-in-arms asking me for help. He wanted me to write the story I am about to tell because it has been buried by a conspiratorial level of silence rooted in political and media bias.

This is the story about an incredibly loving young girl named Christin. A very active high-school graduate and a beloved member of her softball team and community, she was sweet beyond the norm as so often is the case for children with her diagnosis. She had Down syndrome. (I have heard it said, anecdotally, the extra chromosome which characterizes Trisomy 21, encodes for love. For those of you blessed enough to know anyone with Down syndrome, you will likely agree.)

There is simply something about these gifted children that reminds us all about what really matters in life no matter how busy and how complicated our lives appear. Sen. Brownback, R-Kan., made just that point last week on the third day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Roberts.

He spoke on the effects of Roe vs. Wade and on children diagnosed with a disability while still in the womb. Specifically, the records show that 80-90 percent of all children diagnosed with DS are killed. One tragedy to this statistic beyond the obvious taking of life is that waiting lists of people exist to adopt these children. These deaths are a great loss not only to the mother and family, but society as a whole. By way of example, Sen. Brownback spoke of a young man named Jimmy diagnosed with DS who operates an elevator in the Senate building.

That means Jimmy and Christin were lucky exceptions to the general rule and trend to kill the unborn diagnosed with a disability. Sadly, Chrisitin's luck unexpectedly ran out this past year when she was not only sexually assaulted in January of this year, but remarkably became pregnant. No one seems sure of the occurrence that young women diagnosed with DS become pregnant. According to the experts I consulted, the numbers are likely too rare for an official count. One thing is sure, of those becoming pregnant, complications are likely to exist.

In Christin's case, she was taken by her family at 28 weeks pregnant to Wichita, Kan., to the infamous abortion clinic of Dr. George Tiller. At that time, a drug was administered to kill the baby and another drug to open the cervix for delivery or removal of the dead baby. After starting the procedure, which normally takes 3-4 days, Christin was sent to a local hotel to begin her labor.

Somewhat surprisingly, she returned to the clinic the next day, the abortion procedure was completed and she was once again told to return to her hotel room. Immediately her condition began to deteriorate. When she returned to the clinic, her symptoms were misdiagnosed as dehydration. She was given an IV and again sent back to her hotel where she began having episodes of vomiting and unconsciousness. She was advised to return to the clinic where she became unresponsive. By this time Christin was in serious trouble. According to one doctor who reviewed her autopsy report, she was "bleeding and oozing from every orifice of her body."

A clinic employee called 911. More worried abut the clinics image than Christin, she begged the dispatcher to turn off the lights or sirens of the ambulance. The ambulance arrived and took Christin to the emergency room at Wesley Medical Center, but it was too late. Christin died. According to the medical examiner's report, her horrifying and painful death was a direct result of the abortion. What's worse, it could have been prevented if not for the misdiagnosis and slow response of clinic staff.

I really must wonder how much she understood of what was happening to her during those painful and frightening hours and days leading to her death and the death of her baby. But without any coverage from the news, no outcry from her parents or the public, Christin is now dead. This sweet and precious little girl was sexually assaulted, her baby was killed (likely without her consent) then she herself suffered and died a brutal and painful end.

God help us for not protecting the most precious and vulnerable among us. I can only repeat the questions asked by Sen. Brownback: "What does that do to us? What does that say about us?"

The old conspiracy gambit.

Unfortunately for you, I have real facts and references, which you have ZERO to back up.

First Reference:

http://www.afterabortion.info/news/CDCdeathswrong.htm
Women Are Three Times More Likely To Die
After An Abortion, New Study
CDC Admits Its Abortion and Childbirth Mortality Statistics Are Not Comparable
New Findings May Change How Roe v Wade is Applied
Springfield, IL (Sept 9, 2005)‑‑International health experts have published a new study disclosing that 94 percent of maternal deaths associated with abortion are not identifiable from death certificates alone. Proper tracking of pregnancy associated deaths, they report, requires the linking of death certificates to the deceased women's medical records. Only in this way, they conclude, can accurate information about recent pregnancies be determined--information that is frequently missing from death certificates and autopsies.
The study, completed by researchers from the National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health in Finland, shows that the long held presumption that abortion is associated with fewer deaths than childbirth does not hold up once the pregnancy history of women is actually investigated using record linkage. Previously, it has been widely assumed that the mortality rate associated with abortion was only one-sixth that of childbirth. But those estimates were based primarily on information gathered only from death certificates or other public records. Proper identification of pregnancy history, the researchers found, reveals that the death rate associated with abortion is actually three times higher than that of childbirth.
The findings of this epidemiological study may have a profound impact on the abortion debate in the United States, according to some legal analysts. "The claim that abortion was safer than childbirth, at least early in pregnancy, was accepted as a crucial fact in Roe v Wade," says Walter Weber, an attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, who specializes in abortion law. "In fact, the Court concluded that the states had authority to regulate abortion to protect women's health only at the point at which death rates associated with abortion exceeded those associated with childbirth --B which at that time was assumed to be around 12 weeks of gestation."
This recent study is just one of a series of studies done among women in Finland and California demonstrating an elevated risk of death following abortion, a risk that exceeds that of both non-pregnant women and women whose pregnancies are allowed to follow their natural course. According to Weber, these studies provide a new basis for states to regulate abortion even within the judicial reasoning of Roe.
The argument over risks of death following abortion versus childbirth won=t be settled overnight, however. Planned Parenthood and the closely allied Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) continue to promote the message that abortion is safer than childbirth. Their argument is based on comparing the nationally reported rates of death for childbirth to the rate of death associated with abortion that is reported by the National Institutes of Health=s Centers for Disease Control (CDC). But both sets of numbers are drawn principally from death certificates.
Even before this latest study discrediting the accuracy of accessing pregnancy associated deaths from death certificates alone, the CDC=s reports on abortion associated deaths had been severely criticized by abortion opponents. One of the chief complaints was that the top physician=s in the CDC=s abortion surveillance unit had clear conflicts of interest since they were not only outspoken advocates for expanding abortion services but also, when not on government payroll, practicing abortion providers.
Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics, has charged that CDC=s abortion surveillance unit was set up by abortion advocates within the CDC not to oversee abortion but to defend and promote abortion. AWhen it comes to abortion, CDC stands for Center for Damage Control,@ writes Crutcher.
A recent law review article examining the implications new data on elevated death rates following abortion also criticizes the CDC=s resistance to adopting the new record linkage techniques. According to the lead author, David Reardon of the Elliot Institute, the CDC abortion surveillance team has yet to apologize for and repudiate a blatantly misleading study it=s team authored in 1982 which asserted they were successfully identifying at least 90 percent of deaths associated with abortion. AThis report was particularly dishonest in that they misappropriated a little known statistical comparison test, and violated each of the test=s three preconditions for validity, simply to dismiss calls for better investigations.@
Reardon says that the work of Kevin Sherlock, a writer and reporter who specializes in public record research, proves that the CDC=s abortion mortality statistics are essentially meaningless. Sherlock=s independent review of death certificates, with cause of death verified by autopsies and court records regarding malpractice claims, confirmed at least 140 abortion related deaths for the decade of the 1980s, which is thirty percent more than the total reported by the CDC. AThat a single investigator could document thirty percent more deaths than the entire CDC abortion surveillance unit should give everyone pause,@ said Reardon.
In light of the studies documenting higher death rates associated with abortion, combined with renewed criticism of the CDC abortion surveillance unit itself, top CDC officials appear to be backing away from their past claims. In response to a letter from Walter Weber questioning the appropriateness of comparing maternal mortality statistics for childbirth with CDC=s reported mortality statistics for abortion, Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, director of the CDC, wrote in July of 2004, that maternal mortality rates and abortion mortality rates Aare conceptually different and are used by the CDC for different public health purposes.@ In other words, the CDC numbers relied upon by Planned Parenthood and AGI are not truly comparable.
According to Reardon, this is why the record-linkage studies based on data collected in Finland and California are so important. AThese studies represent the first time that the measurements of deaths associated with abortion and childbirth have been taken using a consistent and uniform standard.@
While it is still unclear how this new information will ultimately affect abortion access, there is no doubt that it intensify the social, legal, and medical debates surrounding it.
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Citing:
Gissler M, Berg C, Bouvier‑Colle MH, Buekens P. Methods for identifying pregnancy‑associated deaths: population‑based data from Finland 1987‑2000. Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2004 Nov;18(6):448‑55.
Sherlock K. Victims of Choice. Akron, OH, Brennyman Books, 1996.
Reardon DC, Strahan TW, Thorp JM, Shuping MW. Deaths associated with abortion compared to childbirth: a review of new and old data and the medical and legal implications. The Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy 2004; 20(2):279‑327.
Media interviews can be arranged through Amy Sobie (217) 525-8202

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