Thread by NYer.
ORLANDO, Florida, July 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In disturbing testimony during court proceedings against a well-known Florida abortionist, a fellow abortionist reportedly admitted that some aborted children are delivered alive and left “wiggling around in the toilet,” where they are allowed to die.
The testimony occurred during proceedings against abortionist James Pendergraft, who was forced to pay over $36 million last week for a botched procedure that left its intended target alive, but severely disabled.
Pendergraft, who was convicted of felony extortion in 2001, was told by an Orlando County jury to pay $18 million in the civil suit itself and another $18 million in punitive damages, totaling over $36 million.
Michele Herzog of Pro-Life Action Ministries, a witness in the courtroom, said that jurors listened as abortionist Randall Whitney, one of Pendergrast’s accomplices, “cavalierly stated that yes, babies are delivered in the toilet all the time and many times are still alive, wiggling around in the toilet.”
“I would say it was eye-opening, but we all know what really goes on in these abortion mills. But to hear the abortionist so coldly explain how they kill the children is so hard to hear and so unbelievable to think that it is allowed in our great nation,” Herzog said.
The civil suit was launched by Pendergrast’s former patient, Carol Howard, whose infant barely survived a 2004 medical abortion at his facility. The girl, now ten years old, suffers from a host of disabilities in connection with the attempted killing, including cerebral palsy, loss of function on the left side of her body, strokes, mental disability, chronic lung disease, and seizures.
The jury last week awarded Pendergraft to pay Howard $18,255,000 in damages, as well as $462,000 in court costs, according to reports. The next day, the jury awarded Howard punitive damages of over $18 million, bringing the total to $36,766,000.
“[Pendergraft] has an abortion dynasty around the state of Florida. He only cares about money, and I say hit him where it hurts!” said Howard’s attorney during closing arguments to the jury, according to Herzog.
Although Pendergraft was still in jail for extortion in Marian County at the time, Howard said she was drawn to one of his five abortion clinics because the facility’s website touted his credentials as a board certified OB/GYN. When she got there, she was given RU-486 by a medical assistant to abort her pregnancy at over 22 weeks.
Herzog reports that, according to Howard’s attorney, Howard was given fifty times the standard dosage of Cyotec, a brand name for the labor-inducing drug misoprostol. When Howard began undergoing violent contractions and asked for pain medication, she was told by medical assistants to walk her labor off outside in the parking lot, or else leave, according to the pro-life group. Meanwhile, there were reportedly no doctors or nurses present.
Howard wound up going home, but called 911 and managed to give birth to her baby at a hospital.
Thread by me.
On Saturday the Daily Mail ran a poll with the question, “Should ‘minimally conscious’ patients be allowed to die?
As of this writing (on Saturday), 29% said No, 71% said yes.
I have to wonder though, if the people who clicked Yes had given much thought to the form of the question. Something I learned as a lobbyist paying close attention to various pieces of legislation is to always look very closely indeed at the pages of the bill that give the definitions of terms. What does it mean to be “allowed to die”? And what, exactly, are we talking about when we refer to “minimally conscious” people?
I’ll help here with some research I have done into the question at hand. In the cases I have studied closely, that of Terri Schiavo in the US and Eluana Englaro in Italy, neither woman was a) terminally ill, b) on a respirator c) sick in any way. Both were brain damaged, but the damage did not impair any of their vital bodily functions. In both cases, the only care they needed was ordinary nursing care, bathing, clothing and, most crucially, feeding. Both of them could have lived a normal lifespan if these had been continued.
In the case of Terri Schiavo, her family made it public knowledge that she was not “in a coma,” not in a “vegetative state”. In her case, the public was shown video and photographs of Terri awake and responsive to the people and stimuli around her. In the case of Eluana Englaro, although we were shown no photos, it was revealed to the public that she was not ill, was not on a respirator, was not in a coma and required only food and hydration via a feeding tube. In the US, the delivery of food and water via a tube is classified as “medical treatment” that can be refused by a patient or (and here’s what killed Terri) by a patient’s guardian. In Italy this is not the case, but the artificial delivery of food and water was not specifically dealt with in law. However, in both countries, “assisting a suicide” is an offense, as is homicide.
We are all aware of the media frenzy, including a great deal of misdirection, surrounding the case of Terri Schiavo. In Italy, there was also a loud uproar and the media paid a great deal of attention to the case, particularly towards the end of Eluana’s life. In most cases, the media consistently used this phrase: “allowed to die,” a piece of deliberate and conscious misdirection, that I maintain is maliciously motivated to promote the cause of legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia, a favourite cause on the left in Europe and the US.
In parliaments too, the phrase is consistently used as a type of pacifier by legislators trying to lift prohibitions on assisted suicide. It sound quite natural and harmless doesn’t it, and it plays on the perfectly moral principle that patients who are near to death from illness should be able to refuse extraordinary, aggressive or painful procedures if there is little chance that they will significantly prolong life.
If a cancer patient is in the last stages of the disease and all normal measures have been taken, everyone agrees that it is not only perfectly licit but in fact desirable to provide palliative care and allow the patient and their loved ones some quiet time before the end.
But the question asked by the Daily Mail above doesn’t mention “terminally ill” patients. It doesn’t specify that a person who is potentially to be “allowed to die” is about to do so anyway and is being plagued with aggressive extraordinary treatments. All it says is “minimally conscious” and “allowed to die”.
Let’s examine the following scenario. A healthy person has been drugged into minimal consciousness. He is strapped to a gurney and wheeled into a room and left there without provision for food and water.
Now, ask the following question: Is he being murdered or is he being “allowed to die”?
Now, let’s examine another scenario. A healthy person is in a car accident and is rushed to the hospital with a severe head injury. It is determined in the hospital that although she remains otherwise healthy and undamaged, her brain function is never going to be what it was and she will require help with feeding, dressing and bathing etc., very likely for the rest of her life which, barring future illness, should be a normal span. She is taken to a nursing home run by nuns who are happy to take on the duties of caring for her for the rest of her life. This includes delivery of food and water via a stomach tube.
If the nuns then removed her food and hydration tube and refused to care for her and she died, should they be liable for charges of neglect causing death? Perhaps even homicide?
Is it “allowing a person to die” if he is helpless and is refused food and water?
I wonder how the British public would be answering a poll question like the following:
“Should vulnerable patients be deliberately starved and dehydrated to death when their lives are deemed to be worthless by a hospital ethics committee?”