The closer abortion gets to being illegal

[AvalonXQ]

I take it that there ISN'T an actual anecdote I can site of someone who actually shared the details of a coat hanger abortion?
Not too surprising, but I'd love to be able to shut the guy up.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I take it that there ISN'T an actual anecdote I can site of someone who actually shared the details of a coat hanger abortion?
Not too surprising, but I'd love to be able to shut the guy up.

Will L Ron Hubbard's son do?

One would think that Hubbard was a man who was opposed to abortion, until evidence surfaced that showed Hubbard was writing from his PERSONAL experiences performing abortions on his own wife. In 1983 an interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr. was published, and it contained this horrorific description of Ron Jr.'s witnessing his father attempting an abortion on his mother:
"Hubbard: ... I have a memory of this that goes back to when I was six years old. It is certainly a problem for my father and for Scientology that I rememoer this. It was around 1939, 1940, that I watched my father doing something to my mother. She was lying on the bed and he was sitting on her, facing her feet. He had a coat hanger in his hand. There was blood all over the place. I remember my father shouting at me. "Go back to bed!" A little while later a doctor came and took her off to the hospital. She didn't talk about it for quite a number of years. Neither did my father.
Penthouse: He was trying to perform an abortion? Hubbard: According to him and my mother, he tried to do it with me. I was born at six and a half months and weighed two pounds, two ounces. I mean, I wasn't born: this is what came out as a result of their attempt to abort me. It happened during a night of partying --he got involved in trying to do a black-magic number. Also, I've got to complete this by saying that he thought of himself as the Beast 666 incarnate."

http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/hubbard-coathanger-abortionist.htm

And here's a first hand account (warning, parts of the article are even more disturbing than this):

Next came a thin pencil, which the man shoved into my cervix to begin dilating it. Other pens and pencils of increasing width were forced through my cervix, each of them causing me to wince in pain. When the man was satisfied that I was open enough, he inserted a coat hanger, the triangular part bent into a straight line, through my cervix and into my uterus. I moaned with pain as he began jabbing it around, hitting my uterine wall I don't know how many times before he finally pierced the fetal sac.

http://www.fwhc.org/stories/caroline.htm

 

[Mycroft]

I take it that there ISN'T an actual anecdote I can site of someone who actually shared the details of a coat hanger abortion?
Not too surprising, but I'd love to be able to shut the guy up.

Here you go, something to share with your friend.

http://www.idrink.com/v.html?id=37617#


Then this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/views/03essa.html?_r=1

 

[AvalonXQ]

Will L Ron Hubbard's son do?

It looks like he specifically retracted those statement as having been made up to attack his father.

As for "Caroline", the lack of a last name or location will not meet my "source's" requirements.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Then this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/views/03essa.html?_r=1

That article was posted upthread. I showed it to him; he said that there's plenty of second-hand testimony of people having seen the results of coat hanger abortions, but not even one case with a name, date, and location.
I haven't been able to find one of those either.

 

[sadhatter]

I am a pretty thick skinned individual when dealing with reading, or seeing pain, dismemberment or death. But for the love of crap, this **** is disturbing me.

And not for any political reasons, just the pure.....unpleasantness of the procedures involved. Would anyone do this stuff to them , or let this stuff be done to them, if there was nothing preventing them from getting a safe legal abortion? I couldn't see it. I mean this isn't making a frozen pizza versus ordering one , this is the difference between some gwar lyrics, and an unpleasant yet professionally done procedure.

 

[bookitty]

That article was posted upthread. I showed it to him; he said that there's plenty of second-hand testimony of people having seen the results of coat hanger abortions, but not even one case with a name, date, and location.
I haven't been able to find one of those either.

He expects a person admitting to an illegal procedure that has social repercussions to hand over their full name? Not in this country, too dangerous. But it really doesn't matter because even if you had that last name, he would just say that she is making it all up.

There is nothing that will satisfy this person. Abortion is bad. Full stop. Even if you could prove that criminalizing it would lead to barbaric practices, they would just say that would be more incentive for women to keep their legs shut.

 

[AvalonXQ]

But it really doesn't matter because even if you had that last name, he would just say that she is making it all up.

Probably, but I'd really like to give him the full name, date, and location and force him to actually say that.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Probably, but I'd really like to give him the full name, date, and location and force him to actually say that.

I understand the impulse, but there is little satisfaction to be found there.

 

[Dr. Keith]

He expects a person admitting to an illegal procedure that has social repercussions to hand over their full name?
Not in this country, too dangerous.

I was trying to think of where you could find such an account. Medical records are private, as would be the police records or ambulance reports on something so personal. So that would leave you with a newspaper article or book where someone was admitting to having done such an act. As you mention, there is a lot of public shame in this act, so that is not likely to be a timely report. In other words, the woman doing this to herself would need to time to come to a point in her life where she would also be willing to admit she had done it. So, maybe memoirs are the place to look, but I doubt anyone wants that image of themselves in a book about themselves.

No, as far as I can tell it is not odd that you can not find such an account.

ETA: I tried to think of an analogy that would help you explain to your friend why there are no women who admit to having done this in the public record. I can't. Sorry.

 

[bookitty]

Probably, but I'd really like to give him the full name, date, and location and force him to actually say that.

Why? If this person is focused on minutia, there is no way to reason with them. His argument is "if no actual coat hangers were used, illegal abortion is safe." or possibly "No actual coat hangers means that reports of the numbers of abortion that were performed before it was legal are exaggerated." By refusing to engage the real issue, you are feeding his irrationality.

 

[BTMO]

Here's your chance. Explain to me why we should protect a cluster of cells without a brain when we don't do the same for mentally developed animals like pigs.

I will not accept the phrase "because the cell is human" as an answer unless you explain to me why a strand of human DNA is more worthy of life than a strand of pig DNA.

I know the answer to this one - "specism".

When the pig develops a suitable, commensurate, reliable retaliatory military response to bacon, then they get to decide which DNA is sacred.

Until then.... bacon.

 

[Mycroft]

That article was posted upthread. I showed it to him; he said that there's plenty of second-hand testimony of people having seen the results of coat hanger abortions, but not even one case with a name, date, and location.
I haven't been able to find one of those either.

A doctor says he's seen firsthand multiple examples of botched home abortions with coat-hangars. If your friend believes it's more likely that doctor is lying than that he really did witness what he claims to have witnessed, then I'd say your friend demands an unreasonably high standard of proof and that further discussion with him is pointless.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Why? If this person is focused on minutia, there is no way to reason with them. His argument is "if no actual coat hangers were used, illegal abortion is safe." or possibly "No actual coat hangers means that reports of the numbers of abortion that were performed before it was legal are exaggerated."

Actually, his argument is "abortion advocates will happily exaggerate, manufacture graphic tales, or generally stretch the truth to make their point". The common use of "coat hanger abortions" without even one identifiable, verifiable example of that specific phenomenon is simply being used as evidence of something where he claims pro-aborts have essentially created an urban legend to give them a rallying point with no solid factual underpinning.
And again, I'd like to just be able to cite a name, date, and location to shut down his argument. But I understand that that's not actually possible due to the nature of the event.

 

[AvalonXQ]

A doctor says he's seen firsthand multiple examples of botched home abortions with coat-hangars. If your friend believes it's more likely that doctor is lying than that he really did witness what he claims to have witnessed, then I'd say your friend demands an unreasonably high standard of proof and that further discussion with him is pointless.

I tend to agree -- although it's more like he demands an unreasonably specific standard of proof.
And he's definitely not my friend.

 

[kellyb]

Actually, his argument is "abortion advocates will happily exaggerate, manufacture graphic tales, or generally stretch the truth to make their point". The common use of "coat hanger abortions" without even one identifiable, verifiable example of that specific phenomenon is simply being used as evidence of something where he claims pro-aborts have essentially created an urban legend to give them a rallying point with no solid factual underpinning.
And again, I'd like to just be able to cite a name, date, and location to shut down his argument. But I understand that that's not actually possible due to the nature of the event.

What about this?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791734/

Ask him if he thinks it's just an elaborate hoax to promote abortions.

 

[shalomsteph]

What about this?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791734/

Ask him if he thinks it's just an elaborate hoax to promote abortions.

Oh my, that was horrible. She is lucky to be alive, by the sounds of it.

 

[kellyb]

Also, ask him WHY he needs a name, and point out to him that behaving like this makes it look like some pro-lifers (him) are just as or more dishonest than he accusing pro-abortionists of being.

 

[sadhatter]

Actually, his argument is "abortion advocates will happily exaggerate, manufacture graphic tales, or generally stretch the truth to make their point". The common use of "coat hanger abortions" without even one identifiable, verifiable example of that specific phenomenon is simply being used as evidence of something where he claims pro-aborts have essentially created an urban legend to give them a rallying point with no solid factual underpinning.
And again, I'd like to just be able to cite a name, date, and location to shut down his argument. But I understand that that's not actually possible due to the nature of the event.

With all the terrible methods invented through time that have been used to induce abortions ( just try and get a list going it will take you quite some time.) , your friends argument seems to be if this one method does not have a spokesperson willing to say they did it with their real name, then illegal abortions arn't that bad.

That is the silliest line of logic i have ever heard. Historical methods used to induce abortion are pretty easy to find, and none of them are pleasant at all. Even if a single coat hanger abortion never happened in the literal sense, there is a laundry list of self abortive procedures none of which are clean, safe or have any semblance of a guarantee.

 

[bookitty]

Actually, his argument is "abortion advocates will happily exaggerate, manufacture graphic tales, or generally stretch the truth to make their point". The common use of "coat hanger abortions" without even one identifiable, verifiable example of that specific phenomenon is simply being used as evidence of something where he claims pro-aborts have essentially created an urban legend to give them a rallying point with no solid factual underpinning.
And again, I'd like to just be able to cite a name, date, and location to shut down his argument. But I understand that that's not actually possible due to the nature of the event.

If his point is not that methods of abortion were unsafe before it was legal, or that fewer were performed than are currently be being reported, what is it? What exactly is the point of exaggerating?