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""Abortion Survivor"?

Maybe I'm overestimating the intelligence of pro-lifers. I've just been to an anti-abortion site which is covering Jessens's story. It also has a picture of what it claims is a late-term abortion baby that has been "ripped to pieces".
The picture shows what appears to be a 7-month fetus - there's nothing to measure it's size by, so I'm guessing - covered in blood, lying on a bloody sheet. It looks at first sight as if it's missing an arm.
But blow the picture up and study it and you see that the "missing arm" effect is created by the positioning of the baby - one arm is just out of sight - and that there's no obvious wound that the blood could be coming from. Also, the child looks far too pink and healthy to have lost that much blood. Finally. the child has a perfectly obvious umbilical cord clamp. Why clamp the cord of an aborted fetus? This is clearly NOT an aborted baby.
If pro-lifers can't see that they're being lied to when the photographic evidence is right in front of their eyes, then convincing them that "abortion survivors" like Jessen are lying is going to be an impossible task.

DISTURBING PICTURE WARNINGThe photo is here DISTURBING PICTURE WARNING
 
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sophia8 said:
Maybe I'm overestimating the intelligence of pro-lifers. I've just been to an anti-abortion site which is covering Jessens's story. It also has a picture of what it claims is a late-term abortion baby that has been "ripped to pieces".
The picture shows what appears to be a 7-month fetus - there's nothing to measure it's size by, so I'm guessing - covered in blood, lying on a bloody sheet. It looks at first sight as if it's missing an arm.
But blow the picture up and study it and you see that the "missing arm" effect is created by the positioning of the baby - one arm is just out of sight - and that there's no obvious wound that the blood could be coming from. Also, the child looks far too pink and healthy to have lost that much blood. Finally. the child has a perfectly obvious umbilical cord clamp. Why clamp the cord of an aborted fetus? This is clearly NOT an aborted baby.
If pro-lifers can't see that they're being lied to when the photographic evidence is right in front of their eyes, then convincing them that "abortion survivors" like Jessen are lying is going to be an impossible task.

DISTURBING PICTURE WARNINGThe photo is here DISTURBING PICTURE WARNING
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It is a dead fetus and it does not appear that any attempt has been made to resuscitate it, implying that either it is a still birth or a late abortion.

The cord is clamped because the placenta is often delivered a couple of minutes after the fetus. It would be unpleasant (to say the least) to have a dead baby close to the mother while waiting for placental delivery to occur.

The amount of blood does not look unusual for a vaginal delivery.
 
Camillus said:
It is a dead fetus and it does not appear that any attempt has been made to resuscitate it, implying that either it is a still birth or a late abortion.

The cord is clamped because the placenta is often delivered a couple of minutes after the fetus. It would be unpleasant (to say the least) to have a dead baby close to the mother while waiting for placental delivery to occur.

The amount of blood does not look unusual for a vaginal delivery.
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I thought that too, but it seemed so obvious that I didn't mention it. There are a couple of things - the meconium staining, the distorted head - that makes me guess that this particular baby had something like anencephaly or severe spina bifida; a legitimate reason for a late abortion, since such babies never survive. If that photo was taken by one of the medical staff there would be a second shot taken of the baby's back, which would show the defect. I can't imagine anybody else taking such a shocking photo, or for any other reason.
Personally, I find the use of such photographs by prolifers to be totally disgusting. Every such picture represents a tragedy for a mother, a father, a family. Using them for proganda purposes, without even giving the children involved the dignity of a name, a history, is FOUL.

As for a "Stop Gianna" site, there are two reason why I wouldn't do it.
First, prolifers aren't like RLLancaster's mum and her friends, who are decent people in the main, misguided maybe, but with a moral code and attempting to live by "Christian" values of love and forgiveness. Once they had proof of Kaz's lying and hypocricy, they accepted it.
Prolifers are a different breed altogether. Lots of them claim to be Christian, but you wouldn't think so from reading their websites, which spew hatred and venom at anyone who doesn't share their views. They share a lot of characteristics with the animal rights extremists, especially the mindset that paints everything in black and white; in their minds, they are fighting on the side of Good and everyone who isn't is pure Evil and deserves annihilation.
Jessen is feeding them exactly what they believe and want to hear - abortionists are Evil, abortion is Murder, stop the Evil Murdering Abortion Doctors. She is on their side, so she is automatically Good and cannot possibly be lying. Like CTs, they are going to simply ignore anything that doesn't carry that message.
And they don't give a monkey's for any of that mamby-pamby "Love the sinner, hate the sin", "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do" stuff. Which brings me to my second point. These people are serious about wanting to wipe out abortionists - like the animal rights lots, they freely publish names, addresses, workplaces, so that any nutball knows where a pro-abortionist lives.
I do not want to get onto one of those lists, thank you very much.
 
It's an interesting thread, and a case I hadn't heard about before. I had heard about cases of procedures that started as abortions and ended as live births, but I've never heard from an adult survivor.

I want to offer one possible reason why there is no campaign mounted by the pro-choice movement to debunk her story. The reason they don't do it is because her story is probably true.
 
Meadmaker said:
It's an interesting thread, and a case I hadn't heard about before. I had heard about cases of procedures that started as abortions and ended as live births, but I've never heard from an adult survivor.

I want to offer one possible reason why there is no campaign mounted by the pro-choice movement to debunk her story. The reason they don't do it is because her story is probably true.
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Meadmaker, please go and read the earlier posts - especially those of Euromutt and Ysabella.
Jessen has no proof whatsoever of her story. The entire story about her mother being 17, going for a 32-week abortion, of her mother being left to suffer for hours in an "abortion room", of the "abortion doctor" having to be forced to sign Jessens birth certificate, and so on, are not supported by any evidence or eyewitness statements. Her mother has never been identified, has never come forward and told her story. That part of Jessen's story may or may not be true, but without evidence for its veracity, why should it be believed?
At least two of Jessen's claims cannot be true.
She claims that saline abortion kills babies by slowly "burning" them. False
She claims that California had no time limits on abortion when she was born. False
Jessen has been publically telling her story - making her living from telling it - and making these claims for some 14 years now. When somebody continually makes demonstrably false claims, they are either delusional or lying.

As to why the pro-choice movement hasn't mounted a campaign to debunk her story, maybe they feel it would be a totla waste of their time. She is, after all, speaking to the converted, who will not believe any debunking (as I explained earlier).

ETA: Just came up with this blog entry:
As I pointed out once before, someone or a few someones out there really don't like Gianna Jessen - the young woman who survived an abortion - and/or her story. A few days ago, I noticed yet another search for "Gianna Jessen fraud" brought someone to S&B, and again today, a search for "Gianna Jessen fraud abortion" showed up on my Site Meter referrals page. The details for the visitors show them to be different people (one from Australia and one from Atlanta), so obviously more than one person out there have it in their heads that Gianna Jessen is a liar. It's strange how people just don't want her story to be true. That speaks volumes about the pro-abortion crowd.
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Which illustrates my earlier point about prolifers - anyone who expresses doubts about the Blessed Gianna's story is by definition one of the evil proabortion enemy.
 
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sophia8 said:
She claims that saline abortion kills babies by slowly "burning" them. False
She claims that California had no time limits on abortion when she was born. False
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I think a clinically inaccurate description of the mechanism of death is not a really significant part of her story. There's plenty of overheated rhetoric on both sides of the issue, and certainly she tells a version dripping with emotion and stretched in various ways to make a point. Do you think her story would be significantly different if she described the death of the fetus more accurately?

As for restrictions and time limits, one of the complaints from the right wing is that, whatever restrictions there are always have loopholes, effectively creating a situation where abortion on demand is available from conception to delivery. They say that the restrictions can be avoided. I don't know if that's true, but that's what they say. To demonstrate that this is false, all one would have to do is show cases of doctors being prosecuted and/or disciplined for performing late term abortions.

What I do know is that there are cases of live births resulting from late term abortion procedures. So, let us suppose that the truth is that it is difficult, but possible, to obtain a late term abortion. This contrasts with the claim that there is no time limit on late term abortions. Again, is the difference all that significant?

You're splitting hairs. The core of her story is that she survived an abortion attempt, although not without long term medical complications. That is extremely plausible. The rest of the story is window dressing.
 
Meadmaker said:
I think a clinically inaccurate description of the mechanism of death is not a really significant part of her story. There's plenty of overheated rhetoric on both sides of the issue, and certainly she tells a version dripping with emotion and stretched in various ways to make a point. Do you think her story would be significantly different if she described the death of the fetus more accurately?
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Her description her her claimed saline abortion is not just "clinically inaccurate". It is simply UNTRUE.
Her description of her claimed abortion has her being "burned" in her mother's womb for hours. She constantly uses the word "caustic". (I'm not going to bother to provide quotes from her set speech here - there are plenty of them all over the web.) She ascribes to this "burning" not only her cerebral palsy, but also a fear of fire. It is a very important part of her presentation, sorry, story.
The fact is that a saline solution DOES NOT BURN. Soup is a saline solution, the sea is a saline solution - sea water is about twice as salty as medical saline solutions. A saline abortion kills by changing the electrolyte balance of the blood, stopping the heart; it's very quick and does not take "hours".
So she is LYING about that fact. Her claimed saline abortion did not cause her cerebral palsy, nor her fear of fire.
This fact can be got grom any gynacologist, any gynacological textbook. Yet Jessen continues to repeat it, over and over and over (for $2500-$7500 a time).
She has claimed numerous times "There is no time limit on abortions in America". Again, this is simply NOT TRUE. When she was born, there was a time limit of 28 weeks on abortions in California. If she really was the victim of a 34-week abortion, why wasn't the abortion doctor (the one who signed her birth certificate, remember?) prosecuted?

This is not splitting hairs. Those two claims form the whole basis of her story, that she is an abortion survivor who was damaged by abortion. Without them, she has no credibility with the prolife movement, nobody will pay to hear her speak.
And, I repeat that there is NO EVIDENCE that she was the victim of an abortion at all. Her story is not plausible at all.

Finally, I am getting pretty tired of being accused of being pro-abortion simply because I believe this woman is a liar.
 
Saline abortions are simply not done at 30 weeks. I suppose you could craft some tale of a deceptive mother and an incompetent doctor. If someone did inject a mother with saline at 30 weeks I suppose I can imagine it inducing premature birth. But all this is so absurdly speculative that I'm inclined to call it a hoax.

Anyone out there care to speculate on what a saline injection at 30 weeks might do?
 
Ryokan said:
ETA : Ban abortions, and your newspapers will soon fill up with how awful illegal abortions are, and how late they are done.
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This will be followed by the immediate call to spend vast amounts of government money and law enforcement manpower, along with the wholesale violations of American civil rights that will result, in order to fight the "War For The Unborn."

If you thought drug prohibition was stupid, just and see what happens if the fetus fetishists get their wish.
 
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sophia8 said:
She ascribes to this "burning" not only her cerebral palsy, but also a fear of fire. It is a very important part of her presentation, sorry, story.
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My guess is she doesn't remember.

She also strikes me as a bit woo-ish, so she's not a scientific authority, and it's quite possible she gets a lot of details wrong, and is probably unconcerned with accuracy.

It's also possible that she is just plain lying. If so, then here is what happened: She read about an abortion survivor, and decided that if she pretended to be one, she could scam some bucks. However, in order for that plan to work, there's one key fact that would have to be true. There would have to be abortion survivors to imitate.

That works out pretty well for her, because there are abortion survivors.

Finally, I am getting pretty tired of being accused of being pro-abortion simply because I believe this woman is a liar.
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By whom? Certainly not by me. I haven't gone back and re-read the thread, but I can't recall a reference to you having pro-abortion views.
 
Euromutt said:
And Ms Jessen supposedly suffers from cerebral palsy, but fortunately, as of 2000, she is left "only with a slight limp" and "no longer [has] need of a walker or leg braces." In this article in the Torygraph, she claims that:Two years ago... so, late November or early December of 2003. Yet she finished last year's Music City Marathon (in Nashville TN), which was held on April 24th. From atrophied muscles to running a 7½ hour marathon in a mere five months!
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17 months. She ran the 2005 marathon not the 2004.
 
Is that 7 1/2 hour figure a typo? If not, then the girl completed it at a brisk walk.

ETA: Nope, 7 1/2 hours it is. approximately 3.5 miles per hour. As an athletic accomplishment, very unimpressive. For a regular person, anyway.


I looked up the "burning" thing with saline amniocentesis. It's a widely repeated claim. Those sources with footnotes always cited the same source. Stephen Corson, "Fertility Control", Little, Brown. No page number given. Presumably the sites are all plagiarizing off each other, complete with footnotes. Or there is some variation of a "talking points" or "writing points" among the anti-abortion community. Don't have the source, myself, so I can't see whether that's even a reasonable interpretation of Dr. Corson's work.
 
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Meadmaker said:
If so, then here is what happened: She read about an abortion survivor, and decided that if she pretended to be one, she could scam some bucks. However, in order for that plan to work, there's one key fact that would have to be true. There would have to be abortion survivors to imitate.
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All she would have to do is read a lot of anti-abortion literature and make up her own narative. There doesn't have to be another abortion survivor for her to copy.
 
Thanks for the links. After reading that article, the 18-week limit seems like a good idea. But something needs to be done about those British doctors. Perhaps they're the ones who washed out of British dental school?
 
You might also look up a 1978 paper:

"Live Birth as a Complication of Second Trimester Abortion Induced with Intra-amniotic Prostaglandin F2a,"

It appears about 7% were born alive, although none survived longer than 13 hours. Now, consider why the Prostaglandin was being introduced at the time. Answer: Two reasons. Fewer complications to the pregnant woman, and fewer live births. Later methods were refined to prevent that particular complication.

Curious thing about looking up the "burning" question. It's claimed in lots of anti-abortion sites. This includes a few firsthand accounts from nurses who saw babies (and yes these were babies because they lived for several days following birth) covered with blisters.

By comparison, pro-abortion and neutral sites barely mention the phenomenon at all. A few tried to debunk the claim by noting that saline solutions didn't burn, but they didn't actually describe the appearance of aborted fetal skin. But, then again, I couldn't find any description of the appearance of an aborted fetus on any of the neutral or pro-abortion sites.

So, the people who do not oppose abortion seem reluctant to talk about the phenomenon, and the people who do oppose it may reasonably considered biased sources. Hard to sort out the truth from that.

Meanwhile, I must admit something. I had seen previous reports in newspapers about live births that started out as abortion attempts. However, it occurred to me reading the abortion sites that I have only seen them reported within a day or two of the event. Therefore, my earlier assertion that I had heard of survivors is somewhat (unintentionally)misleading, in that I was previously unaware of a "survivor" that lasted more than a couple of days. The newspaper articles I read never covered that question, as they always appeared within a day or two of the birth, and I can't recall any mention of the baby's health.

I don't know if there are any other cases where a person claims to be an adult survivor of a failed abortion, or if any such claim can be verified by unimpeachable documentary evidence. I have never read an article, before Ms. Jessen's claim, about a baby who left the hospital in reasonably good health, having been delivered after an abortion attempt.
 
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