A Day at West Alabama Women’s Center
Editor’s note: As part of our new Secular Sidewalk program, Monday blog posts will be written by sidewalk counselors. This week, our guest blogger is Amelia from Alabama.
Saturdays are sidewalk counseling days. We have two shifts. The first comes early in the morning to greet the doctor, nurses, and staff. The second shift shows up at 8:30 and stays until 11 or 12. I generally work the second shift. We have about 6 people to a shift, with a bit of overlap in the middle.
The clinic is located at the intersection of an interstate and a busy highway. We park on the shoulder of the road. The clinic is located in a complex of buildings owned by a pro-choice lawyer; we’re not allowed to approach the building. A single row of the parking lot is public property, we stand there, about 25 feet from where the patients park. They have a hard time hearing us. Dr. Payne (his real name…isn’t that ironic) opens his doors at 7.
Today is game day (Roll Tide!) Gloria, the clinic manager, has her car decked out in Crimson flags. Sometimes she’s polite to us and say good morning. Other days she’ll accuse one of our members of child abuse (one woman brings her 8 year old, who mostly stays in the car and reads). Today she just ignored us. Game days are usually a bit slower, but it’s an evening game, so there’s no need to schedule your abortion around football.
A little bit after I show up, we have one couple come talk to us. We give her a Physician’s for Life pamphlet and tell her that there are other resources. She informs us that she’s just there for a “check-up.” This isn’t actually a service offered by the clinic, but we wish her good health and send her off with smiles.
She’s the only one who talks to us for the next hour. We plead with women walking in. We tell them that we can help, that this is their child, that they are strong enough to be mothers; but there are no turn-arounds today. We watch them walk in, hunch backed, arms around their stomachs. It is as if, even as they walk into the abortion clinic, they are protecting their children from us. The maternal instinct is a funny thing.
We had two families there today. In the first one, the daughter seemed to be eleven. Her parents looked like they were mid-thirties. Usually when this happens, the girl is there for the abortion; however, this time the girl was there for support (and I was so relieved). She wandered the parking lot a bit while her mother got an abortion. The other family was the first Hispanic family I’ve seen here. The daughter was definitely the patient; she had the walk. When we called to them, the father answered and promised to come and speak to us in a minute. An hour later, we still hadn’t seen him.
Eventually, we were able to talk to two men. They brought a girl and then wandered around the parking lot. After calling them over 3 times, they finally came to talk to us. I guess they figured they had nothing else to do. Usually, in these cases we tell them about post-abortive counseling and that they might want to watch for signs of depression. However, one of them had a cross on and a praying hands tattoo. So, one of our men spent about 20 minutes preaching to them instead. I don’t know how it was taken.
Halfway through the day, someone called the police on us. This is a fairly common occurrence (the real estate office next door to the clinic doesn’t like us for some reason…they claim to be pro-life, but our presence “bothers” them). The cops know us by now, and they’re always nice about it. We show them the invisible line we’re not allowed to go past, sometimes we hand them some literature, and then they wish us a nice day and drive away.
And that was Saturday. I don’t think we saved any lives today, but maybe we touched a heart or two. We stood witness to 20 lost lives. We’re one of the few people who know that these children existed. I feel that we owe this to them. If we can’t save these children’s lives, then don’t they deserve someone (someone who will mourn the loss) to bear witness to their deaths?
I don’t think we saved any lives today
Sure you did. By your failure to stop her, you may well have saved the life of the little girl who needed the abortion.
In fact, given the relative statistical odds of pregnancy/childbirth vs legal abortion ending in death, you save at least one life for every 10,000 girls and women you do NOT manage to bully out of going into the clinic.
And for every day you fail to shut that clinic down, you save the lives of all the women who would otherwise have to have unsafe illegal abortions.
Negative life-savings, but so long as you decline to tackle the real dangers, you'll just have to be content with your failures saving lives by default.
The real lethal dangers in the US are what the pro-life movement studiously declines to tackle.
Deadly Delivery
Read carefully, Yonmei: the girl was there to accompany her mother, who was aborting a sibling, not to get an abortion herself.
Interesting that the pro-lifer whose kid likes to read in the car is accused of child abuse, but bringing your middle schooler along for Mom's abortion is a-okay.
If 1 out of 10 000 women die in childbirth, 9999 out of 10 000 women don't.
That means, chances are, all the women who had abortions would have survived childbirth.
The vast majority of women who die in childbirth have underlying conditions that contribute to death.
With abortion someone WILL die.
With childbirth, someone MIGHT die.
When you calculate a moral risk, you avoid the certain evil, before you start worrying about an evil that has a 1 in 10 000 chance of occurring.
Good point, Suzanne. On top of that, there are plenty of things that we can do to prevent death in childbirth which are more effective than promoting abortion. Particularly in the developing world, the best way to prevent deaths in childbirth is to provide competent, trained midwifes. Surgery to repair fistulas is also life-saving, and inexpensive (from our perspective).
More info: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/05/wudunn.women.oppression/?hpt=C2
http://www.nrlc.org/UN/MMEnglsh.pdf
I did read carefully: "The other family was the first Hispanic family I’ve seen here. The daughter was definitely the patient; she had the walk" – so one little girl's life saved by abortion. Pregnancy is dangerous for children: while I'm against forced abortion, no one but a child abuser would force a little girl through pregnancy against her will.
Taking a little kid along on a political demonstration – especially one which could get as ugly as a pro-life bullying session outside a clinic – is something people are rightly cautious about, if they're responsible parents.
Daughter wanting to come with mother to support her through a minor operation: that shows good family solidarity.
Suzanne: That means, chances are, all the women who had abortions would have survived childbirth.
For every ten thousand women in the US who get pregnant, 13.3 will die. That's a maternal death rate way higher than any other developed country, strongly associated with the US's poor healthcare system. Yet pro-lifers are never seen demonstrating for universal healthcare, demanding prenatal care for ALL women. They're seen outside health clinics demonstrating against doctors saving lives by providing safe legal abortion.
When you calculate a moral risk, you avoid the certain evil, before you start worrying about an evil that has a 1 in 10 000 chance of occurring.
Okay. It is certainly evil – with immediate, known hazards – to force a girl or a woman to have a baby. Forced pregnancy is more dangerous than voluntary pregnancy. Demanding a woman risk her life – even a 1 in 10000 chance – is something no one has the right to do. I choose to oppose the known evil: that's why I'm pro-choice and you guys are anti-choice.
Particularly in the developing world, the best way to prevent deaths in childbirth is to provide competent, trained midwifes.
Ecclampsia is one of the leading causes of death in childbirth in any country where safe legal abortion is not available. Pro-lifers who campaign against safe legal abortion in the developing world – the recent campaign against making it POSSIBLE for women to have life-saving abortions in Kenya is one direct example – are directly arguing that it doesn't matter when women die of pregnancy-related conditions for which the ONLY cure is abortion. Pro-lifers effectively campaign for women dying. How ironic.
Maternal mortality rate Alabama: 9.6 per hundred thousand live births. 25th in the US as a whole.
13.7% of total births in Alabama are to teenage mothers. The infant mortality rates for teenage mothers in 2007 compared with adult mothers in Alabama makes a statistically significant difference, 13.8 for teens versus 9.4 for adult mother. Teen mothers are less likely to obtain adequate prenatal care and to complete high school or attend college. Children of teenage mothers are at greater risk for preterm birth, low birth weight, poverty and welfare dependence. Medical News Today
Yonmei, the odds are that she was not there for a life-saving abortion. 93% of abortions are performed for socioeconomic reasons. Only 4% cited maternal health, and an even smaller percentage were life-saving.
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/reasonsabortions.html
In addition, eclampsia can be treated by delivering the child; an abortion is not necessary.
Killing an innocent human being is something nobody has a right to do, regardless of the age of the victim.
It would be particularly traumatic to me if my brother or sister were killed.
Well, if we take Jesurgislac's data, there is a .000096% chance abortion will save the mother's life. However, we have to subtract from that the chance that abortion will end the mother's life(.00001054, using CDC statshttp://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm)).
This leaves a.00008546% chance that an abortion would save an Alabamian woman's life, versus the 100% chance that it would end her child's life. I'd rather save the child's life and help the mother through her emotional and economic hardship, than kill the child and leave her alone to deal with her problems.
"so one little girl's life saved by abortion."
Yeah, she definitly wans't a "little girl." She was about 17, I think. Just because she came with a family unit, doesn't mean she's a child. We'll have early 30's come in with their mother's sometimes.
And these 3rd world countries need access to magnesium sulfate (and adequate prenatal care), not abortion, to stop eclamptic deaths.
Actually, I think trying to perform an abortion an a pre-eclamptic woman without magnesium sulfate would make her more likely to die, just due to increased blood pressure and risk of infection (think about it, would you have surgery in one of these countries).
But, yeah, abortion is definitly not the only cure (actually, I don't think they ever use it as a cure) for eclampsia. My mom was preeclamptic with the last set of twins, and I have beautiful 3 year old brothers and a perfectly healthy mother.
I've noticed pro-lifers tend to live in a nice little dream world where pregnancy never kills people they know. Probably because the pro-life movement in the US is a white movement with strong links to racism… and because maternal mortality/morbidity tends to affect black and Hispanic women far more than white, reflecting racist healthcare provision in the US.
Nevertheless, Amelia:
"Preeclampsia occurs in approximately 5% of all pregnancies in the United States, which represents an incidence of 23.6 cases per 1,000 deliveries. Eclampsia occurs in 0.05% to 0.2% of all pregnancies. Preeclampsia is the third-leading cause of death related to pregnancy, with hemorrhage and embolism ranking first and second, respectively. It accounts for approximately 790 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The maternal mortality rate for eclampsia is 8%–36%. Maternal morbidity and mortality from preeclampsia and eclampsia are related to organ ischemia associated with vasospasm and small vessel thrombosis, coagulation disorders, kidney damage, stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, seizures and abruptio placentae. Fetal morbidity and mortality may result from premature delivery, abruption placentae infarction of the placenta, ischemic encephalopathy and intrauterine growth retardation." EMS Magazine
Magnesium sulfate can be used to control pre-eclamptic seizures. If preeclampsia occurs late enough in pregnancy and the woman is willing to take the risk, and if she's not at a pro-life hospital that will force her to take the risk whether she wants to or not, she may be able to continue the pregnancy for long enough to terminate by live delivery rather than abortion.
But, yeah, abortion is definitly not the only cure (actually, I don't think they ever use it as a cure) for eclampsia.
Well, except when the woman isn't at a pro-life hospital AND she needs an abortion to save her life. But why would a pro-lifer care about saving the woman's life if doing so meant killing the fetus? Why save one when both could be left to die? That's not the Catholic way.
"Probably because the pro-life movement in the US is a white movement with strong links to racism…"
Oh, please. Do you really want to have the conversation about the eugenic roots of the abortion movement? How about the video in which Planned Parenthood gleefully accepts donations earmarked to "kill black babies"? I'm not saying that all pro-choicers are racist or that no pro-lifers are, but I am saying that there are plenty of unsavory associations to go around on both sides. Let's focus on the real issues.
"Yet pro-lifers are never seen demonstrating for universal healthcare, demanding prenatal care for ALL women. They're seen outside health clinics demonstrating against doctors saving lives by providing safe legal abortion."
Actually, pro-life pregnancy clinics (to which sidewalk counselors refer) rely heavily on government programs that help make prenatal care available to low-income, uninsured women. You're making it sound as if the only two choices are get an abortion, or carry to term with no prenatal care whatsoever. Pro-lifers volunteer considerable time and money to making sure that this is not the case.
In 2007, Planned Parenthoods offered prenatal care for just under 11,000 families. That's not a bad thing. But by comparison, there are more than 2200 pro-life pregnancy centers in the United States. If each of them helped just five moms to access prenatal care, it would be equal to the services given by Planned Parenthood. Of course, they serve FAR more than five moms a year!
In short, if you're a low-income mother in the United States who's chosen life and needs prenatal care, you're much more likely to get it from a pro-life pregnancy center than from a Planned Parenthood. And yet, pro-choicers are constantly trying to shut down pregnancy centers. Do they really think that Planned Parenthood is going to pick up the slack if the pregnancy centers go away?
(Planned Parenthood stats can be found here: http://blog.secularprolife.org/2010/07/what-will-pregnancy-assistance-fund.html)
"Do you really want to have the conversation about the eugenic roots of the abortion movement?"
Oh yes. Historically this is interesting – the pro-life movement is so strongly linked to active, negative eugenics, the conservative/right-wing belief that some people are "unfit parents" – and it continues to the present day. The whole "demographic winter" movement, for example – classic right-wing eugenics.
Of course pro-lifers are always willing to quote Margaret Sanger, saying things that – especially taken out of context – look extremely disturbing. (Quotes from Dear Enemy look equally disturbing. But we never hear pro-lifers campaigning to ban all books by Jean Webster from children's libraries.) Why look at the context, historical and textual, when you can just flail angrily without reference to the facts and ignore the racism inherent in the pro-lifer "demographic winter" movement?
They also tend to ignore that Margaret Sanger, living at a time when abortion was much more dangerous than it is today, was strongly anti-abortion: she was pro-contraception. She believed in family planning.
How about the video in which Planned Parenthood gleefully accepts donations earmarked to "kill black babies"?
How about some faked-up piece of pro-life propaganda to smear Planned Parenthood? yea, how about that!
The claim that "crisis pregnancy centers" offer useful pre-natal health care is unsupported, to put it kindly. Some may do. Some may even do so without obliging the woman to whom this is offered to give up her baby for adoption. Most crisis pregnancy centers in the US seem to be tied dead square into the adoption market, providing care to low-income women for the purpose of taking her baby away from her and agenting out the adoption – a highly profitable baby industry. You want to talk about that?
Shotgun adoption:Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), the nonprofit pregnancy-testing facilities set up by antiabortion groups to dissuade women from having abortions, have become fixtures of the antiabortion landscape, buttressed by an estimated $60 million in federal abstinence and marriage-promotion funds. The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to "choose life" but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany's case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.
What price being cared for in pregnancy when the scum doing it are only providing care in order to take the baby away?
It's a good rule: follow the money. Planned Parenthood are a non-profit: but by providing no-strings pre-natal health care, as well as the options of contraception and abortion, they cut into the pro-life CPC adoption profits.
Jesurgislac, there are some statements that are not okay in any context. Sangers' fall into that category. Yes, she lived at a time where eugenicism was socially acceptable; her statements were not as radical then as they seem now. But that doesn't make it right.
Sanger's views on abortion and the right to life have always fascinated me. For instance, while she's quoted as saying that abortion is a "crime" (which it was) and that she didn't support it, she also said things like "The most merciful thing a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." So was she opposed to abortion, but okay with infanticide because it didn't pose the same dangers to the mother? Or were the anti-abortion statements just a p.r. tactic? I can't know, but if I could go back in time to interview someone, she'd by in my top ten.
As for pregnancy centers: the one I've had the most experience with was in Miami. They offered prenatal care on site, but unfortunately had to outsource STD testing when the economy soured. The vast majority of their patients chose to raise their babies, although adoption services were offered for those who were interested. But every pregnancy center is different, so it's possible that some of them have the troubling adoption practices that you describe. I'd be interested in seeing whatever statistics you have.
"It's a good rule: follow the money. Planned Parenthood are a non-profit: but by providing no-strings pre-natal health care, as well as the options of contraception and abortion, they cut into the pro-life CPC adoption profits."
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Okay, first of all, pregnancy centers never charge their patients for any services. And since the vast majority (i.e. all but Bethany) have to refer out for adoptions, they don't profit from that either. They rely on donations and volunteers. Planned Parenthood, by contrast, earns over $100 million dollars *after expenses* annually. Planned Parenthood cutting into the profits of CPCs? It's the other way around!
Okay, first of all, pregnancy centers never charge their patients for any services.
Of course not. To pregnancy centers, the women are the product – you don't charge the product for walking in the door.
Here's the kind of "pre-natal care" that a crisis pregnancy center provides:
Once they get women inside their doors, CPCs often force women to watch graphic, misleading videos; pressure women with religious sermons; and provide medically inaccurate information about a false link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer, the effects of abortion on future fertility, and the mental health effects of abortion. Some CPCs further mislead women by giving them false pregnancy test results so that they will postpone obtaining abortion care. Others have been known to give women ultrasounds depicting gestational ages more advanced than their actual pregnancies in order to make them think that they are too far along to access abortion services. In some cases CPCs even promise to provide financial assistance to women if they carry their pregnancies to term, but this assistance usually doesn't last once a woman's pregnancy has advanced past the legal termination limit in her state. Even after women leave CPCs, they sometimes continue to be mistreated. In a clear violation of patient confidentiality, many CPCs call women and harass them about their decision to obtain abortion care for weeks after they visit the center.
Representative Henry Waxman released a report which found that the vast majority of government-funded CPC will lie to callers, telling them falsehoods about the hazards of abortion.
Planned Parenthood, by contrast, earns over $100 million dollars *after expenses* annually.
Pro-lifers do seem to misunderstand the difference between "non-profit" and "runs at a loss". Deliberately, or real ignorance?
Planned Parenthood is a non-profit. And the services it provides definitely cut into the profitability of the adoption market, to which Crisis Pregnancy Centers are strongly tied.
Okay, first of all, pregnancy centers never charge their patients for any services.
Of course not. To pregnancy centers, the women are the product – you don't charge the product for walking in the door.
Here's the kind of "pre-natal care" that a crisis pregnancy center provides:
Once they get women inside their doors, CPCs often force women to watch graphic, misleading videos; pressure women with religious sermons; and provide medically inaccurate information about a false link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer, the effects of abortion on future fertility, and the mental health effects of abortion. Some CPCs further mislead women by giving them false pregnancy test results so that they will postpone obtaining abortion care. Others have been known to give women ultrasounds depicting gestational ages more advanced than their actual pregnancies in order to make them think that they are too far along to access abortion services. In some cases CPCs even promise to provide financial assistance to women if they carry their pregnancies to term, but this assistance usually doesn't last once a woman's pregnancy has advanced past the legal termination limit in her state. Even after women leave CPCs, they sometimes continue to be mistreated. In a clear violation of patient confidentiality, many CPCs call women and harass them about their decision to obtain abortion care for weeks after they visit the center.
Representative Henry Waxman released a report in 2008 which found that the vast majority of government-funded CPC will lie to callers, telling them falsehoods about the hazards of abortion.
Planned Parenthood, by contrast, earns over $100 million dollars *after expenses* annually.
Pro-lifers do seem to misunderstand the difference between "non-profit" and "runs at a loss". Deliberately, or real ignorance? Is it that so many conservative campaigning organizations run at a loss – useful if they're tax shelters – while Planned Parenthood, a service providing vital care to hundreds of thousands of women, is run as a non-profit but not at a loss?
Planned Parenthood is a non-profit. And the services it provides definitely cut into the profitability of the adoption market, to which Crisis Pregnancy Centers are strongly tied.
Adoption in the US is highly profitable to everyone involved except the women who actually give birth and lose their babies – and the couples who are willing to pay high for a healthy white baby.
So was she opposed to abortion, but okay with infanticide because it didn't pose the same dangers to the mother?
Neither one. She was writing about the appalling lives of the poor in the US in her day –
If its effects upon the mother and the wage earning father were not enough to condemn the large family as an institution, its effects upon the child would make the case against it conclusive. In the United States, some 300,000 children under one year of age die each twelve months. Approximately ninety per cent of these deaths are directly or indirectly due to malnutrition, to other diseased conditions resulting from poverty, or to excessive childbearing by the mother.
The direct relationship between the size of the wage-earner’s family and the death of children less than one year old has been revealed by a number of studies of the infant death rate.
Margaret Sanger on "V. The Wickedness of Creating Large Families"
http://www.bartleby.com/1013/5.html
I noticed that although that one line was quoted down Google's first search page by pro-life sites, click one page on and you find the line in context.
No one who read the line in context – who read the whole chapter – could suppose Margaret Sanger to be advocating infanticide, any more than anyone who read Jonathan Swift in context could. She's advocating, angrily, strongly, that women must have the right to plan their families for the sake of the children as for the sake of the women – for contraception to be available to low-income, working-class women, who are being denied it by the pro-lifers of 1920.
The world Sanger describes, where there was 60% chance that the 12th child would die before their 1st birthday, is a world that still exists for women in developing countries: that the pro-life movement, if they got their way, would return women to everywhere.
As for pregnancy centers: the one I've had the most experience with was in Miami. They offered prenatal care on site
They were a state-licensed medical facility? That's extremely unusual for crisis pregnancy centers. There's a consumer watch guide here:
http://www.womensmedcenter.com/faqs/consumerwatch.asp for how to spot a deceptive CPC posing as a health facility.
But every pregnancy center is different, so it's possible that some of them have the troubling adoption practices that you describe.
Were you involved with that pregnancy center because you were pregnant? How many of the women who went there did you know personally and keep in touch with afterwards? How do YOU know that CPC wasn't as strongly linked with coercive adoption as any of them?
Let's also consider that because CPC aren't medically registered, they often don't follow the medical ethics of client confidentiality:
Was your CPC in Miami affiliated with CareNet?
I believe that personal information between a client and her counselor should never leave the room. My client intake software is designed to store data on-site at the center so that I never see it. No one has any business seeing personal information except a client and her counselor.
CareNet doesn't feel this way. They heavily endorse an internet based company ekyros.com. Hundreds of their affiliate pregnancy centers use the internet based ekyros.com client intake software. These centers make clients think that their pregnancy history and other confidential information will never leave the room, then they turn around and enter it online and this personal information leaves the center and gets into the hands of ekyros employees.
I am losing my business because I will not change my software to send client data outside the walls of the center. A client already has enough on their mind. They do not need their right to privacy violated.
I don't care about losing my company. The client's right to confidentiality is more important than my business.
"That's extremely unusual for crisis pregnancy centers."
Not really. In a large city like Miami, it's not difficult to find pro-life physicians and sonographers to donate their time. Exact figures are hard to come by, but an anti-CPC article from 2006 estimated that 15% of pregnancy centers are medically equipped. That's surely increased substantially by now.
Exact figures are hard to come by, but an anti-CPC article from 2006 estimated that 15% of pregnancy centers are medically equipped.
Being able to do a pregnancy test (which any pharmacist can sell) or do a sonogram, is not the same thing as being a state-licensed medical facility.
For one thing, getting a state license requires operating with a degree of medical ethics. Employees of state-licensed medical facilities are required by professional ethics and by the terms of their license to provide accurate information to their patients and maintain client confidentiality.
But I looked up a list of crisis pregnancy centers in Miami, and then searched for their names on the http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov – and whaddayaknow, I couldn't find any of them. If I'm wrong, find me their state license nunber… or point me at their listing on the state licensing site yourself.
I appreciate your detective work, Jes. I was surprised to find that the pregnancy clinic wasn't there. But then I searched for my hometown allergist, and found that his office wasn't listed either. So I think the issue is that floridahealthfinder.gov only lists those facilities that are in the drop-down categories, and neither ob/gyn nor allergy is included. Which is incredibly stupid, but that's Florida for you.
The exact laws for getting a state license varies from place to place. In most states, a licensed physician can set up a non-surgical office without any additional licensing. A pregnancy clinic is in compliance with the law so long as its medical director and physician volunteers are in compliance.
(And since the medical director for the Miami CPC was also a faculty member of the University of Miami medical school, I would be shocked if her license had lapsed.)
A pregnancy clinic is in compliance with the law so long as its medical director and physician volunteers are in compliance.
While the non-physician volunteers are allowed to bully, harass, and lie to the walk-ins in accordance with pro-life principles? Nice division of labor.
Really? Wow, have you ever been in a CPC or are you just pulling that out of your ass?
"she wants to or not, she may be able to continue the pregnancy for long enough to terminate by live delivery rather than abortion"
Sorry, I should have been more specific. *Traditional* abortion is never a treatment for preeclampsia. A woman ending her pregnancy do to preeclampsia is NEVER going to be at a clinic. It will be done at a hospital.
She will either be induced or c-sectioned (dependent on the risk and previous medical history). Traditional abortion (D&C)simply takes to long to save her life (late terms take multiple days). Women who do have abortions (where the fetus is intentionally killed before birth…very rare) will still go through traditional inductions and there child will be born still born. There's not really a reason for them to be performed.
I'm of the opinion that induced early labor to save the mother's life isn't abortion. It allows both mother and child the best opportunity to live. However, this is generally aside the point as NO preeclamptic woman is going to have an abortion performed at a clinic.
I seriously doubt you witnessed 20 abortions. Some women do seek counseling, pregnancy testing, and STD testing at this facility.
But I am thankful that places like this exist so that women have somewhere safe to go for their needs. Their decision doesn't affect YOU at all. And standing outside HARRASSING women is WRONG. Get a job. Get a life. And do what you want with your uterus. Nobody stands outside your bedroom window throwing condoms at you…so show some respect to other women. MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.
I would like to offer a thought… I would be 9 weeks pregnant last Wed. I went to the dr and found out my baby DIED and my body forgot to the message. I am devastated. I now am left with waiting to "pass" this or going to the hospital and paying $5,000. I have a 2.5 yr old and rather than traumatize her with blood everywhere ( I've read what happens) and a spontaneous miscarriage or having a $5,000 hospital bill am going to Alabama Women's Center. Some places like this offer women who don't have the means to pay for the hospital or qualify for Medicaid a way to get the health care they need. I would like to remind you not everyone is going there to end a viable pregnancy. Some people just don't have another option to a bad situation and no matter what, there is no life to save. I know your heart is in the right place, but I thought I would offer a new perspective.