HT to Mary Katharine Ham at Hugh Hewitt.com posting a link to Washington Post editorial from a Dana L.
The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.
And she goes on as to how she got pregnant with a “family complete” and was unable to get Plan B (levonorgestrel) from her doctor. She laments the fact that this drug (see below) was not immediately available to her without a prescription and that her doctor was not obligated to give her a prescription when she requested one.
Meanwhile, I hadn’t even been able to get Plan B with a prescription that Friday, because in Virginia, health-care practitioners apparently are allowed to refuse to prescribe any drug that goes against their beliefs. Although I had heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control on religious grounds, I was dumbfounded to find that doctors could do the same thing.
Moreover, they aren’t even required to tell the patient why they won’t provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn’s receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn’t prescribe Plan B for me. She refused to answer or offer any reason, no matter how much I pressed her. By the time I got on the phone with my internist’s office and found that he would not fill a Plan B prescription either, I figured it was a waste of time to fight with the office staff. To this day, I don’t know why my doctors wouldn’t prescribe Plan B — whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.
Well of course she has the “unwanted abortion” and of course she has no responsibility for her actions, rather Bush and “religion” made her do it. Imagine that.
It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening[imagine how the baby felt]. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.
Dana’s dilemma is one that follows the philosophy of “sex as recreation.” There is no deeper meaning imparted upon the act and therefore she was inconvenienced when the pregnancy occurred.
But morning after pills can be dangerous and RU-487 can be deadly. The Chicago Tribune reports:
Through March 31, the FDA has received reports of 950 serious side effects after use of RU-486, including nine life-threatening incidents, 232 hospitalizations, 116 cases of heavy bleeding that required transfusions and 88 infections. Four of the five women who died of septic shock were from California, the other from Canada.
Another American died of septic shock after taking the abortion pill, but she had an infection different from the Clostridium sordellii infection linked to the other deaths, said Dr. Janet Woodcock, an FDA deputy commissioner.
So Dana would have this medication available on demand to women of any age. Would she want all morning after drugs available on demand? Would she mourn the death of even a single teenage women who used RU-487 over the counter? For all the ranting concerning “safe” abortions, where is the concern for this drug’s potential lethality? Could this be the new “coat hanger” abortion?
