If only the fetus fetishists cared as much about their “hosts” or “birthing vessels” (also known as “women”) this sort of consequence would prevent what’s about to happen in many states around the country:
Each month, Dr. Andrea Palmer delivers about 20 babies, easily the best part of her job. But some days, she has to deliver difficult news.
“The conversations are just — they’re gut wrenching every time,” she said.
Palmer is an OB-GYN in Fort Worth, Texas. She recently had to tell a woman that her fetus had a condition called anencephaly, “where, essentially, the baby doesn’t have a brain.” It’s always fatal — often during the pregnancy or else soon after birth — and patients are typically given the option to terminate.
“I’ve had some moms who choose to continue the pregnancy because this is the only time they’re gonna have with their baby,” she said. “Which is just heartbreaking to me.”
Texas doctors like Palmer say SB 8, an unusual new state law banning most abortions, is complicating other types of medical decisions. They’re hoping for more clarity soon, as legal challenges continue, including a federal challenge from the Biden administration.
Continuing a pregnancy after a diagnosis like anencephaly comes with additional health risks and, for some patients, additional emotional trauma, Palmer said.
“I have other patients who just, imagining the sorrow that each prenatal visit would bring, knowing that’s never gonna result in a baby they could take home — that is just too much to bear,” she said.
Before SB 8, Palmer would have offered to end the pregnancy by inducing labor. But the new law, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to take effect Sept. 1, prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is detectable, except for medical emergencies.
Palmer said her patient, at more than 16 weeks, opted to go out of state for an abortion — something she said many of her patients could never afford.
Some doctors say the law also is complicating medical decisions when women come in for help while experiencing a miscarriage.
“For example, patient comes in, 17 weeks, with her water broken. That’s a nonviable pregnancy. The biggest risk to the patient is that she could become infected,” said Theresa Patton, an OB-GYN in Dallas.
In such cases, Patton said she’d normally offer medication to expedite the miscarriage and reduce the risk of infection, which can trigger a severe condition called sepsis. But she and other doctors say it’s not clear under the law what constitutes a “medical emergency.”
“We don’t want a patient to get sick for a pregnancy that is not going to progress, it’s not going to continue,” Patton said. “Now, am I going to be in legal trouble for offering that termination now? Do I need to wait until she’s septic and imminently in danger herself before I offer that termination? These are all of the things that we have been struggling with what we should do.”
Dr. Jennifer Villavicencio, with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said laws like SB 8 often fail to account for the “liminal” spaces and complexities surrounding pregnancy.
“What do you want your doctor thinking about when you or your family member is in a life-threatening situation?” she asked. “Do you want them thinking about the best possible treatment … or do you want them weighing whether or not they’re willing to risk their personal livelihood, safety and decades of training in order to treat your family member who has their life at risk?”
John Seago, of the anti-abortion-rights group Texas Right to Life, defends the law.
But Seago acknowledges that it removes some options for health care providers.
“We understand that our ethics and our commitment to human life does limit medicine … from being as efficient as it wants to be,” he said. “However, this is protecting innocent human life and seeking to protect these values.”
Apparently, the women who are in danger of dying because of this grotesque, ghoulish obsession are not “innocent” enough to protect. Clearly, they see them as dispensable human carriers for the valuable embryos and fetuses and thus of no real intrinsic value at all.
This is the real issue. It always has been and it always will be. This belief in the woman as nothing more than a vessel for the male seed is ancient:
The ancient patriarchal societies drew many of their values and beliefs from their agrarian experience. This was particularly true with regard to their understand of the conception or birth process. Having witnessed all kinds of seeds sprout in the soil and bring forth new plants, whether they entered the soil by natural means or were deliberately planted by human beings, it is understandable why the ancients in many societies saw the birth of humans and other animal coming forth solely from “seed” deposited by the male.
Just as the soil served as the place where the seed of a plant received shelter and nourishment for it to germinate and grow, so too the uterus of the female provided shelter and nourishment for the “seed” of the make to germinate and grow until it was ready to be born. The female, like the soil, was passive. She contributed nothing biologically or genetically. Every quality and characteristic was derived from the male.
Today people know better. But the underlying value of the woman as secondary to the “seed” remains. The anti-abortion fanatics literally believe her life is less valuable than a pre-viability fetus or embryo and that she should endure the full pregnancy and birth of a fetus that has no brain and cannot live outside the womb.
Women are without value to these people beyond their role as the “soil” for a man’s seed. They are primitive cretins.