It's such an amazing
story. Had to comment here and there. Go, read the full text. Really good reporting.
Offering Abortion, Rebirth
Yes, an Arkansas doctor says, he destroys life. But he believes the thousands of women who have relied on him have been 'born again.'
By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer
November 29, 2005
[....]
Harrison is beyond such concerns. For several years in the 1980s, his clinic was picketed, vandalized and once firebombed. Protesters marched outside his home and death threats became routine. Harrison responded by making his case.
He answered every phone call, replied to every letter in the newspaper and appeared at public forums to defend abortion rights. Eventually, the protesters in this college town left him alone. (Arkansas Right to Life focuses instead on educating women about alternatives to abortion, Executive Director Rose Mimms said.)
[Admirable.]
In the years since, Harrison has become more outspoken.
He calls himself an "abortionist" and says, "I am destroying life."
[Do people debate as to whether abortion destorys life? Something is alive and then it's not - at least, that's my understanding. I thought the question was whether or not it was human life being destroyed.]
But he also feels he's giving life: He calls his patients "born again."
[Indeed. They were in bondage to something, and now they are free. The question is what they were in bondage to.]
"When you end what the woman considers a disastrous pregnancy, she has literally been given her life back," he says.
[Well, not literally, since it wasn't literally taken away from her. If it had been, she'd be dead.]
Before giving up obstetrics in 1991, Harrison delivered 6,000 babies. Childbirth, he says, should be joyous; a woman should never consider it a punishment or an obligation.
[Yeah, it should be joyous. The question is, should whether or not it's joyous be the absolute deciding factor? Or are there other factors that might outweigh it?]
"We try to make sure she doesn't ever feel guilty," he says, "for what she feels she has to do."
[Description of events surrounding abortion procedure...]
Harrison glances at an ultrasound screen frozen with an image of the fetus taken moments before. Against the fuzzy black-and-white screen, he sees the curve of a head, the bend of an elbow, the ball of a fist.
[Does the patient see this? Ought she to? Maybe before she goes on the table? I know it ain't exactly a definitive argument, but it might be worth considering.]
[Abortion is completed.]
She is not yet sure, she says, how she is doing emotionally. She feels guilty, sad and relieved, all in a jumble.
"There's things wrong with abortion," she says. "But I want to have a good life. And provide a good life for my child." To keep this baby now, she says, when she's single, broke and about to start college, "would be unfair."
[Unfair how, exactly? Difficult, yes, even painful and awful. But how unfair?]
Politicians on both sides of the abortion debate often talk up adoption as a better alternative. Harrison's patients do not consider it an option.
A high school volleyball player says she doesn't want to give up her body for nine months. "I realize just from the first three months how it changes everything," she says.
[Of course, if the fetus were regarded as a person, then that would outweigh someone's not wanting to give up their body for nine months. I think.]
Kim, a single mother of three, says she couldn't bear to give away a child and have to wonder every day if he were loved. Ending the pregnancy seemed easier, she says — as long as she doesn't let herself think about "what could have been."
[This doesn't sound easier. It sounds damaging.]
[...]
For the few women who arrive ambivalent or beset by guilt, Harrison's nurse has posted statistics on the exam-room mirror: One out of every four pregnant women in the U.S. chooses abortion. A third of all women in this country will have at least one abortion by the time they're 45.
[See? Everybody's doing it...]
"You think there's room in hell for all those women?" the nurse will ask.
[This is simply outrageous. For the record, I think there's room in hell for every single person who ever was, and that every sinner - read, everyone but Jesus and his mom - deserves to go there. Thank God for mercy. But that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not abortion is right or wrong. Nor does it speak to the moral status of women who seek abortions.]
If the woman remains troubled, the nurse tells her to go home and think it over.
[Admirable.]
"If they truly feel they're killing a baby, we're not going to do an abortion for them," says the nurse, who asked not to be identified for fear protesters would target her.
[Amazing. I wish the reporter had asked if they had ever actually denied someone an abortion on those grounds.]
The 17-year-old in for a consultation this morning assures the nurse that she does not consider the embryo inside her a baby.
"Not until it's developed," she says. "That would be about three months?"
"It's completely formed about nine weeks," the nurse tells her. "Yours is more like a chicken yolk."
[A
chicken yolk?]
The girl, who is five weeks pregnant, looks relieved. "Then no," she says, "it's not a baby." Her mother sits in the corner wiping her tears.
Harrison draws his own moral line at the end of the second trimester, or 26 weeks since the first day of the woman's last menstrual period. Until that point, he will abort for any reason.
"It's not a baby to me until the mother tells me it's a baby," he says.
[Ah, the old will-to-personhood. And yet...]
But Harrison refuses to end third-trimester pregnancies, even if the fetus is severely disabled. Some premature infants born at that stage, or even a few weeks earlier, can survive. Harrison believes they may be developed enough to feel pain in utero. Just a handful of doctors around the nation will abort a fetus at this stage.
"I just don't think it should be done," says Harrison, who calls the practice infanticide.
[Well, why not, if it's not a baby until the mother tells you it's a baby?]
[...]
Amanda, a 20-year-old administrative assistant, says it's not the obstacles that surprise her — it's how normal and unashamed she feels as she prepares to end her first pregnancy.
"It's an everyday occurrence," she says as she waits for her 2:30 p.m. abortion. "It's not like this is a rare thing."
[I could name a few other everyday, common occurrences that aren't any more justifiable for being common.]
Amanda hasn't told her ex-boyfriend that she's 15 weeks pregnant with his child. She hasn't told her parents, either, though she lives with them.
"I figured it was my responsibility," she says.
She regrets having to pay $750 for the abortion, but Amanda says she does not doubt her decision. "It's not like it's illegal. It's not like I'm doing anything wrong," she says.
[The law is a teacher, anyone?]
"I've been praying a lot and that's been a real source of strength for me. I really believe God has a plan for us all. I have a choice, and that's part of my plan."
[Your plan or God's plan? Not being flip, here.]
His first patient of the day, Sarah, 23, says it never occurred to her to use birth control, though she has been sexually active for six years. When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. "I don't think my dress would have fit with a baby in there," she says.
[This is incendiary, but let's let it pass...]
The last patient of the day, a 32-year-old college student named Stephanie, has had four abortions in the last 12 years. She keeps forgetting to take her birth control pills. Abortion "is a bummer," she says, "but no big stress."
[As ever, the question is whether it's a bummer and a stress for the fetus.]
[...]
