For everyone out there who has been praying nightly that Dr. George Tiller would drop dead, and especially those of you who have expressed that wish out loud on a regular basis on your nationally-broadcast talk show, your prayers have finally been answered. The delay in finding yet another total nutjob to do your dirty work has been a shame, sure!–the idiot who bombed his clinic in 1985 was a big F-A-I-L and so was the individual with really bad aim who only managed to shoot Dr. Tiller in both arms in 1993.
To everyone out there who is really, really glad Dr. Tiller is dead, it can’t be denied–his death is going to directly prevent a number of a certain category of abortions from happening. Unlike abortions that occur in the first trimester of pregnancy, where the evil murdering sluts women attempting to obtain them usually (though not always) have access to at least a small handful of providers within their very own state borders, the kind of abortions Dr. Tiller did are performed by less than ten other physicians in the entire United States. (No, I’m not going to provide any further information on them, their names or their whereabouts here, and if you email me asking for it–sorry; unless you can prove you’re not compiling a hit list, you’re on your own.)
But really–congratulations. You can rejoice in knowing that a decent number of women with usually desperately wanted pregnancies who find themselves more than halfway through those wanted pregnancies risking death, permanent disability or carrying a dying fetus firmly ensconced in their own wombs, are now much more likely to be forced to carry their pregnancy to term. I am so, so happy for you.
But I haven’t been in that situation myself…exactly…I mean, the pre-eclampsia I developed in both my pregnancies didn’t actually threaten to kill me off til my babies were full-term and the babies themselves were totally fine, not so much as a hangnail in sight in their ultrasounds. I didn’t get to seek out a third-trimester abortion like all those other feckless, selfish broads that did. Gosh, I’m so jealous! You will be too, after you read their stories–or rather, you’ll be able to bask in the warm glow of satisfaction that now, those awful, heartless, immoral women are really going to suffer when they try to snuff out that sweet, innocent life growing inside their very own bodies–no more easy, thoughtless terminations in the third trimester for them! Damn STRAIGHT.
I elected to have [a] CVS test. . . . Then, the test results came in. . . . We knew chromosome 14 was incompatible with life, and chromosome 22 could mean Cat Eye Syndrome. Both my husband and I wanted the baby very much, and neither one of us was willing to terminate the pregnancy on a “maybe.” . . .
I had the amnio on 12/26/05, and the results came in on Jan. 13, 2006. It confirmed without doubt – she had Cat Eye Syndrome tetrasomy in every cell of her body. The last 3 sonograms showed . . . our baby’s kidneys were beginning to malfunction. . . .We made this decision because we loved our daughter so much.
I was about 17 weeks pregnant at the time. . . .[T]hey scheduled us for our Level II ultrasound a few weeks early so they could look in more detail at the baby. . . . A few days [after the ultrasound], we received the news that would change our lives forever. Our son was infected with CMV (cytomegalovirus). This was the worst possible scenario (of the possibilities we were given).
Dave held my hand as I lay on the cushy examining table at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center office in Lexington. As images of our baby filled the black screen, we oohed and aahed like the goofy expectant parents that we were. “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” I must have asked a million stupid times. The technician was noncommittal, stoic, and I started feeling uncomfortable. Where I was all bubbly chitchat, she was all furrow-browed concentration.
Staring at the pictures of fuzzy kittens and kissing dolphins on the ceiling, I knew something was wrong. Dave tried to reassure me, but when the ultrasound technician told us that our doctor wanted to see us, I started to shake. “But she doesn’t even know we’re here,” I said to her, and then to Dave, over and over. That’s when I started crying. I could barely get my clothes back on.
The waiting room upstairs, usually full of happy pregnant women devouring parenting magazines, was empty. Our doctor, who usually wears a smile below her chestnut hair, met us at the front desk. She was not smiling that day as she led us back to her cramped office, full of framed photos of her own children.
As we sat there, she said that the ultrasound indicated that the fetus had an open neural tube defect, meaning that the spinal column had not closed properly. It was a term I remembered skipping right over in my pregnancy book, along with all the other fetal anomalies and birth defects that I thought referred to other people’s babies, not mine. She couldn’t tell us much more. We would have to go to the main hospital in Boston, which had a more high-tech machine and a more highly trained technician. She tried to be hopeful — there was a wide range of severity with these defects, she said. And then she left us to cry.
We drove into Boston in near silence, tears rolling down my cheeks. There was no joking or chatting at the hospital in Boston. No fuzzy kittens and kissing dolphins on the ceiling of that chilly, clinical room. Dave held my hand more tightly than before. I couldn’t bear to look at this screen. Instead, I studied the technician’s face, like a nervous flier taking her cues from the expression a stewardess wears. Her face revealed nothing.
She squirted cold jelly on my belly and then slid an even colder probe back and forth around my belly button, punching it down every so often to make the baby move for a better view. She didn’t say one word in 45 minutes. When she finished, she looked at us and confirmed our worst fears.
Instead of cinnamon and spice, our child came with technical terms like hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as it got. What they knew — that the baby would certainly be paralyzed and incontinent, that the baby’s brain was being tugged against the opening in the base of the skull and the cranium was full of fluid — was awful.
[Without access to late-term abortion], Tammy Watts would likely be dead, she says.
In March of that year, Watts was in the eighth month of a much-wanted pregnancy and was eagerly anticipating the birth of her first child. During a routine ultrasound (the only way to detect abnormalities that require late-term abortion), she discovered her baby had Trisomy 13, a chromosomal abnormality that causes severe deformities and carries no hope of survival.
Because her baby was already dying and because this put her own life at stake, Watts had an intact dilation and extraction (D and X).
Viki Wilson of Fresno, Calif. had a late-term abortion because the brain of the fetus she was carrying had developed outside the skull. So did Vikki Stella of Naperville, Ill., whose fetus had dwarfism, no brain tissue and seven other major abnormalities.
The baby had contracted a virus and you could see on the MRI that its organs were all messed up. It looked like there were bubbles in them, instead of solid masses like they were supposed to be. Then they figured out that the baby had been exposed to Fifth disease. All sorts of researchers contacted us, because they wanted to study it.
That was at about 20 weeks. I got a blood transfusion and I thought everything was cool. We went on vacation. But then we came back, and the doctor realized everything wasn’t cool. His brain had a hemorrhage.
. . . I cry all the time, and that will be for the rest of my life. Because I really, really wanted that baby.
My husband and I received the worst news about our son’s impending birth: He suffered from multiple, severe fetal anomalies, both internal and external, thought to be the result of a rare blood disorder. If he could survive his early birth at 24 weeks he most likely would not survive his blood cancer…
. . . While still reeling from the shock, we were told we could take our chances and let the baby be born, but that the state would be forced to intervene if we did not then take every measure to keep our son alive. Or, we could consider two late-term abortion clinics—one in Wichita, Kan., the other in Holland! Our initial thoughts were “how could we be in a major NYC hospital in the United States and be told these are our only choices?” To say it was surreal is an understatement.
Isn’t that wonderful? No more abortions for you, for all of you! I bet you’re all really crying NOW.
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Thank you for compiling these. I hope I can remember them the next time I hear someone wheezing about “choose life”.
This was a great post. One of the things I’ve been very impressed by in the (short) aftermath of Tiller’s murder is the great volume of personal testimony from women who have received late-term abortions. As a pro-choice woman who writes about sex on a daily basis, I was unaware of many of these specific scenarios and complications that are often behind a woman’s choice. I hope other doctors will be brave enough to step in Dr. Tiller’s footsteps, and I hope these women’s stories can help convince them to do so.
Thank you for this.
What is annoying is that on a number of sites that I read, people are saying “This guy is a murderer! I support late term abortions for serious problems only!” And just don’t hear you if you say “Late term abortions are performed for serious problems only! You fool.”
Touching, and frightening, post. You should read this one, too.
[...] to stone a perceived “slut”; be on the lookout next year for more violence on May 31; more stories that should make you cry; are the terrorists the mainstream in the so-called-pro-life movement?; is the manufacture of [...]
Oh my science. I’ve been reading these stories and they’re just absolutely heartbreaking. I cried, several times. They should be required reading for anyone who wants to have an opinion on the debate. I thought I was prochoice before, but….
I wanted to thank you for covering this. As one of the women in your story, it warms my heart to know our tragic loss continues to help other people.
Rest in peace, Dr. Tiller, as you helped women in terrible circumstances, have a choice.
There is obviously a lot to know about this, which I did not know. I think you made some good points and I have bookmarked this page.