Abortion Doctor Charged with 8 Murders.

Braigwen wrote:

I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption, but I know I would get my head bitten off about how some women couldn't afford those things.

From the jury report:

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An “Anesthesia for Surgery” form [Appendix B] presented to patients for their signature – and payment – did not identify or describe the drugs to be administered. However, it suggested:
It will probably be best to pay the extra money and be more comfortable if some of the following conditions are true for you.
1. The decision to have the procedure is a difficult decision.
2. Medication is usually necessary for your menstrual cramps.
3. Your decision has been forced by your parents or partner.
4. Your family members or friends “don’t like pain.”

[...]

We were particularly appalled by the reference in the form to a decision being “forced” on a patient by a partner or parents. A legitimate practitioner would never perform forced abortions. Gosnell would and did. As long as he was paid, the patient’s wishes or circumstances were not his concern.

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Pennsylvania, like other states, permits legal abortion within a regulatory framework. Physicians must, for example, provide counseling about the nature of the procedure. Minors must have parental or judicial consent. All women must wait 24 hours after first visiting the facility, in order to fully consider their decision. But Gosnell’s compliance with such requirements was casual at best. At the Women’s Medical Society, the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash. Too young? No problem. Didn’t want to wait? Gosnell provided same-day service.

^
This just leaves me feeling even more ill than before.

Braigwen wrote:

I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption

Because they got pregnant all on their own and it was their own fault for not "being more careful", right?

FUCK. YOU.

Braigwen wrote:

I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption, but I know I would get my head bitten off about how some women couldn't afford those things.

Go fuck yourself.

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I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption, but I know I would get my head bitten off about how some women couldn't afford those things.

Oh, fuck off.

Braigwen wrote:

I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption, but I know I would get my head bitten off about how some women couldn't afford those things.

I'd say my sentiments on the matter, but the others pretty much covered it.

In the interest of presenting an actual argument that I know I will likely get my head chopped off for, let me list a few things:

1: No birth control aside from abstinence is 100% effective, no matter how many of them you pack on together.

2: Not all women, especially not married women, have the choice to stay abstinent. It's even worse of they're poor or minorities.

Braigwen wrote:

I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption, but I know I would get my head bitten off about how some women couldn't afford those things.

Everyone else has pretty much covered exactly what's idiotic about this statement, so let me focus on the other stupid thing you said.

Braigwen wrote:

But how much does it cost to correct the mistakes made by these chop-shop doctors who seem to take pleasure in snuffing out a life just as it begins?

People aren't psychic. People don't know that the doctor they're visiting is actually fucking evil. So of course they're not going to think "hmm, maybe I should pay a little extra for an abortion somewhere else, I'd hate to have to pay extra after the procedure to recover from the evil torture this bloke is about to put me through".

I am just trying to wrap my head around this sickness.

Now now, Braig, don't start implying that women are ever responsible for making a stupid decision to have sex despite not having birth control on-hand. You know how we don't like that around here.

Alhazred wrote:

Now now, Braig, don't start implying that women are ever responsible for making a stupid decision to have sex despite not having birth control on-hand. You know how we don't like that around here.

Don't I know that...

Braigwen wrote:

Alhazred wrote:

Now now, Braig, don't start implying that women are ever responsible for making a stupid decision to have sex despite not having birth control on-hand. You know how we don't like that around here.

Don't I know that...

S'okay. We just disagree. Nothing new under the sun here.

Alhazred wrote:

Now now, Braig, don't start implying that women are ever responsible for making a stupid decision to have sex despite not having birth control on-hand. You know how we don't like that around here.

Yes, because the reason a woman is pregnant should determine whether or not she's allowed an abortion. And you know, what Braigwen said has anything to do with the terrible thing that's happened to these women here.

You aren't factoring in lack of education. Half of his "patients" were probably younger women, poor, who never had any sex education. All they got in high school was probably the "don't have sex" joke of a class. Things probably weren't explained to them very well in any case, by teachers who were uncomfortable or who were themselves poorly educated.

So they probably believed some form of urban legend "You can't get pregnant your first time", "You can't get pregnant on such-and-such day after your period", "You won't get pregnant if he pulls out". Hell, the era Badger was brought up, she could probably tell you some that would make your jaw drop out of the sheer idiocy.

And a lot of them probably didn't even know they were pregnant for a bit. Or they were in denial. They went to a clinic that they thought was staffed by people who would help them.

Or consider a woman who is poor and already has three children. She can't not have sex with her husband, and they don't use birth control. (For a variety of reasons, either her own ideas, or his) But she certainly can't afford another baby. So she goes to the cheapest clinic behind her husband's back with money she's squirreled away for emergencies.

A lot of you on this board live in a world of middle-class entitlement. You have access to birth control and you know how to use it. You can afford to be pregnant. And you just have no idea about what kind of world some women have to live in every day. You just don't seem to get what it's like when you don't know what to do, and you have to hide something so big, and this is the only out you can see. Then to have this monster use you as his doll on top of all of that. Now everyone knows.

You have some very close-minded ideas that all seem to revolve around "But what about the baby/Well, she was stupid." Well what about her? What if she's fourteen and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend won't call her back, and she'll be homeless if her parents find out, to the point they never speak to her again? What about her life? Or the mother of too many kids who is trying to provide for the ones she already has and can't afford them much less another, or afford the time off work pregnancy causes? What about her life?

And as for the "stupid", newsflash. Poor women often don't get fantastic educations. That's not their fault, and it's not something you should feel entitled to look down on.

This horror show is why more Planned Parenthood's need to be built, and why sex education in school needs to be comprehensive and detailed. And it needs to be more that a two-session class that gets done half-assed. If people from Planned Parenthood have to come down to schools and talk to kids, fine. Whatever it takes to bring down the number of unwanted pregnancies so that this stops happening to women.

Educate people about sex?! But contraception is like, totally murder!

Lapin wrote:

This horror show is why more Planned Parenthood's need to be built, and why sex education in school needs to be comprehensive and detailed. And it needs to be more that a two-session class that gets done half-assed. If people from Planned Parenthood have to come down to schools and talk to kids, fine. Whatever it takes to bring down the number of unwanted pregnancies so that this stops happening to women.

The moral here is that we need to reduce unwanted pregnancies?

There were thirty years of signs. Multiple people reported him to regulatory offices. He had to kill a patient before anybody even looked into the clinic who cared.

Well, no. The moral of this particular story is that clinics where women can receive abortions are obviously not regulated well enough, and that there is something seriously wrong with the higher-ups if this horrible monster kept getting away with it.

Braigwen wrote:

Alhazred wrote:

Now now, Braig, don't start implying that women are ever responsible for making a stupid decision to have sex despite not having birth control on-hand. You know how we don't like that around here.

Don't I know that...

Because men are never responsible for the decision to have sex. It's not like they have to stick around for the pregnancy.

Because all unwanted pregnancies are the result of the lack of birth control.

Because all unwanted pregnancies are the result of consensual, non coerced sex.

Because circumstances can't change, and suddenly someone who could go through a pregnancy can't.

I'd like to invite you to climb an insurmountable wall of dicks and choke on every single one.

saeku wrote:

Lapin wrote:

This horror show is why more Planned Parenthood's need to be built, and why sex education in school needs to be comprehensive and detailed. And it needs to be more that a two-session class that gets done half-assed. If people from Planned Parenthood have to come down to schools and talk to kids, fine. Whatever it takes to bring down the number of unwanted pregnancies so that this stops happening to women.

The moral here is that we need to reduce unwanted pregnancies?

There were thirty years of signs. Multiple people reported him to regulatory offices. He had to kill a patient before anybody even looked into the clinic who cared.

No, it's one of the morals. When it comes down to it, yes, this guy's a horrible excuse for a human being, and he deserves to be locked up for a very long time. However, it doesn't change the fact that the fact he was able to do this and make a lot of money off of it is a symptom of...multiple larger problems, actually. The one you mentioned is indeed one of them (that for whatever reason, there was enough negligence by the authorities for him not to be caught much sooner), but you can't really argue that the fact that there were women desperate enough to turn to this guy in the first place wasn't a factor.

caffeine addict wrote:

No, it's one of the morals. When it comes down to it, yes, this guy's a horrible excuse for a human being, and he deserves to be locked up for a very long time. However, it doesn't change the fact that the fact he was able to do this and make a lot of money off of it is a symptom of...multiple larger problems, actually. The one you mentioned is indeed one of them (that for whatever reason, there was enough negligence by the authorities for him not to be caught much sooner), but you can't really argue that the fact that there were women desperate enough to turn to this guy in the first place wasn't a factor.

See Anathema's post for why I think "prevent unwanted pregnancies through education" should not be the first conclusion.

Lapin wrote:

You aren't factoring in lack of education...

I'm also not talking about this particular story but, rather, the "woman are completely infallible and it's never their fault ever" attitude around here.

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So they probably believed some form of urban legend "You can't get pregnant your first time", "You can't get pregnant on such-and-such day after your period", "You won't get pregnant if he pulls out". Hell, the era Badger was brought up, she could probably tell you some that would make your jaw drop out of the sheer idiocy.

If I had money, I would pay it to hear something worse than "Drinking ice water immediately after sex stops pregnancy by freezing your insides."

Are some cases of unwanted pregnancy caused by under-educated women who simply don't know any better because a variety of factors have conspired to make them uninformed about how the mechanics of the human body works? Yes, of course. Is every unwanted pregnancy the result of this? No.

Anathema wrote:

Because men are never responsible for the decision to have sex. It's not like they have to stick around for the pregnancy.

Of course they are. It doesn't automatically make the women not responsible. When consensual heterosexual sex happens, the woman is just as responsible for it happening.

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Because all unwanted pregnancies are the result of the lack of birth control.

I don't think all unwanted pregnancies are the result of the lack of birth control. I think some unwanted pregnancies are the result of a lack of birth control, in which case both the man and the woman could have, and should have, said no.

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Because all unwanted pregnancies are the result of consensual, non coerced sex.

All all heterosexual men rapists? Because if not, there is such a thing as a woman who can choose not to have sex by saying "no."

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Because circumstances can't change, and suddenly someone who could go through a pregnancy can't.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with how she got pregnant. At no point did I ever say women shouldn't have easy access to abortion.

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I'd like to invite you to climb an insurmountable wall of dicks and choke on every single one.

What I wouldn't give to have more cock in my life at the moment...

I'm about to lose my breakfast. Those poor babies.

Yeah. I don't want to read any articles on this asshole. But I am wondering how much he was charging? I don't know about other states, but over in Minnesota (that's where the SoDak women go to get their abortions because even though the god damn issue comes up every two years to ban abortion in South Dakota, we don't actually have a clinic that performs abortions here. Instead, we have to import a doctor from Minnesota, or go to Minnesota, usually the latter... but I digress) it's not that expensive. For at least some of them, cost has been mentioned as a factor, so I'm wondering how big of that factor it is.

Alhazred wrote:

Lapin wrote:

You aren't factoring in lack of education...

I'm also not talking about this particular story but, rather, the "woman are completely infallible and it's never their fault ever" attitude around here.

We've been through this. No one here ever says that, and if that's the subtext you're getting out of it, than that's your problem. Not ours.

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Of course they are. It doesn't automatically make the women not responsible. When consensual heterosexual sex happens, the woman is just as responsible for it happening.

But when the woman gets pregnant, the man has the ability to walk away, while the woman doesn't. Not only that, but if you and Braigwen thought that it was all equal down the line, why did you automatically assume that the woman got an abortion because she's just a dumb slut who needs to learn to birth control correctly. Only stupid sluts have unwanted pregnancies. Only dumb whores get abortions.

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All all heterosexual men rapists? Because if not, there is such a thing as a woman who can choose not to have sex by saying "no."

More implying that women who get abortions are stupid bitches who should have known better than to catch the PREGGERS!

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Which has absolutely nothing to do with how she got pregnant. At no point did I ever say women shouldn't have easy access to abortion.

Than what are you saying? That we should stop putting wymyn first over the poor widdle males? Poor widdle aboozed males? Because no one is doing that.

Blimey, I missed Al's post. Doobs, lovely, you've said most of what I want to say, but I shall add this.

If only consent were simply the absence of a "no". If only people did not feel coerced into sex and coerced into not saying no. Consent is more than that.

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We've been through this. No one here ever says that, and if that's the subtext you're getting out of it, than that's your problem. Not ours.

It's really pretty blatant, actually, but even if it were subtext, subtext is not the audience's problem. If you're trying to get a point across, it falls on you to make sure the proper idea is communicated.