Friday, March 09, 2012

Prepare to "Celebrate" Abortionists!

Abortion enthusiasts have not yet given up on the idea of March 10 as a day to "appreciate" abortionists. From the "You can't make this shit up" category I present the Stop Patriarchy blog's joyous anticipation of the festivities of the day.

They even provide -- I kid you not -- PDFs of greeting cards to print out and mail to your local abortionist! They come in four different designs. On the inside, each has the same inspirational message:

Thank You, Heroes

Day in and day out, you make the unseen sacrifice.

You are there for women in some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives, and you value them for all that they are. You know better than many the reality of women's lives, and you commit yourselves to their health. You face anger, lies, and even threats for what you do, but you keep doing it, because you know better than many the costs of giving up, and giving in.

For this we thank you.

For this we treasure you.

For this we promise to defend you.

For this we promise to tell people this truth:

Abortion providers are heroes.


Yeah, I know. Pass the barf bag.

Now let's look at the artwork.

This one, "Gather," celebrates the herbal abortifacients that were sold in the 1800s. You know, herbal abortifacients like the ones that killed Cordelia Calkins in 1859, Aurora Heaton in 1866, Mary Donigan in 1870, and Delia May Bell in 1889, among so many others.

And it's not like these homey herbal concoctions stopped being lethal with Roe. Kris Humphrey managed to do herself in with a pennyroyal regimen in 1994, as had a Colorado woman in 1978.

Granted, the card in question focuses on abortifacients containing aloe, but you get the idea.

I'm a bit perplexed, though, as to why an admonition to "gather" an herbal abortifacient for private home use was considered an appropriate theme for celebrating the modern, technologically-advanced abortionist. Maybe it's just a nostalgia thing.

Then there's "Praise," which celebrates, of all people, notorious 19th Century abortionist Madame Restelle, noting that she was "one of over two hundred abortionists practicing in New York City."

Yeah, celebrate New York City abortionists. We can start with the ones of Madame Restelle's day. How about Restelle herself, who was fingered in the death of Mary Rogers?

Well, Restelle was never definitively linked to any abortion deaths, but the same can't be said of her fellow New York abortion "providers" of the era.

There was Dr. Charles Cobel, implicated in the 19th Century abortion deaths of Emma Wolfer and Amelia Weber, and possibly the death of death of Catharine DeBreuxal as well.

Dr. Edward M Browne committed the fatal 1862 abortion on Clementina Anderson. Midwife Johanna White was charged in the 1874 abortion death of Christine Siefred. Midwife Caroline Kraft was fingered in the 1893 abortion death of Bertha Kern.

New York city abortionists, of course, continued to ply their trade after the turn of the century. In 1921, Dr. Simeon B. Minden performed a fatal abortion on Catherine Riga. Dr. Allen F. Murphy was sentenced to 2-10 years in Sing-Sing for the death of Alice Corbett in 1939. Dr. Anthony Renda went to Sing-Sing for the 1944 death of Amelia Cardito. Gynecologist Mandel M. Friedman was charged with homicide in the 1962 death of Barbara Covington, a Florida socialite.

With legalization, New York City abortionists really ran amok, performing dangerous saline abortions -- sometimes as outpatient procedures -- and otherwise just scraping women and girls out and sending them home to die.

New York City abortion quackery continues pretty much unabated, with the death of Alexandra Nunez in 2010 being the most recent one I'm aware of. Abortionists are what they always have been, and their cheerleaders find them worthy of celebration anyway.


The final card is a bit ironically creepy, considering the goings-on in Philadelphia with Kermit Gosnell. This card admonishes us to "cooperate" and celebrates the "Jane" collective in Chicago, formed by a bunch of women who wanted to facilitate abortions and ended up getting the likes of Harvey Karman to train them to perpetrate the abortions themselves.

You see, "Jane" wanted to give Harvey a batch of women to test his new "super coil" abortions on. Their Chicago practice was raided so they loaded up their test subjects -- all poor minority women -- on a bus and hauled them off to Philadelphia, where Harvey and a buddy worked in Gosnell's mill to pack the women full of plastic springs. One woman had to be hospitalized in Philadelphia, and others were hospitalized on return to Chicago.

At least none of Harvey's patients died. The same can't be said for "Jane's" buddy Kermit Gosnell, who killed Semika Shaw and Karnamaya Mongar. It's a stunning tribute to willful ignorance that a link to this quack would be offered up as a way to appreciate what these "heroes" do for women.

2 comments:

Christina Dunigan said...

Rachael's comment vanished somehow. I'll re-post it:

Women in the Silent No More movement or any woman who's been hurt by abortion can advantage of this time to remind reproductive health care providers that abortion hurts women physically and mentally, by taking a moment and writing a note inside of one of these so-called Thank You cards, sharing their story and how abortion hurt them, encouraging the abortion provider to find another medical profession.

adab2 said...

This is a DISGRACE! I've taken part of the Silent No More campaign and have even participated in the Rachel's Vineyard retreat. Abortion does hurt! I cannot believe that murderers are hailed as heroes!!! So sad!