Philadelphia doctor accused of murdering patient, newborns

[easjer]

I can't begin to express the horror I'm feeling. I wish I hadn't read this, I really do.

The only thing I can point out is that through the dead baby community I've met a handful of women who terminated their pregnancies between 24 and 27 weeks, not because of their health (though I know several who had to induce b/c of their health and it was essentially a death sentence). Their babies had such deformities that it was kinder to the babies to terminate earlier when they would not feel any pain because their short lives would be excruciating if carried to term (and none of them were likely to carry to term). I know one mother who ended up carrying to term when they determined after four weeks of back and forth that condition was not treatable and the quality of life would be non-existent only to find they were two days past the termination deadline (though the size of the baby would still have qualified). Those remaining 13 weeks were excruciating and horrifying, knowing the entire time that her baby was going to die a very painful death as soon as she was born.

All of that is to say - late term abortions are not always about denial and murder. Sometimes the testing necessary to determine things isn't complete in time, particularly if there are no early ultrasounds or testing - it's possible to wind up halfway through the pregnancy before finding out your child has severe problems that aren't compatible with life.

ETA - what was going on in that 'clinic' is among the worst things I've ever heard. Ever. That should be prevented at all costs, however it can be prevented.

[lil'mo]

dead baby community? sorry about your miscarriages.

[easjer]

Yeah, that's what we tend to call it. Bit of black humor, I suppose. As most of us have learned, there is no good word for being baby-lost (the more polite term, I guess). People who lose their spouses are widows or widowers, people who lose their parents are orphans. There's no name for those of us who lost our children, particularly that subsection of us who lost babies during or shortly after pregnancy, to stillbirth or during delivery, when we were parents for a very short time. For SFIE and me, it was about 20-30 minutes between Gabe's birth and death. Remembering how it felt to hold him while he died makes this story even more horrifying. To think about what those poor babies may have felt makes me sick.

There are a number of support sites and blogs out there for babylost parents. The one I've been most involved with is www.glowinthewoods.com in case someone out there ever needs that sort of support (or needs to support someone going through that).

[Viva Las Espuelas]

WW<--------Click me

A pretty graphic depiction of the slaughterhouse this guy was running.