Mistreatment of Incarcerated People: One Nonviolent Activist’s Experience and the Broader Problem
by Sarah Terzo
Pro-life activist Heather Idoni, 59, who is awaiting sentencing for blocking entrances to abortion facilities, suffered a stroke at Northern Neck Regional Jail in West Virginia after being subjected to extended solitary confinement and other inhumane treatment.
Information in this article comes from a May 9, 2024, email from the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) unless otherwise indicated.
Mistreatment Suffered in Jail
Idoni was found guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act in multiple states. According to Live Action News, Idoni is facing up to fifty years in prison and fines of over one million dollars—all for nonviolent civil disobedience.
Idoni was first placed in solitary confinement for sharing food with another inmate. She remained there, in isolation, for two weeks. She was out of confinement for less than a day when she was sent back, this time for taking off her wrist ID bracelet. Idoni has severe carpal tunnel syndrome and may have removed her bracelet because of pain.
For these “crimes” she spent twenty-two days in solitary confinement. Staff kept the jail cell’s lights on all day and night.
Heather Idoni
According to the United Nations, what Idoni experienced were human rights violations.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules) prohibits solitary confinement “in excess of 15 consecutive days,” deeming it “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The Nelson Mandela Rules also forbid the “[p]lacement of a prisoner in a dark or constantly lit cell.”
This was not the only ill-treatment Idoni endured. Witnesses say that when she was brought into the courtroom for a pre-trial hearing in Detroit, she was shackled at her wrists, waist, and feet. Idoni has never been violent.
Witness Carl Zastrow recalls that even the judge was horrified:
The shocked judge ordered the shackles removed. Initially, the marshal agreed to remove the shackles from only one wrist to allow Idoni freedom to write, a concession necessary for her to take notes, as she was then representing herself in court. Only at the insistence of the indignant judge were the shackles of both wrists finally removed, although the marshal left the bars around her waist and feet.
Idoni has also endured repeated strip searches.
Denial of Medical Care
Idoni was convicted of civil disobedience in Tennessee, then sent back to Oklahoma, where she began experiencing chest pains. She was then moved to West Virginia, where she had the stroke after being kept in solitary confinement.
Idoni has diabetes, and was denied her insulin, both before and after her stroke. After heart surgery, she couldn’t get insulin for two days. When she finally got the insulin, she says, she became dizzy and lightheaded. Afraid of falling, she grabbed the handrail in a hallway. The guard escorting her forced her to let go of the handrail and walk without holding on.
She also complained about being cold at night. Guards refused to give Idoni sufficient blankets to stay warm, even though she was recovering from surgery.
No one told Idoni’s family about her stroke. In fact, they didn’t even know where Idoni was for a while. They weren’t told when she was transported from one facility to another, and she wasn’t able to contact them and tell them where she was.
After unsuccessfully trying to locate Idoni, her son, a US veteran, contacted the VA and asked for help. With the VA’s help, they finally located Idoni and found out that she was in the hospital.
Family and Previous Activism
Idoni was born in Indianapolis in 1964. Her birth mother chose adoption, and Idoni grew up in an adoptive family. After Idoni married her husband Jim in 1987, the couple adopted and raised ten orphaned Ukrainian children alongside their biological children. Idoni now has nine grandchildren. One of her grandchildren was born during her incarceration.
Idoni has been active in the pro-life movement since 1988. She also raised money to send hundreds of emergency medical kits to Ukraine during the worst of the Covid pandemic.
Idoni is a deeply religious Christian. After she took part in a pro-life “rescue” in 2022, she realized she might go to jail. She spent two years praying for everyone she would meet while incarcerated. She says that, though in jail, she continues to feel God’s presence and take comfort in her faith.
A Death from a Stroke in the Same Jail
The cruelty Idoni has faced in jail is very common in the US prison system. In fact, Idoni is not the first person to be denied medication, nor to suffer a stroke while at Northern Neck Regional Jail.
In March 2016, Jaimee Kirkwood Reese suffered a fatal stroke in her cell after jail employees refused to give her the stroke-prevention medications she was prescribed after open-heart surgery.
Reese was serving a year-long sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. Jail staff denied her medical care after her stroke. Instead of taking her to the hospital, jail employees placed the unconscious Reese on a stretcher and put her in another cell for “medical observation.” She lay there, unattended, for eleven hours.
By the time Reese was finally transferred to the hospital, she was brain-dead. Reese was only thirty-two years old. She had been at Northern Neck Regional Jail for two weeks.
According to the jail’s Superintendent Ted Hull, “No policies or procedures were changed as a result” of Reese’s death.
Fortunately, Idoni received treatment in time to save her life.
Deaths from Denial of Insulin
We can only hope Idoni is now being given her insulin. Diabetes is a life-threatening illness, and denying a diabetic person insulin can subject them to coma and death, as well as complications such as blindness and loss of limbs.
Sadly, the denial of insulin is common in the US prison system.
In Tennessee, sixty inmates filed a class-action lawsuit against Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility alleging they were forced to wait hours for their insulin after eating or were denied it entirely. The prisoners have documented complaints to prison staff going back years. CoreCivic, the for-profit company that runs the prison, is also facing two more lawsuits related to insulin refusal, including that of Jonathan Salada, who suffered serious complications from diabetes, was denied medical care, and died.
CoreCivic has denied wrongdoing and claims all sixty-two plaintiffs refused insulin, used illegal drugs, and skipped meals and were therefore responsible for their own complications.
An article in the Atlanta-Journal-Constitution profiled twelve inmates from Georgia who died from uncontrolled diabetes while in jail.
Willie Whaley, a type I diabetic, received no insulin for forty-eight hours before his death. His autopsy revealed a blood sugar reading five times the normal range.
Wickie Bryant, 55, also died after not receiving insulin. She was arrested for disorderly conduct and later discovered dead in her jail cell. Bryant was mentally ill, which may have contributed to her arrest, and had a history of refusing medications, but wasn’t hospitalized when her condition became critical.
Esteban Mosqueda-Romero had high blood sugar when he was first incarcerated, but by the time staff sent him to the hospital, his blood sugar was 1472, nearly 13 times the normal level.
Authorities arrested military veteran Douglas Brown for falling behind on his child support payments. According to a lawsuit filed by his father, staff didn’t give Brown his diabetes medication. He was found dead on the floor of his cell.
When Paul Mullinax was transported to Habersham County Detention Center for a probation violation, he told staff he was a type II diabetic. His daughter brought in his medication and turned it over to the prison staff. But the staff never gave it to him. After a week without his medication, Mullinax died.
Barnes Nowlin, Jr., 39, had diabetes and took three kinds of medication. His wife brought his medications to the jail after he his arrest, but jail employees never gave them to him, nor did they test his blood sugar.
Before his death, Nowlin vomited for hours and was unable to stand, but the jail nurse ignored requests to check on him. A coroner’s inquest labeled Nowlin’s death a homicide, but no criminal charges were ever filed against anyone at the jail.
What was his crime? He missed a hearing in a traffic case.
These are just a few cases of prisoners not receiving life-saving medications.
Some people may not care about prisoners, feeling that criminals deserve to suffer. But not all incarcerated people are guilty. The Innocence Project has exonerated 191 wrongly convicted people from death row and over 250 convicted of lesser crimes.
University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Gross of the Innocence Project says:
If we reviewed prison sentences with the same level of care that we devote to death sentences, there would have been over 28,500 non-death-row exonerations in the past 15 years, rather than the 255 that have in fact occurred. (from Skeptic, p. 197)
Everyone deserves basic medical care and humane treatment.
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For our blog posts on similar topics, see:
The Random Death Sentence: COVID in Prisons and Jails
Police Brutality Against Protesters
Police Brutality to the Preborn
The Dangers of Climate Change for the Pregnant and Pre-born
This is a follow-up to the author’s previous post, How Caring for the Earth Fits into the Consistent Life Ethic
by Christina Yao Pelliccioni
According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, everyone will be affected by climate change, but some people will be affected more than others. Children, pregnant women, older adults, people who work outdoors, people with disabilities, and those with chronic medical conditions are at an increased risk. Social determinants, meaning social, economic, political, and environmental factors, weigh into how much of a risk climate change is to one’s health. Examples of these determinants include poverty, racial discrimination, a lack of access to healthcare or education, and an unhealthy or unsafe environment. To help those affected by climate change, NIEHS reports, we must first understand the risk and understand the population we want to help.
It intrigued me that NIEHS would list pregnant women as particularly at risk for climate change, so I decided to do some more research there. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, both pregnant women and their unborn babies are more vulnerable to threats made by climate change. Climate-related hazards such as heat, flooding, and wildfires have been linked to health problems such as anemia, eclampsia, low birth weight, preterm birth and miscarriage. Extreme weather events can also mean that pregnant women cannot get proper medical care, because of either lack of care available or lack of transportation. Climate change can also be linked to an increased risk of water, food, and insect-related illnesses. This can be linked to PTSD and Postpartum Depression.
Climate change can increase the amount of heavier rains, cause change in the air and wind temperatures, cause flooding and rising sea levels, and bring disease-carrying organisms into drinking and recreational waters. This can cause gastrointestinal and other diseases, which pregnant women are at an increased risk of contracting. Severe gastrointestinal disease can cause preterm birth and miscarriage. Flooding has been associated with conditions that threaten the health of pregnant women, such as anemia, preeclampsia, and eclampsia.
Rising temperature and extreme weather events threaten food availability and safety. Food-borne illnesses such as listeria and toxoplasma can increase the risk of a baby being stillborn, premature, or miscarried. A lack of food security can prevent pregnant women from getting enough healthy food. This can lead to delivery problems, low birth weight, or infant mortality. A rise in temperature can lead to a rise in heart-related deaths among groups of vulnerable people, including pregnant women. Pregnant women are more prone to heat exhaustion and heart stroke. Pregnant women are also more sensitive to wildfire smoke, which can affect their babies, causing them to be born premature and/or with a low birth weight.
Rising temperatures will also cause an increase of diseases being transmitted by insects, such as mosquitoes. This most infamous case of this is with Zika virus, which can be passed from pregnant women to their babies. This can cause microcephaly.
Last but certainly not least, a study conducted after Hurricane Katrina found that pregnant women who had had a more traumatic hurricane experienced a significantly higher risk of past-partum depression and PTSD.
If we are going to truly be pro-life, we need to care about climate change. Like the NIEHS said, we need to learn about the needs of those most affected by climate change and do what we can to live greenly.
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For more of our posts on the environment, see:
How Caring for the Earth Fits into the Consistent Life Ethic
Stewardship and the Consistent Life Ethic
Climate Change and the Consistent Life Ethic: An Opportunity to Connect Issues
Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion
Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
by Sarah Terzo
Canada’s Medical Aid in Dying law took effect in June 2016. The law allows those with disabilities or chronic illnesses to be killed by a doctor at their request.
Many stories have come out about disabled people “choosing” euthanasia because of poverty or inability to get treatment.
A Charity Worker Speaks Out
Meghan Nicholls
As of 2023, over 1.5 million disabled Canadians were living in poverty. Many of them are turning to MAID.
Charities that help poor disabled people have noticed the problem. Meghan Nicholls, CEO of the Mississauga Food Bank, said:
We’re at the point where clients on these programs are telling us they’re considering medically assisted death or suicide because they can’t live in grinding poverty anymore.
A client in our Food Bank 2 Home delivery program told one of our staff that they’re considering suicide because they’re so tired of suffering through poverty. Another client asked if we knew how to apply for MAID (medical assistance in dying) for the same reasons…
When people start telling us they’re going to end their life because they can’t live in poverty anymore, it’s clear that we’ve failed them.
Getting Approved for Government Assistance and Being Turned Down
One example is 33-year-old Rose Finlay. Last June, Finlay, a paraplegic, requested MAID because she was unable to find personal care support. She had once run her own business, but her condition worsened, and she couldn’t pay her support workers.
She applied to the Ontario Disability Support Program but was told it would take at least six to eight months to get approved. Euthanasia would be approved in 90 days.
Finlay said, “It’s not what I want. But if I don’t receive the support that I need, the outcome is the same . . . I would like to have other options.”
Rose Finlay with one of her three sons; picture submitted to several media outlets by Rose Finlay.
A woman going by “Madeline” with myalgic encephalomyelitis turned to crowdfunding to pay for the help she needed after being turned down five times for government assistance. She has arranged for her death through euthanasia if she runs out of money.
She said, “I found treatments, but I can’t afford them . . . MAID, for me, is not a life and death choice. It’s about what kind of death I want when I run out of money.”
Sathya Dhara Kovac, 44, died of euthanasia, which she “chose” because the government refused to provide enough care hours. Before she died, she said, “Ultimately it was not a genetic disease that took me out, it was a system . . . I could have had more time if I had more help.”
Her friend Shayla Brantnall said:
She accepted the changes in her body, but without enough support, how could anyone keep going? . . . You’re constantly stressed, you’re constantly struggling, like, ‘How am I going to get to the bathroom? How am I going to eat food?’ That’s not really a great quality of life either.
Once again, the cause of her “request” wasn’t her disability, but a lack of money for care.
Tracey Thompson suffered from long covid. She couldn’t get approved for assistance, which, even if granted, would barely cover her rent and would leave her with nothing for other expenses.
Choosing euthanasia, she said, was “exclusively a financial consideration.”
She also said, “I’m very happy to be alive. I still enjoy life. Birds chirping, small things that make up a day are still pleasant to me, they’re still enjoyable. I still enjoy my friends.”
But with no income, she didn’t feel she could survive.
Lack of Appropriate Housing
Michael Fraser qualified for euthanasia because of liver disease, incontinence, and the inability to walk.
He died because his apartment, which was on the second floor, had become a prison, and he couldn’t afford to move anywhere else.
The doctor who killed him, Dr. Navindra Persaud, struggled with the decision.
Persaud said:
Professional standards were met. It’s legal, but I do feel guilty. I’m conflicted about it . . . There were a number of factors that led to Michael’s decision, and I think poverty was one of them . . .
Sometimes poverty is pushing people to MAID who can be helped by other supports. For sure, I think the fact that he had trouble paying his rent made it harder for him to be in this world.
51-year-old “Sophia” had multiple chemical sensitivities. She did everything she could to get access to safe housing but was turned down and denied it at every turn. So, she died by euthanasia.
Rohini Peris, President of the Environmental Health Association of Québec, said of her case:
This person begged for help for years, two years, wrote everywhere, called everywhere, asking for healthy housing . . . It’s not that she didn’t want to live. She couldn’t live that way.
Dr. Riina Bray, who treats people with her condition, said, “It was an easy fix. She just needed to be helped to find a suitable place to live, where there wasn’t smoke wafting in through the vents.”
Lack of Resources and Poor Quality Care
Paraplegic Jacques Comeau was getting in-home care from orderlies that had worked with him for years. But the local health center began sending new orderlies who gave poor care. One orderly left him sitting in his waste. They made mistakes with his procedures, causing him pain.
So, he chose euthanasia.
Adèle Liliane Ngo Mben Nkoth, an accessibility advocate, said about his case, “Everywhere in Quebec, we see this … It’s deplorable to see that … we find ourselves in these situations for a country so rich as ours.”
Dr. Paul Saba from Lachine Hospital said:
People are choosing it because they can’t get proper housing, can’t get affordable housing, can’t get food, where they’re not getting enough social services, not enough nursing help.
“Falling Through the Cracks”
Jennyfer Hatch appeared in the pro-euthanasia propaganda film “All Is Beauty.”
What the makers of the film didn’t reveal was that she had said:
I feel like I’m falling through the cracks so if I’m not able to access health care, am I then able to access death care? And that’s what led me to look into MAID and I applied last year . . .
From a disability and financial perspective as well, I can’t afford the resources that would help improve my quality of life. Because of being locked in financially as well and geographically, it is far easier to let go than keep fighting.
Fraser Health’s MAID documentation includes the statement, “There were no other treatment recommendations or interventions that were suitable to the patient’s needs or to her financial constraints.”
Les Landry’s disability benefits ended when he turned 65. His senior benefits weren’t enough to cover his medical transportation, prescription coverage, or service dog’s care. So, he applied for MAID.
Euthanasia Averted by Generous Donors
Amir Farsoud of Ontario was living in “never-ending agony” from a back injury. But it wasn’t pain that drove him to seek euthanasia, but the prospect of homelessness after the owner sold the house he was renting. He said, “I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die.”
His story has a happy ending. Strangers raised $60,000 for him, allowing him to find a place to live, and he withdrew his application.
31-year-old “Denise”, who also had multiple chemical sensitivities, applied for assisted suicide “essentially, because of abject poverty” as she said. But her GoFundMe account brought in enough money for her to get help for her condition.
A Goal of Saving Money?
These are just a handful of examples showing that disabled people are being forced into euthanasia by poverty and lack of services.
But there is some evidence that the law works exactly as it was meant to.
Before MAID was legalized, the Canadian Medical Association released a report documenting how much money the law would save. Dead people, after all, don’t cost the government any more money in healthcare spending or support.
New research suggests medically assisted dying could result in substantial savings across Canada’s health-care system.
Doctor-assisted death could reduce annual health-care spending across the country by between $34.7 million and $136.8 million, according to a report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday.
Aaron Trachtenberg, one of the report’s authors, told CBC news:
In a resource-limited health care system, anytime we roll out a large intervention there has to be a certain amount of planning and preparation and cost has to be a part of that discussion… It’s just the reality of working in a system of finite resources.
Arguments about the money that MAID would save were rarely made publicly. Instead, euthanasia supporters relied on claims of “death with dignity” and “relieving human suffering.” But reports like this one were available to legislators, and issues of cost were spoken about behind closed doors.
How do supporters of MAID respond to these cases?
Mostly by denying they exist. In response to allegations that disabled people were choosing death because of poverty and lack of housing, Helen Long, CEO of pro-euthanasia group Dying with Dignity said, “This is simply not true and there is no evidence that I’m aware of to support those claims.”
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For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
Will I be Treated the Same Way Now?
#SayHisName: The Medical Murder of Michael Hickson
Are We Finally Waking Up? Signs of New Awareness of the Nuclear Threat
by John Whitehead
Nuclear weapons have threatened humanity’s survival for almost 80 years. During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the nuclear threat received substantial attention and inspired significant anti-nuclear activism, such as the June 1982 rally against nuclear weapons in New York City that drew roughly 1 million people. In the 21st century, however, the nuclear threat has not galvanized the same kind of action, at least in the United States, that it did in the 20th, despite the nuclear threat growing amid various conflicts among nuclear-armed nations.
Americans’ comparative neglect of the nuclear threat in the 21st century may finally be ending, though. In the first half of 2024, elements of the media and entertainment industry, which can play a major role in shaping public opinion, have given renewed attention to the colossal threat posed by nuclear weapons. These signs of serious concern about the nuclear threat are very encouraging and worth noting.
The Times’ “At the Brink”
The New York Times ran a series of opinion pieces in March on the nuclear threat, entitled “At the Brink.” The series’ introduction declared “The risk of nuclear conflict is rising . . . Is anyone paying attention?”
One opinion piece gives a sense of how pressing the nuclear threat is today by revealing the Biden administration’s fears of Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. In late 2022, when Russia was losing ground to the Ukrainian counter-offensive, such a resort to nuclear weapons loomed as a real possibility. The opinion piece notes “The possibility of a nuclear strike, once inconceivable in modern conflict, is more likely now than at any other time since the Cold War.”
Seeking to remind readers of the precise nature of the threat, “The Brink” series portrays, through words and graphics, what a nuclear strike would be like: “A brilliant white flash envelops the sky for miles, briefly blinding everyone who witnesses it . . . Temperatures inside the explosion reach millions of degrees, hotter than the surface of the sun . . . The wreckage — what once was asphalt, steel, soil, glass, flesh and bone — is suctioned into the roiling stem of a mushroom cloud rising for miles.” The article also covers the long-term health and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons’ use.
Another opinion in the series examines the president’s authority, without any checks or balances, to order nuclear weapons’ use and the dangers this authority presents. The opinion piece makes the modest but significant proposal that “Congress should immediately establish a new legal framework that restricts the president from being able to issue a nuclear launch order without the consent of another senior official unless the United States is already under attack.”
A different “At the Brink” piece identifies further concrete steps to reduce the nuclear threat and makes the welcome declaration that “It’s Time to Protest Nuclear Weapons Again.”
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
Another encouraging sign is a documentary series that debuted on Netflix in March, Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War. This nine-part series surveys the history of both of first Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and the second, current Cold War between the United States and Russia. As the title suggests, nuclear weapons and their threat are the series’ central concern.
The Bomb and the Cold War has limitations and flaws. Its emphasis on the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia and focus on Europe means huge parts of Cold War history receive minimal coverage or are left out altogether. China’s role in the Cold War receives a cursory treatment and the wars in Korea and Indochina are scarcely mentioned. The treatment of the second Cold War is disappointing, as the series largely embraces the view that the conflict is the result solely of Vladimir Putin’s malevolence and neglects the west’s responsibility for the current situation.
Nevertheless, the series doesn’t adopt a simplistic, jingoistic view throughout. Many Cold War-related injustices committed by the United States are covered, from the harm caused by nuclear testing; to the US role in overthrowing democratic governments in Iran, Guatemala, and elsewhere; to the civil liberties violations of the Red Scare. Particularly refreshing is the careful treatment of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, where the series gives time to both supportive and critical views. The episode recounting the Berlin Wall’s collapse (by far the most moving part of the series) also offers an excellent case study in the power of nonviolent resistance.
Most important, The Bomb and the Cold War devotes significant time and attention to the ongoing nuclear threat. As noted, nuclear testing and the atomic bombings of Japan are covered in detail, with powerful testimonials from bombing survivors included. The series also covers the nuclear arms race in detail, including such terrifying events as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Able Archer scare, and cases of narrowly averted accidental nuclear war.
Among the many historians, journalists, and former officials interviewed for the series, perhaps the most significant commentator is whistleblower and peace activist Daniel Ellsberg (who appears in what must have been one of his last interviews before his death in 2023). Ellsberg describes his time working for the US military establishment and his exposure to nuclear war planning, which might be more accurately called “mass murder planning.” He sums up a US nuclear war plan that would cause the deaths of over 600 million people as being “the most evil and insane plan that had ever existed in the history of humanity.”
The series correctly highlights that the nuclear threat is not merely a matter of history but a very real and pressing danger today. The concluding episode features the apt warning from Tom Nichols, a professor at the US Navy War College, who comments, “I worry about a cataclysm . . . That we wake up in the morning and the world is a peaceful place, and by that evening, for any number of contingent reasons — accidents, miscalculation, misunderstanding — suddenly we’re facing the extinction of billions of people.”
“An Open Letter from Hollywood”
One reason the nuclear threat is receiving more attention is the impact of the movie Oppenheimer. While flawed from a peace advocacy standpoint, Oppenheimer has at least re-started public debates about nuclear weapons.
A welcome direct consequence of the movie’s critical and commercial success is the “Open Letter from Hollywood on Oppenheimer and Nuclear Weapons.” Published in the Los Angeles Times and online on March 6 and signed by a variety of actors, directors, and others, the letter states “As artists and advocates, we want to raise our voices to remind people that while Oppenheimer is history, nuclear weapons are not.” The signatories declare “To protect our families, our communities, and our world, we must demand that global leaders work to make nuclear weapons history.”
A notable signatory is writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who directed the 1983 TV movie The Day After. The movie, which dramatized the likely consequences of nuclear war, was one of the most-watched programs in American TV history. Among those deeply affected by the nightmarish story was a former member of the entertainment industry, President Ronald Reagan. The Day After may have contributed to Reagan eventually softening his ultra-hawkish policies.
The recent “Open Letter from Hollywood” raises the hope history might repeat itself and latter-day versions of The Day After will emerge to motivate renewed opposition to nuclear weapons.
Continuing the Work
Whether the concerns about the nuclear threat reflected in the opinion pieces, series, and statement described above continue to gain prominence remains to be seen. Nevertheless, these expressions of concern are hopeful signs that the nuclear threat may yet become a major public concern again in the United States. These signs show peace advocates that at least some people are listening and should serve as a spur to further advocacy efforts.
In his final comments in The Bomb and the Cold War, Daniel Ellsberg offered some simple, sobering yet, to me, encouraging words: “I do have to say now, in this point in my life, the chance of actually affecting [the nuclear threat] is lower even than I thought it was [previously] . . . Can it be worth, then, risking your life, your freedom, for a very low chance of saving lives? And the answer is ‘yes.’ Of course it can be worth it.”
Let’s keep moving forward with the work of Ellsberg and others to raise awareness about the nuclear threat and ultimately to end it.
one of the quarterly anti-nuclear vigils we do with a coalition of groups. Christy Yao is at the microphone.
Those wishing to witness against the nuclear threat can join the Consistent Life Network on May 18th outside the White House for a Vigil to End the Nuclear Danger.
Trump Sabotaging the Pro-Life Movement
The Consistent Life Network is a nonpartisan organization that encourages individual writers to express a variety of views, and the views expressed in its blog are the writers’ own.
by Rachel MacNair
Because (among other backtracking among Republicans recently) Donald Trump recently announced his position on abortion as being that it should be left to the states – without encouraging the states to have laws protecting the victims – several conservative pro-life writers who have opposed Trump for a while have made some interesting points.
Conservative Insights
Russell Moore
I like the way the editor of Christianity Today, Russell Moore, who identifies himself who as “both pro-life and anti-Trump” put it in a CNN interview. He commented on the people who are “pro-life with three exceptions: rape, incest, and declining poll numbers.” He pointed out this isn’t “a compelling moral vision.”
The New York Times and The Washington Post had three columns on Trump’s announcement by writers who also contribute to The National Review, the magazine founded by William F. Buckley. The newspapers want to diversify their opinion pieces with conservative views, and offering different perspectives has always been in the Buckley tradition.
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ramesh Ponnuru, The Washington Post, April 10, 2024:
Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, and decades ago when he was a student at Princeton invited me to speak there as Feminists for Life of America president. He drew a parallel with the 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates on slavery. Douglas argued slavery policy should be set state by state, to reflect the will of the people. That’s what Trump is advocating now, and “He expresses no hope that states will protect unborn children, specifying only what exceptions he wants any law to have. That indifference to the pro-life cause is probably his most honest statement of his views in years.”
Ross Douthat, The New York Times, April 10, 2024:
They changed the title, but I prefer the original: How the Pro-Life Movement’s Deal With Trump Made America More Pro-Choice. I quote directly:
Ross Douthat
The problem for pro-lifers is that these efforts at persuasion have become markedly less effective over a timeline that overlaps closely with Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. The captivity of abortion opponents, in this sense, isn’t about the specific policy stances that Trump might choose and that they might then have to reluctantly accept. It’s about the ways in which a Trumpist form of conservatism seems inherently to make Americans more pro-choice . . .
[O]ne does not need to be a monocausalist to see how the identification of the anti-abortion cause with his particular persona, his personal history and public style, might have persuaded previously wavering and ambivalent Americans to see the pro-life movement differently than they did before.
If you set out to champion the rights of the most vulnerable human beings while promising protection and support for women in their most vulnerable state, and your leader is a man famous for his playboy lifestyle who exudes brash sexism and contempt for weakness, people are going to have some legitimate questions about whether they can trust you to make good on your promises of love and care . . .
That’s the price of the bargain abortion opponents made. The deal worked on its own terms: Roe is gone. But now they’re trapped in a world where their image is defined more by the dealmaker’s values than by their own.
David French, The New York Times, April 11, 2024
French mentions that he agrees with Ponnuru’s column (see above), and words things much more sharply in The Great Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Movement:
David French
I’d been a part of the pro-life movement my entire adult life. I began my activism in college and represented pro-life students and pro-life groups in my legal career, and I’d never seen a desire for subjugation and control. While I don’t pretend that any political movement is perfect, I’ve seen with my own eyes pro-life activists and volunteers demonstrate immense love and compassion for women in distress, trying desperately to care for mother and child by offering financial, emotional and spiritual support.
But now I’m left wondering how much of the movement was truly real . . . Trump’s advice to voters was to “follow your heart” and “do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.” It’s “all about the will of the people,” he said.
This is the most pro-choice position a Republican presidential candidate has taken since at least Gerald Ford. And how did the pro-life establishment respond? With mild criticism, but also with immediate support . . .
Even more ominously from a pro-life perspective, the abortion rate rose under Trump . . .
It’s hard to argue you’re a movement rooted in love when you enthusiastically unite behind a fundamentally hateful man.
French also gives personal experience, which I must say doesn’t comport with my own personal experience. But he may get more attention and does get that attention identified as a conservative:
At its worst, the pro-life movement was also deeply cynical. Many of its members have spent the last eight years mocking and bullying pro-life conservatives who’ve refused to support Trump, even when we rightly said he was a terrible ambassador for a virtuous cause. I’ve been called a baby-killer or murderer or heretic more times than I can count. Commitment to Trump was the ultimate test of your pro-life convictions. Yet now he is taking the most pro-choice position of any Republican presidential nominee in two generations, and all the largest pro-life groups continue to bend the knee.
He concludes: “There is no truly pro-life party in the United States.”
My Thoughts
Rachel MacNair
As a consistent-lifer, I’ve long held the conclusion that French just recently came to. Republicans have had policies on war and the death penalty that don’t fit the bill. They’ve been inadequate on poverty-reduction programs that have merit on their own but would also reduce abortions. Yet Republicans have never really been good enough on abortion just as a single issue either. So many of the office-holders haven’t educated themselves enough about the issue to be able to articulate persuasively and effectively. They certainly have never given it the priority it deserves.
This is one of the points I stress about the advantages of consistent-life candidates. There are very few of them, and what we do find is mainly for lower office and of course in our member group the American Solidarity Party. But precisely because they aren’t prominent, you can come much closer to counting on them. A consistent-life candidate is more likely to be sincere. They’re also more likely to have thought it through carefully, because they’ve had to articulate it to skeptics more than just employing platitudes.
Even from a single-issue anti-abortion point of view, abortion is an issue where there are just too many politicians who take the position to get votes and don’t even try to understand it well. So it’s no wonder that when they found that it was no longer a stand with no policy implications except around the margins, but that practical policy could actually be advanced, they didn’t have the skill set necessary to come up with creative or persuasive solutions.
I report on these conservative writers because though they aren’t advocates of the consistent life ethic and probably aren’t that familiar with it (if they’ve heard of it at all), they’re having the kinds of insights that consistent-lifers commonly have. The same truth can be found from different perspectives, after all. Especially truth based on people whose thoughts are guided by compassion and principle.
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Also of interest, former Vice President Mike Pence (who was unambiguously pro-Trump before 2021) weighed in with
Donald Trump Has Betrayed the Pro-Life Movement (The New York Times, April 20, 2024).
This quotation added on July 3, 2024:
Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review, July 1, 2024
Referring to the debate between Biden and Trump on June 27, 2024, Lopez makes the negative case for her title question, The Most Pro-life President?
Kathryn Jean Lopez
Trump was right to call out Democratic extremism on abortion. But the second question of the debate called out both candidates’ ignorance on the issue. “First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it,” Trump said. The Court did no such thing. It issued a decision on the abortion-pill case based not on the merits or safety of chemical abortion but on whether the plaintiff had standing for the case, which in no way indicated approval of chemical abortion. Trump’s words in support of abortion pills were callous. Chemical abortion, increasingly the default method of abortion, is a bloody abandonment of pregnant girls and women.
And a couple more:
Pro-Lifers Helped Bring Trump to Power. Why Has He Abandoned Us? by Patrick T. Brown (The New York Times, July 19, 2024).
Trump’s Abandonment of Pro-Lifers is Complete by Philip Klein (The National Review, August 23, 2024)
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For updated information on an aspect of elections we can get behind, see our project website:
Coerced Abortion
by Sarah Terzo
An Attempt to Ban Coerced Abortion
A bill passed in Kansas would’ve made coerced abortion a crime, had it not been vetoed. Bill 2436 banned:
Threatening to harm or physically restrain an individual or the creation or execution of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause an individual to believe that failure to perform an act would result in financial harm to, or physical restraint of, an individual;
Abusing or threatening abuse of the legal system, including threats of arrest or deportation without regard to whether the individual being threatened is subject to arrest or deportation under state or federal law;
Knowingly destroying, concealing, removing, confiscating, or possessing any actual or purported passport or other immigration document . . .
Facilitating or controlling an individual’s access to a controlled substance . . .
Sex traffickers whose victims are undocumented couldn’t use victims’ immigration status to blackmail them into unwanted abortions.
Examples of “financial harm” in the bill included predatory loans with unfair interest, illegal conditions placed on wages, extortion, or “any other adverse financial consequence.”
Many women have come forward with stories of coerced abortion.
Inspired by Her Own Story
Kansas Rep. Rebecca Schmoe introduced House Bill 2813, a precursor to 2436. Her own experience inspired her. Her doctor spent an hour trying to bully her into an abortion when she was pregnant with her son, who is now 21. The doctor told her the pregnancy would kill her.
Schmoe says, “I was called selfish at least 10 times, then I stopped counting.”
In her testimony before the legislature, she says the doctor told her:
Why are you being so selfish? How dare you make your parents watch you die? . . . Your selfish decision to even try to carry a baby will result in your parents having to pick out a coffin for their own daughter. Why would you do that to them? . . .
It’s not even a big deal, just an outpatient appointment. Don’t your parents deserve that? No one even has to know. You’ll never even have to think about it again. Or you can go ahead and die a slow painful death and destroy your parents life.
The baby is half dead already. You aren’t saving anyone. The baby is going to die inside you and take you with it. It is selfish to put your family through this.
You have to make the appointment right now. You can’t leave the office without making the appointment.
Rebecca Schmoe
Women Forced into Abortion by Clinic Workers
One woman described a forced abortion at Planned Parenthood. She changed her mind on the abortion table:
I told them that I did not want to do this. I had changed my mind … The doctor began to tell me that I didn’t need a baby and that I had my whole life ahead of me.
I began to cry harder, and they strapped me down. I asked them to please unstrap me and let me leave. The anesthesia was administered, and I fell asleep to the sound of their laughter.
Catherine Glenn Foster, now president of Americans United for Life, was 19 when she endured a forced abortion:
I said “please let me up. Let me off this table, out of this room. I don’t want this anymore.” I said, “I can’t do this. This is wrong and I feel really bad about this. Just let me go. You can keep the money.”
And they shouted for more people, and I had four people holding me down. One—a nurse—and a staff member on each arm. The doctor aborted my child. I’m screaming.
Another young woman named Crystal wanted her baby, but her boyfriend insisted on an abortion. She says, “I was never asked what I wanted to do about the baby, he decided for me.”
On the operating table, Crystal changed her mind and told the abortionist to stop, but he ignored her:
As I lay back on the bed, I started sternly saying no several times. That’s when the doctor had the nurses hold me down…
I yelled, “STOP! I can’t do this!” That is when the doctor told me, “Don’t scream, you’ll scare the other patients.” I felt violated and threatened, both physically and emotionally.
She said the abortion was “excruciating.”
Catherine Glenn Foster
Pressured into an Abortion by Others
In other cases, parents pressure teens. Layla was 15 and wanted to keep her baby. But when her father learned about her pregnancy, she said, he “went ballistic”:
[T]he father who had once called me his little princess relentlessly beat me down…My father never let up day in and day out. I was in a torture chamber. Only the prison cell was my home . . .
Her father told her he’d commit suicide unless she aborted.
This terrified Layla. She said, “I was being asked to make a horrific choice: the death of my child, or the death of my father.”
Layla gave in and aborted.
Lorijo and her husband were poor when she became pregnant. She didn’t want an abortion. He did and threatened to leave her. But the most serious coercion came from her caseworker at the welfare office.
The caseworker berated Lorijo and threatened her, then called Planned Parenthood and made her an abortion appointment. Afraid of losing her benefits, Lorijo had the abortion.
The first time Mary became pregnant, she was happy and wanted to keep the baby. But when she told her abusive boyfriend, he “flew into a terrifying rage.”
He demanded she abort and ignored her pleas. She agreed to go to an abortion facility and speak to someone. She said:
I was crying my eyes out . . . I knew it was impossible for me to stand up to my boyfriend on my own, but I thought that this “counselor” could support me and perhaps help him see reason.
Instead, she sided with him. I now had two people haranguing me. I was saying over and over that I wanted to have the baby, but the two of them just bulldozed over me completely. I felt cornered. I was sitting down, and they were both standing over me. I had once received training in how to close a sale, and I felt that this “counselor” must’ve been to the same sales training seminars.
She finally gave in.
The abuse escalated after the abortion. Pregnant again, she was “so conditioned to being under his control” she didn’t resist a second abortion. She had one more abortion before breaking free from her abuser.
Opposition to Protecting People from Coerced Abortion
One would think a law against abortion coercion wouldn’t be controversial. After all, aren’t pro-choice people, well, pro-choice? Nevertheless, politicians opposed the law.
Representative Jo Ella Hoye worried about husbands who threaten to divorce their wives if they refuse abortion. She speculated these men could be convicted, even though there is nothing in the bill to indicate this. She says:
If you don’t agree on a pregnancy outcome for abortion, I do think that should be able to be cause for divorce. I don’t think that we should create a crime that would charge somebody if they just said, ‘Hey, if you don’t get an abortion, we’re going to get divorced.’ I think that does go too far.
Hoye is fine with men threatening their pregnant wives with divorce and wants to protect them. She would kill the bill in its entirety, leaving women to be coerced into abortion in the most egregious ways.
Rep. Ford Carr, a Wichita Democrat, also defended men who leave their pregnant partners when they refuse to obey them about aborting. He says:
Quite honestly, oftentimes they’re scared at the sound of, you know, ‘There’s going to be another life that is going to be a part of this and I’m not ready for it. I had dreams, and I had aspirations, and this wasn’t part of it. Then, you’re welcome to go that direction on your own, but I don’t want to.’
Could a vindictive mother, could she then enact this and say that this was a definition of coercion? I think this is just a bridge too far.
Since in all cases a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, a “vindictive mother” would still have to prove her case in a court of law.
Carr also said, “I just see how this could turn into a real, real sticky situation for a lot of young people.”
He doesn’t seem to care about the “sticky situation” for the pregnant person.
The bill was vetoed by Governor Laura Kelly.
According to the Kansas City Star, Kelly said that “threatening violence against someone else is already a crime.”
They quoted her saying:
I am concerned with the vague language in this bill and its potential to intrude upon private, often difficult, conversations between a person and their family, friends, and health care providers.
This overly broad language risks criminalizing Kansans who are being confided in by their loved ones or simply sharing their expertise as a health care provider.
Is the language of the bill, quoted above, really “overly broad”? Regardless, unless the veto can be overruled, women in Kansas won’t be protected from coerced abortion.
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For our posts on similar topics, see:
How Caring for the Earth Fits into the Consistent Life Ethic
by Christina Yao Pelliccioni
I was in high school the first time I realized that what humans are doing to the environment is affecting the most vulnerable among us. I went to an environmental conference at another high school, willing to do anything I could to go on an extra field trip. Looking back on it, this was really the first conference I ever went to, aside from being dragged to Church conferences with kids that annoyed me. But the other students at this conference inspired me – they were serious about helping the earth! One group had even snuck into their cafeteria and stolen all the styrofoam, forcing their school to have more sustainable materials. My teenage brain simultaneously feared and adored those who would risk getting in trouble to make the point that sustainability was important.
The most important thing I learned from the conference, however, was that climate change was leading some groups of people to leave their homelands. It was affecting impoverished people halfway around the globe who hardly caused much pollution at all. I knew that human-made climate change would cause devastation eventually (I mean, WALL-E had come out pretty recently), but I had no idea that how we are living here in the US could affect someone on another continent whose lifestyle was way more sustainable than ours.
This memory was prominent in my mind when I was wondering how to best frame environmentalism in the Consistent Life Ethic. I came to the conclusion that more than anything, environmental justice is a topic that needs to be stressed when we talk about how to best live out the Consistent Life Ethic. I first heard about the concept of environmental justice in college, I believe in relation to a group of children in Baltimore City not wanting a trash incinerator in close proximity to their school.
I looked to find a succinct definition for environmental justice, but had a hard time doing so. According to the EPA, “Environmental justice means the just treatment of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origins, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making and other federal activities that affect human health and the environment…” The Natural Resources Defense Council says that environmental justice is “an important part of the struggle to improve and maintain a clean and healthful environment, especially for communities of color, who have been forced to live, work, and play closest to sources of pollution.”
Despite the differences I found in definitions, the main theme of environmental justice sounds very much like the Consistent Life Ethic: each person, regardless of their circumstance, especially if they are in a particularly vulnerable circumstance, deserves protection from harm and an opportunity to thrive. Just because a child is born in poverty does not mean the child has any less of a right to clean water, air, or food. No one should have to suffer hardships because of climate change or endure poor health because of pollution.
I look forward to sharing more about environmental justice and how it relates to the Consistent Life Ethic, throughout Earth month and beyond!
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For more of our posts that include environmental justice, see:
Stewardship and the Consistent Life Ethic
Climate Change and the Consistent Life Ethic: An Opportunity to Connect Issues
Lethal from the Start: Uranium Mining’s Danger to the Most Vulnerable
Threats to the Unborn Beyond Abortion
Resilient Rigidity
by Rachel MacNair
Debate and Switch on a Comedy Show
Jimmy Kimmel is a late-night comedian who frequently has innovative person-in-the-street interviews with questions or approaches others may not have thought of. Recently, he had a 4-minute segment where people known to be Trump supporters were asked what they thought of Joe Biden making a certain remark. Then the interviewer switched – it was actually Donald Trump who made the remark.
The Trump supporters were disgusted with the remark when they thought Biden made it. But when the interviewer apologized that her notes were mixed up, asked to re-ask, and made clear it was Trump who made the remark, the interviewees immediately switched to justifying the remark or expanding on the point in a more positive way.
We’re talking about the exact same people on the exact same occasion turning on a dime. They changed their perspective in a matter of seconds.
Jimmy Kimmel show graphic for this segment
Of course, the show only uses the best answers for their purpose. They undoubtedly did a large number of interviews, and then selected out the three that were most unambiguous.
Still, these three people were all intelligent and gave reasoning for their sudden switch. I think they surely had to be aware of what they were doing, though not all observers would agree. And they all three had to have signed permission to allow the video of them to be used, so they were willing to have this publicly portrayed.
Also, I watch enough of anti-Trump punditry that I knew it was actually Trump who made the remark as soon as the interviewer offered it. The interviewees mainly didn’t. So we’re dealing with intelligent people who support Trump without having previously heard some of the more awful things he said, yet not fazed about it when they hear that it was he who said it.
But I say this with complete confidence: if someone were to design a set of interviews that instead took some horrifying quotations from Biden and went to Biden supporters and attributed them to Trump at first and then corrected themselves, they’d be able to find some interviewees that would do the exact same thing (Update 02.16.25: here’s a video that does something similar with Biden and Warren quotes.) It’s not which candidate a person supports that causes this. It’s the fact of being dead set in favor of a certain candidate. See a Saturday Night Live satire on this, in which interviewees strain to support undesirable candidates simply because they’re Black.
I found this fascinating. The position is rigid, but the explanation for it is so very resilient precisely because the position is so very rigid. I think there are plenty of applications of this all over the consistent life ethic and its component issues.
Political Psychology: The Inherent Bad Faith Model
Psychologists have long known about the ability to switch whether something is good or bad, based entirely on your predispositions about who did or said it. In a classic case, in 1962 a study by Ole Holsti looked at the “information processing” of John Foster Dulles (President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State) which showed that any information that came to him about the Soviet Union was filtered through a negative lens.
I recall in my 1970s peace studies classes reading of studies where American and Soviet students would be shown such things as trees planted by a highway. They’d be told their own government planted them and asked why, and they would come up with reasons such as shade, beauty, and soil stabilization. Then they’d be shown a similar picture and told that the other government had planted the trees in their country and asked why. And they’d give reasons such as to hide tanks.
How this underpins wars and conditions that lead to wars isn’t hard to figure out. Nor is it difficult to see how it applies to conflicts where two sides just won’t listen to each other.
Consistent Life Gets Hit
Back in the 1980s when our predecessor group, Prolifers for Survival, was going strong, we tried to join the anti-nuclear-weapons coalition Mobilization for Survival (Mobe). A local Mobe chapter put out a letter in response saying that all pro-lifers were “racist, classist, misogynist anti-choice reactionaries.” We put that on t-shirts and sang it with conga lines, the absurdity of it being so obvious to us. But we could see that these are people that can’t be reasoned with. From their understanding, we couldn’t exist. Therefore, we didn’t.
For a coalition where we had an all-hands-on-deck need for urgent policy, and where the fact that it’s a coalition already means you’re deliberately cooperating with people you disagree with on other policy, their unshakeable stand did harm to their own cause.
But the understanding of peace activists as Soviet stooges was also of long standing at that time – the Mobe chapter was surely aware of this. Trying to simply make a reasonable case of what was wrong with nuclear weapons, and how unwise nuclear strategy was, was constantly hitting the brick wall that saying so made you an unpatriotic person.
So we joked that as pro-life peaceniks, we were communists on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and we were fascists on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and we took Sundays off.
Facing this intransigence against us, either for an individual issue or for the consistent life ethic as a whole, has been a bane of our existence all along. So badly do we ache to explain ourselves, hoping that we can find just the right way to articulate it in the hope of being convincing. But more than persuasion on intellectual points is needed. Which leads to:
Questions
Did any of Kimmel’s interviewees watch themselves on national television, even if it’s a show they didn’t ordinarily watch? If so, what happened to the thinking of the three interviewees, once they saw themselves on Jimmy Kimmel, heard the audience reaction, and saw how Kimmel framed it? There hasn’t been follow-up, at least as shown by Kimmel, on how that went.
Would people who engage in this kind of bad-faith model of thinking be less inclined to do so if the model were explained to them? Would they be less inclined to do so if they saw how it worked on an issue where they see the problem before being applied to their own situation?
Would techniques such as de-Martian-izing and getting back to the comfort zone help in dialog with those who have otherwise unshakeable stereotypes? Would one-to-one personal dialog make a difference?
What more do we need to do when simple attempts at persuasion dash up against the rocks of such resilient yet rigid reasoning?
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For more on the dynamics of dialog, see:
Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion
Dialog on Life Issues: Avoiding Some Obstacles to Communication
For more on psychological dynamics, see:
The Mind’s Drive for Consistency
Maryland March for Life 2024
Christina Yao Pelliccioni
by Christina Yao Pelliccioni
On Monday, March 11, Maryland had its annual March for Life. It was the first time I had gone since COVID started, and the first time I brought my husband and son along. In fact, it was the first time I had gone since I had gotten married or had a son! The March had been smaller when the COVID pandemic was worse, but now was happening in full capacity. I wore my Consistent Life t-shirt, brought our banner, and was ready to go!
My husband and son came to pick me up early from work to hit the road for an hour’s drive to the state capital of Annapolis from my work in the DC suburbs. My son of course fell asleep in the car, but was so excited when he woke up and we were right on the water at St. Mary’s Church. We went to the mass before the march (CLN is a secular organization, but I am Catholic) and it was jam packed! A kind couple scooted over so that I could sit down with my son on my lap, but of course we did not last in the pew for very long. One good thing about pro-life events is that no one ever seems to mind screaming children! From the way back of the church I was able to make out a bit of the petitions, and was delighted that along with prayers for an end to abortion, there were prayers for an end to racism and the death penalty.
Husband Ethan Pelliccioni and son Nathaniel, 2 years old
We then went on the short March from the church to the capitol building and back, with my son carrying a sign the whole way. He was so excited! My husband, who is Jewish, was glad to meet representatives from the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation, who had traveled all the way from Pittsburgh. We also met people who had come the other direction from Virginia to show their support for pro-life legislation in Maryland.
This has been a crucial year for Maryland, since this November we’ll vote on a state constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion as a “right.” That was put on the ballot by the legislature..
There is hope, however, because we had an Assisted Suicide bill that never got out of committee. What a relief!
It was wonderful to see member groups the American Solidarity Party and Democrats for Life at the March. It was wonderful to connect with those I hadn’t seen in a few years, all coming together to protect life in Maryland. I look forward to next year’s Maryland March for Life, as well as other pro-life events in and outside of our great state!
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Previous reports:
Progressive Prolifers at the Progressive Magazine 100th Anniversary Celebration / Mary Krane Derr
Kate Cox and D&E Abortion
by Sarah Terzo
This is Part 2 of 2. Part 1 last week covered children with Trisonomy 18.
Kate Cox, who was pregnant with a baby with Trisomy 18, sued the state of Texas to obtain a legal abortion. Many media outlets covered her story. Cox demanded a Dilation & Evacuation, or D&E abortion. She was denied an abortion in Texas but had one elsewhere. Cox’s child was over 21 weeks old.
Cox was falsely told that her daughter couldn’t survive, and that there were no treatment options available. She had an abortion partly because “I didn’t want her to suffer. I felt it was best for her . . . ”
Cox also claimed that, because of two previous caesarian sections, having her daughter would destroy her future fertility and make her unable to have more children. A Live Action News article challenged this claim and pointed out that D&E abortions can also jeopardize fertility.
The D&E Procedure
Ironically, through the D&E, Cox’s daughter likely suffered far more than she would’ve if Cox had given birth. In a D&E, the preborn child is dismembered and pulled out piece by piece.
In this video, former abortionist Kathi Aultman describes the procedure
Sometimes, abortionists inject the baby with the drug digoxin to kill her before dismemberment occurs. But digoxin takes hours to kill a baby and fails between 5-10% of the time. And many abortion facilities don’t use it because it renders the baby’s body parts useless for research and they can’t be sold.
Potassium chloride is also sometimes used. This is the same drug used in executions. One woman considering abortion, who worked in the prison system, chose life because she didn’t want her child to die the same way death row inmates do.
A Former Abortionist Describes the D&E
Abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino described a D&E.
He described the Sopher Clamp, the instrument used to dismember the child. It is:
about thirteen inches long and made of stainless steel. At one end are located jaws about two inches long and about an inch wide with rows of sharp ridges or teeth. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go.
Once the cervix is dilated and the amniotic fluid suctioned out, the abortionist reaches into the woman’s uterus with the Sopher Clamp. Levatino says:
Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard—really hard. You feel something let go and out pops a fully formed leg … Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length.
Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart, and lungs.
The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head … You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see a pure white gelatinous material issue from the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull in pieces.
If you have a really bad day like I often did, a little face may come out and stare back at you.
Levatino finishes his description by saying, “Congratulations . . . You just made $600 cash in fifteen minutes.”
A Witness to the Procedure
Nurse Brenda Pratt-Shafer worked in a late-term abortion facility and witnessed several D&E abortions before quitting. One was committed under ultrasound, and she saw the baby being aborted on the screen. She saw the child trying to escape the forceps after one leg and an arm had been torn off:
Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabbed one of the fetal legs with his forceps. He clamped down hard and, with a twisting and tearing motion, ripped the leg from the little body. He brought it out and threw it in the pan beside me. I stood in horror as I looked at that little leg in the pan with perfectly formed toes…
The next time he went in, he tore off an arm with hands and little fingers!
I could see the fetus on the ultrasound screen trying to get away from the forceps! Then I no longer saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound screen.
The ultrasound’s sound was turned off so the mother couldn’t hear her dying baby’s heartbeat. The abortionist had turned the screen away from her as well.
Pratt-Shafer watched the abortionist tear off the remaining arm and leg, pull out the intestines, and crush and remove the baby’s head.
The baby was conscious and alive after being partially dismembered. He was still trying to escape. The child would’ve experienced intense physical pain. There is a great deal of research showing that babies in the womb feel pain by 20 weeks, or even earlier.
A Preborn Baby’s Awareness
This baby reacted to a physical assault. But witnesses have reported that preborn babies also react when foreign objects are put into the womb and come near them, even when they aren’t actually touched.
Diagnostic sonographer Sarah Cleveland assisted in an amniocentesis done under ultrasound guidance. In amniocentesis, a doctor inserts a needle into the uterus to withdraw amniotic fluid for testing. It isn’t an abortion procedure. The target of the needle isn’t the baby.
The baby having the amniocentesis was 18 weeks old. Before the doctor inserted the needle, Cleveland says the baby was “kicking, playful, and happy.”
But when the needle was inserted:
I saw Baby dart away from where we were in the uterus and move as far away as possible to the other side of the womb. He stopped kicking and playing … His little heart rate skyrocketed. He was scared. In fact, I am convinced he was terrified.
After the needle was removed, she watched the baby’s heart rate decelerate and saw him “come out of the corner” where he’d retreated.
The baby reacted to a needle that never touched him, and Cleveland witnessed what she interpreted as fear and distress. It is impossible to know what the child was truly feeling, but he was clearly aware of the needle.
D&E abortions are brutal to preborn children. They’re never the kinder option.
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For more of our writings on the Kate Cox case, see
Kate Cox and Stories of Trisonomy 18
For a similar post on cruel procedures see:
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
For a post on alternatives, see:
A Process of Tender Understanding and Loving Closure when Life Ends