Her name was Jennifer.
She was 29 years old, a kindergarten teacher from New
Rochelle, New York, who had married her college sweetheart, TJ. Together, they
were expecting their first child – a daughter that was to be named Madison
Leigh.
Her family must have been almost as excited as she and
her husband. There were her parents, TJ’s parents, her brother and sister, her
grandmother, and too many other extended family members to count.
It wouldn’t be much longer. Jennifer was over 30 weeks
pregnant – just a little bit more, and then they could all welcome little
Madison together as a family.
All of that changed at the beginning of February, when a
catastrophic fetal abnormality was discovered. While we don’t know with any
certainty what that abnormality was, comments on blog posts from people
purporting to know the family say that Jennifer and TJ were told the baby would
be blind, severely developmentally delayed, and suffer seizures on a daily
basis.
At over thirty weeks pregnant the decision would have to
be made: Continue to carry the pregnancy and let nature take its course once
the child has been born? She could live for minutes, hours, or years. Would she
be in pain during that time? Or, take the burden of pain onto themselves to
spare the child they so desperately loved?
There would have been tears. Tears, anger, emotions you
and I cannot even begin to fathom unless we have lived through that situation.
There may have been second and third and fourth opinions. Hopes raised, only to
end with the results being the same.
And then, finally, the decision, and the call to Dr.
Carhart’s clinic to schedule the procedure.
After that, life would have been navigated on auto-pilot.
Raise the funds. Book the plane tickets and the hotel. Tell the family, the friends.
Maybe cancel the baby shower, the maternity shoot.
Their world indescribably, irreversibly changed in two
scant weeks.
Maybe it was nothing like this, but maybe it was.
We do know her decision was not made lightly, and neither
was it made on a whim. We know that there was anguish and heartbreak on a level
that we will never understand, long before she flew in to see Dr. Carhart.
Abortion, while it carries risks like any other surgical
procedure and can be emotionally devastating in cases where the pregnancy was
wanted, is normally one of the
safest medical
procedures one can undergo in the United States today.
In fact, “[t]he risk of
death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that
with abortion.” This is backed by research from the Centers for Disease Control
which, with the most recent data available, reports 1,294
deaths
from childbirth in 2006-2007 as opposed to 12
deaths
from legal abortion in 2009.
Unfortunately for Jennifer, she was in the minority of
those who develop complications, and on February 7, passed away
from
a rare childbirth-related complication called an
amniotic fluid
embolism, with associated disseminated intravascular coagulation. In
laymen’s terms, this diagnosis means that for all the strength a body must
possess to carry a pregnancy and birth a child, it can, at times, be frail and
fragile, and that sometimes something as innocuous as the fluid that protected
and cushioned the baby that Jennifer dreamed of was the thing that ultimately
took her life.
As our founder, Todd Stave, is the owner of the building
Dr. Carhart operates in, Voice of Choice acknowledges that no matter the
reason, Jennifer’s death was a tragedy, as every death from abortion has been
in the past and will be in the future. But we also acknowledge that every
surgery carries risks, and a tragedy befalling one does not justify stripping
rights from others.
Troy Newman, President of the anti-choice group Operation
Rescue,
responded
to the death of Jennifer by saying, “The avoidable death of this young woman dramatically
illustrates the dangers of third trimester abortions that are done outside of
the safety of obstetrical standards. In 2005, Carhart was also involved in the
death of Christin Gilbert, who died after a third trimester abortion in
Wichita, Kansas. It is time for medical boards to put an end to these
horrifically dangerous and barbaric third trimester abortions. If they do not,
we can only expect Carhart and his associates to send more women to the
morgue.”
This statement seems curious, as it has just been shown
that far more women die in maternity wards than in abortion clinics. If Mr.
Newman and other anti-choice activists care as much about women as they claim,
they would logically want to be where more women are dying. And more women are
indeed dying in maternity wards, especially if they happen to be women of
color.
About halfway through the
article
posted earlier it states that during the last 50 years, Black women have
been approximately four times as likely to die as white women. The risk of
death dramatically increases if there is a complication. Even though black
women did not have a significantly higher prevalence of five major causes of
maternal death than white women, they were two to three times more likely to
die than the white women who had the same complication.
This is echoed in
a
report by Amnesty International, which states that,
“[w]omen of color are more
likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than women from other sections of the
population. Black women are nearly four times more likely to die from
pregnancy-related causes than white women. In high-risk pregnancies, the
disparities are even greater, with African-American women 5.6 times more likely
to die than white women. Among women diagnosed with pregnancy-induced
hypertension (eclampsia and pre-eclampsia), African-American and Latina women
were 9.9 and 7.9 times more likely to die than white women with the same
complications.” (Page 19)
Where is the outrage for them and their lives? Where are
the calls for stripping OB/Gyns who deliver babies of their licenses when one
of their patients die? Where are the “pro-life” bloggers harassing and
demanding “action” from the owners of hospitals or other medical facilities when
patients die, as they have consistently done with Todd Stave since Jennifer’s
death?
Unless…
Unless it has never really been about saving the lives of
anyone – women and “unborn babies” included. Unless it has always been about
misogyny, and controlling the lives and destinies of those deemed inferior and
weaker by virtue of their birth sex.
In the eyes of an anti-choicer, once you have made the
“correct” decision – that is, carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to
a child – you have served your purpose. You are no longer useful or important
to them or their cause.
And if you make the “wrong” decision? I’ll let the comments
on the Operation Rescue blog post speak for themselves:
“If this woman hadn’t killed
her baby she would be alive today! I feel no pity for her…”
“MURDERER….. SHE SHOULD HAD
[sic] DIED JUST LIKE SHE KILLED THE BABY…”
“These women should get
themselves fixed if they want to screw around, there would not be a need for
her to have an abortion because there wouldn’t be a baby in the first place! I
have no sympathy for women who kill their unborn babies…”
“I hope the woman prayed for
forgiveness before she died, she murdered her baby, and in turn ended up dying
too, it’s really hard to feel sorry for someone to does this…”
For claiming to be “pro-life,” we have seen over and over
just how little compassion the anti-choice sect affords women who make decisions
they deem unacceptable.
Her name was Jennifer.
She was 29 years old, a kindergarten teacher from New
Rochelle, New York, who had married her college sweetheart, TJ. Together, they
were faced with a choice that no parents-to-be should ever have to confront.
While we cannot know for sure the process that led up to
the decision to terminate, common sense tells us that the decision to terminate
a pregnancy as late as Jennifer’s is never undertaken lightly. It is not an
easy decision and not done on a whim. To discount the heartbreaking choice that
Jennifer and thousands of other woman have to make every year for the sole
purpose of furthering your political agenda is sick and cheapens the very real
sacrifice and heartbreak they go through in their journeys.
The fact that abortion is one of the safest medical
procedures one can undergo in the United States today will be of little comfort
to Jennifer’s friends and family in the coming weeks and months. However, maybe
they can take solace in knowing that there are thousands around the world –
including us here at Voice of Choice – that respect and honor the choice that Jennifer
made and who are committed to making sure that choice remains legal and
accessible to those who come after her.
