From: dsh@eceyv.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger)
Subject: Re: Description of the Fetal Remains from an Abortion
Organization: North Carolina State University
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 20:43:29 GMT

In article <1992Nov21.210107.7915@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> 
smith@comm.mot.com (Jeff Smith) writes:

>dsh@eceyv.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger) writes:

>> BTW, here's my new .signature, how do you like it?
>> 
>>   "It was easy to shrug off an aborted pregnancy as nothing more than

> You know something?  You would probably be better off bringing up interesting
> points such as why everyone is all up in arms about your post, when not so
> long ago someone posted some ridiculous pseudo-science about how "aura's"
> prove that unborn babies have no soul and almost no one bothered to reprimand
> him for "invading the newsgroup." 

I think I know why people have objected to my posting of a  
description of the fetal remains from an abortion, and it's
not because it's "inappropriate" for this newsgroup.  There
are ongoing political discussions in this newsgroup, and
nobody seems to care.  The people in this newsgroup don't  
want others to realize that abortion destroys a human life.
They could put me in a killfile, and they wouldn't have to 
read the description.  But it's the fact that other people
can read the description which upsets them.


  "It was easy to shrug off an aborted pregnancy as nothing more than
   a sack of blood and globs of tissue--as many pro-choice activists
   did--if one never saw fetal remains, or products of conception (POC),
   as they were known in medical circles.  But the nurses, medical
   assistants, and doctors who worked inside procedure rooms knew
   that while an eight-week POC was indeed a sack of blood and
   globs of tissue, an eleven-week POC harbored tiny arms and legs
   and feet with toes.  At twelve weeks, those tiny hands had tiny
   nails.  Although the fetal head was too small at that stage to
   withstand the evacuation machine's suction, pieces of face--a nose
   and a mouth, or a black eye (all fetal eyes are black in the
   first trimester) the size of a pea--were sometimes found in
   the aftermath.

   Later abortions spawned even more gruesome fetal remains.  Between
   the twelfth and the sixteenth week, early in the second trimester,
   the fetus almost doubled in length as its body caught up to its
   large head, and it filled out to the point where it looked like
   a human baby for the first time.  Since the fetal skull was 
   still soft, the head did not come out whole during the evacuation,
   but the legs and arms and rib cage made it through intact.  The
   hand of a second trimester fetus, as a Preterm doctor described
   it, seemed big enough to shake.

   Most of Preterm's abortion staff didn't volunteer to work ``seconds''.
   Late first trimester POCs were hard enough.  The counselor/medical
   assistants (CMAs) met regularly to discuss their feelings about
   their work, and often the discussion focused on the POC.  Inside
   a procedure room, facing the contents of the uterus, there was
   no denying what abortion was." 

   Sue Hertz, _Caught in the Crossfire: A Year on Abortion's Front Line_,
   Prentice Hall Press, 1991, pg. 104.

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