From: smithmc@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Lost Boy)
Subject: Re: Description of the Fetal Remains from an Abortion
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:06:51 GMT

dsh@eceyv.ncsu.edu (Woody Allen) writes:
>
>]   "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.

Okay, time to describe a different but equally gruesome medical procedure...

Supposing I wanted to replace a leg joint with a titanium-steel implant.
The first thing I would have to do (after doing all the usual presurgical
stuff) is cut the skin with  a fine blade, exposing the layers of greasy 
fat oozing around, the arteries going THUMP THUMP THUMP with each heartbeat,
and the muscles which contract as nerves fire to make sure the vic^H^H^Hpatient
is alive. So you have a greasy, throbing, quivering mess. You cut through
the mess, being sure not to sever any blood vessels, and reach the bone.
You then cut through the bone, usually with a saw that sounds like a dentists'
drill onlly louder, and cut off the bone leading to the bad joint. You then 
get out a big drill and bore out the bone marrow, being sure to vaccum this
greasy mess up so that it doesn't get into the bloodstream and cause a stroke.
(Thank god for anathesia.) Surgeons note that this smells like butter....
Now you stick the titanium implant into the grove you cut out in the bone,
and the head fits nicely in the joint. After reattatching the sinew to the 
joint and bones, you then staple the guy up and let him/her heal for three
weeks.

LETS FACE IT PEOPLE! SURGERY IS GROSS! *ANY* SURGERY IS GROSS! This procedure
is relatively simple and let's face it, I feel like throwing up. There is
no reason why an abortion should be less gross than this relatively simple
procedure.

Lost Boy


Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.abortion.inequity