By Colleen Pulley
I spent 32 years as an intensive care Registered Nurse -15 years in adult Trauma, 5 years in pediatric trauma/ICU, and the last 12 years in the neonatal ICU. I have a thorough understanding of what is involved in an abortion. I was the primary nurse to two unsuccessful abortions. I consider myself a knowledgeable individual.
An abortion does not only involve the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, but it involves the right of another developing individual. The question is when, and under what circumstances does the right of a woman supersede the right of the developing person in the womb?
In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States made an important decision in the Roe vs Wade case. It allowed a woman the right to seek an abortion through the end of the second trimester. In recent years that second trimester has been tested, and now they want the abortion to be allowed until the moment of delivery.
At the time of the approval of the right to have a legal abortion in 1973, no baby had survived before the end of the second trimester. This was one of the reasons the procedure was allowed through the end of the second trimester. However, there were many who questioned that second trimester guideline, based upon the advances in medicine that were occurring.
It will have been nearly fifty years ago in 2021 since abortions became legal, and millions of lives have been destroyed through the medical procedures an abortionist uses. The techniques are brutal, and the goal is the death of the developing child. Many in the medical field believe most abortions can be avoided.
An abortion can be induced in many ways. Early late term abortions were often induced by removing some of the amniotic fluid and replacing it with a hypertonic saline solution. The solution would burn the fetus, usually resulting in death. At times this results in an incomplete abortion, and the spontaneous delivery of a severely burned, living preemie. The doctor would place the failed abortion product into a stainless-steel basin on a table and wait for it to expire. Usually, with no care death would occur within 15 to 20 minutes.
The university hospital I worked in performed late term abortions (greater that 20 weeks gestation) on Thursday. When one of the nurses at the delivery complained that a 24-week preemie lay in a basin for 35 minutes before it finally died, the hospital policy changed. Any unsuccessful abortion was to be placed in a warm isolette. Then if it survived 30 minutes, it was to be resuscitated and sent to the NICU.
You are not simply suctioning out a mass of tissue, you are tearing up the hands and feet, arms and legs of a developing individual. Unfortunately, I was unknowingly asked to help clean up a surgical room, after an abortion. I emptied the suction canister, and to my horror saw the tiny hands and feet and placental tissue floating in the canister. I can still see those little body parts at times.
As time passed, abortions had a higher success rate by giving the mother drugs such as prostaglandins along with placing laminaria, which is a thin seaweed that is sterilized and then placed in a woman’s cervix or the neck of the uterus. This causes the opening to dilate, and the developing fetus is aborted. These methods decreased the chances of a viable spontaneous birth.
The latest battle in the abortion arena concerns late-term abortions. The contention is abortion up to the moment of birth. That means technically a nine-month baby can be killed before it takes its first breath of life.
Think of this. In the United States, in 2021 a diagnosis of Downs Syndrome means 67 to 90% of these individuals are aborted. In Iceland 98% to 99%of Downs Syndrome babies are eliminated. To me this is horrendous. Hitler justified the genocide of the Jews and any “undesirables” with the principles of eugenics and discrimination.
A woman has the right to say, “I don’t want a child with a defect”. But she doesn’t have the right to kill that individual. There are individuals willing to love and nurture a child with a disability.
Baby Jane case
I was working as a NICU nurse on a Thursday night, when baby Jane arrived. She was a 24-week 5-day abortion product. I became her primary nurse. Baby Jane’s mother abandoned her the next day, leaving the hospital against medical advice.
Jane lived for five months, before she finally died. She was the equivalent of an 11-month-old infant and weighed 9 pounds. I was with her for three out of seven 12-hour night shifts, and for three 12-hour day shifts her day primary nurse cared for Jane. Most of the other nurses viewed Jane as an assignment and were happy when their shift ended. She was not a preemie that attracted smiles or words of encouragement from the staff.
She did develop her own personality. When she was able to be extubated and taken off the ventilator, after two months, she was placed on a nasal canula. We could see her smile, suck on her fingers, cry when her little heel would be stuck to check her blood sugar.
At that time, many doctors felt a preemie didn’t feel pain, and because of that, there was no need to administer pain medications. When Jane developed a pneumothorax, and her lung collapsed, she was not given any pain medication for the placement of a chest tube. I argued with an attending doctor, pointing at her increased agitation, facial grimaces, and increased heart rate. The doctor finally gave an order for pain medication and agreed that she did seem to respond with less agitation, facial grimacing, and decreased heart rate.
Things seemed to be going pretty good for Jane until one night she developed what is called necrotizing enterocolitis, which means part of the intestines becomes inflamed causing a hole to develop, and fluid to leak into the abdomen. Jane had to have part of her intestines removed. She became septic, and after three days she finally died.
If baby Jane was born in 2020, in all probability she would have survived. On June 5th, 2020 Richard Scott William Hutchinson was born at Children’s Hospital of Minnesota. He was 21 weeks 2 days old. He is now over a year old and is on track for his growth and development benchmarks. The same is true for Curtis Means, who was born July 5th, 2020, at 21 weeks 1 day, at the University of Alabama.
The question is this, when do the rights of the mother supersede the rights of the unborn child?
The fact is birth control measures are readily available. Any woman who makes the choice to become sexually active has the responsibility to use birth control. She can take the pill, get a Depo shot, or use an IUD. Most women have no excuse to resort to an abortion for birth control.
If a girl or woman is a victim of rape or incest, the morning after pill or ‘Plan B pill’ is available to her. If a woman’s life is at risk, or the baby is deformed, and wouldn’t survive, under these circumstances it may be necessary to perform an abortion, but few abortions account for these circumstances.
Ethically and morally, abortion under all but the most unusual of circumstances is wrong. No matter how much the pro-abortionist tries to dehumanize the procedure, the facts are you are stopping another individual’s life.
Each of us deserve the chance to fulfill the measure of our creation. We each have the right to laugh and cry and love and be loved.
This isn’t just tissue. It is an individual child of God who has had their life terminated. Think about this.
Key Words – abortion, pregnancy, 1973, Roe vs Wade, late-term abortions, Baby Jane case, birth control measures
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