Life Issues

Article Of the Week

Stith: Arguing with Pro-Choicers

By Richard Stith

Monday, October 30, 2006, 10:18 AM

Why do many pro-choice people find our arguments against early abortion not just unconvincing but absurd? Consider, for example, the ridicule that the defense of human embryos sometimes draws. In order to have any hope of winning the debate, defenders of unborn life must understand how an argument that seems wholly reasonable to us can strike our opponents as a bizarre (therefore religious) doctrine wholly unconnected to the real world.

I submit that pro-life arguments seem absurd to any listener who has in the back of the mind a sense that the embryo or fetus is being constructed in the womb. Here’s an analogy: At what point in the automobile assembly-line process can a “car” be said to exist? I suppose most of us would point to some measure of minimum functionality (viability), like having wheels and/or a motor, but some might insist on the need for windshield wipers or say it’s not fully a car until it rolls out onto the street (is born). We would all understand, however, that there’s no clearly “right” answer as to when a car is there. And we would also agree that someone who claimed the car to be present from the insertion of the first screw at the very beginning of the assembly line would be taking an utterly absurd position. To someone who conceives of gestation as intrauterine construction, pro-life people sound just this ridiculous. For a thing being constructed is truly not there until it is nearly complete. (Moving from ordinary language to metaphysics, we would say that a constructed thing does not have its essential form until it is complete or nearly complete. And it can’t be that thing without having the form of that thing.)

Now, this way of thinking (treating gestation as construction, assembling, fabrication, making) has not only intuitive appeal today but a grand pedigree. For thousands of years, it was the dominant (though not the exclusive) way to conceive of what was happening in the womb. Thus Job exclaims to God: “You poured me out like milk and curdled me like cheese. You clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together . . .” No one knew of the ovum until the 1830s, and, despite its name, semen (“seed”) didn’t seem to develop on its own. So, for the ancients and medievals, it made sense to posit an outside constructor or fabricator, either God or one of the parents, who worked inert seminal material into a human shape, as one does with clay, during the early stages of pregnancy. And, quite reasonably, abortion of the incomplete and still relatively amorphous mass was not considered the destruction of someone with an essential human form (though it may have been forbidden as interference with a sacred process).

But, at quickening (animation, enlivening), the unborn child exhibited something that no merely constructed thing could do: It moved itself. (This was judged to occur in mid-pregnancy, a position that did not become untenable until, again, after the 1830s, when the invention of the stethoscope first made possible the detection of the early fetal heartbeat.) The greatest of all fabrications must therefore have taken place, a soul (anima) must have been inserted by God. From this point on, construction from the outside was over and development from the inside began. And so now abortion constituted homicide, the killing of a human person. For, unlike a constructed entity, which is not present until nearly the end of the construction process, a developing being is already there as soon as it starts developing.

Why does self-development entail continuity of being? There are many ways to get at the answer here. Heideggerians could point to “de-velop” as an un-veiling or un-wrapping (cf. “en-velop”). (Heidegger himself would no doubt privilege German and point to ent-wickeln—“un-wrap.” In Spanish, one would unwrap in the sense of un-roll—des-arrollar.) One could also just point to our ordinary language, to our lived world, in which development connotes continuity. We would say that the first little sprout we saw come out of the ground five years ago is the same plant as the pear tree we now see, unless someone tells us that some grafting (construction) has occurred—for example, that the sprout developed into an apple tree but its original branches were trimmed off and pear branches grafted on.

The difference between making and developing is not just an accident of language. Suppose we’re back in the pre-digital days and you’ve just taken a fabulous photo, one you know you will prize, with your Polaroid camera. (Say it’s a picture of a jaguar that has now darted back into the jungle, so that the photo is unrepeatable.) You are just starting to let the photo hang out to develop when I grab it and rip its cover off, thus destroying it. What would you think if I responded to your dismay with the assertion: “Hey man, it was still in the brown-smudge stage. Why should you care about brown smudges?” You would find my defense utterly absurd. Just so for pro-lifers, who find dignity in every human individual: To say that killing such a prized being doesn’t count if he or she is still developing in the womb strikes them as outrageously absurd.

By contrast, if I had simply destroyed a blank, unexposed piece of your film, you would have been much less upset. You really would have lost little more than a smudge. Passive potential does not count for much. Only developing potential already contains its own form (essence, identity), is already the what that it is in the process of manifesting.

I conclude that pro-choice folks think pro-life claims regarding embryos to be not only wrong but also absurd whenever they think (even unconsciously) that embryos are under construction in the womb. And pro-life folks find pro-choice denials of prized human dignity in embryos to be equally absurd whenever they think that the unborn child develops (indeed, develops itself, unlike the Polaroid photo) from the moment of fertilization.

The two sides are not quite parallel in this, however: Human beings do develop. To think they are constructed is flatly erroneous. This error remains intuitively plausible and has a decent cultural pedigree, so therefore those who make it should not be dismissed as utterly irrational or evil, even though they may seem so from the viewpoint of one who bears in mind the facts of human development. But they are absolutely wrong. We know with certainty that quickening is an illusion, that the child is developing from the beginning, not being made from the outside, for its form lies within it, in its active potency, in its activated DNA. From the point of view of natural science (and natural theology) delayed animation (quickening) is no longer needed to explain human development, and Occam’s razor should cut it out of our debates. “Viability” is similarly irrelevant to human identity if we bear in mind that the child is developing rather than being constructed. The pear tree was already a pear tree even when it still needed frequent watering and fertilizer, even in the years before it began bearing fruit.

The “construction” image is often present when someone favors abortion. Thus Dalton Conley argued in the New York Times a while ago that most Americans think of a fetus as “an individual under construction.” They must have this making-a-fetus in mind whenever they refer to current fetal-embryonic characteristics (for example, “it’s so small,” “it has no brain”) in order to prove the unborn child at a certain moment in time is not yet a human being. For current appearance doesn’t matter much when one is asking what a developing being is. (Recall the pear tree again.)

Of course, everything changes for the postmodern academics who think mere humanity not a locus of dignity at all, that only experience and not being matters, that what one is doesn’t count, that human personhood is only an epiphenomenon rather than a nature. If the only rule of ethics were, for example, “reasoning processes should not be interrupted,” then it would be absurd to oppose the abortion of a human embryo that had not yet developed a brain. Similarly, no logical mistake is made by a utilitarian who thinks that the only evil is pain, that at a certain stage a fetus cannot feel pain, and thus that abortion is obviously OK with regard to that fetus (though any short- or long-term painful consequences for his or her mother would still need to be considered before approving of abortion).

In other words, those who hold both to the truth of human development and to the truth of universal human dignity will seek to respect life from conception. But those who fall into ignorance or denial of one or the other of these truths will find our arguments against abortion to be absurd.

Richard Stith is professor of law at Valparaiso University School of Law.

The article below is from an Eliot Instiute on 10th Feb 2006

Abortion Causes Mental Disorders: New Zealand Study May Require Doctors to Do Fewer Abortions

Pro-Choice Researcher Says Some Journals Rejected Politically Volatile Findings

Springfield, IL (Feb. 9, 2005) -- A study in New Zealand that tracked approximately 500 women from birth to 25 years of age has confirmed that young women who have abortions subsequently experience elevated rates of suicidal behaviors, depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and other mental problems.

Most significantly, the researchers – led by Professor David M. Fergusson, who is the director of the longitudinal Christchurch Health and Development Study – found that the higher rate of subsequent mental problems could not be explained by any pre-pregnancy differences in mental health, which had been regularly evaluated over the course of the 25-year study.

Findings Surprise Pro-Choice Researchers

According to Fergusson, the researchers had undertaken the study anticipating that they would be able to confirm the view that any problems found after abortion would be traceable to mental health problems that had existed before the abortion. At first glance, it appeared that their data would confirm this hypothesis. The data showed that women who became pregnant before age 25 were more likely to have experienced family dysfunction and adjustment problems, were more likely to have left home at a young age, and were more likely to have entered a cohabiting relationship.

However, when these and many other factors were taken into account, the findings showed that women who had abortions were still significantly more likely to experience mental health problems. Thus, the data contradicted the hypothesis that prior mental illness or other “pre-disposing” factors could explain the differences.

“We know what people were like before they became pregnant,” Fergusson told The New Zealand Herald. “We take into account their social background, education, ethnicity, previous mental health, exposure to sexual abuse, and a whole mass of factors."

The data persistently pointed toward the politically unwelcome conclusion that abortion may itself be the cause of subsequent mental health problems. So Fergusson presented his results to New Zealand’s Abortion Supervisory Committee, which is charged with ensuring that abortions in that country are conducted in accordance with all the legal requirements. According to The New Zealand Herald, the committee told Fergusson that it would be “undesirable to publish the results in their ‘unclarified’ state.”

Despite his own pro-choice political beliefs, Fergusson responded to the committee with a letter stating that it would be “scientifically irresponsible” to suppress the findings simply because they touched on an explosive political issue.

In an interview about the findings with an Australian radio host, Fergusson stated: “I remain pro-choice. I am not religious. I am an atheist and a rationalist. The findings did surprise me, but the results appear to be very robust because they persist across a series of disorders and a series of ages. . . . Abortion is a traumatic life event; that is, it involves loss, it involves grief, it involves difficulties. And the trauma may, in fact, predispose people to having mental illness.”

Journals Reject the Politically Incorrect Results

The research team of the Christchurch Health and Development Study is used to having its studies on health and human development accepted by the top medical journals on first submission. After all, the collection of data from birth to adulthood of 1,265 children born in Christchurch is one of the most long-running and valuable longitudinal studies in the world. But this study was the first from the experienced research team that touched on the contentious issue of abortion.

Ferguson said the team “went to four journals, which is very unusual for us – we normally get accepted the first time.” Finally, the fourth journal accepted the study for publication.

Although he still holds a pro-choice view, Fergusson believes women and doctors should not blindly accept the unsupported claim that abortion is generally harmless or beneficial to women. He appears particularly upset by the false assurances of abortion’s safety given by the American Psychological Association (APA).

In a 2005 statement, the APA claimed that “well-designed studies” have found that “the risk of psychological harm is low.” In the discussion of their results, Fergusson and his team note that the APA’s position paper ignored many key studies showing evidence of abortion’s harm and looked only at a selective sample of studies that have serious methodological flaws.

Fergusson told reporters that “it verges on scandalous that a surgical procedure that is performed on over one in 10 women has been so poorly researched and evaluated, given the debates about the psychological consequences of abortion.”

Following Fergusson’s complaints about the selective and misleading nature of the 2005 APA statement, the APA removed the page from their Internet site. The statement can still be found through a web archive service, however.

Study May Have Profound Influence on Medicine, Law, and Politics

The reaction to the publication of the Christchurch study is heating up the political debate in the United States. The study was introduced into the official record at the senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Also, a U.S. congressional subcommittee chaired by Representative Mark Souder (R-IN) has asked the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to report on what efforts the NIH is undertaking to confirm or refute Fergusson’s findings.

The impact of the study in other countries may be even more profound. According to The New Zealand Herald, the Christchurch study may require doctors in New Zealand to certify far fewer abortions. Approximately 98 percent of abortions in New Zealand are done under a provision in the law that only allows abortion when “the continuance of the pregnancy would result in serious danger (not being danger normally attendant upon childbirth) to the life, or to the physical or mental health, of the woman or girl.”

Doctors performing abortions in Great Britain face a similar legal problem. Indeed, the requirement to justify an abortion is even higher in British law. Doctors there are only supposed to perform abortions when the risks of physical or psychological injury from allowing the pregnancy to continue are “greater than if the pregnancy was terminated.”

According to researcher Dr. David Reardon, who has published more than a dozen studies investigating abortion’s impact on women, Fergusson’s study reinforces a growing body of literature showing that doctors in New Zealand, Britain and elsewhere face legal and ethical obligations to discourage or refuse contraindicated abortions.

“Fergusson’s study underscores that fact that evidence-based medicine does not support the conjecture that abortion will protect women from ‘serious danger’ to their mental health,” said Reardon. “Instead, the best evidence indicates that abortion is more likely to increase the risk of mental health problems. Physicians who ignore this study may no longer be able to argue that they are acting in good faith and may therefore be in violation of the law.”

“Record-based studies in Finland and the United States have conclusively proven that the risk of women dying in the year following an abortion is significantly higher than the risk of death if the pregnancy is allowed to continue to term,” said Reardon, who directs the Elliot Institute, a research organization based in Springfield, Illinois. “So the hypothesis that the physical risks of childbirth surpass the risks associated with abortion is no longer tenable. That means most abortion providers have had to look to mental health advantages to justify abortion over childbirth.”

But Reardon now believes that alternative for recommending abortion no longer passes scientific muster, either.

“This New Zealand study, with its unsurpassed controls for possible alternative explanations, confirms the findings of several recent studies linking abortion to higher rates of psychiatric hospitalization. depression, generalized anxiety disorder, substance abuse, suicidal tendencies, poor bonding with and parenting of later children, and sleep disorders,” he said. “It should inevitably lead to a change in the standard of care offered to women facing problem pregnancies.”

Some Women May Be At Greater Risk

Reardon, a biomedical ethicist, is an advocate of “evidence-based medicine”—a movement in medical training that encourages the questioning of “routine, accepted practices” which have not been proven to be helpful in scientific trials. If one uses the standards applied in evidence-based medicine, Reardon says, one can only conclude that there is insufficient evidence to support the view that abortion is generally beneficial to women. Instead, the opposite appears to be more likely.

“It is true that the practice of medicine is both an art and a science,” Reardon said. “But given the current research, doctors who do an abortion in the hope that it will produce more good than harm for an individual woman can only justify their decisions by reference to the art of medicine, not the science.”

According to Reardon, the best available medical evidence shows that it is easier for a woman to adjust to the birth of an unintended child than it is to adjust to the emotional turmoil caused by an abortion.

“We are social beings, so it is easier for people to adjust to having a new relationship in one’s life than to adjust to the loss of a relationship,” he said. “In the context of abortion, adjusting to the loss is especially difficult if there any unresolved feelings of attachment, grief, or guilt.”

By using known risk factors, the women who are at greatest risk of severe reactions to abortion could be easily identified, according to Reardon. If this were done, some women who are at highest risk of negative reactions might opt for childbirth instead of abortion.

In a recent article published in The Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy, Reardon identified approximately 35 studies that had identified statistically validated risk factors that most reliably predict which women are most likely to report negative reactions.

“Risk factors for maladjustment were first identified in a 1973 study published by Planned Parenthood,” Reardon said. “Since that time, numerous other researchers have further advanced our knowledge of the risk factors which should be used to screen women at highest risk. These researchers have routinely recommended that the risk factors should be used by doctors to identify women who would benefit from more counseling, either so they can avoid contraindicated abortions or so they can receive better followup care to help treat negative reactions.”

Feeling pressured by others to consent to the abortion, having moral beliefs that abortion is wrong, or having already developed a strong maternal attachment to the baby are three of the most common risk factors, Reardon says.

While screening makes sense, Reardon says that in practice, screening for risk factors is rare for two reasons.

“First, there are aberrations in the law that shield abortion providers from any liability for emotional complications following an abortion,” he said. “This loophole means that abortion clinics can save time and money by substituting one-size-fits-all counseling for individualized screening.

“The second obstacle in the way of screening is ideological. Many abortion providers insist that it is not their job to try to figure out whether an abortion is more likely to hurt than help a particular woman. They see their role as to ensure that any woman who wants an abortion is provided one.”

“This ‘buyer beware’ mentality is actually inconsistent with medical ethics,” Reardon said. “Actually, the ethic governing most abortion providers’ services is no different than that of the abortionists: ‘If you have the money, we’ll do the abortion.’ Women deserve better. They deserve to have doctors who act like doctors. That means doctors who will give good medical advice based on the best available evidence as applied to each patient’s individual risk profile.”

Fergusson also believes that the same rules that apply to other medical treatments should apply to abortion. “If we were talking about an antibiotic or an asthma risk, and someone reported adverse reactions, people would be advocating further research to evaluate risk,” he said in the New Zealand Herald. “I can see no good reason why the same rules don't apply to abortion.”

# # #

Sources:

David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, and Elizabeth M. Ridder, “Abortion in young women and subsequent mental health,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47(1): 16-24, 2006.

Tom Iggulden, “Abortion increases mental health risk: study” AM transcript. http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1540914.htm

Nick Grimm “Higher risk of mental health problems after abortion: report” Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 03/01/2006 http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1541543.htm

Ruth Hill, “Abortion Researcher Confounded by Study” New Zealand Herald 1/5/06, http://www.nzherald.co.nz

APA Briefing Paper on The Impact of Abortion on Women, http://web.archive.org of http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/womenabortfacts.html

Reardon DC. "The Duty to Screen: Clinical, Legal and Ethical Implications of Predictive Risk Factors of Post-Abortion Maladjustment." The Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy. 2003 Winter;20(1):33-114.

When society celebrates suicide by Suzanne Fields - Jan 23, 2006

Life not worthy of life

"God is Proud of You!"

A story of Rape, Abortion, and Salvation

By Holly Dutton
I was born in Endicott, NY, in 1955. I was normal until severe epilepsy struck me at age six. This posed a new and terrifying experience for me, my family, and friends. Mom tried her best to cope, taking me to a child psychologist and monitoring my daily medication.

Dad, however, appeared unable to accept my new-found disability. For instance, he took care never to directly mention my illness, and if someone else did, he would change the subject. Other relatives and friends were also dismayed and bewildered at my situation. Some former playmates were forbidden to see me anymore for fear that my illness might be catching. Stinging taunts and name-calling were common occurrences, but the barbs from my brother hurt the worst. Mom always rebuked him for deriding me, but he kept it up. However, he was two years my junior-which made him only four at the time-so he was really too young to understand what was happening.

With proper medical care, my epilepsy was reduced from severe to mild by the time I was nine. In December, 1967, at age 12, I was secretly kidnapped from my parents’ home in Miami, FL (where we had moved in 1962), by a total stranger who, threatening to kill at the least resistance, took me two blocks from my home, mercilessly raped me for two hours, then dumped me back home. Profoundly shattered by this brutal and unprecedented attack, I went straight to bed instead of awakening my parents.

Next morning, Saturday, December 2, 1967, Mom and Dad wondered what was making me so adversely withdrawn. I had no interest in Saturday morning cartoons and would not eat any breakfast. Finally, Mom warned me I had better eat so I could take my medicine. Then I told her what had occurred the night before. She was absolutely flabbergasted, too much so to believe me. When I insisted I was telling the truth, Mom hit me with a pillow. Dad warned me rape was then a capital offense in FL. "Do you want an innocent man to be executed?!" Dad exclaimed. When Mom suggested a medical exam to see if I’d "really" been raped, I balked in sheer terror. The rapist had roughed me up so badly I was too afraid to let anyone else, even a doctor, touch me.

At the time, it seemed my parents didn’t care, but actually they were probably just as stunned and frightened as I was. Back then, however, I was too young to understand, and soon began to resent them. Since my parents hadn’t been able to believe me, I felt nobody else would, either, and kept the ordeal to myself. I told no one, not even my parish priest. While I did my best to go on with life as usual, my emotional struggle worsened, and my once top-level school grades began to decline.

On April 4, 1968, news of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination hit like a thunderbolt, electrifying horrible memories of my own victimization. Later the same month, I turned 13, but didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead of a young lady, I felt like a dirty dishrag, for the assault had occurred before my first period, meaning I was still a little girl at the time!

Two months later, the June 5, 1968 murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy jolted me all the more violently. A week after this tragedy, I again found myself arguing with my parents about the rape. "I hope God punishes that creep for raping me!" I sobbed. "I hope God punishes you for telling lies!" my father shot back.

Much to my parents’ confusion and dismay, my school grades continued to suffer. While I appeared to be nonchalant about life, in reality I was absolutely furious about the outrage done to me and my parents’ seeming lack of concern and support. To my utter bewilderment and despair, I found myself beginning to believe I must have done something to deserve such raunchy treatment.

By 16, I was promiscuous. When word of my doings from my high-school principal reached my parents, they rushed me to a psychiatrist. After hearing me recount the rape to the psychiatrist, Mom exclaimed, "But I didn’t believe her because she didn’t act hysterical about it! She didn’t wake her father and me right away to tell us!" The psychiatrist then explained to my mother that the rape had probably left me so emotionally traumatized that I couldn’t think straight and summon immediate aid. Visits with the psychiatrist continued until I graduated from high school in June, 1972.

Although my parents hoped I’d go to college after graduating from high school, I wasn’t really interested. I was more intent on finding a way to "fix things." Despite the fact my parents had tried to help me by taking me to a psychiatrist, I longed to get even with them for not believing me about the rape. Still mildly epileptic, I shied away from drugs as a means of revenge.

So I decided to try getting pregnant out of wedlock to retaliate against my parents, and continued to secretly see men on the side. Eight months later, in February, 1973, I became pregnant. I was seventeen. All month I watched anxiously for a period that never came. Suddenly I became frightened, and realizing I’d be found out sooner or later, at last decided to tell someone -- my mother. Utterly stunned and dismayed, my mother had our family doctor test me, and sure enough, I was pregnant (March 12, 1973). Mom and Dad were thoroughly chagrinned and terrified. Over the next month, the doctor tested me two more times-the second test after my second missed period-and each time, the results resounded "positive!"

The doctor warned, in a voice harsh with fatalism, that abortion was the only option. Epilepsy is known to "dangerously or even fatally complicate pregnancy." My poor parents were at their wits’ end. They didn’t like the idea of abortion, but also didn’t want to risk the health or perhaps even the life of their daughter. I held out against abortion until the doctor mentioned that the strong medications required for my seizures (Phenobarbitol and Dilantin), just might "seriously damage" the fetus by inducing physical and/or mental defects. "Do you really want to give birth to a deformed child?" he asked almost disparagingly. What a thing to say! I had gone to my parish priest for help, but after I repeated the doctor’s grim prognosis, the priest was just as frightened and confused as I was. After a prolonged, moody silence, the priest advised me that if the doctor felt the abortion was "in my best interests," then I should follow his counsel.

The abortion counselor did not give my parents and me the truth about abortion. We were not informed on how an unborn child develops, the gruesome nature of abortion procedures, or the tragic physical and emotional aftermath of abortion. All that seemed to matter was that this inconvenient unborn child be eliminated as soon as possible-which is just what was executed when my unborn daughter was killed by abortion on April 5, 1973. She was only eight weeks old.

For the next five years, I felt deep guilt and depression from the abortion, but it remained mostly low-key -- until Mother’s Day, 1978. I had just turned 23. After each Mass that Mother’s Day, strange-looking photos were being passed out to the congregation. I moved in for a closer look, only to discover that these photos revealed what the abortion counselor had hidden: the true nature of abortion, in every grisly detail, depicted in these photos of innocent children murdered by various abortion methods. One photo of an 8-week-old killed by suction abortion hit too close for comfort. "The same age as my daughter! The same method used to kill her!" my heart cried out in anguished dismay.

Desolated as never before, I plunged into 11 years of terrible turmoil and despair. Now that I knew how my poor child had really died, I hated myself as never before. I plunged headlong into tobacco and alcohol addiction. In 1980 and 1982, I attempted suicide, but failed. In 1985, Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s "The Silent Scream" devastated me still further. Time and again I confronted my parents, but every time they insisted that the doctor’s decision was "in my best interests." In 1988 a mental health therapist, appalled by my "reckless" remarks on killing my mother, exclaimed, "You think nothing of killing your own mother, yet you carry on about killing an embryo!" My eyes flashed red-hot rage. "What you’re talking about is not an embryo!" I screamed in an almost rabid lather of fury at the therapist. "She is a person, my unborn child, my daughter, and I let some creep kill her by abortion!"

By March, 1989, I was sick of the post-abortion struggle. Sixteen years of hell with still no end in sight. Countless intensive yet failed attempts to break the grip of this emotional monster. Again ready to give up on life, I plotted the final demise of my parents, and then myself.

However, on March 7, 1989, just after the 11 p.m. news, God would work a miracle that would save our lives. USA Today TV News Magazine broadcast a show featuring a former abortionist turned Christian pro-life crusader, Carol Everett of Texas. As I watched the remarkable story of Carol Everett unfold on the TV, an incredible new hope began to spark within me, the first real hope I had felt in years. I took down the phone number of her organization, "Let Me Live."

After two days of awkward but intense prayer and meditation, I phoned Carol Everett at her Dallas office on March 9, 1989--the day which marked the first real positive turning point for me in years. God seemed to speak sweetly through Carol Everett. Through her encouragement and example, Jesus invitingly demonstrated to me that no sin is too great to be forgiven and no sinner too wretched to be transformed by His grace into "a new creature in Christ." At last, after a lifetime of struggling to break free, here was the key to my liberation! His mercy! If only I would accept! And, yes, I did accept-and His forgiveness set me FREE!--for the first time ever!

Meanwhile, I had been praying for the conversion of my parents. Sure enough, on Sept. 18, 1991, my mother was listening to "Point of View," a Christian radio talk show. And on this particular date, the guest was none other than Carol Everett. As she listened to Carol Everett’s moving testimony, Mom was convicted and repented of her part in aborting her grandchild. Later God reached through Mom to convert my father. After Mom and Dad had repented, they apologized to me. I was overjoyed God had finally brought my parents back to Himself, and thus restored our family.

In 1990, I began sidewalk counseling in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. In 1991, I moved to Austin, TX, worked in pro-life there for two years, then in 1993 went to work in Corpus Christi. In April 1994 I left Corpus Christi for Dallas, where I have been working since. Ever since the abortion, I had promised God and myself that if I ever got pregnant again, I would let nature take its course.

While homeless in Dallas in December, 1994, I was raped. Then 39, I knew my chances of getting pregnant were less than at 17, but this time I was ready. During the medical exam for rape, I quietly and steadfastly refused the pregnancy-preventive medication. The doctors and hospital staff were dumfounded, but I felt a wonderful inner peace, the first real peace in many years. I didn’t get pregnant, but when I told Bishop Charles Grahmann what had happened, he smiled warmly and praised my action as "heroic." Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Rescue was also elated. "It took great faith and courage to do what you did. God bless you!" Fr. Larry Pichard and Fr. Anibal Adorno of Santuario de Guadalupe Cathedral acclaimed me for exercising "extraordinary generosity and courage." "You did the right thing," commended Cathedral deacon Charlie Stump. Deacon Juan Ibarra agreed. "I think God is trying to tell you He is proud of you, too!"

Other pro-life notables whom I later met who also commended me include Norma McCorvey, the former "Jane Roe" of Roe vs. Wade, John Everett, director of St. Joseph’s Helpers at the White Rose Pregnancy Center, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, Jean Garton, Lutheran pro-life author of "Who Broke the Baby," Olivia Gans of American Victims of Abortion, and Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

Yet beyond them all lingered Deacon Juan Ibarra’s moving observation," God is proud of you!" Slowly but surely it dawned on me that God was really proud of me. From there it became increasingly evident that God could only be proud of me because He LOVED me! I was worthwhile, after all! I was NOT a dirty dishrag; I was His child! Better yet, I no longer felt relentlessly driven to forever keep trying to prove myself to others or to me, because, as Fr. Anibal Adorno had so gently yet firmly reassured, God had already affirmed me, as He does every one of us, in His divine Son, the Word made flesh, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

-Holly Dutton is a Pro-Life Activist, Author, and Speaker, Dallas, TX, USA.

Testimony of Carol Everett, former Abortion Provider

(This testimony was originally given at a "Meet the Abortion Providers" workshop sponsored by the Pro-life Action League of Chicago, directed by Joe Scheidler. Priests for Life offers their video, "Inside the Abortion Industry," containing excerpts of the testimonies of many former providers)

Thank you all for coming. In 1973, when abortion was legalized, I was married, had an 8 year-old daughter and a 10 year-old son. Two weeks later, with abortion very much in the news and everywhere we turned we were still talking about abortion, I found myself pregnant. When I told my husband, I was excited. But his initial reaction was, you'll just have to have an abortion. Because I really didn't want to deal with that with him, I decided I'd look for someone to help me. I went to my friend, my doctor, and cried out to him, and said, "Harvey, Tom doesn't want me to have this baby." And he said, "Oh, that's easy. You bring Tom's urine in, the pregnancy test will be negative, we'll do the abortion in the hospital, and your insurance will pay for it".

What I'm telling you is that this man offered to do an illegal abortion in the State of Texas and, yes, indeed, we did it. I was looking for someone to tell me not to have the abortion and I ran into an abortion salesman. And that's what happens in our nation today. We're going to talk a lot more about that, but let's go back to my story and what happened to me.

When I woke from that abortion, I picked up the telephone, and literally started working from my hospital bed, not realizing that I was already running from that decision. Within a month I was having an affair, and that had not been one of my patterns prior to that time. Very soon I started drinking; I'd not ever drunk in my life and I would go out and just get drunk once a month. It was almost like on target; once a month I had to do it. Very soon I asked my husband to leave, and then I started seeing a psychiatrist daily.

At the rate of $125.00 an hour, I could not go on with this very long. So I decided to do what I called, "get hold of myself." I changed everything I could in my life, except my children. I got away from the job I'd had; got away from my husband, and decided I would make it on my own. What I'm telling you is the story about how my life went along at a pretty good level for a while, and the moment I had that abortion, it went straight downhill. And I think that's what happens to every woman who has an abortion.

One of the things that I want to impress upon you today is, yes, we do have to save the babies; they're important. But we're saving the mother, and, yes, we're saving the father. My ex-husband has been in counseling all this year trying to deal with this abortion. And we're saving all those family units in our entire nation. We've got a lot of work ahead of us.

When I did get hold of myself, I went to work for a nice Catholic man who had a medical supply business. At about this time abortion became legal in the State of Texas, and very soon we had an account on-line that was very profitable for us. We were making over $1,000 a month profit out of this account. So he decided that he wanted to look into it to see exactly what sort of business they were, and yes, indeed, they were an abortion clinic. So this great Catholic man who told me he never wanted to see an abortion, never wanted to know what an abortion really was, opened his first abortion clinic, and soon he had four. All this time he kept inviting me to join. He kept saying, come over and do this, come over and do that; if you'll go out and sell abortions for me, I'll pay you $10 an abortion, and on and on and on. I kept selling medical supplies, and finally the day came when I needed to make more money, and I went in and said, hey, I'm quitting my job; I want to go with another company. And he said, give me some time; let me come up with something. So, he got me on the fringe of the abortion industry by asking me to go out and set up referral clinics all over Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. And I did that for a while and it was quite profitable. Then one day the call came: Come into the clinic; I need you to work in here for a month.

When I got in the clinic I had to decide whether to get involved in the abortions over here (and I am a scrub tech, so I have been involved in the medical industry for a long time), or if I was going to get involved with the numbers. And since I had that option, I got involved with the numbers. With just a very few small changes, his abortions went from 190-195 per month to over 400 per month. So then he sent me to another clinic. I went to his Fort Worth clinic, and yes, we were soon doubling his abortions over there. The last month I was with him in those two clinics (by then he had split with his partner), he was doing something over 800 abortions a month.

I went in and said, hey, look, I've doubled your business, come on, give me an equity interest in the business. And he politely said no, and I politely scheduled my hysterectomy, the kids teeth being fixed, everything his insurance would pay for, and, by the way, I placed my Yellow Page ad to come out in six months for my own abortion clinic. We opened and the first month we did 45; 65; 85, and the last month I was there, with two clinics functioning in the Dallas area, we did over 500 abortions a month in that clinic. I was compensated at the rate of $25.00 per case, plus one-third of the clinic's, so you can imagine what my motivation was. I sold abortions. I had made $150,000; was on target in 1983 to make about $260,000; and when we opened our five clinics, I would have been taking home about a million dollars a year. I expected to make more than that after we were really functioning.

All of this sounds neat. I had two kids in college, and I was alone and I was making plenty of money. But that money went absolutely nowhere. Taking home that much money a month, I literally couldn't even pay my utilities. What you've got to remember is that this is really one of Satan's strongholds. That money literally ran through my fingers so that my motivation was to do more abortions to make more money, and on and on and on.

That's what I think happens with doctors. A banker called me one time and asked me to go to work for an abortionist there in the Dallas area. He said he was putting $27,000 a month in my bank in his account and he can't pay me back what he owes me. Go to work for him and help me. That's the way it is. These guys just get in there and it goes on and on. With Satan in there, we had problems between the partners, and so if we were going to open these five clinics, I went to our financial advisors and said we've got to get the partners' problems straightened out, let's do it. So he called in a man he told me was a business counselor. This man met with us for an hour each, brought us back together for a fourth hour, and had a paper with six points on it. All six of these points were in my favor, and I thought, boy, I paid you $75.00 an hour long ago when I found you. He told the doctor's live-in girlfriend to get out of the clinic and stay out and to leave me alone. But we had to agree to meet with him for four more weeks, an hour each. On our second visit, I found I couldn't control him. You know, when you're in the world you control people, but I couldn't move him. So I suppose out of desperation I finally asked him the question: Are you a preacher? He said, yes. I said, what in the world are you doing in here? He said, God sent me. I said, wait a minute! I'm a Christian; I have a Bible in my desk; I tithe on all this abortion money, and I want you to know that God has me in here helping women, and God doesn't really talk to people anyway.

So, through a long period of discussions, he told me that indeed God did talk to people. That God had asked him to come into this situation for 30 days, and through much prayer, he and his elders had decided that there was indeed someone in there that the Lord wanted out. And we left in 27 days. Now that's kind of remarkable. But you don't take this lying, cheating, stealing on our income tax woman, and just change her into an angel overnight. And you also don't just walk away from all of this without looking back. So when I started telling people that I was leaving the clinic, they started telling me how crazy I was. They'd say, how are you going to pay your bills? Of course, I did spend it all. I mean, you'll never be able to make this much money; you can't even live on $5,000 a month, and where are you going to make $5,000 anyway?

Then people said, you worked so hard to be here, why? So I literally fell to my knees in that abortion clinic. At this point it was: Lord, if there is a Lord, if this is not where you want me, hit me over the head with a 2 x 4. Now I encourage people not to ask that because He has a 2 x 4, and my 2 x 4 was a report that Channel 4, a television station in our area did. They sent their star reporter, Laura Randall, in, wired for sound. And we so convinced her that she was pregnant and that yes, she needed an abortion, and we had the answer, that when she left there the poor girl was so shaken that she went to another doctor. She was not sure she wasn't pregnant. And she wasn't pregnant. So we had a five-day report wherein Laura Randall, wired for sound, came in the abortion clinic and had our doctor saying, yes, baby, you're pregnant. Come on, let's do this abortion today. You haven't had anything to eat, you've got your money, why would you want to come back tomorrow. Come on, let's do it now. And that was my answer to prayer.

I didn't understand why. I didn't have enough sense to know, but I did know that I had a peace about walking out, and I did know that God did answer prayers. He put me in a wilderness situation for a long time.

I've got to tell you this, and there is no good way to tell it. I have tried a million times. From the abortion clinics, I had a meat market. Now my problem is that I don't very often call it a meat market. You see, I call it a butcher shop. So when I say butcher shop, people think I'm talking about the abortion clinic. But I was involved in the butcher business for several years, I guess. (That wasn't very funny.) Anyway, I did go into this butcher shop and I did stay out there and the Lord worked with me for a very long time. And through the man who washed my windows in the butcher shop, the Right-to-Life came into my life. Through a long period of association with this man who was a seminary student washing my windows, I finally decided that yes, the Lord did want me to speak out, and that I would become involved in this Movement. Now what I do is just go around and tell people the truth about what really happens inside one of the abortion mills.

There are all sorts of experiences with the abortion. I want to walk you through my experiences in an abortion clinic.

Let's just step back. How many of you have children 14 and under? How many of you have seen a number, unsolicited, that you think you could call that said, "Problem Pregnancy," "Abortion Information," or "Pregnant?" in your area where you think you could call for abortion information? Let's talk about those kids when they find out that they are pregnant. They may not want an abortion; they may want information. But when they call that number that's paid for by abortion money, what kind of information do you think they're going to get? Let's remember, they sell abortions. They don't sell keeping the baby. They don't sell giving the baby up for adoption. They don't sell delivering that baby in any form. They only sell abortions.

In the State of Texas, a girl can come in to have an abortion, and the abortion clinics are not required to have parental consent. Most of the abortion clinics in Texas do require it for 14 and under. However, let's paint this picture: The girl comes in, has an abortion, she can sign for it. But when the doctor rips her uterus out and they take her to the hospital, they won't admit her until her parents get there and are told she had this abortion without their consent. And they will not repair the damage or try to save her life until the parents sign on the dotted line. And that happens. It's terrible.

So the girl calls this number and says, I'm pregnant. How far along are you? What's the first day of your last normal period? They've got their wheel there and they figure it out. This counselor is paid to be this girl's friend. She is paid to be the authority for this girl. She is supposed to seduce her into a friendship of sorts to sell her the abortion. Every problem this girl has: I don't want to tell my parents. You don't have to tell your parents. They don't have to know. You're old enough to come in and have it without them knowing. And then the money, and they ask them to go get their money and pay the people back in a year. Then the two questions they ask are: Does it hurt? Oh, no. Your uterus is a muscle, and they hold their hand up if they're seeing them; if not, they tell them over the phone: It's a cramp to open it; a cramp to close it; it's a slight cramping sensation. Everybody's had cramps; every woman in the world. So they think that's no problem. I can stand that; I've been through it before. And then they say: Is it a baby? No, it's a product of conception; it's a blood clot; it's a piece of tissue. They don't even really tell them it's a fetus, because, you see, that almost humanizes it too much. It's never a baby. They can't admit it themselves when they go in the back and have little 6-week fetuses, babies that they put down disposals, and that's how we did it in our clinic. The clinics in Dallas use disposals so none of those crazy Pro-Lifers will come and get them out of the trash anymore and bury them the way they did. So, they lie to her. You know, if you look at abortion from the face, I cannot tell you one thing that happens in an abortion clinic that is not a lie. They tell the counselors, and I told the counselors, not to rock the boat; not to answer any questions that they didn't ask. Get them in here; the faster you can get them in here, the easier it is on them. You concentrate on the woman; you tell them to help her, and you don't deal with the baby at all.

So they get this girl to come in the clinic, and many times they just get her to come in for a pregnancy test, and if that's the case then they greet her at the door and they say, Oh, Linda, I'm so glad you're here. I've been waiting for you. This girl doesn't know they have an appointment book and each counselor has to schedule their appointments an hour apart so she has plenty of time to spend being their "friend" while they're there. She takes them back; she does the pregnancy test; it doesn't really matter. If there's any way they can convince this girl she's pregnant, she's going to be pregnant. But they go through this test anyway. She tells her she's pregnant, and the girl might cry. She may get upset. But they take her into a separate room; they don't want anyone to see anyone crying in there; it's supposed to be a great place; we're supposed to help people in the abortion clinic.

If she has the abortion that day, she goes through one procedure, but if she comes back another day, she just comes in the front door, fills out some forms (very minimal information). Most of the information on that form is name, address, telephone number, and your financial status. So they can find out to what group they need to appeal with their $250,000 per clinic Yellow Page budget.

Then the girl goes back, has some lab work, and then she pays, up-front, for what they have decided the term of pregnancy she is. Cash, Master Card, or Visa--get a Master Card, Visa or American Express. You might consider sending them back because they do charge for abortions, and tell them why you're sending them back. They will accept those charges. Then the girl goes into this room for counseling and they give her a 6 to 12-page form. This form is written by an abortion attorney. Ours was written by one out of New York, and it was written to confuse the girl to death. It had every possible complication of an abortion you could imagine, and it would take [a doctor] two hours with a medical dictionary to go through it. Words two inches long that no one could possibly understand, and it does its job. It confuses her and she doesn't ask any questions. She goes back to the two questions: Does it hurt? Is it a baby? And when you have convinced her again and lied to her again that no, it's not going to hurt, and if she doesn't have her money--in the State of Texas you have to pay extra to be put to sleep--it's an extra $100 to $250, depending on how far you are into the pregnancy.

Then she goes into this holding room, waiting for the abortion. And it depends on the day of the week, of course, as to how many people are in there. Saturday is the big day, but it could be a day in the week when there are only five or six people in there waiting. And soon, if there are 30 or 40, especially, they kind of number each other so they know what order they are going to be going out in. They kind of laugh and joke. And if there is one crying in there, you get that one out. You don't want that one affecting the rest of them.

She is taken back to the procedure room, put on the table, and draped. Her chart is put in the door. Each chart in our clinics was handled with a little coupon on the front. The coupon was for the doctor, because when he walks up to that door for the first time--if you have two or three doctors working, you don't know which one is going to do the abortion--so, they don't collect the doctor's money with the clinic money, they collect it separately and do not show it on any of the records in those clinics. In the four clinics I've been in and worked in, they never showed that they collected the doctor's money at any place. That way, they are independent contractors; you don't have to be concerned with their malpractice insurance, and you don't have to report it to IRS. He collects the coupon, puts it in his scrub suit pocket. At the end of the day he goes up and presents his coupons. This is how many I've done. And each doctor presents them separately. The girl counts the coupons, figures out how much she owes him, and pays him in cash.

As I said earlier, I have seen doctors walk out after three hours work and split $4,500 between them on a Saturday morning. More, if you go longer into the day, of course. The doctor walks in, sees the patient for the very first time, pats her on the leg, says, Hi, baby, how are you? You call them "baby" so you don't have to remember their name. And she says, Oh, I'm scared, or, I'm cold. Never anything positive. And he doesn't really ask her any questions. It's just get the abortion done. If he discovers that she may be farther along than anyone thought she was, they stop right there, collect the money, and then finish the procedure.

If abortion is such a good thing, why don't they give them away? If abortion is such a good thing, why don't they go ahead and do the abortion then, and trust you to pay the extra $200 when they're finished? That's not the way it is. I've never been able to come up with the words to describe the abortion procedure, because, you see, you're educating people about abortion. You know more about it than the average person. However, no matter how bad you think abortion is, there are no words to describe how bad it really is. It kills the baby. And, yes, I've seen sonograms with the baby pulling away from the instruments that are introduced into the vagina. And the woman, the mother, is hurt if she doesn't have the extra money to be put to sleep, and I've seen D&Es through 32 weeks done without the mother being put to sleep. And, yes, they hurt, and they are very painful to the baby. But, yes, they are very, very painful to the woman. I've seen six people hold a woman on the table while they did her abortion.

But, they have the abortion and they go to the recovery room, and then there are two reactions in the recovery room. The first one is: I've killed my baby. And even then, it amazed me that that was the first time they called it a baby and the first time they called it murder. But, you know, as bad as that sounds, that's probably the healthiest reaction. That woman is probably going to have the ability to walk out of there and deal with it, and perhaps be healed and go on.

And now, in Europe, where they've had abortions for much, much longer than we have, there are some authorities in the Netherlands who are alluding to a spiritual healing that women have to go through before they can completely deal with their abortion. So they're getting closer day by day by day. But the second reaction is: I am hungry, you kept me in here for four hours and you told me I'd only be here for two; let me out of here. Now that woman is doing what I did. She's running from her abortion. She's not dealing with it; she's choosing to deny it, and she's the woman that we read all the statistics about, post-abortion syndrome. They say now it's an average of five years before people actually deal with the fact that, yes, they did kill their baby. And yes, they do have to deal with that.

You know, I go back to my own personal healing, which just started a year ago. I was making deals with God. I didn't want to talk about my own abortion. Then when I finally did deal with it, I cried nonstop for five months because, you see, I killed my baby, and I'm still not through that. And how difficult it is for all these women because, you see, I believe that every woman, even if she's not physically harmed, is harmed by abortion.

Then what the recovery room personnel do is resell it. They resell them on their next abortion. They don't say, hey, I'm reselling you so you'll go out and get pregnant and come back. But they make subtle innuendos that say, you know, this isn't going to happen again, but, you know we're always here. And when you leave here you're going to have a couple of days when you won't feel so good. You'll have a couple of days of depression, and that's just your hormones realigning, and everyone who has a baby has postpartum depression, and don't worry about it. And there they are encouraging them to suppress their feelings about that abortion.

So they go through this whole gamut of reselling abortion, encouraging suppression, and say, call us if you have a problem. And the girls leave, and they do have problems.

The girls that walk out of there, though, are the lucky ones. We were seeing over 500 abortions per month; we were doing the only one-day second or third trimester abortion in the state of Texas. (We didn't call it third; we called it second.) Meaning that we didn't use the laminaria. We did all the dilation on that day, and that's why we were seeing such a tremendous number of complications. We saw complications in the second and third trimester, but we were seeing one per 500 abortions for over a year. Yes, we had a death. A 32 year-old woman with a 17 year-old son and a 2 year-old son. Never made the papers. Her boyfriend felt guilty for his part in the abortion and he didn't want to deal with it. Her family thought, yes, she had probably had an abortion, but they didn't want to deal with it. It never came out. No lawsuit.

The 21-year-old that danced in, and I'll never forget her for as long as I live. She was my son's age. Danced in to get her "problem" taken care of. Had the extra money to be put to sleep. And you see, my job with two of those doctors was to put my right hand on the baby and hold it while they did the abortion so I could tell them where the head was and where the legs were, and all of that. And I had my hand on that woman's stomach, and that baby was perfectly inside her uterus; she had been examined by the doctor; and he said, yes, the baby was inside her uterus and everything was fine and she was 24-weeks. And he went in one time, and he pulled out placenta, and he went in the second time and he went through the back of her uterus and pulled her bowel out through her vagina. We put her in the car because we didn't want an ambulance in front of the abortion clinic and we took her to the hospital. Seven doctors worked on her and they did a colostomy on her. When the reports came back, they said that it was an abdominal pregnancy that had not been in the uterus, and seven doctors and a pathologist concurred with that, and then the hospital wrote off her bill, and there was no lawsuit, ever. She was told that had been a normal complication; it was just amazing that she'd made it that long. And she didn't know any better. And then the girl that the doctors decided had a fibroid tumor at the back of her uterus. That's a highly common tumor that's very rarely malignant. And the two doctors decided they were just going to pull this out after she had her abortion, and they didn't know they were pulling on the back of her uterus, and they pulled the uterus out wrong-side-out of a 21- year-old; she had a hysterectomy.

Those are the ones that I remember. Those are the ones that bother me. Those are the ones that I have to go through and deal with and be healed of constantly. Because, you see, it was like the mothers were presenting their babies to be killed. And it was okay to kill 500 babies a month. But when we started killing or maiming a mother for each 500 babies, even I couldn't handle that.

There are two problems that are going on that we might be able to do something with, too. That is, that abortion clinics, if they have someone that does present themselves thinking they're pregnant and of course the test show they're not; that they're going to sell that abortion to that non-pregnant woman. And every time that you are standing in front of an abortion clinic, you are holding a light on inside that clinic. You are holding those people accountable and that day they are less likely to do the woman who is not pregnant because they're scared of you. They think these crazy Pro-Lifers are going to run in, chain themselves to the table. We had seven locks or something from the front door to the back. They are less likely to do that woman who is too far along that day too, because, you see, when the babies are so big they don't come apart like the others. Their muscle structure is strong that the heads come off from the body, and you can't dispose of those in the disposal. You have to put those in the trash. And we used to take ours over to opposition abortion clinics' trash and hope they'd be found there.

But every time you're in front, you're holding that light on. They slow down. An abortionist who brags and thinks he can do eight to ten, maybe even twelve abortions an hour, with a picketer in front of him, will slow down. Do four, six, three, something--but he'll slow down. He's afraid of you.

If there is good medical care inside an abortuary, the day you're standing out there is the day it happens. And you asked me how I feel about what you do? First of all, in Dallas, Texas, we have a guy named Winston Wilder, and thank you, Lord, for Winston. When I finally got over the right side... That's another thing, you don't see the defectors from the Pro-Life side to the abortion side, did you ever notice that? The defection's this way, and there are a lot of them. Winston and I sat down and I gave him all the names, addresses, telephone numbers, business offices (because many times their partners do not even know they do abortions). We had one guy called in from the Bahamas because they suddenly started picketing his office, and his partner didn't know he did abortions in the clinics. At their private homes, many times their wives do not know they do abortions. Many times their mother-in-law doesn't know they're doing abortions. Many times the maid doesn't know they're doing abortions. Their neighbors, of course, rarely know. But that's the most effective thing. Picket them where they live. The clinics, yes, because it is my firm conviction that every day abortion is done and we're not standing in front of the abortion clinic, that we are held accountable. We must be there doing what they say that we should do.

But even more important than that, I believe at their homes and their private clinics where they're going in and being closet abortionists. We do have responsibility; it's pretty clearly laid out to us. I'm just so delighted to meet people who are out there doing it.

Thank God for you'all.

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Why euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should NOT be legalised
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Alison Davis,
Patient

Send response to journal:
Re: Why euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should NOT be legalised

Dear Sir,

The arguments of Professors Len and Lesley Doyal rest on an assumption that certain patients are "right to want to die" and should be taken at their word when they request euthanasia. I suggest that this assumption is morally wrong, dangerous, and likely to add to the suffering of vulnerable patients, rather than alleviating it.

I have several severe disabling conditions that make my life difficult and, at times, extremely painful. My spine is collapsing, causing extreme pain which is not always controlled, even with morphine. When my pain is at its worst I cannot move or speak. The pain can go on for hours, and at times I am afraid that it will never stop.

In addition to this, I am a full-time wheelchair user because I have spina bifida, and I also have emphysema and osteoporosis. These conditions make me the sort of person many would consider "better off dead" and a suitable candidate for euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. No doubt Professors Len and Lesley Doyal would say that since they are advocating a "voluntary" system, I need thus have no fear. There are two problems with this.

The first is that they also consider it morally acceptable to kill patients who cannot express any consent, on the grounds that their condition makes death in their "best interests."

The second is that some years ago, I did want to die. It was a "settled wish" lasting many years, and had euthanasia or physician assisted suicide been legal then, I would have requested it. Under the criteria of the Dutch law, often cited as a model to be followed, I would qualify for this legal killing.

I am alive now only because my friends refused to go along with my sincere belief that my life had no value. Over time, they enabled me to re-establish a sense of my own inherent dignity and worth. Diane Pretty, on the other hand, is surrounded by family and supporters who agree that her life objectively is "undignified" and "degrading", and believe that death is the right answer to her suffering.

Even now there are times when the suffering seems too much, and I say I want to die. Would I be safe as such times, if Professors Len and Lesley Doyal had their way? I suppose they might say that I could write a kind of "reverse living will" stating that I want to be kept alive; but as long as I am competent I could revoke such a document.

Professors Len and Lesley Doyal suggest that to avoid the problem of a "slippery slope" decisions must be made by doctors about "when a request for helping dying is appropriate." This, of course, makes it the doctor's choice rather than that of the patient. It also implies that some patients are "right to want to die" and should be helped to die, while others are "wrong to want to die" and should be helped to live. Such a system speaks more of the prejudice against sick and disabled people that some doctors hold, than about objective and morally defensible facts on which tenable criteria could be based.

The fact that I am not terminally ill, as Mrs. Pretty is, if anything makes me a more compelling candidate for euthanasia, since I have to live with my suffering for an indefinite time, while Mrs. Pretty, whatever happens, will soon get her wish to die.

The possibility that euthanasia might be legalised terrifies me, and would only add to the difficulties of living with pain that is often unbearable, but for the fact that I have to bear it.

I suggest that what suffering people actually need is help, from both medical staff and from society itself, to live with dignity, and eventually to die peacefully and naturally. If Professors Len and Lesley Doyal get their way, the chances of this happening would recede rather than advance.

Yours faithfully,

Alison Davis