Category Archives: Abortion

Signs of Life

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 1, 2005

On the one hand, mankind has been engaged in an eternal quest for the explanation of human existence…where did we come from?  And this debate eventually gets reduced to the basic test…looking for signs of life in the primordial soup.

Where did the first living cell come from, the building block of life?  In the 1950s, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago was busy researching early earth.  Bringing together the work of several scientists, Stanley Miller created a chamber with only hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia to simulate the possible atmosphere of the first earth.

To speed up “geologic time,” Miller boiled the water.  Then, instead of exposing the mix to ultraviolet light, he used an electric discharge to simulate lightning. After just a week, Miller had a residue of compounds. He analyzed them and the results were electrifying: Organic compounds had been formed, most notably some of the “building blocks of life,” amino acids.

Miller’s experiment and his small collection of amino acids were instantly heralded as the first evolutionary sign of life.  At the same time, other scientists were beginning to break into the DNA code to unravel the chemical design of life.

Their claims of support for evolution have not gone unchallenged.  One of the most striking discussions on the possible origins of life is Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box.  A biochemist at Lehigh University, Behe explains complex chemical concepts in plain English, disputing the probability of evolution by chance.

Miller and Behe are two of the many experts at the center of raging debates about human life.  Amazon posts 477 reviews from Behe’s readers alone. On the one hand, peering millions of years into the past, we are feverishly seeking the first sign of life.

On the other hand, with evidence in front of us in the here and now of the most perfectly designed living beings, we are engaged in another feverish battle to ignore signs of life.

Delivering the decision of the Supreme Court in 1973, Justice Blackmun recorded the history of “attitudinal change” regarding the “potentiality of human life.”  For the Pythagoreans, “the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being.”  In other words, they saw signs of life.  And for Blackmun, this was evidence of their backward thinking and inflexible dogma.

As a modern Intellectual, Justice Blackmun wrestled with “the raw edges of human existence,” looking for signs of life.  But this was hard for him because of the distraction of pollution.  Pollution?  Yes, pollution…it’s right there in Blackmun’s decision.  The Supreme Court can’t find signs of life because of pollution, even as Stanley Miller claimed signs of life in theoretical primordial soup?

For Justice Blackmun, the science of life was not a concrete matter based on fact.  It was a problem with “racial overtones,” complicated, fraught with emotion and subject to “attitudinal change.”  For Stanley Miller, either it was an amino acid, or it wasn’t.  Attitude and emotion had nothing to do with signs of life.

In 1973, Blackmun struggled to find even “the potentiality of human life.”  In 2000, Justice Breyer evaluated a pile of evidence demonstrating more than life’s “potentiality” and declared for the court… “We don’t care.”

Reading through the Court Decision of Stenberg v. Carhart, a truly civilized human must cringe at the signs of life described.  Clinical details of the doctor’s procedure describe  instrumental disarticulation or dismemberment of the fetus or the collapse of fetal parts to facilitate evacuation from the uterus.  The Court writes of problems in the dismemberment of life that can result in a ‘free floating’ fetal head that can be difficult for a physician to grasp and remove.

On the one hand, thousands of the brightest minds in science are intent on defending the evidence of life implied in a simple amino acid.  On the other hand, hundreds of the most educated minds in America are intent on denying absolute signs of life inside the womb.

Has the best of human intellect and the purest of the human spirit reduced us to this level?  Pushing aside the facts, we find signs of life when we want to?

Supreme Court Decision:  Stenberg v. Carhart

Decision Issued June 28, 2000

http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

Medically Accurate Cowards

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

July 11, 2005

We’ve all seen it.  The television commercial where a magic pill is sold, the cure to some terrible medical problem.  The lady smiles.  The man takes her hand gingerly.  The sun sets, leaving a warm glow in the air just as the announcer lowers his voice.  As an afterthought, he remembers to tell us, “Valipuck may cause drowsiness, nausea, limping, coughing, gagging, financial ruin, blindness, skin rot or death.  Consult your physician.”

Magazines are luckier.  They have the whole back page of Valipuck’s ad to describe in the smallest font possible why the medicine they are selling to cure you could possibly leave you worse off than you were.

This is the age of medical liability, where undisclosed side effects of drugs can include financial ruin for drug companies.  One gets the feeling they are rushing to make the list of terrible possibilities longer than a person has time to read…just so you won’t.

There is only one serious exception to the “tell them everything” rule used by drug companies.  Without any compromising “fine print” disclosures, condoms are pushed on us from every possible angle, promising us unqualified “protection” from every consequence of sexual promiscuity.

On June 1, NBC and WB networks announced they would be running a series of four commercials “touting the importance of condom use in the prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).”  Their message is the all-encompassing promise we have come to expect from condom pushers, “Other than abstinence there is only one way to protect yourself.  Use a condom every time.”

Jim Daniels, vice president of marketing for Trojan, assures us his “respectful and tasteful” ads will get out an “important health message.”  So, Jim, what about the fine print?  What about the medically accurate truth about condoms?

One month after Jim’s tasteful ads, the Kaiser Family Foundation filled out the missing information on condoms.  “According to a 2004 World Health Organization bulletin and a 2001 NIH report, individual studies have demonstrated that condom use reduces the risk of infection for:

  • Gonorrhea by 39% to 62% in women and 49% to 75% in men;
  • Chlamydia by 29% to 90% in women and 33% in men;
  • Genital herpes by 30% to 92% in women and less in men, though no numbers were given;
  • Trichomoniasis by 30% in women and significantly less in men, though no numbers were given;
  • Syphillis by 40% to 60% in both sexes;
  • Pelvic inflammatory disease by 55%; and
  • Genital ulcers by 18% to 23% in both sexes.”

Wow!  With odds like these, who needs enemies?  Any way you slice it, the flip side of these numbers is clear evidence of the serious risk for contracting life-changing diseases even when using a condom.  And this is even before disclosing that there is no evidence that condoms prevent infection by human papillomavirus, the cause of over 97% of cervical cancer cases.

Giving teens a choice between abstinence and condoms is like giving a five-year-old a choice between a pea shooter and a six-shooter loaded with four live bullets.

Jim, speaking for Trojan, tells his potential customers that they have two choices, abstinence or condoms.  He lays the two options out in either/or fashion as “protection”.

But there is only one way for Jim…or anyone…to promote condoms as “protection” in the same sentence with abstinence.  Just shut the door and push the medically accurate facts under the carpet, behind the wall, and into the round filing cabinet.

While drug companies heap their medically accurate facts on us, it will take an act of Congress to get the same disclosure on condoms…literally an act of Congress.  Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is one of many who are insisting that condom packaging labels be revised to tell the full truth about condoms and their failure to provide the level of “protection” promised by advertisers.

Meanwhile, opponents to this labeling change are running full speed away from full disclosure, saying it “might undermine the public’s confidence in condoms.”  If we weren’t in the midst of an epidemic of STDs we might be laughing at a surprising irony: for the most part, opponents to medically accurate information on condoms are the same people who support laws requiring medically accurate information in sex education.

Any way you add it up, this is a formula for selling the people a lie.  It has worked for thirty years, but it won’t work forever.  Eventually, truth always comes to light.  Just ask the makers of the Pinto and cigarette industry CEOs.  Truth is only one class action lawsuit away from the surface.

Securing medically accurate information on condoms is not a battle for the coward.  In Congress, in classrooms, and in the courts…we are in debt to those who have the courage to lead the fight.  Thanks to them, no matter what it takes to make it happen, the truth about condoms is on its way.

February 14, 2005:  All the Condoms in the World

April 30, 2004:  Condoms: A Failure to Protect

See Archives for past editorials.

Abortion Recall

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

July 4, 2005

Six hours in the airport…

Surrounded by restless, cranky children and their restless, cranky parents…

Our flight is delayed again…and I have finished my book.

This is the time when boredom overtakes good manners, and I begin to read the newspaper in the hands of the woman across the aisle.  My eyesight is just good enough to pick up the headlines:

Massive Drug Recall Spurs Questions

I have two hours in the airport to find a way to move into the seat next to the woman and finish reading the story over her shoulder.  It only takes five minutes.  Next to her, a restless business executive rises, checks his watch, and heads for the nearest lounge.  I slip into his seat and begin reading.

The massive drug recall announced on the front page of USA Today papers is actually spawned in a small New Jersey community.  Able Laboratories has suddenly pulled off the market millions of doses of drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced “serious concerns” that drugs produced by Able Laboratories “were not produced according to quality assurance standards.”  Over 295 products are included in the recall.

Drug recalls…food recalls…medical device recalls…the FDA website list of recalls, withdrawals and alerts in the last 60 days is five pages long.  Consumers are told to beware of bed systems, sulfites in dried vegetables, Mariani brand fancy golden raisins, undeclared soy nets in Catherine’s Finest Pecan Caramel Clusters, BetacTM, pet treats, implantable cardiac defibrillators, Elegant Gourmet cookies, Xigris, almonds…and more.

A recall of raw almonds due to reports of Salmonella Enteriditis in 2004 alone necessitated the recall of over 40 products from companies around the world:  Royal Food International, GKI Foods, Sahadi Fine Foods, Apple Valley, Fort Fudge Shop, Jeppi Nut and Candy Company…and more.

And it should be no surprise that recalls can launch a flurry of lawsuits.  At www.finddruglawsuits.com consumers are told “Lawyers Investigating.”  You can click on the link and “find out about the drug recall.  You may be able to get Cash back!”  The list of “cash cows” over the years is extensive:  Accutane, Celebrex, Ephedra, Fen-Phen, Lamisil, Viagra, Vioxx…and more.

Whole industries have collapsed as their products are challenged.  Cigarettes, once the chic statement of Bogart and Bacall, after a twenty year campaign succeeded in uncovering the truth of research hidden and denied by tobacco companies, are now called “cancer sticks” on late night television.

Protecting billions of dollars of corporate profit, the temptation to hide product defects is enormous.  Yet, truth does eventually surface…as Ford found out.  Court cases documented that between 1971 and 1978, the Ford Pinto was responsible for a number of fire-related deaths.  Ford puts the figure at 23; critics say the figure is closer to 500. The auto manufacturer did manage to survive the litigation, but not before being ordered by a California jury to pay a record-breaking judgment of $128 million.

With such an extensive record of drug and product recalls in America, one must wonder why discussions of abortion remain so simplistic.  “Are you for abortion?  Or against it?”  Did we ever ask, “Are you for tobacco?  Or against it?”  We simply laid out the facts about tobacco and let people enforce the truth, if needed, through the courts.

Are you for the Pinto?  Or against it?  How can you know the answer to the question unless someone tells you the truth about the design flaw in the fuel tanks that causes them to rupture and explode into fire, killing the people you love?

Abortion is more than politics.  It is a product.  It is a product that has survived without question over thirty years in America.  It is sold to consumers as a wonderful solution to their problems.

Yet, when a courageous editor is willing to challenge the liberal bias of his industry, stories expose the underbelly of abortion that many wish to deny.  Women die from abortion, both surgical and chemical.  Babies survive from abortion, even if maimed.

Abortion is linked to high rates of infertility, fueling a billion dollar industry for women who finally do wish to bring their pregnancies to term.  And battles over the link of abortion to breast cancer are clouded by the knowledge that even scientists and researchers can hide the truth about products for the sake of the corporate bottom line.

Don’t be surprised if one day, when we are able to discuss abortion and the complexities of what it means to have courts protect the sale of this surgery because they are “for abortion”…don’t be surprised if one day, the truth rises from the ashes of people who suffered because we failed to ask the right questions.

An abortion recall…it’s not as far-fetched an idea as you might think.

June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

January 15, 2005:  The Pregnant Elephant in the Room

I Think I Can’t….I Think I Can’t

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 24, 2005

Her question stopped me in my tracks.  “So why can’t you have a baby and go to college?”

I opened my mouth to speak, “Because….”  I stopped.  “Well, it….”

The modern proscription for a successful life in America is rigid.  You graduate from high school, you go to college and graduate, you get a master’s degree, and you begin your career.  Only then are you given permission to settle down and consider having a family.

The promise of “success” hangs in front of our nose, like the hare racing in front of the greyhounds at the track.  We have our life mapped out, no time to waste, and no room for detours.  But why?

It wasn’t always this way.  There was a day not so long ago when diversity was more than a political slogan.  It formed the very fabric of life, a patchwork of possibilities, a life of beauty designed around the varied circumstances of men and women.

Once upon a time, we took life as it came.  We planned.  But we also made allowances for the turns in the road, the detours and side trips that inevitably occur.  They were not evidence that life was over.  They were moments of creativity, unbidden opportunities to incorporate the unexpected into life and call it success.

Love wasn’t rejected until we had our college diploma framed behind the leather chair.  It came in joyful moments of surprise, and it was received as a gift.  Students in love got married.  If children came along, life wasn’t over.  It was extended.

Married students moved into married housing.  And if they became pregnant, the children were welcome.  Life was big enough to have it all.

Not so today.  For all the pride we have in our ability to plan the perfect life, we have created the ultimate rigid path that rejects life’s diversity.  If success is only possible as single men and women without children, then our fate is sealed.  Sex is recreation, relationships are void of commitment, and babies are unwelcome.

Thus, it is quite an easy matter for clinics on college campuses to sell young women the solution to unplanned pregnancies.  Abortion in college is just one more part of the so-called prescription for success.

Abortion counselors don’t counsel.  They simply latch onto our fears and reinforce them.  “Oh, my dear,” they tell young women, “you don’t want to drop out of school.  You’ll never be able to do it.  Here let us fix it for you.”

Sealing their fate, reinforcing the promise of failure, we withdraw support from pregnant women.  If they want acceptance, love, careers, and a future…they have only one path, one narrow path, just big enough for one person to walk alone, no babies allowed.

As a nation we are all caught in the fear of failure.  Parents push their daughters to abortion.  Boyfriends expect abortions.  And women have bought the lie.  They can’t be a woman, a mother, a wife, and a student…because we tell them they can’t.

When did we decide that the best life to be had is the life of a sterile woman?  What justification do we have for preaching the Mother Goddess in feminism even as we demand that she sacrifice the joy of mothering in order to move ahead?

Do you plan joy?  Or does it flow from your ability to accept the unexpected treasures found along the way…love, commitment, marriage, and family?  If humans were created to be parents, what kind of happiness will we find by denying our creation?

Babies are not the enemy…but only if we are willing to believe in the value of life and all that it brings.  What joy have we lost today by pretending that the best of life can be planned?  When did we give up on ourselves?

 

June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

 See Archives for past editorials.

The Pregnant Elephant in the Room

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 17, 2005

It was a shocking statement to hear my friend Joan say, “I personally don’t think sex education is comprehensive enough.”  But she made perfect sense.

“Comprehensive” has come to mean “condoms and birth control” in debates about sex education.  Comprehensive sex educators insist on the necessity of demonstrating condoms and instructing students on birth control.  But condoms and birth control were the last thing on Joan’s mind.

She has spent years counseling women who sought her out to deal with the negative consequences of their abortions.  Their pain is easy for her to understand.  At the age of 19, over twenty years ago, Joan had an abortion, too.

“I was a college freshman when I got pregnant,” she recalls, “and my boyfriend insisted that I have an abortion.  He wanted to finish school and we would get married after that.  I gave in to his desires.”

Like so many young women today, Joan thought love was the focus of their relationship.  “I thought we were in love….I wasn’t disturbed by the pregnancy at all.  I was excited about it.  I really wanted the baby, but he put pressure on me….I didn’t want to lose him.”

Isolated at the time, relying on her boyfriend’s advice, Joan had the abortion.  Only later, after severe medical complications arose, did her parents find out.  But more important to Joan were the severe emotional consequences.

Her boyfriend was unable to handle her emotions and took Joan to see his family psychiatrist.  “His psychiatrist told me that he couldn’t see any reason for my depression and my grief and my regret…that I had done the right thing and I needed to get over it and get on with my life.”  Only two months after the abortion performed for his sake, her boyfriend left.

Not a religious person at the time, and unaware of fetal development, Joan still felt extreme shame and guilt.  “I knew that I was pregnant with a baby I wanted.  And immediately afterwards, I knew that that baby…I would never hold that baby.”

Eventually, Joan married and became the mother of two children.  Her life then was filled with “triggers,” moments when her abortion would come to life, and emotions would flood her.  “When our son was born, I just looked at him and thought, “He’s not your first child.  He’s your second.  And your first you gave back.  You don’t deserve this one.”

Striving to become the perfect, loving mother and to reclaim the pain of her abortion, she began working at a local crisis pregnancy center.  It was there where, working over eight years with pregnant moms and women who had had abortions, Joan found healing.  She learned she was not alone.  Her experiences of abandonment, shame and guilt were common among other post-abortive women.

Joan looks at sex education today and criticizes the failure to discuss the obvious…the pregnant elephant in the room.  “I don’t believe they talk about the consequences strongly enough.”  Condoms have a pregnancy failure rate for teens of approximately 22%.  “I believe,” Joan says, “that if abortion is talked about as a possible consequence to sexual activity. Kids might make a different choice about becoming sexually active.”

Even when abortion is discussed, Joan points out, “It’s been sugar-coated… ‘This is nothing more than a very simple, quick medical procedure, probably not as traumatic as having a tooth pulled.’”

While some educators have begun to change their rhetoric, Joan is quick to challenge their fence-sitting.  “Either it is a horrible heart-wrenching difficult decision with all of the implications of that, with the emotional damage and the reality of what it does to the child…or it is simpler than having a tooth pulled.  Which is it?”

Coupled with the lack of comprehensive discussions about abortions, sex educators offer almost no information on fetal development.  Over 138,000 abortions were performed in 2001 on women age 19 and under according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Often facing an abortion decision in isolation, teens may lack true knowledge about the stage of development of their baby.  Years later, when pregnant with a child they will keep and with intimate knowledge of fetal development, they often experience a delayed and traumatic reaction to their abortion.

Joan speaks openly about abortion these days.  And she calls others to do the same.  There is a pregnant elephant in the room, and we need to start talking openly about what to do with it.

The next time an educator promotes comprehensive sex education to you, ask them if they present the harmful consequences of abortion to young people.  Ask them if they teach young people about the development of a baby in the womb.  And if they don’t, ask them, “Why not?”

Joan is right.  If we’re going to be comprehensive, it’s time to start discussing the pregnant elephant.

 

 June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

 See Archives for past editorials.