WASHINGTON (BP)–Kelly Dickerson has pulled the curtain back a little further on George Tiller’s late-term abortion business.
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor” Dec. 12, Dickerson described having an abortion at Tiller’s Wichita, Kan., clinic an unspecified number of years ago as a 14 year old, according to LifeNews.com. Her parents took Dickerson when she was 20 weeks pregnant from their Maryland home to the clinic, the country’s best known late-term abortion provider.
Dickerson, who was described by LifeNews as a spokeswoman for an organization that aids post-abortive women, described a process lacking in compassionate care, especially from Tiller.
She only saw Tiller twice, once when he injected saline solution to kill her unborn child and again after she delivered her dead baby.
The five-day process began with a group counseling session that included other women seeking abortions late in their pregnancies, Dickerson said. The staff inserted laminaria, a sea plant that swells when it absorbs fluid, to dilate her cervix for the abortion, she said.
“On the third day, Tiller came in and injected into the amniotic sac saline solution, which suffocated and burned my baby to death,” Dickerson said, according to LifeNews.
On the fifth day, Dickerson and other women were placed on beds in the same room. Staff members checked to see which women were dilated enough to have their abortions completed, she said. When she was ready, Dickerson went into a bathroom and delivered her dead child into a toilet while she leaned on a nurse.
When she was asked what became of her baby’s body, she said, “I have no idea. I left the body of my dead baby in the toilet.”
“This is all very graphic, but I think it’s important that people know what’s going on in our country,” Dickerson said.
Clinic personnel did not explain to her any emotional or physical problems that might occur after her abortion, she said.
“No one ever said anything to me about what was going to happen to me 10 years down the road,” Dickerson said.
“I’m disgusted that women are told they have a choice, yet no one tells us what that choice is or what that choice is going to do to us or to the baby. Very few people, I think, know that this is what happens.
“Abortion is not just an easy solution; it’s not an answer to a problem –- it just creates other problems,” she said.
Problems plagued her post-abortive life, Dickerson said.
“I was traumatized,” she said. “I had lots of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. I had very low self-esteem, was promiscuous; I used drugs; I had eating disorders –- lots of horrible things.”
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has been investigating Tiller’s clinic and a Planned Parenthood center in Overland Park for evidence of possible charges of illegal late-term abortions, rape, child rape, incest and doctors’ refusal to report child sex abuse.
Tiller’s clinic is a destination of women from throughout the United States and other countries who are seeking late-term abortions.
DR. DEATH PAROLED -– Jack Kevorkian, who helped at least 130 people kill themselves, will be eligible to leave prison June 1, according to the Detroit Free Press.
A panel of the Michigan Parole Board voted Dec. 13 to grant parole to the notorious Kevorkian, who became known as Dr. Death and the rather unwelcome face of the assisted-suicide movement. He will gain his freedom after serving eight years and a month for a second-degree murder conviction in a 1998 death.
When Kevorkian gains media attention after his release, people should not be confused about his actions and goals, said bioethics specialist Wesley Smith.
For one thing, Kevorkian does not think assisted suicide is just for the terminally ill, and he has demonstrated so in his writings and activities, Smith said. About 70 percent of the 130 people who died with his aid were not terminally ill, Smith said.
“Most were disabled and depressed,” Smith wrote in an online article for The Weekly Standard. “At least five had no discernible illnesses upon autopsy.”
Kevorkian mutilated one man after his death, cutting out his kidneys, and offered them for transplantation, Smith said. His goal was to be able to experiment on people while they were still alive but being aided in their deaths, Smith said.
Kevorkian is a “quack, a ghoul and a fiend,” Smith wrote.
NO TO SEX SELECTION -– China’s largest province has banned sex-selection abortions to remedy an increasing imbalance in the births of boys and girls. The new regulations in Henan also prohibit the use of ultrasound machines to identify for non-medical reasons the sex of an unborn child, according to a LifeNews.com report based on the Zhengzhou Evening News.
Sex selection is a particular problem in China, which implemented a one-child population control policy in 1973 that continues to be enforced in much of the country. The policy has resulted in reports of forced sterilization, abortion and infanticide. Since 1984, rural couples have been allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl. The Chinese normally favor sons, especially in rural areas, since they are able to support their parents and to continue the family name.
In September, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported China and India are missing an estimated 80 million females largely because of sex-selection abortions.
The gender imbalance grew to 121 boys born for every 100 girls born in 2004, according to a September report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 2000, the ratio was 117 to 100.
The government shut down in May in the Hebei province more than 200 clinics that were disclosing the sex of unborn babies so women could have abortions. The imbalance in Hebei was 134 male births for every 100 female ones, LifeNews reported from a Shanghai Daily article.
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