If I understand David Little’s letter, he is correct that there are no laws for men, such as, A Man’s Right to Know, which ensures informed consent prior to any medical procedure.
Or, a physician-only requirement for men, which requires that only doctors perform surgery, and while the physician can perform outpatient surgery in his office, he must have admitting privileges in a local hospital should there be complications resulting from the surgery.
In David’s opinion, these laws for women are intrusive, abusive, and an invasion of a woman’s privacy, which no man would stand for when he needed a medical procedure. His closing statement, “that men know what is best for females regarding abortion” seems to be an opinion that when men write or speak out on this subject, they are also being intrusive, abusive, and invading a woman’s privacy.
I will speak for the silent majority of women and their families who must deal with abortion in their lives – the poor. Pregnancy is most often dealt with by abortifacients obtained from their understanding pharmacist or midwife in the poor sections of a community.
The worldwide financial collapse of 1929 caused the number of poor in our country to increase from 5 percent to 25 percent, and lasted for the next 10 years. It was only corrected by the war, which brought back full employment to our nation. My mother “hid me under her apron” until I was too far along to be aborted by medicines. What a terrible choice for a woman and family to be forced to make: feed your existing children by sacrificing your unborn to provide for your family and deal with whatever complications resulted from an abortion.
Ten years of medical abortions destroyed my mother’s health, as it did for many of my mother’s friends. Divorce became common, with abuse being most commonly cited, code for “too many abortions.” As my aunts explained to me, my father and uncle (the druggist) were good men and they thought they were doing the right thing. But you cannot kill a woman’s unborn children and not expect there to be problems.
It is now the 1990s; I am a sidewalk counselor in front of the abortion clinic by the bus stop. Two blocks away is the crisis pregnancy center to help the poor who want to keep their unborn child. Five miles away is our city’s only crisis pregnancy center next to a hospital to help the poor with post-abortion medical problems.
The abortion clinics (8) posted fliers in the poor section of our community offering free pregnancy tests with support and services for pregnant women. The fliers included a statement that the clinic’s abortions were safer than giving birth. Unfortunately for the pregnant poor, the only “support and services” provided by these clinics was abortion.
During my morning watches, I became acquainted with the clinic’s nurses who arrived by bus. One day Helen arrived and then came back out of the clinic to thank me and the other counselors for taking the poor to our crisis medical center. She said that she could no longer do the things required by her employers. Doing abortion procedures while the doctor played golf or was home sick, or telling the women to go home and take two aspirins when medical help was needed due to complications arising from the abortion procedure.
Another morning David approached me and asked for help for his wife – “three days ago, we came to this clinic, and the nurse took my wife into another room; an hour later, she came out and said let’s go home. What kind of help can they give us? I asked my wife – let’s just go home, she replied. Last night she told me she was leaving me, that she hated herself, and that she had killed our baby!”
From three years of sidewalk counseling, I can recount hundreds of examples of abuse of the poor and other women experiencing crisis pregnancies. I am thankful that Minnesota has laws protecting the poor, or ignorant, or innocent, women and their families from the misinformation and abuses practiced by the abortion clinics of the 1990s.
Today there are 12 abortion clinics and over 40 “care clinics” in Minnesota. These clinics offer help and support to women and families experiencing crisis pregnancies or complications from abortions.
These care centers operate on donations with mostly unpaid volunteers. Volunteers are often women whose personal experiences with crisis pregnancies make them understanding, caring, and the best-equipped people to help those in need. I am most thankful and grateful for these dedicated women.
Chuck Flickinger – Hovland
Leave a Reply