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Woman denied abortion dies in hospital
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/1114/1224326575203.html
Synopsis: A 31-year-old woman was 17 weeks pregnant when she went into the hospital with back pain and was found to be miscarrying. She asked several times over 3 days that they medically terminate the pregnancy and was denied. Once the fetal heartbeat stopped, they removed the dead fetus. The mother later died of an infection.
It is stories like this why I will always remain pro-choice. The woman was fully dilated and leaking amniotic fluid. There was zero chance the baby was surviving. Instead of assisting medically, they let the woman suffer and then die herself. Now her husband is without a wife and a child. Had they terminated, she may have had a chance at survival.
Re: Woman denied abortion dies in hospital
Wow! We agree on something!
This just goes to show that abortion is not black or white. I'm sure the doctor's didn't realize she would die of infection, but if her wishes had been respected then she would still be here today.
This.
Why in the world, when it was clear the baby would not survive and she was clearly miscarrying would they not intervene medically? That is asinine.
Why in the world when its clear that someone is not going to survive and is clearly suffering would they not allow euthanasia? Some people just don't want to interfere with "God's plan."
In cases like this one, I can actually image a lot of pro-lifers arguing that as long as there was a fetal heartbeat maybe there could have been a miracle..
I do believe in God, but clearly heartbeat or not, at 17 weeks, that baby would not/could not survive.
I meant survive in utero - like maybe she wouldn't deliver. I'm not arguing that, but I could see some people.
*Double Post Deleted*
I'm about as extreme pro-life as a person can be, and I'm appalled at this story, the way this situation was handled, and the horrible loss of this young woman.
You are definitely not as pro-life as they come then, because Arizona has banned any abortion past 18 weeks. If this case happened in AZ, a few days later - then the outcome would have been the same. The AZ law is being challenged, but my point is that there are many in the US that would have let this unfold the same way.
I'm not sure this is true. The law states
EXCEPT IN A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, A PERSON SHALL NOT KNOWINGLY PERFORM, INDUCE OR ATTEMPT TO PERFORM OR INDUCE AN ABORTION ON A PREGNANT WOMAN IF THE PROBABLE GESTATIONAL AGE OF HER UNBORN CHILD HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO BE AT LEAST TWENTY WEEKS.
Medical Emergency is vaguely defined as
"a condition that, on the basis of the physician's good faith clinical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of a pregnant woman as to necessitate the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death or for which a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.
So, I don't think it's really clear that this would have happened in AZ. Also, the whole counting the gestational age by date of last menstrual period confuses me. Any pregnancy I've ever had, gest. age has been determined by LMP. I'm assuming the lady in this article was 17 weeks by LMP (could be wrong), so we're not talking about a difference of a few days. Not that that makes it any better.
(Sorry, don't know how to get back to black text...)
ETA: Source http://azleg.gov/DocumentsForBill.asp?Bill_Number=2036&Session_Id=107&image.x=0&image.y=0
The doctors in this case did not know she was going to develop septicemia let alone die if they did not listen to her wishes the first time around, and its up to the discretion of the doctor, so I don't see why you think the AZ law would have been automatically waived.
I don't know why you assume that she miscalculated the date of her own pregnancy and all news outlets are citing the inaccurate date rather than the statements they were given by the hospital which presumably used a medically accurate date. But ok.
I did not say I thought that the AZ law would be waived, just that it's not as clear as you made it sound. I can't say for sure that this wouldn't happen in AZ, but I don't think you can say for sure that it would based on the wording in that law. ETA: I also was referring to the baby miscarrying and the woman being in labor being the medical emergency in question. Not the septicemia, I understand that the doctors didn't know that was the case.
I also don't know where you got that I think she miscalculated the date of her pregnancy. The article says she was 17 weeks pregnant. I'm assuming that's 17 weeks from LMP, which is how gestational age is determined in every pregnancy I've ever heard of. The AZ law outlaws abortion after 20 weeks, by LMP, which you converted to 18 weeks based on conception, to say that if this happened in AZ "A few days later...". All I'm saying is that if she was 17 weeks pregnant by LMP, she was not "a few days" from 20 weeks pregnant in AZ. Make sense?
This is a perfect instance in which a termination should have been done to save the mother's life. Fail here. She needed it and didn't get it.
This is an instance in which the pro-life side opts for an abortion to save a mother's life and the procedure is medically necessary. The baby was too little to even have a remote chance of survivial outside the womb AND the pregnancy was ending itself anyway naturally. This lady did not need to die!!!
This is not really the case. The doctors did not know the mother's life was in danger until it was too late. So that law and that thinking sadly do not apply to this situation.
Pumpkin, I read somewhere that her water broke? Now, I am not a doctor but at 17 weeks wouldn't that compromise the whole pregnancy? I would think that if her water broke the doctors should have known there would be an increased riof infection.
I was in labor 30 hours with my DS and I remember the doctor being very concerned when my water broke because she wanted to make sure I delivered soon after that happened.
The article said amniotic fluid was leaking, which I don't think carries the same risk of infection as the water breaking - not an expert though...
I am in no way trying to defend the doctor here, just stating that I don't think they realized the mother's life was in danger, so having laws that would protect the life of the mother would not have saved her.
Well I still think this shows how dangerous it can be when the government inserts itself between a doctor and his/her patient.
My heart breaks for this family, this is a senseless loss.
Leaking amniotic fluid = your water breaking. So even if it is leaking slowly it means your membranes have ruptured and there is a risk of infection. In fact an infection is one of the main causes of membranes rupturing early so I'd hope that would be something the doctors were monitoring and even treating with antibiotics.
This article obviously doesn't have a lot of information about how closely the doctor's were assessing HER health. Or whether they were just waiting around to see if she ended up miscarrying on her own. But if a woman comes in with ruptured membranes, she is in extreme pain, and the doctors go by a wait-and-see approach? Negligence at best.
This most definitely is a senseless loss. And a prime example why "outlawing abortion except in the case of mother's health" doesn't work.
Unless you're an ignorant old white man politician.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/19/gop-candidate-says-life-exception-a-tool-for-abortions/
(I've only been on intermittently the last couple weeks, sorry if this got posted already... but it's still making me seethe days after reading it)
"This is an issue that opponents of life throw out there to make us look unreasonable," Walsh said. "There's no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing, with advances in science and technology. Health of the mother has been, has become a tool for abortions any time under any reason." (Joe Walsh, a Republican rep from IL who happily just lost his reelection bid)
Dontcha just love all the doctors out there who apparently abandoned their careers to run for office instead?
I still don't think a wait-and-see approach is all that uncommon with an amniotic leak at 17 weeks, but we're getting of track here.
Back on topic, I disagree that this is a "prime example why "outlawing abortion except in the case of mother's health" doesn't work."
Such a statement implies that proponants of such a law would think that the right decision was made in this situation, and I don't think you'll find one that would. No one who calls themselves an advocate for life would be able to make a case that supports the death of this woman.
In my opinion, though medically defined as such, (as I think all miscarriages are, at least before a certain gest. age), terminating this pregnancy would not have been an abortion. The baby had 0 chance of survival, there is not a law I would want to make that would outlaw a procedure to speed along the inevitable. The failure here is with the hospital policy, or whatever the doctor based his decision on that did not allow for such a procedure.
I would agree that "wait and see" isn't uncommon if the patient isn't in extreme pain. But it sounds like there were signs that something more serious was going on that necessitated more care.
But I don't think my statement implies that proponents of such a law think the right decision was made. I completely agree that only an extreme few think the doctors made the right decision. My reason for saying it doesn't work is this is a case in point showing how dangerous it can be to have a grey area where it is up to the doctor to determine when a patient's life is at risk. Is it only if the patient has a 50/50 chance of living? Or 60/40? Or what if the condition isn't fatal but would result in paralysis or some other life changing situation for the mother. Doctors who are pro-life may have a much higher threshold a patient has to meet to be allowed an abortion.