Science for sociopaths
by digby
I think the worst part of this horrible story is that these blithering idiots use the word "science" to bolster their hideous cruelty. It's bad enough that they forced this woman to give birth to her dying child out of insane zealotry, but that they have the utter gall to call the medical diagnosis into question is almost too much to take.
Danielle Deaver was 22 weeks pregnant when her water broke and doctors gave her a devastating prognosis: With undeveloped lungs, the baby likely would never survive outside the womb, and because all the amniotic fluid had drained, the tiny growing fetus slowly would be crushed by the uterus walls.
"What we learned from the perinatologist was that because there was no cushion, she couldn't move her arms and legs because of contractures," said Deaver, a 34-year-old nurse from Grand Isle, Neb. "And her face and head would be deformed because the uterus pushed down so hard."
Just one month earlier, Nebraska had enacted the nation's first fetal pain legislation, banning abortions after 20 weeks gestation. So the Deavers had to wait more than a week to deliver baby Elizabeth, who died after just 15 minutes.
"They could do nothing to make it better but tell us to wait, which made it worse," Danielle Deaver said. "Every time I felt movement, I was terrified she was hurting and trying to push the uterus away from her."
Horrifying, right? Well, not according to this awful person from Oklahoma, who knows better:
Taking the lead from Nebraska this week, the Oklahoma House of Representatives voted 94 to 2 to similarly ban abortion later than 20 weeks of gestation in what it called the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act." Bill 1888 will go on to the state Senate.
"It's a very sad situation all around," said Rep. Pam Peterson, who sponsored the Oklahoma bill. "It's about the humanness. These unborn babies are in excruciating pain in the abortion process at 20 weeks."We know they feel pain early on -- there is medical evidence."
She also said that the fact that Deaver's baby was reported by her mother as "perfect and beautiful in her arms" showed the "discrepancy" in the medical advice she was given that the skull would have been crushed.
"Thirty-eight years ago when Roe v. Wade passed, we didn't have the scientific evidence, but now this bill has caught up with the science," said Peterson. "Back in 1973, we were told they were a clump of cells and we didn't know the difference. Now we do fetal surgery and give anesthetics.
Keep in mind that this woman is a complete idiot and her scientific misinformation is propaganda. But worse than that is the fact that she would second guess real doctors about this diagnosis --- as well as the mother who was terrified that she was causing the terminally ill fetus pain! Evidently, the only thing this terrible woman from Oklahoma believes causes fetal pain is abortion.
Literally, nothing matters but forcing women to go through childbirth even if, according to their own beliefs, the fetus could be in terrible pain until such time as the woman delivers the dying child. How sick and twisted can these people get?
Lucky for them their fetal pain propaganda isn't true. But if any of their religious beliefs are true, they're still going to hell for what they're putting these families through.
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