Pro-life: well sort of
by digby
This is where these draconian anti-abortion laws are taking us:
A pregnant 16-year-old in the Dominican Republic died from complications of leukemia, according to CNN. The young woman was forced to wait nearly three weeks to begin chemotherapy to treat her disease as hospital officials initially refused to treat her fearing it could terminate her pregnancy. In the end she lost her life and the pregnancy, and may have died because of the delay in her treatment.
Under an amendment to the Dominican Republic's constitution which declares that "life begins at conception," abortion is banned, effectively for any reason. The girl's leukemia was diagnosed when she was just nine weeks pregnant.
Dominican women's health advocates told RH Reality Check this afternoon that while the doctors and the state refused to allow the girl treatment for leukemia, they made her undergo "ultrasounds to show that the baby was healthy and for her to see it moving."
They went on to give the chemo at the end of the first trimester but refused the abortion. The girl miscarried, started hemorrhaging and they couldn't stop it. So she died.
But that could never happen here, right? Well, according to the "personhood" zealots, it certainly could:
"There are no exceptions in Personhood USA’s presidential pledge because there are no situations where it becomes necessary to dismember a baby,” said Jennifer Mason, spokesperson for Personhood USA, in a January press release.
"With the passage of federal or state personhood amendments, recognizing the personhood rights of both mother and child, women will still of course have access to life-saving treatments and medical care," Mason continued. "Procedures to treat both mom and baby can potentially lead to happier outcomes for both patients, whereas abortion procedures, which are dangerous as it stands already, intentionally kill a child."
They would have done exactly what those Dominican doctors did.
And by the way, our good pal Paul Ryan sponsored the federal personhood amendment. Romney supports it too. This is the new mainstream Republican position.
Update: Jesus, oh Jesus can we do away with this literalist bullshit that's coming out of the so-called fact checkers?
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