8/28/2008

Silly anti-abortionists, truth is our friend!

Here is another anti-abortion myth debunked... the "abortion" photo/dead fetus props...
"A considerable number of anti-abortion visuals feature an almost fully developed fetus. Abortions preformed at this stage via hysterotomy or D&Xabortions are rare [approximately 0.08% are performed after 24weeks, when the fetus may be viable - no fetal demise] A July 1992 LIFE magazine article, The Great Divide, reported that Reverend Robert Schenk, member of anti-choice coalition Operation rescue, attended a demonstration outside an abortion clinic in Buffalo, NY, with "Baby Tia", a7-inch, gray-tinted and formaldehyde-soaked dead fetus. In the escalating madness of the crowd, the fetus was dropped onto the sneaker-trodden street. Authorities arrested Schenk and confiscated the fetus, which was taken to a coroner, only to be identified as an approximately 20-week-old stillborn. The article reads, "Many pro-choice supporters in Buffalo are angry about the distance between their reality-what they see in the clinics-and the images the anti-abortionists present as fact. 'What they are showing to the public is a lie,' says Joni Ladowski, a nurse at a nearby clinic, as she unfolds a length of gauze. In the center lies what appears to be a clot the size of a peanut. It is a fetus, nine weeks old.'This is an abortion,' she says."

You know, without misinformation, pseudoscience and/or outright lies, the anti-abortion extremists would have nothing (except their religion/personal belief system) Those of us who live within the realm of reality will always be here to provide accurate information in order to educate the average person about the truth surrounding abortion... the information is there.

More on the misrepresentations and misinformation used by the anti-abortion forces:

"Through the construction of public fetal images as 'baby pictures,' the fetus is visibly separated from its mother and can consequently enter the social imagination alone. It is relatively easy to untangle the symbolic reasons that would encourage fetal autonomy: Embryo photography has personified the fetus by replacing the mother with empty space. As Daniels (1993) has said, 'In much of the promotional literature of the anti-abortion movement, the fetus is visually severed from the mother, presented as an autonomous free-floating being, attached tenuously to the 'mother ship' by the umbilical cord.' or, as Franklin (1991) says, 'The conditions for spectator recognition of and identification with the fetus are achieved on the basis of its separation and individuation from the mother.'"

~Taylor, Janelle. 1998. Image of Contradiction: Obstetrical Ultrasound in American Culture. In Franklin, S. and Ragone, H. (eds.) Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation. University of Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia.

~Daniels, Cynthia R. 1993. At Women's Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

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