Abortions too easy

I was saddened to read that “Planned Parenthood dedicates (its) new clinic” (Spokesman-Review, June 16, 2018) to the provision of surgical abortions up to eighteen weeks into pregnancy and medication abortions up to ten weeks into pregnancy. My how they’ve changed. They wouldn’t (or couldn’t) even refer me to an abortion clinic in 1982. It’s far too easy to obtain a home pregnancy test and have an abortion very early on to even consider an abortion of either type past six or eight weeks into pregnancy, or at the very latest, before movement is first detected. I detected movement at nine or ten weeks into my first pregnancy. And there should be a hearing before any abortion is performed.

As for medication abortions as late as ten weeks into pregnancy, when my mother was pregnant in 1944, she was able to obtain from a pharmacist without a doctor’s prescription a pill said to induce miscarriage if taken early enough. So she took it at about seven weeks into pregnancy. It didn’t work, and the baby boy was born at full term with breathing difficulties and died three days later. As for surgical abortions performed as late as halfway into pregnancy, I’m even sadder at the thought of doctors who commit infanticide. And I’m still sadder yet at the possibility of a woman abortionist. To paraphrase from an old folk song from the sixties and earlier, where have all the babies gone? When will they ever learn?

Judith Maibie

Spokane