In this op-ed in the NYT By KATE MANNING we see that the Pro-Lie crowd have always been hypocrites claming a reverence for life to hide their obsession for foetuses.
She tells the story of Ann Lohman;
Lohman, who called herself Madame Restell, was an immigrant from Gloucestershire, England, who started out selling “female pills” to “regulate” women. The medicines — mostly herbs, perhaps some opium — promised relief from an “obstructed womb” and “suppressed” menstruation. “Not to be used when *******,” declared one of the many coy ads she placed, “as miscarriage may occur.”
In the event that the pills did not, in fact, induce miscarriage, Lohman offered a procedure in her offices, charging $20 for poor women, and as much as $100 for her increasingly wealthy clientele. She also boarded pregnant ladies, delivered babies, placed infants for adoption and conducted sex education classes.
Reminiscent of the rhetoric of today used against such doctors as Tiller and Morgantaler, invectives were also uttered against Lohman
In a riot organized in 1846 by the newspaper publisher George Dixon, a mob surrounded Lohman’s house and chanted, “Hanging’s too good for her!” and “This house is built on babies’ skulls.”
Even their underhanded methods have not changed
As a special agent of the United States Post Office, Comstock entrapped Lohman by posing as a husband seeking abortion services for a lady. When she provided him with some tablets, he returned and arrested her — accompanied by two reporters. She faced years in jail.
and finally neither has their disregard for born life;
“A bloody ending to a bloody life,” Comstock commented upon hearing of her death.
Dr. Warren Hern too knows of their disregard for life and children.
Even early on in his practice, Hern did not shy away from confrontation. When people protested outside his office, he stood in the parking lot and wrote down their license plates. When they shouted during his speeches, he shouted louder. When a protester hurled a rock through a clinic window, Hern hung up a sign: “This window was broken by those who hate freedom.”
But his fear grew along with his defiance. When people called his mountain home with death threats, he started keeping a rifle by the bed. “You think, ‘Is it OK to go for a hike? What about walking my son to school? What about going skiing?’ ” he said.
In 1988, a gunman fired five shots into his clinic’s waiting room, prompting Hern to install four layers of bulletproof glass and an electronic security system. That year, Hern and his wife of six years divorced, a breakup Hern attributed in part to the stress of his work.
The ever-present threats made it hard to develop relationships, Hern testified at a 1999 trial in which he and other doctors sued an antiabortion group for placing their names and personal information on a “Deadly Dozen” list. “It has made me feel a great sense of personal isolation, and that has been the most painful part of this experience,” Hern said, according to the Associated Press.
Dr. Hern has endured all this because of his commitment to women’s health
As he studied medicine, Hern said he encountered women ill from botched illegal abortions. In the early 1970s, Hern — who had planned to become an epidemiologist — became convinced that the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion would mean nothing if doctors would not perform them.
“I felt doing abortions was the most important thing I could do with my life,” he said.
When Hern performed his first abortion, on a 17-year-old girl, he later wrote, he cried with a sense of relief because he had made a difference in her future.
The Pro-Lie’rs claim that there is no counselling that abortion are forced on women and that doctors take the money anyway yet this story shows the truth, note that he found the forcing of an abortion “disturbing”;
Hern recalled a disturbing situation his staff encountered 15 years ago during the counseling phase. The parents of a 14-year-old girl wanted her to terminate her pregnancy. The girl did not. As she was filling out a form, she wrote, “I think you should all be killed.”
The clinic manager called in Hern and, after more discussion, the doctor refused to perform the abortion. He has no idea what the family decided to do
There is no middle ground, no debate, no discourse that could be had with people whose blatant disregard for both life and truth is so deeply embedded that it has persisted across decades and nearly centuries.
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