From the e-mail.

To me from another blogger:

Blogger: There was a reason Julia asked you those questions about Cecily’s situation– it’s because compassion can’t be abstract. Can you say, sight unseen, that every woman getting to the hospital in severe HELLP is stable enough for c-section or induction?

Me: I can’t say that any more than you can say that every woman getting into the hospital is stable enough to have their cervix surgically dilated and then their pregnancy either evacuated or extracted. When you are that critical there are no guarantees.

Blogger: I am glad to see you run smack into the thing most of us have been trying very hard to get through– when there are no guarantees and a woman’s life in the balance, or even the quality of her life, or, say, the likelihood she will be able to have children in the future, the only people I want making recommendations are the doctors. And I sure don’t want the decision to be pre-made by any number of lawyers and politicians. And yes, I do think it’s a crime and it’s unconscionable even if one woman gets hurt as a result of this law. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure it will be a lot more than one.

Which kind of brings me back to my original questions on the partial birth abortion. If there are no guarantees, then how can all of these pro-abortion pronponants keep saying that the partial birth abortion (D&E) is lifesaving? Where is the guarantee that it absolutely will save the life of the mother each and every time it is used, especially when by their own statistics it is used so rarely that I wonder how anyone could have developed anywhere near the proficiency at it that average OB/GYN has with C-section! What about the associated risks of infection, damage to the cervix, uterus or other structures! The way they make it sound we have finally reached panacea folks- a risk free, infection free, blood-loss free procedure with no side effects, risks or potential complications!

I also don’t get this complete trust of the medical community where standard of care in just regular childbirth has been driven by fear of malpractice and compensation rates! Which brings me to another question, if the D&E is coded and reimbursed at a lesser rate than the Cesarean, I wonder how that will affect the recommendations of the doctors?

The rest is just worth posting for the sake of documentation:
I can only say that you definitely have a funny way of expressing empathy and that I sincerely hope that I never get so callous as to be that flippant about the death of another woman’s child. Or at least, that if I ever do, I can muster enough grace for an actual apology.

Yea that’s me. Callous and flippant.

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