The Talibangelists now running the Republican Party are so strictly dogmatic that they would ban abortions even if the procedure was to remove a dead fetus which threatened the life of the mother carrying it.
This is not a hypothetical as I know at least one woman that had to have this procedure after the twins she was carrying died in utero. Dr. George Tiller headed one of the three practices left in the United States that still performed this kind of procedure and now he is gone...
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Let me give you some background information about our friend's situation. After many years of trying to conceive, our friend proudly told us she was pregnant with twins. She decided to travel early in her third trimester to visit a family member living on the West Coast.
Our friend began to experience complications and immediately went to see an OB/GYN — not an abortion doctor as the Talibangelists have labeled physicians. An ultrasound revealed that her amniotic fluid had leaked and neither fetus had a heart beat.
Do you remember when John McCain mocked the health of the mother exceptions during last fall's Presidential Debate?
Well this was a real life example where the mother was at risk of death for carrying two dead fetuses to term because of the rigid adherence to dogma which is forced upon people who don't share the same extremist religious views. Had our friend not been able to legally have an abortion, she wouldn't be here today and she wouldn't be the mother of three beautiful children all born after this procedure.
Josh Marshall, at TPM, discussed McCain's cavalier attitude, as he was live-blogging the debate:
10:26 PM ... McCain interrupts a lot.
10:27 PM ... Also laughs at his own sarcastic comments a lot.
10:28 PM ... I've been thinking about this and we're pulling the video. But the part of the debate where Sen. McCain seemed to mock the issue of a woman's health was weird and ... well, kind of disgusting. It's hard for me to see how's he seriously pushing for the women's vote.
Here's what TPM Reader PT had to say: "I haven't seen this on the TPM front-page liveblog, but it deserves attention. McCain's mocking of a mother's health during the abortion exchange was easily his low point tonight, even if the moment was too fleeting to have a substantial impact. He called the idea of a mother's health exemption extreme. But that's not all. If you were watching closely, you would've heard John McCain saying "health" in a mocking tone, and suggesting that Obama's support for a mother's health was nothing more than, to put it bluntly, smooth-talking bullshit. Stunning and appalling."(my emphasis)
Mind you this is the same John McCain that sidestepped the abortion issue when reporters hypothetically asked what he would do during the 2000 primaries should his daughter Meaghan get pregnant.
McCain actually had a common sense answer, which he later disavowed, but even his original answer is troubling because it reeks of IOKIYARism when he said he would leave the choice up to her. This is no different than teenage mother Bristol Palin lecturing teens on the virtues of abstinence which she obviously did not adhere to.
Cut ahead eight years, and McCain tacked so far to the right that he almost collided with the S.S. Alan Keyes. This was George Bush style political thought as abortion like everything else was boiled down to black and white positions and there was no room for even minute shades of grey.
So candidate McCain in 2000 morphed into an extreme right winger when he became Presidential nominee of the Talibangelist, er Republican Party as his contempt for women was noted by the following reader on TPM the evening of that debate.
TPM Reader TC also didn't think much of McCain's attitude toward a health of the mother exception: "Regarding John McCain's 'health of the Mother' comment... "In 2001, I was five months pregnant and was admitted to a small Catholic hospital with a uterine infection. My condition quickly deteriorated to a condition known as Sepsis. Ultrasound determined "fetal demise" thus uterine "evacuation" was necessary. While being prepped for the O.R., my heart stopped, I developed pulmonary effusion and flat-lined. I awoke one week later on life support. I'm only sharing this with you because had the infection not affected my pregnancy, McCain suggests the protocol for care may have been quite different. There are times when the health of the Mother must be considered. If McCain thinks it foolish, ask my husband and two sons what they think. We will never scoff at anyone in a similar situation."
It is ironic that conservatives fail to realize that taking the decision out of the hands of the patient and the doctor is antithetical to the conservative philosophy of less or no government interference.
What is even worse about these decisions made on faith is that the right wingers who generally reject science are trying to use it as a justification for killing an actual human. It is as if they love the fetus; but hate the person. The abstract concept of a fetus trumps everything for these extremists. Literally nothing else matters, and the problem with that thinking is that sooner or later you get people like Eric Rudolph, John Salvi, James Kopp, and the suspect accused of killing Dr. George Tiller.