This article on the front page of the Cambridge Evening News has me absolutely livid.
Aborted babies burn in hospital incinerator it screams - with a large, yukky picture of an unborn foetus. The Evening News seems to think we should be according every abortion a full state funeral complete with maniacal fire and brimstone preacher and hired in wailers.
What exactly did they they think would happen to aborted foetuses (not babies, there are laws against that sort of thing)? The article concedes that the hospital "cannot afford crematorium fees" but seems hell bent (literally) on making those wrestling with difficult decisions, or those who have had to make them in the past, feel like crap.
One woman who has recently had an abortion said "after the heartache of deciding to have an abortion she was mortified to find the hospital had used the same furnace they burn rubbish in to incinerate her terminated baby." Well thanks for interviewing people at such a difficult time. Perhaps they'd also like to interview parents who've just lost their child about how they feel about the body having an autopsy?
A spokeswoman for the hospital "Following the termination of unwanted pregnancy, foetal tissue is disposed of within the hospital incinerator in a sensitive and respectful manner. The incinerator is cleared of all other material, and no other waste is dealt with at the same time as the foetal tissue. [ie not with the rubbish] The process is organised and witnessed by two members of staff who are specialists in bereavement care." Which seems like a very thorough and sensitive way to deal with the tissue.
For all the pretense in the three pages of articles in the CEN that we should be sensitive on this issue what are they doing other than heaping guilt and heartache onto those who have personal experience of these issues?
Although the article is not explicitly "pro-life" it draws on the clergy and Life spokeswoman Micheala Aston to set the tone of the feature - which essentially covers non-news and whose only purpose is to provoke distaste for those who carry out the abortion procedure.
Let's turn a non-story into a sensational headline shall we? That will sell our grubby little paper!
You can write to the letters page at letters@cambridge-news.co.uk don't forget to include your name and address.
Monday, October 23, 2006
CEN watch: conceding to the anti-abortion lobby
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World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.
3,500 per day / 1.3 million per year in America alone.
50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame.
A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all.
And 2% had medical reasons.
That means a stagering 98% may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.
Bill Clinton once said that abortions should be available , safe and RARE. He is a wise man.
I'd like to see an ultrasound in every clinnic to provide a more informed choice,
before going through with something they may regret.
I'd also like to see effective birth control made available to all who can't afford it.
Freely available birth control, Proper sex education, and a woman's right to decide what happens to her body
I agree with all those things.
But I'm not sure I agree Bill Clinton falls into the category of "wisemen"
I'm 98% pro-life and 2% pro-choice, though the 2% didn't come easy.
Australia (with a population of 20 million) terminated over 100 thousand young people last year. I've done the figures and Australia do more per head.
Abortion has got to be by far the Mother of all holicosts, the most extensive crime against humanity the world has ever seen.
Though it pains me to say it but, there may always be a need for the 2% medical reasons and such, but that's all.
So how do we get the other 98% to be responsible...................
How do we get them to be honest with themselves, about when life begins.
Everyone knows it starts at conception, egg+sperm = human being
Sadly many frefer the odd termination over using birth control, they have all kinds of reasons, each of them selfish.
Then there's the christian impossition,(all a bit talibanish), and their men in high places.(church and state should never entwine) their stance against b/c has only added to the numbers.
Sanity must provale, abortions should remain available and safe to the 2% and the rest need to have a good look at themselves and get their act together.
Have you seen ( HOT OFF THE SHOW! Throw-away babies )
It's a blog by Sharon Hughes?
Well blogged :) - I saw that headline and recall inadvertently rolling my eyes at the vendor.
What sort of moral coward commits that kind of article to paper?
I'm only mildly suprised that the paper didn't somehow try to link it to Asylum Seekers
Hi Sam, thanks.
I note they've changed the title of the article on the web to... wait for it... Outrage over 'babies in incinerator' shock well thank goodness for clear, balanced reporting - Addenbrookes put babies in incinerators do they?
Get your letters in!
Oh and to ausblog - I was anti-abortion until I was about 18 or 19 when my grandmother told me, in graphic detail, about the backstreet abortion she had postwar. That has stayed with me forever.
Our choice is not between whether abortions happen or not but whether they happen in a safe clean manner or a dangerous and unsafe way with added moralism and emotional anguish thrown in the mix.
The women's rights movement has always been correct to say "our bodies, our choice" and decent advice, contraception, health care and all the rest of it will still never be able to replace the woman's right to choose what happens to her body.
I'm with aus blog here on the abortion issue, as you probably know. But I see your point about the story, if abortion must exist then I don't understand why the incineration of dead foetuses should be so shocking.
Yeughh, aborted foetuses, yuck, sick, disgusting, how DARE anyone, let alone a newspaper mention something so vile.
But hang on a minute, aborted foetuses DO get burned, and presumably Jim Jay is happy about that.
So why is his mind in revolt about this perfectly reasonable story?
Or is he more uncomfortable with the mass cull of human foetuses than he dare admit?
Something for Pro-choicers to concider...
If conception is NOT when life begins,and a clump of cells is just that and not a living human being.
Then at least concider this-
Soon after you were conceived you were no more than a clump of cells.
This clump of cells was you at your earliest stage, you had plenty of growing to do but this clump of cells was you none the less. Think about it.
Aren't you glad you were left unhindered to develope further.
Safe inside your mother's womb until you were born.
No I'm not glad.
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