Forced abortion in Gosnell's clinic - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15320731
This is an account of a forced abortion. It's not as uncommon as many people might think.


Robyn Reid was just 15 years old when a doctor fought her down onto a table, ripped off her clothes, tied her arms and legs with restraints and forced her to undergo an abortion against her will.

It was January 31, 1996, and the teenager had spent the last three months hiding her pregnancy from her grandparents as she prepared for a new life raising her baby.

When they found out, Robyn's grandmother had driven her from their home in New Jersey to a notorious west Philadelphia clinic nicknamed "Club Abortion".

"I was determined to keep the baby," Robyn, now 40, tells The Independent.

"My plan was to go to the doctor and refuse to have the abortion as I thought 'no one can make me.' My 15-year-old brain thought there wasn’t even a chance that would happen to me.

"Inside the clinic, I remember being in the room and the doctor walked in and said: 'Why aren’t you undressed?' When I told him 'I'm not having an abortion', he shouted: 'I don't have time for this s(*)(*)(*).'

"He then walked out of the room and came back in with my grandmother... Then he started pulling my clothes off."

Robyn, a small 90-pound teenager, fought with all her strength.

"I was fighting him as he pulled my clothes off and held me down," she says.

"He was tying my arms down with straps and, then every time he tied my legs down, I managed to pull my arms free. It went on and on like that -- it was a physical fight."

In the end, she could fight no more.

"He overpowered me to the point that I could no longer move. I remember looking up at the light and saying to myself: 'Just don’t go to sleep'. Then he gave me a needle," she says.

"The next thing I knew, I woke up 12 hours later and I was back home in New Jersey and was no longer pregnant."

Sobbing, she adds: "I'll never forget that day."

More than 14 more years would pass before the full truth of Kermit Gosnell's clinic was finally exposed to the world.​

Kermit Gosnell butchered women and babies for decades. | The Independent


If they would abort an unborn developing baby at 3 months, and doing so is just a routine job for them, why do you think they would have any big qualms about doing it when the teenage mother doesn't want it?

This isn't extremely uncommon in many parts of the U.S., the families of young teenage girls pressuring, coercing, and in some cases literally forcing the girls to have their pregnancy terminated.

In some cases, the person forcing the girl to get an abortion might not be related to her. It could be her older aged boyfriend. Or a stepfather who is molesting her, wanting to make sure there is an abortion to hide the evidence of the incest. Some suspect that some of these teens and young women may be being sex trafficked, too naive or in too much fear to speak up for help. Some may not be able to because they do not speak English, a situation that is not so unusual as some might think, with the huge amount of immigration, undocumented migrants, and migrant 'asylum seekers' who have come to the U.S. in recent years.

While some might try to argue that Gosnell's clinic was unusually and exceptionally horrific, this does happen in many other clinics across the nation. There are many women who have stories of being forced to get abortions when they were younger. Usually it is the mother who brings the girl in and then female abortion workers hold the girl down and administer a sedative to calm the patient and stop her from resisting. Most commonly the girls in these situations are around 15 years old, sometimes 14 or 16.

When the abortionist comes in to do the procedure, the patient has already been "dealt with".
What a lot of people may not understand is there is usually no or very little interaction between the abortion doctor and patients in these clinics. The patients is prepared by other abortion worker assistants, and only after the patient is dressed down, on the table and in stirrups, does the doctor come into the room. Then he usually just gets immediately straight to work without saying anything to the patient, and might only be in the room for 5 minutes, doing the abortion during that entire time. Most of the time the patient never sees the doctor before until literally 2 seconds before he begins the procedure.


By the way, I know someone who used to live in New Jersey in the 70s and early 80s and I remember him mentioning that there were a lot of "crooked abortion doctors" there. (Though this story involves the girl being sent right across the state border to Philadelphia, which could have been less than a half hour away)
#15320743
That's awful. Of course, it's no reason to deny an abortion to any woman who wants one.

It's like euthanizing someone who doesn't want to die. Horrific, but certainly no reason not to kill someone who does.
#15324585
Pewty wrote:That's awful. Of course, it's no reason to deny an abortion to any woman who wants one.

Is it really so horrible to have forced abortion if there is truly no one inside of there and it is really that simple?

The existence of the issue of abortion without the woman's consent sort of forces us to admit and see that there is sort of another life at stake besides just the woman's.

I mean, after all, the intrinsic value of the fetus isn't merely based only on the woman's feelings about whether she wants it.
(If that were the case, she could just try again to have a baby later, couldn't she?)
#15324586
Another interesting issue is it's not altogether clear that this forced abortion was actually against the law (at least not directly and plainly).
Someone please correct me if I'm in error, but from what I've been able to research, it seems like the legality of medical procedures on children comes down to whether the doctor had the consent of a parent.

(And while there are laws in place in many states that can allow a child to get an abortion without the consent of a parent, in certain situations, there do not seem to be any specific laws protecting her against being given an abortion against her will)


You can even see this thread where a judge ordered that a father should be allowed to get his 4 year old son circumcised even though the mother disagreed:
mother threatened with jail if she did not sign consent for child to be circumcised (in 'Law, Justice, Crime & Punishment', 19 Oct 2020 )
#15324709
Puffer Fish wrote:Is it really so horrible to have forced abortion if there is truly no one inside of there and it is really that simple?

The existence of the issue of abortion without the woman's consent sort of forces us to admit and see that there is sort of another life at stake besides just the woman's.

I mean, after all, the intrinsic value of the fetus isn't merely based only on the woman's feelings about whether she wants it.
(If that were the case, she could just try again to have a baby later, couldn't she?)


The only thing that matters is the woman's choice in the issue.
#15324712
Pewty wrote:The only thing that matters is the woman's choice in the issue.

In other words, if there's a forced abortion, the only reason you think it matters is the woman's choice has been denied.

That it is all about her.

I think instinctually, we all have a feeling that just isn't true.

It seems like I'm backing you into a corner and you're being forced to embrace a logically absurd position.
#15324725
Puffer Fish wrote:In other words, if there's a forced abortion, the only reason you think it matters is the woman's choice has been denied.

That it is all about her.

I think instinctually, we all have a feeling that just isn't true.

It seems like I'm backing you into a corner and you're being forced to embrace a logically absurd position.


No.

It really is that simple.
#15324731
Puffer Fish wrote:In other words, if there's a forced abortion, the only reason you think it matters is the woman's choice has been denied.

That it is all about her.

I think instinctually, we all have a feeling that just isn't true.

It seems like I'm backing you into a corner and you're being forced to embrace a logically absurd position.


Now you're getting it! It's all about her!

What corner?
#15325205
If it's really all only about her, then making her uterus empty out its contents when she isn't pregnant would be just as much of an offense against her as making her uterus empty out its contents when there is a developing baby in there.

Obviously that is not the case.
#15325237
Puffer Fish wrote:If it's really all only about her, then making her uterus empty out its contents when she isn't pregnant would be just as much of an offense against her as making her uterus empty out its contents when there is a developing baby in there.

Obviously that is not the case.


What?

Doing anything to anyone's uterus without their consent would be wrong. Not allowing them to do something to their uterus if they wanted to would also be wrong. The degree would depend on the woman, and what she wants.
#15325266
Puffer Fish wrote:We all know a man who slips an abortion pill to a woman without her consent will be punished far more if she is pregnant, than if she isn't.


Like I said, the degree would depend on the woman.

You seem to be of the opinion that if one woman dares to have an abortion, another woman better not complain if someone ends her planned pregnancy.

As I am a proponent of assisted suicide, I suppose I should be careful a doctor doesn't kill me the next time I'm going past a clinic.
#15325369
Puffer Fish wrote:If it's really all only about her, then making her uterus empty out its contents when she isn't pregnant would be just as much of an offense against her as making her uterus empty out its contents when there is a developing baby in there.

Obviously that is not the case.


That is exactly the case.
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