You'd think somebody would have tracked down baby Roe, that it would be a big story. Every now and then someone like Montel will have a show featuring children who survived an abortion. That'll sober you up.

As a former sidewalk counsoler, I can say that sadly, saline abortions are still quite common, as they are considered cheaper than the other procedures. However, it is a painful thing for both the mother and the baby. If you want a scary book to read, try Lime 5. It is a brutal inside look at the abortion industry. Or check back with me in about three years, when I get my book finished. I'll send you an autographed copy for free, FrankJ.

In 1970 she gave birth to the child she would later come to know only as "Baby Roe", and the infant was placed for adoption.

http://www.nswrtl.org.au/alm/0600alm/page5.htm

That's about all anybody says about him.

I just hope he's happy and successful. And that he's accomplishing something great, like liberating a country or finding a cure for cancer.

Frank, i have my laptop sitting on my big pregnant belly (babies like warm laptops) and wanted to let you know that i am enjoying your posts today. Thanks for tossing out interesting questions and allowing the discussions.

Heidi

Found the following article, which I cut and pasted below from this link, regarding Norma's three pregnancies:
http://www.backlash.com/content/gender/1995/5-may95/page13.html

Thanks to McCorvey, there is no longer a stigma attached to illegitimacy and women throughout the world are able to exercise complete control over their bodies with complete disregard for a men's wishes. These girls are now entitled to housing, food, child care, transportation, medical care and even job-training.

When Norma was 16, she was a high-school drop-out, but she was married. While she was pregnant, she attempted to commit suicide, but fortunately, she failed. For a while afterward, she sold drugs for a living, tended bar in gay hangouts and worked as a carnival barker. But, perhaps the most interesting and compelling aspect of all of about her life is that she is a self-acknowledged lesbian.

The "tragic" history of her three pregnancies are as follows:

Baby No. 1: Product of her marriage to a man who accused her of infidelity upon hearing the news that she was pregnant. The baby was born on May 25, 1965 and the baby, named Cheryl, was raised by her mother.

Baby No. 2: The result, one year later, of a brief relationship with a hospital orderly named ''Joe,'' who claimed the baby upon delivery. Without even learning the child's sex, Norma M. took to the road. 'The whereabouts of 'Joe'' and child are unknown.

Baby No 3: She had claimed that this pregnancy was the result of a rape to have the Supreme Court consider her case. The truth, however, is that it was the result of an affair with a professional gambler. The child was born in 1970, three years before the landmark Supreme Court decision. The baby was adopted at birth.

I see someone else shares my perspective on abortion (and I do mean "perspective.") I tend to think that the views on abortion will shift pretty heavily against it in the near future as those of us who were eligible for the procedure come of age. (I'm a 1975 myself.)

I'm not even sure who would know who the kid is; one would hope that the people who arranged the adoption would have locked the identity down tight. Still, can you imagine what would happen if the child that triggered the lawsuit stepped in front of a mike and said, "I didn't ask for any of this"? What if she said, "I don't like people who tried to make me into a 'thing' so they could kill me"?

Food for thought....

I have a particularily tragic role like that. I am an adopted child, born to a Navy Corpsman in 1982. I was adopted at two days old. However, some background leading up to my adoption. I was not my natural mothers first child. She had two previous pregnancies, both aborted. She decided to keep me after extensive thinking/counseling, etc. apparently. How messed up is that? Your mother had to decide to not kill you, to let you live. I would not be here today if she had gone through with it, taken what was percieved as the easy way out. Now I am about to be commissioned as an Officer of Marines with the power of life and death over many. What a change that is, from being killed by your own mother to this. The potential wasted by abortions is tremendous. Some one once asked Mother Teresa if she thought AIDs might ever be cured. She responded that perhaps it might, but perhaps the person to find this cure had been aborted. I could go on and on about this, but it is obviously very dear to me. I was not preparing to fight the GWOT, I think I know what my cause would be.

That article needs a disclaimer. As I sit here with my two-year on my lap, halfway through my second pregnancy, I can't tell you how horrified I was by the descriptions of abortion. I have always been against abortion because I do think it is murder, but I have never really thought about how they carry it out. We went in for our ultrasound last week and when you see that, there is no way to deny that that is a living, growing baby. I am completely horrified at the thought of anyone physically pulling a baby apart (I can't call it a fetus, it's a baby) or poisoning it with a saline solution, let alone, imaginging it happening to my baby.

I'm in Washington for the March for Life. Norma McCorvey spoke to us before the march started. She has converted to Catholicism, and is actively fighting to have Roe v. Wade overturned. God bless her.

So I guess I'm maybe a little naive because I've never really thought about the abortion process before and I couldn't believe that it was really so awful. So I decided to do a little more research on the subject. I guess I was afraid to know how bad it really is. I just cannot understand how people can make the choice to have an abortion or how people can actually perform them. I don't think that I want to understand - it's just too horrific to comtemplate. Sooner or later, people will be forced to face the consequences of their actions and it's too bad they don't understand how steep that cost will be.

I saw a newsbrief in my local paper today taken from the following story:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/religion/article/0,1299,DRMN_61_3493185,00.html
Although the story doesnt say it, the brief said that the protesters were calling the people at the church "grave robbers". Granted we're dealing with lefties whose logic is as twisted as a Twizzler most of the time, but the best I can come up with is that pro-lifers are robbing graves of the bodies of the dead by encouraging them to be allowed to live. Anyone have any further thoughts about how pro-lifers are "grave-robbers"? I especially would like to hear the response from the mouths of some of you DU trolls who come here to tell us how stupid we are.

I can appreciate both sides of this debate, but please, stop saying things like "maybe the person who would have cured AIDS was aborted". Maybe so. Maybe also the next Hitler, or Jeffrey Dahmer. Keep arguments to something sane, not something completely undeterminable and pointless.

I guess I came in just under the wire. I was the second child. My father left when my mother was pregnant with me. She was left trying to raise a two year old daughter alone while pregnant with me. Now my mother is quite the 'take the easy route' kind of person, so I've always believed I was quite lucky, being born in 1972.

On the plus side, while I've never met my father, I DO know who he is and where he is. My DAD is a guy my mother met right after I was born and he is the guy who raised me. HE is the guy I go to watch movies and eat mexican food with every week.

"A person's a person, no matter how small." - Horton.

Though I think Dr. Seuss meant this to mean a society should look out for its most defenseless already-born citizens, his book (and the video) of Horton Hears a Who bear additional consideration with respect to the even more defenseless unborn.

Well, maybe that comment was over the top, but the point is that it is not just something you get rid of when you have an abortion, it is a life, whether good or bad, and that all life is precious. As a military officer I know I must take lives- but this is only as a last resort in a time of war in order to preserve other lives. However, abortions are almost exclusively unnecessary to preserve other's lives. Yes, I know, there are cases where it is the mother's life or the child's, but these situations differ in that the procedure performed does not have the goal of destroying a life, but saving one instead, and an unfortunate collateral effect is the death of the child. With an abortion, I do not see any justification for eliminating that life, that potential, whether it be good or bad. So, an abortion eliminates life needlessly, and that was the real point of that quote.

A thought. It might bring some attention to the cruelty of abortion if the abortion techniques were proposed as valid forms of capital punishment, e.g. if instead of lethal injection, we switched to slow dismemberment, immersion in acid or scalding water, and/or being killed by being vacuumed into a big jug by an industrial-strength vacuum. I'm not actually proposing the switch, but it might help bring the cruelty of abortion to light.

My view remains, though, that even if abortion could be instant and painless for both the baby and the mother, it's still wrong. In that case, it might be a painless crime, but it's far from victimless. As Mother Teresa said, "It's a poverty that a child must die so we can live as we please."

Doesn't anybody care about FIRST!!! any more?

For 7 years I worked at a hospital that performed abortions. I must have had hundreds of these reports cross my desk and only once was an abortion performed because of a birth defect. I was shocked at how many women were using it in place of birth control, some women had had upwards of 11 abortions (on taxpayer dollars)! Another shock was the reasons women claimed they needed an abortion, my favorite being: "I'm going on a cruise and don't want to be nauseated". The pathology reports were especially disturbing because the baby had to be reassembled and although the item was labeled "products of conception" they had to note the measurements of the "products" tibia, ulna, etc. to determine whether the gestational age had been correctly determined.
This is not an acceptable procedure for a country that calls itself "civilized". And the same people who raise a fuss over Abu Graib are the ones protecting the right to this barbaric procedure. Funny isn't it? No.

jonag, was it just terrible to go into work everyday for you? i can tell you right now that i am not a strong enough person for that.

I have a long post on this article at my blog.

Last I had heard was that Ms. McCorvey had tracked down 'Baby Roe', but she refused to meet her biological mother. This was a while ago. I don't know if the kid knew that she was 'Baby Roe'.

"Won By Love", Norma McCorvey's post-conversion autobiography, is a very good read.

The Maternal Lien: A Real World Solution to the Abortion Controversy

What a powerful and moving article concerning the abortion industry, and abortion itself, and all of it's ugliness. I feel physically sick to my stomach after reading it but people need to know exactly what abortion entails.

How many fewer abortions would there be if the young mothers-to-be simply read that article?

May God have mercy on all those involved.

My story is similar to ArmedGeeks - second child, born in '75, dad walked out while she was pregnant with me (he came back later, and turned out to be a good dad, but that's another story). My grandmother, when she learned my mom was pregnant, actively campaigned for her to get an abortion. Further compounding the stress, the pregnancy was extremely difficult, and both our lives were at risk. The doctors also told my Mom to get an abortion, to save her own life. She refused. I am alive today because she cared as much for the life growing inside her as she cared for herself. (She is alive and well, too, if you're wondering) Reading those stories made me realize that if my mother had been weak-willed, I would have shared the fate of those brutally-slaughtered innocents.

To change the topic slightly, I have to wonder why, in the case of late-term abortions when the mother's life is at risk, the baby has to be killed? Other babies born early are given a chance at life - why can't a ceasarean section be performed or labor be induced with the goal of saving both lives? The logic that the baby should die if the preganancy can't go to term seems very twisted to me, and it's a question I have rarely if ever seen discussed. Does anybody have an answer to that?

Wow...some of your stories are so powerful. I'm glad my mom never even considered such an 'option' since she was happily married...even though I was an 'accident' (found out when I was 23!). LOL

Anyway, Yes, they still do Saline and from the description it is EXTREMELY painful for both the mother and the baby. The links from Malkin's website show the body of a little baby, fully formed, the product of a saline abortion. It was almost pure white with black spots...like it had been burned, which is exactly what happens.

Tragic.

I'll weigh in with my own personal story. My brother, while in college, discovered he & his girlfriend were going to become unsuspecting parents. God bless her, she never considered abortion--but she would have been the "perfect" candidate, according to pro-abortion people. She was an unwed mother (they agreed they didn't want to get married but would share responsibility for raising the baby) & ultimately developed a rare illness probably linked to her pregnacy. She delivered a beautiful baby boy, suffered extreme illness, & sadly died when he was 4 years old. If she'd had an abortion, she probably would have died sooner--we think she lived that long because she wanted to see her little boy. (At her death, he went to live with my brother full time.)

My nephew is now an incredibly smart 16-year-old, attending a military high school (at his request--I won't say which one in order to protect his privacy) where he plays in the band, commands his squad, is tops in his class in academics, & is determined to get into West Point. We know he's destined for greatness. His maternal grandparents remain close to all of us (much credit to their character in that they've never had any resentment or anger) & visit frequently. He is a real tribute to his beautiful brilliant mother (she really was brilliant); he resembles her so closely in looks & brains--even down to their stubbornness! They will always have him as her living testimonial. What we all would have lost had he not been born.

Julie-
You were wondering about PBA...
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology admits it cannot "identify any circumstances under which intact D&X [PBA]would be the only option to protect the life or health of a woman," although it still defends the legality of PBA, basically saying it’s between the woman and her doc. You can read their full statement here: http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/press_releases/nr10-03-03.cfm

Likewise the AMA's statement shows they've found no circumstance where PBA was the only option in preserving the life of the mother. The AMA goes so far as to claim, "The demand for abortions [note: not just PBAs], with the exception of those indicated by serious fetal anomalies or conditions which threaten the life or health of the pregnant woman, represent failures in the social environment, education, and contraceptive methods." Their statement here:
http://www.ama-assn.org/apps/pf_new/pf_online?f_n=browse&doc=policyfiles/HnE/H-5.982.HTM

If you have time and are interested the following trial notebook from the Casey case in NY this summer is enlightening. Judge Casey called the PBA procedure “Gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized,” yet he maintained its legality. Which begs the question, "How can an unnecessary procedure so described be protected by our Constitution? Following is the trial notebook: http://www.aclj.org/TrialNotebook/read.aspx?id=15

I may be tying the noose around my neck here, but I'm not against abortion. I don't know that I would ever have an abortion personally; I honestly hope never to have to even consider it. BUT.

I do respect that a woman has a right to decide if she wants to give birth to a child. And I know all the arguments. "you make that decision when you consent to sex" etc etc etc. But really, you don't, because if you're married, do you always have sex for the purposes of having a child?

There is also the issue of the adoption system; half a million kids in the US alone waiting for homes. Half a million.

On a personal level, there was a brief moment, while my mother was pregnant, that I could've been aborted. There was actually a discussion about it. Of course, at this point in my life, I'm quite happy I wasn't aborted... but if I had been, it wouldn't have mattered. I wouldn't have, at that point in my existence, had the capability to care about it.

Yes, it is a life at conception. And no I don't agree with abortion as "birth control". But in a case where a mother does NOT wish to continue her pregnancy, or her health is at risk, or any other motivating factor, I believe the woman has the right to decide for herself.

My two cents.