Fact/Fiction in Abortion Story?
Salon.com recently featured a story on their website titled Abortion saved my life. As I've stated here several times, I fully support abortion in situations of rape/incest or medical necessity. Reading the story, however, there were things that didn't add up.
The Author
The woman who wrote this story is Michelle "Mikki" Kendall. She writes on several of her own blogs. Salon.com cites her Wordpress blog. She also has an account here on LiveJournal (karnythia ) and an account on DreamWidth. While looking her up, I found a few interesting pieces of information.
(via VerbNoire.com - the link on Mikki Kendall's name connects to her LiveJournal account)
(via Mikki's Wordpress blog)
She says that the fact she writes fiction shouldn't mean that this story should be taken with a grain of salt, but keep these two screencaps in mind. Also, before anyone starts crying FOUL, I'm doing something that's done in a lot of court cases - considering the character of the person involved.
The Facts
When reading Mikki's story, there are a few things that don't raise any red flags when considering placenta abruptio (a.k.a. placential abruption):
- MK mentions that she was seeing a specialist for possible treatment of fibroids. Uterine fibroids are one of the risk factors of placential abruption.
- MK also mentions that she wasn't aware she was pregnant until after the 10 week mark. On her Wordpress blurb, she mentions an "affection for booze". Now before anyone starts breaking out the pitchforks, one of the risk factors for plancential abruption is consumption of 14 or more alcoholic drinks per week. Say Mikki has a glass of wine or two every night with dinner. That could be enough alcohol consumption to be a risk, and there are women in this world who have consumed alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or even used drugs who didn't know they were pregnant at the time of use. That's not any kind of accusation, I'm just raising a hypothetical scenario.
- Another risk is large number of past deliveries. MK mentions she's a mother of two children and she'd previously had two miscarriages. This may also have been a factor. There are also risks if she has high blood pressure or diabetes, the latter of which can occur during pregnancy (gestational diabetes). With gestational diabetes, there are usually no symptoms to monitor in its early stages.
The Doubts
As I said, there are some things in this article that just don't add up. First, there are a few key sentences that seem to dominate the story:
- "This attitude that women are shirking responsibility by opting out of having unwanted children has always boggled my mind."
- "I love my kids more than I could ever explain & I do my best to give them the childhood I never had. Because I love them I had an abortion at 20 weeks." - Uh, what‽ I don't have kids, but when I do, I'm gonna show them I love them by spending time with them or giving them a hug, not ending a human life. That whole idea projected by MK just left a bad taste in my mouth.
- "We all knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, couldn’t be viable with the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took them hours to do anything, because the doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. No one on call that night did them in fact." - In Chicago, Illinois, there isn't ONE DOCTOR in a busy hospital who can perform an abortion? Yeah, I call bullshit.
- "I don’t know if his objections were religious or not, all I know is that when a bleeding woman was brought to him for treatment he refused to do the only thing that could stop the bleeding. Because he didn’t do abortions. Ever." - Like Jill Stanek (we'll get to her later), I don't see any rationale in this statement. I highly doubt that any doctor in the known world would have left her bleeding and in severe pain. On top of that, placential abruption doesn't call for an abortion, it calls for c-section delivery (or natural delivery if the cervix isn't closed).
- There's also a lot of indications that this baby was never wanted in the first place - "When we found out (that standard pregnancy test before surgery is necessary after all) I talked it out with my husband and we debated aborting (I got as far as the clinic), before ultimately deciding that we would try to make it work." ... "My two kids at home were going to lose their mother because someone decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that wasn’t going to survive any way." Not to mention the fact that her first option was an abortion. The youngest child on record was born in 2006 at 20 weeks after fertilization, and medical science has advanced in the past five years. What mother wouldn't want to give their child that 50/50 chance? The other reason it bothers me is her blog discusses how she was an "unwanted child" and never wanted her kids to grow up that way.
The reason I caught this story in the first place was through random internet surfing. Not having cable anymore, I check as many news sources (that I like) as I can daily - CNN, Fox, Reason magazine, and Associated Press. On a whim, I checked out DrudgeReport.com for links to news about the debt ceiling vote and found a link: 'Blogger's first-person abortion posting draws fire'. I clicked on it and it connected to a NewsBusters article: 'Salon Writer Admits Embellishing Abortion Story'. I read the article and didn't find one admission from MK that her story was an out-and-out lie, nor any evidence that even one shred of it was false. The piece was mainly Jill Stanek, pro-life under ANY circumstances, gloating about all the things she found wrong with the story. Stanek has gotten herself in trouble before - during the 2008 presidential election, she posted some articles about Obama's voting record concerning the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. It later came out that some of her comments to the Chicago Tribune regarding that voting record were "a mistake", and those words were from her own mouth. Since the story broke on Drudge, Stanek has been posting taunting tweets and Facebook messages to MK. In my opinion, that's not exactly the behavior of someone who's tolerant or values life.
What this all boils down to, this back-and-forth between Kendell and Stanek is Right vs. Left, pro-life vs. pro-choice. It's not a battle of facts and it's hardly a battle of wits. This is political proselytizing through somewhat decent story-telling. It could be fact or it could be utter bullshit and the only person who knows is Mikki Kendell. You can buy into it if you want to but based on the information I've found, I choose to stay with the same views I started with from the beginning of the post.
The Author
The woman who wrote this story is Michelle "Mikki" Kendall. She writes on several of her own blogs. Salon.com cites her Wordpress blog. She also has an account here on LiveJournal (karnythia ) and an account on DreamWidth. While looking her up, I found a few interesting pieces of information.
(via VerbNoire.com - the link on Mikki Kendall's name connects to her LiveJournal account)
(via Mikki's Wordpress blog)
She says that the fact she writes fiction shouldn't mean that this story should be taken with a grain of salt, but keep these two screencaps in mind. Also, before anyone starts crying FOUL, I'm doing something that's done in a lot of court cases - considering the character of the person involved.
The Facts
When reading Mikki's story, there are a few things that don't raise any red flags when considering placenta abruptio (a.k.a. placential abruption):
- MK mentions that she was seeing a specialist for possible treatment of fibroids. Uterine fibroids are one of the risk factors of placential abruption.
- MK also mentions that she wasn't aware she was pregnant until after the 10 week mark. On her Wordpress blurb, she mentions an "affection for booze". Now before anyone starts breaking out the pitchforks, one of the risk factors for plancential abruption is consumption of 14 or more alcoholic drinks per week. Say Mikki has a glass of wine or two every night with dinner. That could be enough alcohol consumption to be a risk, and there are women in this world who have consumed alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or even used drugs who didn't know they were pregnant at the time of use. That's not any kind of accusation, I'm just raising a hypothetical scenario.
- Another risk is large number of past deliveries. MK mentions she's a mother of two children and she'd previously had two miscarriages. This may also have been a factor. There are also risks if she has high blood pressure or diabetes, the latter of which can occur during pregnancy (gestational diabetes). With gestational diabetes, there are usually no symptoms to monitor in its early stages.
The Doubts
As I said, there are some things in this article that just don't add up. First, there are a few key sentences that seem to dominate the story:
- "This attitude that women are shirking responsibility by opting out of having unwanted children has always boggled my mind."
- "I love my kids more than I could ever explain & I do my best to give them the childhood I never had. Because I love them I had an abortion at 20 weeks." - Uh, what‽ I don't have kids, but when I do, I'm gonna show them I love them by spending time with them or giving them a hug, not ending a human life. That whole idea projected by MK just left a bad taste in my mouth.
- "We all knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, couldn’t be viable with the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took them hours to do anything, because the doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. No one on call that night did them in fact." - In Chicago, Illinois, there isn't ONE DOCTOR in a busy hospital who can perform an abortion? Yeah, I call bullshit.
- "I don’t know if his objections were religious or not, all I know is that when a bleeding woman was brought to him for treatment he refused to do the only thing that could stop the bleeding. Because he didn’t do abortions. Ever." - Like Jill Stanek (we'll get to her later), I don't see any rationale in this statement. I highly doubt that any doctor in the known world would have left her bleeding and in severe pain. On top of that, placential abruption doesn't call for an abortion, it calls for c-section delivery (or natural delivery if the cervix isn't closed).
- There's also a lot of indications that this baby was never wanted in the first place - "When we found out (that standard pregnancy test before surgery is necessary after all) I talked it out with my husband and we debated aborting (I got as far as the clinic), before ultimately deciding that we would try to make it work." ... "My two kids at home were going to lose their mother because someone decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that wasn’t going to survive any way." Not to mention the fact that her first option was an abortion. The youngest child on record was born in 2006 at 20 weeks after fertilization, and medical science has advanced in the past five years. What mother wouldn't want to give their child that 50/50 chance? The other reason it bothers me is her blog discusses how she was an "unwanted child" and never wanted her kids to grow up that way.
The reason I caught this story in the first place was through random internet surfing. Not having cable anymore, I check as many news sources (that I like) as I can daily - CNN, Fox, Reason magazine, and Associated Press. On a whim, I checked out DrudgeReport.com for links to news about the debt ceiling vote and found a link: 'Blogger's first-person abortion posting draws fire'. I clicked on it and it connected to a NewsBusters article: 'Salon Writer Admits Embellishing Abortion Story'. I read the article and didn't find one admission from MK that her story was an out-and-out lie, nor any evidence that even one shred of it was false. The piece was mainly Jill Stanek, pro-life under ANY circumstances, gloating about all the things she found wrong with the story. Stanek has gotten herself in trouble before - during the 2008 presidential election, she posted some articles about Obama's voting record concerning the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. It later came out that some of her comments to the Chicago Tribune regarding that voting record were "a mistake", and those words were from her own mouth. Since the story broke on Drudge, Stanek has been posting taunting tweets and Facebook messages to MK. In my opinion, that's not exactly the behavior of someone who's tolerant or values life.
What this all boils down to, this back-and-forth between Kendell and Stanek is Right vs. Left, pro-life vs. pro-choice. It's not a battle of facts and it's hardly a battle of wits. This is political proselytizing through somewhat decent story-telling. It could be fact or it could be utter bullshit and the only person who knows is Mikki Kendell. You can buy into it if you want to but based on the information I've found, I choose to stay with the same views I started with from the beginning of the post.