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(Condensed from an article in the PRI Review, April 2004)
It is hard to imagine a worse violation of a woman's rights than forced
abortion. Yet the Eleventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals apparently
disagrees. Witness the following story.
On 23 January 2004, the Eleventh Circuit Court ruled that an expectant
mother
can be aborted by force if the abortionist argues that it is "necessary to
protect the health of the mother."
The story begins in March 1997, when a young, pregnant mother entered the
Aware Women Center for Choice clinic in Florida to have an abortion.Awaiting her was the abortionist, William P. Egherman, who has performed
over
10,000 abortions. He began the procedure by attempting to dilate the
woman's
cervix with a 12 millimeter dilator.
"My God, you're hurting me" the woman began to scream. "You're killing me,
I'll never be able to have babies.... Stop!"
The woman had had a change of heart. She did not want an abortion. She
wanted
to keep her baby. And she wanted to leave. Immediately. "Stop. Let me out
of
here," she cried.
Instead of respecting the woman's wishes and stopping the procedure,
Egherman
called for assistance. Clinic workers held the woman down as Egherman,
ignoring the woman's screams, continued to dilate her cervix. Then he
entered the
victim with a pair of forceps and began probing and pulling. He mistakenly
pulled out part of the woman's intestines. For the woman, it was like
being drawn
and quartered.
Realizing what he had done, Egherman heavily sedated the woman. Then he
called for an ambulance. He instructed the ambulance to come slowly,
without lights
or sirens, in order to give him "time to pack the woman with gauze."
Egherman was also worried that his regular flow of business would be
interrupted by "all the hoopla." He explained "Saturday's our big and I
didn't want to
generate any more confusion or panic than was already present at the time.
She was loud and shrill, and there were a lot of patients who were hearing
what
was going on, and the normal rhythm of the day was interrupted. The other
patients must have been terrified. and I didn't want the ambulance showing
up with
all the lights and sirens..."Later, at the hospital, the woman was operated on and the damage to her
internal organs repaired. Her baby was found to be dead, and was removed.
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