It’s both heartbreaking and infuriating when abortionists exploit the tragic loss of a child and use it bash pro-lifers. Writing for the Daily Beast, abortionist Chavi Karkowsky did just that when she misrepresented pro-lifers with the sad story of a pregnant patient who lost her unborn baby and nearly lost her own life, too.
Her piece is titled “The Hardest Abortion I’ve Ever Had to Perform.” Yet, Karkowsky admitted that the procedure she did to save the mother’s life may not even be considered abortion. She began inducing labor for a non-viable baby after the mother developed a life-threatening infection. She did not use abortion instruments or poisons.
Karkowsky would be hard pressed to find a pro-lifer who would disagree with her handling of the situation. The pro-life position is focused around saving lives, and most agree that there are very rare cases when an abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life. Karkowsky, however, claimed that pro-lifers would jump on the chance to punish her and her patient.
Her patient’s water broke at 19 weeks of pregnancy. The patient desperately wanted to give her unborn son a chance to survive. She decided to keep her baby in the womb for a few weeks more, hoping he would develop enough to live outside the womb.
Karkowsky wrote:
I didn’t offer her an abortion, then. I did tell her that she was likely to deliver within the next few days; that her chances of getting to a gestational age—23 weeks, 24 weeks—where she could have a live baby that would make out of the NICU were slim to none; and her chances of getting to a gestational age, weeks past that, where she would have a healthy child were slimmer to none. It’s possible that her boyfriend cried. It’s possible that we cried together.
Karkowsky warned her patient that she risked infection and even death, but the patient refused. The patient said she knew she could get sick, but she “just needed to hold on for right now.”
A few days later, despite rounds of antibiotics and a stay in the hospital, the patient developed a life-threatening infection; and Karkowski urged her to agree to induce labor.
I counseled her that we needed to start the induction; shivering, trembling, in the bed, she agreed. I ordered the medicine to start her induction; I went to place the medicine to begin her induction.
She agreed to the induction. I started the induction.
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When I did the exam to place the medication, the patient was already several centimeters dilated. I put the medication away. Her body was trying to save her, and had started emptying her uterus. 10 minutes later, her son—tiny, too tiny—was born. He never had a heartbeat.
The patient ended up getting sicker and sicker and ended up in the ICU, so very sick because of those 5 days we had waited, letting the bacteria grow.
Two days later, she started to get better. Six days after that, she is going home—not pregnant, still needing antibiotics for weeks to come—but safe.
Who are we going to punish, today? Is it her, or is it me?
This is a gross mischaracterization of pro-lifers, a strawman argument. Pro-lifers recognize that in very rare cases, like that of Karkowsky’s patient, sometimes only one life can be saved. Pro-lifers would not think of punishing a woman who put her own life at risk to try to save her baby.
And that’s the key word: save. What abortion activists just don’t seem to get is that the pro-life position is about saving lives. Pro-lifers oppose abortion because the intent of the procedure is to kill a human being. In Karkowsky’s patient’s case, there was no intent to kill anyone. By her own accounts, her and her patient’s motives were to try to save lives. Many would argue that inducing preterm labor wasn’t really an abortion at all. And in this particular case, it appears the patient was already miscarrying anyway.
Unfortunately, Karkowskyhas a pro-abortion agenda, and she fails to see how it conflicts with the very story that she uses to try to defend it.
