Doctor Loses License in Live Birth Abortion Case

Pierre Jean-Jacques Renelique, right, and his attorney, Joseph Harrison, wondering what all the fuss is about.

You've probably heard about the botched abortion performed on an 18 year old. ("Doctor Loses License in Live Birth Abortion Case") Here's my take on the affair, speaking hypothetically of course.

This looks like a clear cut case of a woman's reproductive right to choose. The woman couldn't be bothered with a pesky pregnancy, even a late term pregnancy, so she exercised her court-given rights to abort. She apparently carried a baby for 23 weeks without knowing that she was pregnant, so the obvious choice was immediately to get unpregnant. That's the natural choice for a woman who was faced with such an awkward revelation.

What about the problem of the viability of the baby? That's what the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is all about! "Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s health." We don't really need FOCA to judge that this woman's health was in danger because obviously, her mental distress must have been in the extreme to discover that she was 6 months pregnant. Besides, carrying babies is a dangerous business. (It's such a shame that FOCA hasn't been passed yet so this mother's health could have outweighed the birth of her baby.)

The abortion clinic owner was certainly within her rights to finish the abortion, cut the umbilical cord without a medical license, and pack up the baby in a nice, neat biohazard bag. (Don't want to catch a disease.) If she'd just "tied up all the loose ends" (of the umbilical cord to keep the baby from bleeding to death) that abortion might have been a total bust, with a surviving baby to complicate matters.

On another point, as a woman, the abortion clinic owner maintains the right to a woman's choice. By extension, all women should share the same reproductive rights to abortion and have equal opportunity to terminate pregnancies. So the owner really isn't culpable in any of this.

In fact, had the doctor been there, he would have been culpable for malpractice because he, being a man, doesn't have the court's protection to reproductive rights. He couldn't finish off a living, breathing baby in such a case. He might have actually had to try and preserve the baby's life. He would have suffered serious consequences if he had succeeded. The mother had made her reproductive choice to abort. The baby could have endangered her health. So failing to provide an adequate abortion in this case would have really exposed the doctor to a malpractice suit.

Well, the mom made her reproductive choice, then reneged on the deal when she actually saw how messy an abortion is. Apparently, she's suffered emotional trauma after she "watched in horror and shock as her baby writhed with her chest rising and falling as she breathed." I know how shocking that must have been to give birth to a living, breathing baby. Many women are traumatized by such things.

The culpable party in all this is the abortion clinic staff which, "began screaming and pandemonium ensued." I have no idea what the fuss was all about. I mean, what did these people expect? Didn't they understand that reproductive rights is a messy business? They should have calmly crushed the baby's skull (the usual practice) so the mother wouldn't have suffered such an emotional shock. They are such unfeeling fiends.

The baby is better off now. Because hey, who'd want a mom who would try to abort her, then get so uptight when things didn't go so smoothly down at the clinic?

All in all, this hypothetical case seems to have turned out for the best. The woman got rid of a pesky pregnancy. The abortion clinic owner was only helping with this woman's choice. The doctor was safely out of reach for a malpractice suit. It's only too bad the clinic staff screwed up the whole process and gave the mother such an emotional shock and got that poor doctor's license revoked.

So is the hypothetical point so far fetched?