Abortion Underground
NYC has become a haven for late-term abortions (after 21 weeks). According to this article in New York magazine, about 100 people are part of the "Haven Coalition," a group of volunteers that open their apartments to these pregnant mothers in order to ease the process of getting an abortion.
The article is written by a Haven member. It's sad, odd, and eerie. She deems her actions as charitable and views the source of the charity--the complete suspension of all moral judgment (see page three of the story)--as a higher frame of mind. Yet if there is no morality, there is no charity. That never seems to cross the writer's mind.
Like I said, it's eerie stuff. The writer is so matter-of-fact about it. It's chilling.
Excerpt:
[Adeena, the woman I am hosting tonight] wants to be sociable, but tonight it's hard. This afternoon, sticks made of seaweed were inserted into her cervix, and a drug that causes fetal heart failure was injected into her belly. Now the seaweed is getting moist and swelling, and Adeena no longer feels movement in her womb. By tomorrow the swelling will have opened her cervix a few centimeters, allowing a doctor to extract the dead fetus with surgical tools and a vacuum machine.
I don't know how much Adeena knows about these details. But I know, and so do other Haven members. The organization gives us a handout explaining everything so we'll be prepared if our guests experience side effects. Of course, some complications go beyond the medical.
More late-term abortions are done here [in NYC] than anywhere else in the country. The procedure takes two days from start to finish. There's a night of waiting in between. . . .
Some 2,000 women have late-term abortions in New York City every year. This year, Haven members have opened their homes to 125 of them (including a 10-year-old).
Most Haven hosts are white, Jewish, well schooled, and political. Some are empty-nesters with beds to spare and memories of the sixties and seventies women's movement; many are young idealists with matchbox apartments and roommates who don't mind an extra body crashing in the living room. Meanwhile, most of the women helped by Haven are black and Latina, with GEDs or less, low literacy skills, and not much civic moxie.
