Dear Editor,
SB96 Sponsored by Sen. Gerald Allen is an important pro-life bill prohibiting web-cam abortions by requiring that, when RU-486 or some other drug or chemical is used to induce an abortion, the abortion doctor who is prescribing the drug shall be physically present, in person, when the drug is first provided to the pregnant woman. This allows for a physical examination to be done by the doctor, both to ascertain the state of the mother’s health, and to be sure an ectopic pregnancy is not involved.
Some abortion practitioners have begun doing web-cam abortions using a Skype computer screen to talk to a woman a hundred miles away in a satellite office where no doctor is present. The abortion doctor pushes a button on his computer, and a drawer opens in the distant location to dispense the lethal chemical.
Abortion already is an impersonal, assembly-line procedure, where the “doctor-patient relationship” is virtually non-existent. Abortionists’ emphasis on efficiency and profit make a mockery of the Supreme Court’s pious incantation about abortion being a “decision between a woman and her doctor.” Usually a mother doesn’t see the abortion doctor until she is on the operating table and often rarely told his name. The practice in some states of web-cam abortions takes the impersonal, assembly-line nature of abortion to a new low. The Alabama Legislature has an opportunity to help protect women’s health by preventing this substandard practice from happening here. Excessive bleeding and deadly infections are but two of the complications of chemical abortions. Abortion is a dangerous procedure; it always results in at least one death, and, sometimes, two. SB 96 will improve the chances that the casualty rate for each chemical abortion in Alabama will be limited to one death only.
Cheryl Ringuette Ciamarra, M.C.D.
Alabama Board Director to NRLC
