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In the Washington Post, an article appears, a "touching" story on the justification of killing a baby in the twentieth week. When I first saw the title and realized it was also about Terri, I could have thought perhaps this article was about the denying of Terri the Right to Choose.

Wrong in so many ways...

The pregnancy was planned and joyful. The young California health aide and her teacher husband had just announced it to their families with a celebratory video of themselves playing "Wheel of Fortune." "I was really blessed," McNichol, now 49, says.

~Snip~

Though her health and her concern about it worsened by the day, she still hoped to continue the pregnancy. But eventually, she began asking her closest relatives and friends what to do. "The worst part of it was that it was never clear," McNichol says. "I never knew what was the right thing to do."

At 20 weeks, McNichol had an abortion using a procedure she says fit the description of the intact extraction method that the U.S. Supreme Court banned last week. Afterward, she learned her condition was placental abruption -- the placenta, which nourishes the fetus, was breaking up and sloughing off from her uterus. The condition can cause a woman to bleed to death. "It's one of the causes of maternal death," McNichol says.

McNichol went on to have two healthy pregnancies. Her children are now teenagers. She first told her story in a friend-of-court brief submitted to the lower courts as the landmark abortion case wound its way upward.

~Snip~

We are all Terri Schiavo now. We all can be subject to second-guessing of our family's medical choices from the halls of Congress.

McNichol's doctors couldn't diagnose what was wrong. How could the justices? How could 535 members of the House and Senate -- 448 of them men -- prescribe the best medicine for a woman they've never met, let alone examined with a trained eye?

"I have to tell you, I asked everyone -- what should I do?" McNichol says. "I never thought about calling up my representative in Congress to ask them what to do. There was no way that someone who has any other agenda but my well-being could make that decision.It wasn't a political decision. It was a medical, personal decision."

It is the sort of decision American women no longer can assume they are free to make.

When women can't choose

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Wagglebee thread on new law proposed. If only they would have wished Terri could have the "Right to Choose"...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The pro-abortion Freedom of Choice Act was officially introduced on Thursday and the legislation would codify the Roe v. Wade decision into law. That would make legalized abortion the law of the land, but it also would overturn the pro-life laws state legislature have enacted.

The FOCA bill would "bar government, at any level, from interfering with a woman's fundamental right to choose to bear a child or to terminate a pregnancy."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, is behind the bill in the Senate and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, is the sponsor of the bill in the House.

"We can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to protect a woman's constitutional right to choose," Nadler said in introducing the bill and responding to the high court's decision to uphold a national ban on partial-birth abortions.

Pro-Abortion Freedom of Choice Act Officially Introduced in Congress

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