News

By John Connolly

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, January 25, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Yale Daily News removed coverage from its website of a demonstration on Yale’s campus that allowed participants to perform mock abortions on anatomically correct models of the human female pelvis.

The original coverage relates the demonstration’s methods in detail, including the use of models of the female pelvis, complete with fallopian tubes, cervixes, vaginas, and papayas on which mock abortions were performed. The article was pulled from the website, however, after it attracted attention on the Catholic Answers Forums and the blog GODSBODY (https://www.matthewlickona.com/blog/2008/01/yesterdays-news-today-abortion-edition.html).

Rasha Khoury MED ‘08, a member of Medical Students for Choice, was featured in the article as being favorable to abortions and the demonstration. She said she preferred suction abortions, and that such a procedure wasn’t so disconcerting after one got used to it.

“It’s not as scary as it seems. It’s just blood and mucus,” Khoury said, referring to the fetus remains in the device. She added, “You’ll be able to see arms and stuff, but still just miniscule.”

“Often times, women are crying and cursing and saying they’re going to hell…It may be a quick and easy medical procedure, but it definitely is a very involved social-medical procedure.”

Khoury also praised programs that put students in internships to teaching them how to perform abortions. “It’s fun because you meet people from all over the country who do [abortions],” Khoury said in the article that was taken down on January 23. “It’s pretty inspiring.”

Instead of the original coverage, however, which included the unsavory descriptions of abortion, a new, sanitized version of the article has been published on the newspaper’s website. The sanitized explanation of the presentation now on the Yale Daily News website was penned by Khoury, and fails to mention “arms and stuff” in her apologetic for abortion and Roe v. Wade. The new article changes the tune significantly, instead angling for a patriotic and compassionate tone.

“The goal of our talk on Monday night commemorating Roe v. Wade was twofold: an overview of the epidemiology of abortion as a medical option for women with unintended pregnancies, and a technical description of the procedures, medical and surgical, involved in pregnancy termination,” wrote Khoury in the new article.

“We concluded the talk with a demonstration of the MVA on plastic pelvic models as well as papaya fruits to allow participants to practice and demystify, not trivialize, the procedure,” continued Khoury. “When I was asked what the contents removed from the uterus with the aspirator looked like, I said “blood and mucus,” referring to products of conception, which are then carefully studied in a separate room to ensure the gestational sac and fetal parts (if old enough), are present, ensuring that the procedure was carried out successfully.”

See Original Yale Daily News Article on Abortion Conference – Captured January 23, 2008
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/080125a.html