Pajiba

How interesting that she had many abortions, but chose to keep her dying dog alive instead of giving him or her a dignified and humane release.

This review is very evenhanded, and has made me curious about the book and its author. Well done.

Definitely have no interest in reading books by crazy people who make the world a slightly crappier place in which to live. I'm soooo stoked that you came to terms with your actions through the power of the written word! Please drown yourself.

Hi Alli,

I haven't read the book but your review sent up several red flags in my mind. I used to work in mental health and the behaviors of the writer you describe are very classic behaviors of someone with a personality disorder, specifically Borderline Personality Disorder. These people are sick in their soul and cannot be healed or redeemed at all. I am pro-choice but I have absolutely no empathy for this woman.

What an irresponsible and horrible person. There are serial killers with less of a body count than her.

Danielle Lilly I agree I was thinking the exact same thing she is definitely suffering from some deep rooted psychological issues....

Danielle Lilly,
While I agree the author of this book probably has some kind of mental health issue, your comments about Borderline Personality Disorder are not only untrue but very insulting.

I don't think I can say anything that Yossarian hasn't already said, both about confessional memoirs being tedious exercises in narcissism and about what a top-notch review you wrote for this book.

So I'll just add another "Nicely done, Alli."

Certainly not the only one, Machine. The conclusion of mental illness is easy to come to. I made a mental association with Octomom and child molesters- damaged people who abuse defenseless children. There's something troubling about the Duggers, too, although they don't seem to fit in the same category.

Again, the more restrained side of my personality keeps reminding me that I have neither read the book nor do I know the author, but the judgment and disgust come so easy it's difficult to hold back. She clearly needed (and probably still needs) counseling and help, but it's hard to think of the mechanism for controlling that behavior. You can't forbid her to have an abortion, or lock her up for having to many, or forceably sterilize her (much as you might want to). In short, I think the topic raises a whole lot of moral and ethical issues and presents a compelling psychological case study, I just doubt the woman in question has the mind to address any of it. At least TLC didn't offer her a show: A string of random dudes and Irene, minus 15.

Okay, I'm going to try to say this as respectfully as possible. If you're pro-choice, why would you be horrified by 15 abortions if you're not morally opposed to one or two or three? Where do you draw the line?

Excellent review, Alli.

As a person who has someone very close to them with a serious personality disorder, the above comments about BPD are fairly insulting and not an accurate description of a very serious and difficult condition.

My only questions to the author is, why not birth control? It's an easier option than an abortion and probably cheaper.

Well, Meghan, abortion is not a birth control method. One would hope that after terminating a few pregnancies, she might have taken responsibility for her fertility and looked into preventing pregnancy instead of aborting it.

Also, I've had a few friends who have chosen to have abortions. In all of their cases, it was a very difficult decision for them to make. I couldn't imagine any of them making that same decision 15 times. It seems like Vilar really didn't give a damn about the potential lives she was terminating.

I'm all for a woman's right to choose, but I'm also largely in favor of personal responsibility.

That, and the fact that she wrote a "look at me" book about it.

I am also biased because of my dear friends who have tried and tried to get pregnant without success. They'd be 20 times the mother this bitch will ever be and, yet, her fertility far surpasses theirs. Another topic for another day.

I can only speak for myself here, Meghan, but I'm not "horrified" exactly, just kind of astounded at how this woman can repeatedly get pregnant, go so far as to buy things for her future child, then abort.

Yes I'm pro-choice, but I guess I just feel that...well, for most people, isn't abortion more of a last resort? What the hell was stopping her from using birth control? (An honest question, as I haven't read the book.) I do hear what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure the line would be drawn somewhere below 15.

Anyway, I have never been in this woman's shoes, so I can't pretend to be in a position to judge. I just can't fathom what was going through her mind.

Also, I agree with Alli. Her daughter should never have to read that about herself.

What's fascinating me here is the tension between normal and excessive, and I think that's why I thought of the Duggars. There's obviously a psychological and perhaps even a pathological component, as Yossarian points out. I think what I'm trying to get at is a larger debate regarding responsible reproduction (whatever that means), rather than just the pros and cons of abortion. Why do we care (well, I don't, but this clearly stirs up emotion)? Should we care? How should we care?

Modern society makes available the possibility of aborting a pregnancy or ten, exponentially increasing fertility and keeping alive very large families. Each of these possibilities is an outlier. Beyond the freakshow angle, what is the role of the public in this? I would say there isn't one beyond as an audience. I still think it's interesting, though.

I'm jumping on the well-written-review bandwagon, Alli. You did a wonderful job with a book by someone you clearly came to dislike on a very difficult subject.

I am pro-choice for the same reasons that many of you have already explained, and I find this woman's actions indefensible.

Yeah, I'll be staying far away from this book. Thanks for reading and reviewing it, Alli, so I can steer far away from it.

@ Meghan: "Okay, I'm going to try to say this as respectfully as possible. If you're pro-choice, why would you be horrified by 15 abortions if you're not morally opposed to one or two or three? Where do you draw the line?"

I'm not a teetotaler; I'm certainly pro-adult-style-beverages. I think there are such things as alcoholics. I guess I don't understand your question. Must one support all excess?

Heh, Meghan, I think you deserve a special "devil's advocate" EE award. Way to get people talking, girl!

If anyone cares, this is what I wrote about the abortion thing months ago. Still pro-choice, and my thoughts haven't changed. This was my personal experience:

I'm probably about to start a tornado-sized shit storm, but why don't some of these teens that get pregnant sit with their parents and discuss getting an abortion?

Since we're talking about the semi-anonymity of the Internet here (everyone in Pajibaland at least doesn't know what I look like), I will admit that I had an abortion when I was twenty-three, and I'm not ashamed that I did it.

One night my boyfriend and I got drunk and stupid and then had sex and the condom broke. When I found out I was pregnant I was devastated, but I knew for a lot of reasons it wasn't the right time for us to have a baby. We were only in our fourth month of dating, he was a divorced single dad, and I had (and still have) a medical condition that I take Depakote for. Depakote is a powerful anti-seizure drug that causes severe birth defects (all over the bottle it says DO NOT GET PREGNANT), and after talking to my mom (a nurse), my aunt (an OB/GYN who once delivered a set of twins to a twelve year old), and researching the quality of life for a child with these birth defects, my boyfriend and I decided to get an abortion.

Of course it was emotional (I cried and threw up the night before), overwhelming (my boyfriend had a Catholic friend he had known for over twenty years say he couldn't be friends with him anymore if we were going to go through with it), sad (he and I blamed each other, blamed God, blamed the condom), but in the end I wouldn't have changed my course of action. At the time I was laid off from work and he was struggling to pay child support. How could we afford a wheelchair? Therapy? Special schools? A funeral when it eventually died before the age of five?

What makes me enraged about pro-lifers is that most aren't pro-life, they're pro-birth. No white fundamentalist Christian is adopting a crack baby, a black AIDS baby, a fetal alcohol syndrome child from Russia. Not one person picketing when I went to get my abortion, who screamed at us and made me cry and my boyfriend had to carry me inside with a jacket over my face, not one of them said "listen, I'll adopt your child. I'll pay for your psychologist. I'll love it even if it can't feed itself or hold its head up and I'll tell him how much you grieve for it every day because you know you want children and you can't give them the life they deserve." I actually emailed the Duggar clan (they of the 19 children and the Quiverfull movement) asking why they didn't adopt children that were already born. They sent a form email back.

Abortion isn't easy. It's not dinner conversation, it's not simple when someone asks us if we have kids, it still hits me when I see a little boy that looks like my boyfriend (except with my blue eyes), I pause before I tell people why I have tiny heart tattooed on my ankle (I usually say its for someone who died). My boyfriend late at night in the dark still says he's afraid of being judged by God, of picturing what his son would look like. We've lost friends, he and I have sat at opposite ends of the couch silently thinking about who could have done what differently, if we had more money, if he had no children, if I had lied and said I was strong enough to go through all the pain and doctor's visits and birth and dead with him because we loved each other and that was enough.

But I still would have done it. And that's what these teen moms and Bible beaters need to understand. That there is another choice out there. That gives you time to grow up. Time to mature. Time to find the real love of your life. But it doesn't make it any easier.

Crap Alli, I spelled your name wrong. My apologies.

I don't care too much about the abortions (though it obviously suggests an irresponsible person with poor impulse control), but I am sick (I've probably yapped about this before) of books from fuck-ups explaining to all of us exactly why they're fuck-ups. As if explaining their fuck-uppedness makes it less so or obligates us to "understand" them. Or empathize. Or applaud them for embracing their fuck-up status as some kind of identity, rather than trying to fix it. Why don't these people just unload on a shrink and leave the rest of us out of it?

A fuck-up is a fuck-up. I don't wanna read about it. It isn't interesting. It's depressing.

RE the abortion debate (and if someone disagrees with me, feel free, but don't go to a lot of effort, because I don't care what you think):

Most anti-abortion people are goddam hypocrites. When they perceive THEY need an abortion (ie, a daughter or girlfriend has gotten knocked up), they have no problem with it. And are damn glad to have the option. They just make a public show of being anti-abortion for the same reason most white people claim they're not racist.

And most of the genuinesly anti-abortion people aren't exactly paragons of virtue, either. Some of them are just out of their fucking minds. They can barely disguise their insanity on this issue. And the ones who aren't technically crazy are mostly assholes.

My sister got knocked up right out of high school and my Southern Baptist mother made her go in front of the whole church (the church my mother forced my sister to attend, my sister still lived at home at the time) to acknowledge her sin or some shit like that. I'm pretty sure my sister has never forgiven my mother for that. And she shouldn't. It was an assholish thing to do. FYI for anyone who has kids and thinks that they'll thank you later for crap like that. They won't.

Does anyone not remember:
"New Haven, CT (LifeNews.com) -- A Yale University art student is causing a national controversy with her senior art project that revolves around self-induced abortions. Aliza Shvarts says she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible" in order to become pregnant and reportedly used herbs to cause abortions."

It turned out to be a hoax but sent the country in a tizzy. I say fuck it, let them do what they want, it is their own body. I don't have any say over anything that someone else decides to do.

Meghan, (I read your questions and came down to answer... so maybe someone might have said this already)

Just because someone is pro-choice does not mean that they are pro-abortions. Think about it. No seriously, there is a huge distinction.

Also, Allie said: "that someone could continually become pregnant as a means of exercising control over their life and body." Women can also do that by insisting to use a condom or getting on the pill. No, seriously, that way works too.

"There's something troubling about the Duggers, too, although they don't seem to fit in the same category."

Figuring out what's wrong with the Duggars is much easier in assessment: They believe they have the divine right/directive (read, mandate) to populate the world with more like-minded morons.

This is "Christ's" new army, and by "Christ" I mean the ignorant white men who get people to believe simplistic bullshit so they can shore up their own power base, in the name of Christ.

This woman, however, makes ending lives like Shiva part of her own narcissistic world and tops it off with, "I think I felt something today when my dog died." Some people shouldn't have the power of creation and destruction, as she clearly does based on her own arbitrary whim. Megalomania would be the appropriate diagnosis. Emotionally stunted megalomania. Five-year-old in a 35-year-old's body.

Is there a clinical definition of "desensitized American"?

Well, Meghan, abortion is not a birth control method.
---
We respectfully disagree.

scorzi,

That's some powerful stuff there.

I contend it's real easy to say you'd never have an abortion and to berate people who do or would consider it if you've never been in scorzi's position. Kind of like the way (from the other direction) it might be easy to oppose the death penalty if you've never had a child or friend raped and murdered by a sociopath or gunned down by a gangster.

Anyway, I'm pretty much a social libertarian these days: You mind your business and I'll mind mine. But I'm here as your friend to offer support when you need it.

Alli - incredible job!

There have been some amazingly well presented points on this thread - especially that this woman is more an example of a mental health defect that involves the abuse of abortion rather than a statement on the validity of abortion itself being an acceptable option in our culture.

Another great point made was that planned parenthood is the key to preventing more abortion - to disrupt and dispute this incredibly important public service only serves to create more of the problem pro-lifers wish to solve. A zero fetal death count is better achieved through preventative measures than via religious platitudes with incomplete social support.

And further, and hopefully not to incite inflammation which I'm so impressed hasn't occurred yet, I don't particularly think moral support for women having an abortion should be reserved solely for those who are at last resort. I am disgusted at the idea of women using it because of personal laziness/ineptitude, but there is room in my heart for the women who decide it is not the right time, person or situation to bring forth a child.

Childbirth has been a killer throughout history - war, sickness, poverty...all of these things play a part in the social fabric. I have no qualm with a woman choosing the time and place of her decision to procreate on her terms. If it creates for her and the child the moment of best possibility for success, I'm fine as hell with that.

Issues involving reproduction are often very emotionally charged. Almost everyone feels passionate when it come to children. That said, this woman engaged in some extremely destructive, selfish, and pathological behavior that had an impact on others in her life. That is the classic definition of addiction.

I don't see this as being any different than substance abuse. As the child of an alcoholic, pill-popper I feel qualified to say that whatever the addiction of choice; it is all horrifying, catastrophically destructive, and splashes all over the people around you to disastrous effect. I don't see the issue so much as a woman having abortions, but a woman who is an addict. And every addict(at least in my experience)can tell you exactly why they drink or take drugs or whatever - some were neglected, some were molested, some were abused mentally and/or physically. Doesn't mean they're not addicts. Doesn't mean that the behavior is any less cataclysmic.

As for the kids, it is possible to be the child of an addict and grow up to live a full and rich life. I and my siblings are living proof that you can escape the cycle of destruction and forge a new existence for yourself. It is not easy, but it can be done.

"I say fuck it, let them do what they want, it is their own body. I don't have any say over anything that someone else decides to do."

Just want to comment, the pro-life answer to this is that the unborn baby is its own being with rights, not just a part of the body of its mother. I'm a Catholic (not a very good one, obviously) and I agree with the Church's "seamless garment" philosophy on life, although I believe that preventative forms of birth-control do not violate the seamless garment, and I (don't tell my bishop) also think that some day the church will come around on this, in the interest of social justice and just pure common sense.

Gotta echo all the comments about the tone of debate here, well except for Slash. I'm an incorrigible shit-starter on this site, but I don't see much to take issue with here, of all places. We've gotten about 100 times more contentious over whether or not SuperTroopers is a classic, for example.

Scorzi you have my sympathy and respect, thank you for sharing what is obviously a very hard and ongoing situation in your life. I had a friend who was bullied into an abortion by her father when she was 21, who disapproved of the father even though she had been living with him for a year and dating him for 4 years, he dad told her she would be cut off and wouldnt be able to afford looking after a baby. It took her three years and one night of heavy drinking before she could tell us-her closest friends what happened.
Abortion is not something to be taken lightly it is a personal choice and there are so many mitigating factors that need to be taken into consideration (for example Scorzi's experience) The fact that this woman can make a decision on abortions like she was deciding what shoes to wear is disgusting, sickening and, once again, blows my mind that she was able to do this without some sort of medical professional stepping in to give her a psych eval (incidentaly my friend said the thing that was worse about the abortion was the complete lack of therapy before or afterwards.

RE Yossarian: "Slash, I disagree with you. And I'll take my time to disagree even if you don't care."

Well, I guess I care a little, I'm responding.

Most of the "pro life" (you do realize that that moniker was created specifically to suggest that everyone who thinks abortion shouldn't be illegal is "anti life," right?) people I know are against abortion because they've been told to be against it. They don't care about kids after they come out of the womb, that's why they're also often against things like welfare, "socialized medicine," food assistance, etc. You know, things that many children receive because they were born rather than aborted.

I don't believe for a moment that most adults in America care about someone else getting an abortion. Most anti-abortion people didn't come up with their anti-abortion stance based on agonizing soul searching, they are "pro life" because someone else told them to. Just like they were told that masturbation and homosexuality is wrong, too. If it has to do with the naughty bits, religions want to make sure that they have control over it. Birth control would still be illegal if religion had its way. I also have a difficult time giving Catholicism (the leadership part of it, anyway) the benefit of the doubt on anything now, given recent unsettling stories in the news lately about shenanigans in Europe. Maybe the Catholic Church should take care of that kid touching thing once and for all before they tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

No, no bad personal experiences in this area, I just dislike hypocrisy.

Well, I don't believe in anything just because I've been told to. I think it's a rational and consistent philosophy that killing is never justified. At any stage of life. I don't support capital punishment or abortion. I also don't believe in extended life support past natural life.

Slash, if you were making a rational argument I could counter it, but all you're doing is generalizing about what others believe. I guess I can't argue with what you think I believe except to tell you I don't. I believe in social justice on many levels, and providing the means of family planning to those who can't afford it is just one of them. I identify as Catholic, but I don't slavishly follow the party line, and I know a lot of other people who feel the same way.

By the way, I hope you can acknowledge that the Catholic church is and has long been one of the world's largest sources of social welfare programs. I'm not excusing child molestation or the Inquisition or any of the many, many wrongs of the Church. But that doesn't erase all its good deeds either.

Don't tell the bishop this either, but I think priests should be any gender, married or single.

I also love masturbation and don't have a problem with homosexuality. I told you I'm not a very good Catholic.

I wasn't going to comment on this, but I guess I am.

If I had read this review or this book several years ago, it would have killed me. Not because of politics or anything, and I'm pro-choice, but after my daughter was born, we tried to have another child.

I became pregnant 12 times in three years and lost every one to miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, and one ectopic pregnancy very nearly killed me (no, literally).

I remember at the time thinking that I wasn't being selfish, was I? I just wanted one more child. Just one. That's it. I don't even want a lot out of life. Just peacefulness, enough money to pay the bills, love. My husband, my child. And we wanted one more.

I told my doctor I didn't understand. I had a baby so easily in 1994. She looked at me and actually laughed. She said "honey, I've seen your insides. You didn't have a baby in 94. You had a MIRACLE."

After the one that nearly killed me, Mr. Snuggie said that's it. He couldn't watch me go through all that anymore and he got himself fixed. I was secretly relieved because now the up and down heartbreak was over and we could move on.

We're very happy now and have been for years. In fact, the more time goes on, the happier we are we only have one (there are distinct advantages).

But there was a dark time when I can remember locking myself in a closet being just racked with sobs and clawing at my own face in grief. I mean, for that last one, they had me staying in the maternity ward. So every time I woke up from a drug-induced haze, I'd hear newborns mewling in the next room and think for a second one of them was mine. Then I'd remember.

When my husband and daughter came to pick me up, my daughter, three at the time, wanted to know which baby we were taking home.

I read advice that ranged from getting a pedicure to get over pregnancy loss to naming the child, planting a tree, doing a little headstone. Hell. I'd have had an orchard by now.

And stories like this---wow. And the Duggars, for opposite reasons. They feel they should have as many babies as possible because they are a blessing. Well, I think kids are a blessing, too. Doesn't mean you GET more than one. Or even one sometimes. And her beatific smiling face with her little syrupy sweet baby voice talking about how shocked they are with each pregnancy, oh GOSH, God, another one? Aren't we BLESSED? Aren't we SWELL?

I might sound bitter, but I'm really just channeling a younger me who was pretty bitter for a while. But I did have one gorgeous wonderful healthy daughter and for that, I'm extremely thankful.

Life is good.

Thanks for this review, Alli, but I'm afraid reading it would bring it all back for me and I'd end up feeling resentful and bitter all over again.

Because I'm apparently incapable of a comment as serious as this deserves I'd just like to say that I'm now scared of that picture up there... I feel like it's a serial killer staring at me, and it's creeping me out!

I am beyond impressed with the level of discourse in this thread. Brava, Pajibans. You are all beautiful people.

I just want to throw in two things. First, Planned Parenthood is wonderful! As scorzi mentioned, they do tons of low cost procedures and prescriptions. I suffered from chronic UTIs for about three years, and without PP, I probably would have developed a kidney infection or worse and needed a hospital stay, which I'd still be paying off. I've always had the same doctor and registered nurse when I've gone, which is comforting. PP also offers INFORMATION and factual data, so people can make their own decisions which is more than I can say for many pro-life organizations, some of which deliberately offer false or misleading data.

Second, in regard to Nieve, I have always thought that there should be counseling sessions or support groups offered for all people affected by abortion. Not the condescending "counseling sessions" that pro lifers want to make mandatory to try to discourage women from getting abortions, but actual therapeutic sessions for people (both men and women) before or after an abortion. Not just right after, but even years later.

Jesse M. and cinderkeys, I've never heard an official position from the church on IVF, are they okay with it? I would have assumed they wouldn't approve because it's not natural, and "goes against His plan".

Also, on a slightly lighter and maybe inappropriate note, that header picture totally looks like Deanna Troi (aka Marina Sirtis). Like, it creeps me out.

Oh, as a kind of ending to my big epic story there, I'm 28 now and still with the man I got pregnant with (5 years now), and I still plan on having kids someday. They'll have to do strict monitoring of my condition and take me off my medication and switch me to something less powerful for the nine months.

Not to open up another can of worms, but I've worked with adoption agencies volunteering and what not, and a lot of people say "Oh, instead of an abortion I'll give it up for adoption." I think more people need to know how many thousands of kids "age out" of the system because no one chooses them. Right now in New York there are over 10,000 kids. The ones that get picked the most are white infants. After a kid is past the age of 10 there's a good chance he will not be adopted. I'm not saying adoption is for everyone or its flawless, but I don't think the "throw this one on the pile with the rest of them so it can live" mentality is great either. I myself plan on adopting one and having one naturally.

Oh, and for the person who said the Catholic church does so much relating to children? Massachusetts Catholic Charities (one of the oldest in the country) decided to end all adoptions of children under their care. Why? Because gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts and gays were applying to adopt kids. So they decided the kids would be better off staying in the orphanages until they aged out of the system. Classy.

i see a lot of horror at the many abortions the woman purportedly had, but since most everyone considers this woman mentally ill, why exactly would you want her to carry any (or all) of these children to term?

there's a basic hypocrisy that exists even among those who identify themselves as pro choice, that abortion is fundamentally wrong but you see it as a "necessary evil". seriously, climb down off it. it's a medical procedure and it's the woman's choice. in my viewpoint, this woman was actually showing these potential children, because that's what they are as fetuses - despite some really bad legislation, mercy by not bringing them into the world to be subjected to god knows what with her as a mother.

a woman should be able to have as many abortions as she feels are necessary and if you don't like it, well, it's not your life. they aren't your potential children and there are already enough miserable, abused, and angry children who grow into dangerous adults out there. why don't we take care of the people who are already here, rather than worry about creating someone who might actually be glad to go unborn. tell your judgmental homilies about how wrong abortion is to the kids who get beaten to death with hammers by the people who are supposed to love and take care of them. the kids who are damaged for life or murdered because they got in the way.

but i guess it's okay, once they are out of the womb, to not care whether they live or die. such moral superiority must mean you're going straight to heaven.

good job.

inflammatory material aside... did noone else notice the poor writing in this post? I expect better quality writing from pajiba.

VentureSister, the review only said that she viewed the fetuses as possible children, which doesn't necessarily mean she saw them as children already, could just be she thought they had potential to become them in the future. I'm not saying she probably isn't kind of screwy psychologically, but from my perspective her actions aren't really morally objectionable.

Also, when I asked about IVF embryos being thrown away people responded with comments about what the church or pro-life people think of this, but I was mainly curious about the opinions of pro-choice people on this thread who nevertheless think that having 15 abortions is horrible. Do you guys think that tossing away 15 frozen embryos is less horrible than aborting 15 fetuses who have developed to the point where they have arms and legs and such but whose brains haven't even begun to function yet? If so, why is the second worse than the first?

hey paddydog,

you said "I'll also add though that I agree with many posters that this woman isn't a narcissist but clearly dealing with some mental health issues."

this scary lady shows every sign of being a narcissist in my all-too-experienced eye, and, it's is one of the more horrible mental health issues there is; devastating and draining to everyone in the narcissist's path, while the narcissist goes unscathed, believing the pain they've caused to have been justified, if they acknowledge others' feelings to even that degree. they read what you like to charm and beguile, in order to gain advantage and use. if they lack charisma, they whither and become demented.

there is no possible or important viewpoint other than the narcissist's. even the poor borderline feels love and empathy, and has heroes, until the inevitable splitting occurs; and as they hate and rage against everyone around them, they hate themselves, as well.

that would never occur to a narcissistic!

Haven't finished browsing all the comments yet, only about 10 more to go, but I felt this needed to be said, since no one's pointed it out so far. The debate, though heartbreaking is refreshingly intelligent and poignant, which isn't news, given all the beautiful people here. However, difficult though it may be, I for one would refrain passing judgement until after having read the book.

I am pro-choice in a country that, as far as I know, hasn't voiced any kind of opinion on this matter, and may very well be indifferent to it, or at least, as indifferent as one can be on something so life and self-altering. This being said, I hope I will never have to exercise this right myself. But from the little I've read about this woman, she was indeed troubled for a very long time. As for her current state, she alone may know her own heart and mind. So in trying, and apparently failing, to keep it simple, I want to say that, coming from a troubled family myself, as well as having had my own share of drama ( I refuse to call it tragedy and victimise myself ), the lengths one can go to in order to hurt/ numb/ destroy/ heal/ purge/ reinvent oneself boggle and horrify the mind. Even one's own. Even while going to said lenghts. And I can also attest that some of the things we shout out proud and loud in an effort to cleanse still hurt the same if not more, that the shame is still there at the end of the day, and that sometimes, in spite of everything we claim there is no forgiveness for one's self. Best we can hope for is atonement. Does it seem like an inhuman thing to do? Quite possibly. But can we really label her a psychopath, or metally ill, in the absence of certified training and personal contact and interviews? Doubtful.

Jenni, your link only talks about when the cerebral cortex begins to develop, but it doesn't mention that none of the synapses in the brain's neurons develop until much later--synapses are essential for neurons to actually transmit signals between one another, so until they form their is no actual brain function. See for example the article Embryological Development of the Human Brain which says "The process of synapse formation probably starts in the mid or late second trimester and continues during the life of the individual." You could also check out the article Abortion and Brain Waves (though it's on archive.org so it may take a long time to load) which says:

Kicking is probably a spasm, too, at least initially, because the fetal cerebral cortex, the center of voluntary brain function, is not yet "wired," its neurons still nonfunctional. (Readings from 20- to 22-week-old premature babies who died at birth show only very feeble EEG signals.) From the twenty-second week to the twenty-fourth week, connections start to be established between the cortex and the thalamus, the part of the brain that translates thoughts into nervous-system commands. Fetal consciousness seems physically "impossible" before these connections form, says Fisk, of the Imperial College School of Medicine.

At about the twenty-third week the lungs become able to function, and, as a result, 23 weeks is the earliest date at which premature babies have survived. At 24 weeks the third trimester begins, and at about this time, as the cerebral cortex becomes "wired," fetal EEG readings begin to look more and more like those of a newborn. It may be a logical consequence, either of natural selection or of divine creation, that fetal higher brain activity begins at about the time when life outside the mother becomes possible. After all, without brain function, prematurely born fetuses would lack elementary survival skills, such as the ability to root for nourishment.

At about 26 weeks the cell structure of the fetal brain begins to resemble a newborn's, though many changes remain in store. By the twenty-seventh week, according to Dr. Phillip Pearl, a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C., the fetal EEG reading shows well-organized activity that partly overlaps with the brain activity of adults, although the patterns are far from mature and will continue to change for many weeks. By the thirty-second week, the fetal brain pattern is close to identical to that of a full-term baby.

One other link I have bookmarked from a discussion I got into about this stuff a while ago is 'Brain Waves' When??? which first debunks some pro-life claims about early fetal brain waves, and then in section 3 mentions some studies dealing with premature babies which show they don't have any EEG activity before about 20 weeks, because:

To get scalp or surface potentials from the cortex requires three things: neurons, dendrites, and axons, with synapses between them. Since these requirements are not present in the human cortex before 20-24 weeks of gestation, it is not possible to record "brain waves" prior to 20-24 weeks.

Great review, Alli. I'm only sorry that this woman received any money or media attention from the reading of her book.

And to the commentators – excellent job. This is one of the kindest, most impassioned and most articulate threads I've read on the web and this is why I continually come to this site.

My own opinions are a moot point; many of you have addressed them already. I wanted to make sure that Alli got her props for this one.

Pups, presumably just an oversight by the reporter, but it wouldn't change the info (confirmed by other sources) about the timing of synapse development and brain waves. The reporter said 23 weeks was the earliest because that's when lungs begin to function, I'd guess the cases of earlier survival involved lungs that developed slightly earlier--the wikipedia article on preterm birth says the youngest to survive was 21 weeks 5 days, so that's just 9 days less than 23 weeks.

I'm moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes...