darwin is sorry for making it sound like he thought you were passing judgement.

Pretty macabric though.

Yes, maybe something we anti-abortionists can learn from.

As for the celibacy fetish, seems to me you're the one that's got a celibacy fetish.

Just because darwin hasn't asked you for a date? Listen, darwin doesn't have a celibacy fetish. darwin used to be an ordinary devotee, shaving his head and body, taking 10 cold showers a day, struggling to not spill semen (sometimes for 5, 6, or even 7 days!), burning incense and chanting...

It seems to be all you think about, that is when you're not showing off your dry jnani to Mark.

Please take the time to read those posts

ihlm

quote:

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Originally posted by darwin:
HPriestess wrote:
[b]Andy Warhol ate aborted fetuses

Is it any worse than killing fetuses to satisfy a celibacy fetish?

[This message has been edited by darwin (edited 01-02-2001).][/B]

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Killing is killing; I wasn't passing judgement, just passing on some info. Pretty macabric though. As for the celibacy fetish, seems to me you're the one that's got a celibacy fetish. It seems to be all you think about, that is when you're not showing off your dry jnani to Mark.

ihlm

HPriestess wrote:
Andy Warhol ate aborted fetuses

Maybe we should eat aborted fetuses to publicize the fact that fetuses are being killed and to shock people into realizing that fetuses are developing people. darwin wishes BB would drive his bloody fetus truck to Boston.

Is it any worse than killing fetuses to satisfy a celibacy fetish?

quote:

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Originally posted by darwin:
Tarun Krsnadas wrote:

[b]For a high fee, a few select Manhattan restaurants serve aborted fetus flesh.

That's very hard to believe, please provide more information. .[/B]

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For a high fee, a few select Manhattan restaurants serve aborted fetus flesh.

It is just past midnight VNN forum time, and yesterday was the 6th anniversary of John's rampage. darwin's first child was killed by abortion in one of the clinics that John attacked. darwin was a little bit involved with the anti-abortion protesters, chanting the Rosary with them and talking to the vegetarian priest, in the months leading up to john's rampage. darwin's mother used to work in the abortion industry when it was illegal. Please indulge darwin in another rendering of his poetry. Please help darwin to believe that we are real and it all means something.

John Salvi went crazy so I wouldn't have to.

He saw a giant bird in his kitchen.

Let's prevent even more abortions!

Let us throw off our chains of sexual envy!

Let the non-violent birth control flow freely!

Save the fetuses!

As Abortion Rate Decreases, Clinics Compete for Patients

By GINA KOLATA

DETROIT - Renee Chelian was worried about her business. With competitors charging lower prices, she needed something special to draw customers. So she created an almost a spa-like atmosphere at her offices, with low light in the rooms, aromatherapy, candles and relaxing music.

Ms. Chelian runs three abortion clinics in the Detroit suburbs, where competition is so fierce that each clinic owner is looking for an edge.

In Detroit, and in other large metropolitan areas around the country, there are not too few abortion providers, as abortion proponents have lamented for years. There are too many. It is still true that fewer hospitals are providing abortions, fewer doctors outside abortion clinics are offering the procedure and 86 percent of counties in the country have no abortion provider.

But, over the past few years, as the number of abortions has declined, abortions increasingly have been concentrated in specialty clinics in cities and pockets of competition have developed.

So while women in rural areas must sometimes drive hundreds of miles to the nearest clinic, in cities and suburbs there are price wars and competition over amenities. Doctors have refused to train colleagues, fearing they will only help a potential competitor in a lucrative, often cash-only, business.

National statistics compiled by the Alan Guttmacher Institute illustrate the clinics' problem. The number of abortions declined by 17.4 percent in just seven years, to a low of 1.328 million in 1997 from a peak of 1.608 million abortions in 1990, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Different groups give different explanations for the drop. The National Right to Life Committee credits the persuasive power of abortion opponents as well as laws requiring informed consent and parental notification. But Dr. Stanley Henshaw, a senior fellow at the Guttmacher Institute who analyzed abortion data, said the reason is mostly better birth control. While it is true, he said, that more teenagers are keeping their babies, most of those having abortions are in their early 20's and fewer of them are becoming pregnant.

Whatever the reason, the falling number of abortions has come at a time when the number of clinics in major cities has not changed. Since 1992, the number of clinics doing 400 or more abortions a year has remained steady at 690. It is in these clinics - 99 percent of which are in metropolitan areas - that 89 percent of abortions take place.

The Cost of Competition

Clinic owners say they have little choice but to cluster in cities - that is the only way they can find enough patients. Ruth Arick, the owner of Choice Pursuits in DeLand, Fla., which does management consulting for abortion clinics, said that a population of about 200,000 is needed to support a full-fledged clinic.

Abortion clinics are not so different from other specialty services, said Dr. William Ramos, who runs an abortion clinic in Las Vegas.

"In the entire state of Nevada, there is only one Lexus dealer and only one Acura dealer," he said.

But, abortion providers say, unlike other areas of medicine, where prices have surged over the years, competition among abortion clinics has kept prices so low that an abortion in many cities costs less now than it did 25 years ago, without even adjusting for the nearly 500 percent inflation in medical services. If abortion had kept up with inflation in medical services, a $300 abortion in 1972 would cost $2,251 today.

"The fees are not set by the cost of the services but by the cost of the competition," said Dr. Warren Hern, owner of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado. And, he said, "the competition for patients is absolutely ruthless."

While abortion providers report that many metropolitan areas - New York, Northern New Jersey, large cities in California and Florida - have a surplus of abortion providers, few places have more intense competition than Detroit and its suburbs, home to about 5.4 million people. There, two dozen clinics - with another nine within a two-hour drive from Detroit - fight for a dwindling number of patients and owners like Ms. Chelian find themselves struggling to survive.

"As altruistic as women and feminists want to be, the reality is that we can only stay in business if we earn enough to keep our doors open," Ms. Chelian said.

Fighting the Price Wars

After working at abortion clinics for 25 years, Kathryn Allen seized an opportunity to own one. The doctor running the Scotsdale Women's Center, a small brick building painted a dusky rose on a bleak treeless street in Detroit, was in his 60's and his practice had dwindled.

So, in 1997, Ms. Allen and her daughter, Shelly Miller, took over, getting a doctor to do abortions and deciding to charge $275 for a first- trimester abortion - significantly less than the average fee in the United States, which was $316 in 1996.

But then a nearby clinic, which had been charging $250 for students and $285 for others, dropped its fee to $175. Ms. Allen could not compete.

"We were not making it, we were just getting killed," Ms. Allen said. "There was one week when we did just eight patients. We owned the building, we were paying peoples' salaries and we were really scared."

The only way to survive, Ms. Allen decided, was to meet her competitor's fee and forgo her own pay. The competing clinic finally raised its fee to $230 for a first-trimester abortion, and so Ms. Allen and Ms. Miller did the same. Their clinic now does about 1,200 abortions a year.

Ms. Allen and Ms. Miller still have to watch every penny. Like other clinics, the owners save money by training a low-paid staff to do everything but the actual surgery, from drawing blood to doing lab tests. Most of the time, no patients are scheduled and the staff cleans and does paper work. But when the doctor comes, a parade of patients is ready for the procedure, which takes just two or three minutes in the first trimester of pregnancy.

In Detroit, as in many other large cities, abortion protesters have not been a problem. The main problem is competition from other clinics. In New York, two of the largest clinics, Parkmed and Eastern Women's Center, coexisted for more than a decade, about two blocks from each other near Park Avenue South and 30th Street. But last year they had 30 percent fewer abortion patients than they did in peak years in the late 1980's and early 1990's, said Ted Weiselberg, who owned Parkmed.

So the two New York clinics decided that the only way they could survive was to merge, forming Parkmed Eastern Women's Center. The new clinic not only does abortions - about 15,000 a year, said Mr. Weiselberg, one of its owners - but it offers gynecological services as well.

"It's like any other service," Mr. Weiselberg said. "You have to lower your fee to attract enough patients to allow the office to pay its rent and you have to diversify to be successful."

Abortion Pill Dilemma

Now, clinics are grappling with the mifepristone dilemma. Owners feel they have to offer the recently approved abortion pill, formerly known as RU-486, because women are asking for it and seem to expect it. But its price - $270 for three pills - will be a problem. Many owners say that if they charge what it costs to provide the three pills plus the three office visits, the lab work, and the counseling, they will lose customers to competitors who say they will keep the price much lower.

Some have found creative solutions. Ms. Chelian said she is considering offering women just one pill instead of three and to have them sign a form saying they understand that one pill is not the approved dose but that studies have shown that one pill is effective. Then she can charge them just $80 more than for a surgical abortion.

Carmen Franco, who owns six clinics in Detroit, said she expects to charge women $450 for a mifepristone abortion with the full three-pill dose. It is less than her costs. But, she said, by making it available, she expects to draw patients to the clinic where they can see the full range of options she provides. "We probably will use it as a loss leader," she said.

A Subsidized Competitor

Dr. Hern used to have plenty of patients for first-trimester abortions at his clinic in Boulder, where he was charging $375. Then, a Planned Parenthood clinic opened in nearby Fort Collins, charging less than $300. Subsidized by the nonprofit Planned Parenthood Foundation, the clinic was able to keep its fees lower than Dr. Hern could even contemplate.

"Within a month after that clinic opened, my patient numbers dropped by 25 percent," Dr. Hern said.

Independent abortion providers say Planned Parenthood clinics can easily undercut them.

"I would sort of compare them to Wal-Mart coming in and taking over from all the mom and pops'," said Dr. William West, who works at an abortion clinic in Dallas.

The Planned Parenthood issue, said Carole Joffee, a sociologist who is a visiting professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, is part of "the identity crisis of abortion. All other forms of health care are part of a market. Is abortion part of the health care industry? Or is it part of a social movement?"

Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that her group has a slightly different focus than independent providers.

"As a nonprofit organization our mission is to make sure that every woman has access to reproductive health services - including abortion - regardless of their ability to pay," she said.

In keeping with that mission, Planned Parenthood has expanded its abortion services over the past decade, Ms. Feldt said. In 1991, 91 out of 199 Planned Parenthood health centers offered abortions. In 1999, 147 out of 876 offered them. But, Ms. Feldt said, she does not see a conflict between her group and independent clinics since they often coexist peacefully, even sharing doctors. "We each fill an important niche in the community," she said. In addition, Ms. Feldt said, Planned Parenthood advocates and litigates to provide a social climate that enables abortion clinics to exist.

Many independent clinic owners say they survive only by finding a way to distinguish themselves from Planned Parenthood.

Dr. Hern decided that because his Planned Parenthood competitor did only first-trimester abortions, he would compete by focusing on abortions in the second and third trimester. While the vast majority of women who have abortions are in their first trimester, the thought was that those who were later in pregnancy would be drawn to Dr. Hern. But now even that niche is starting to erode, he said. At a recent medical meeting, Dr. Hern said, doctors crowded into a session on late-term abortions. "The startling thing to me was that a very large room was filled - packed," Dr. Hern said. "Twenty years ago, there were just two or three doctors in the country doing late abortions."

A Lucrative Business

Dr. Ramos said the situation at his clinic in Las Vegas is close to ideal. There are no protesters. Business is good - he does about 3,000 abortions a year, charging $300 for a first- trimester abortion. And with four clinics in the city, everyone is getting by. Dr. Ramos says he made the perfect career choice when he began doing abortions nearly three decades ago. "There is less work and more income," he explained.

While few want to talk about the money that abortion doctors can make, clinic owners and doctors agree that doctors can make several hundred thousand dollars a year working part time, a few hours a day with their fees averaging $60 for a first-trimester abortion. Although they do have hefty fees for malpractice insurance, doctors who travel from clinic to clinic have no overhead and no record keeping.

But it can be hard to enter the profession.

One doctor in Detroit, who spoke on condition he not be identified, saying he feared hostility from his colleagues, said that when he finished medical school, trained in obstetrics and gynecology, he asked abortion doctors in the area to train him. He was turned away.

Eventually, he found a clinic whose doctor was retiring and the owner let him do abortions. Now, he travels from clinic to clinic terminating pregnancies.

Ronald Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said he gets calls from doctors looking for work but often he cannot help them.

"There are places in this country where there are more doctors who perform abortions looking for work than we can handle," Mr. Fitzsimmons said.

Dr. Ramos said that he understands why. "Anything that's not managed care is exquisitely popular."

In fact, he said, the only thing that is keeping more doctors from entering the abortion arena is the social stigma.

"My patients say, `How do you feel doing abortions all day?' " Dr. Ramos said.

He tells them that he feels fine - that he is helping women at a difficult time of their lives and that, he said, is very gratifying.

"I find this to be a very rewarding practice," Dr. Ramos said. "Emotionally rewarding and financially rewarding."

Chilling, eh?

quote:

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Originally posted by Tarun Krsnadas:
Full STOP! Slam on the brakes! Emergency brake too!
Drop your transmission if need be!
We have to think, put our selves in the unborn baby's position.
Then recall, thoroughly examine & discuss the golden rule: "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you."

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Essential truth spoken concisely is true eloqence.

quote:

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Originally posted by darwin:
John Salvi went crazy so I wouldn't have to.

He saw a giant bird in his kitchen.

We will do voodoo.

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"St. Augustine (AD 354-430) said, There cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation, and held that abortion required penance only for the sexual aspect of the sin."