Remee Lee is devastated. The 26-year-old Floridian went from finding out she was pregnant to filing charges against the father of her baby. Remee’s ex-boyfriend John Andrew Welden took her to his father’s clinic when Remee suspected she was pregnant. Welden’s father, an obstetrician, gave her a sonogram which revealed she was six weeks along. To Remee this was a dream come true. For John Andrew it was a nightmare. John made it clear he didn’t want a child but Remee planned to carry the baby full term. Things took a turn for the worse when Welden tricked her into taking an abortion causing pill that terminated the child.
Welden lied to Lee, telling her his father diagnosed her with a bacterial infection for which she’d need to take the antibiotic Amoxicillin. Welden stole his father’s prescription pad to get Cytotec, an abortion causing pill. He forged a phony label and told Remee to take three pills a day. After the first pill Remee woke up bleeding and had to be rushed to the hospital.
At the hospital Lee showed the medicine to the doctors who quickly recognized it was not Amoxicillin.
Lee appeared on CNN’s ‘New Day’ Tuesday telling host Chris Cuomo, “Every day is a nightmare for me ever since this began.”
CNN reports Welden, “pleaded guilty to killing their unborn baby.” He was originally indicted under the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a murder charge that carries a life sentence. Walden accepted a plea deal with lesser charges that could give him up to 15 years in prison for product tampering and conspiracy to commit fraud. Lee said, “There’s just no words for the horror I wake up with every day that this is my reality. There’s no escaping it, there’s no turning it off.”
Welden will be back in court to be sentence December 5th.
This is a sad story with no winners. Remee lost the child she dearly desired. John lost his freedom as a consequence for wrongdoing. The baby lost its life because its father sought to take it.
It’s interesting to read the responses to this story. CNN reported Welden pleaded guilty to “killing their unborn baby”. Yes you read that right. It didn’t say terminating a fetus or destroying a clump of cells . CNN said killing an unborn baby.
A reader in the comment section voiced his confusion over the word choice:
Freddy: So why in this case is it a “baby” and in so many others it is just tissue and not a “baby” … confused
Some readers recognized the crime was evil but refused to admit it had anything to do with legalized abortion. Another reader commented:
“Welden committed a heinous crime. I am pro-choice but this is not an abortion issue at all. Once a woman is pregnant it is her choice alone to have the baby or abort.”
The “I’m pro-choice but” line of thinking was used often in regards to Kermit Gosnell’s house of horrors. People were disgusted by Gosnell’s action yet many refused to let the case challenge their thoughts on abortion. They acknowledged Gosnell as a monster but wrote him off as an anomaly. They held fast to the views that made them comfortable.
Other readers played the blame the victim card. Specifically by saying Remee was “trapping” Welden.
VB: Why is it ok for a woman to abort a child without the consent of the father. He’s not malicious. He just did not want to be trapped in a relationship for the rest of his life, which would have been the case if she kept the baby.
Vladimir: HAIL to the boyfriend! For doing this trick. It’s better to spend a couple years in prison than letting this skank to imprison him to next 18 years of payments for baby he didn’t want! She tricked him and he tricked her back! Not feeling sorry for women like her!
This is a window into the way our society views women. Many comments assumed Remee was secretly skipping her birth control or plotting to get pregnant. The CNN interview gave no indication of that. People condemned her for being desperate simply because she was enthusiastic about wanting her child.
Some readers found it unfair that a man has no rights in deciding if he wants to parent a child while a women can terminate a pregnancy without question. In addition some men and women had a real issue with men having to pay child support for a child they never wanted. One man commented :
John McKay: I’m more interested in the double standard under the law, which treats the fetus as a human being that is protected under the law if desired by the mother and as a fetus with no rights or protections when undesired by the mother. Which one is it? You can make an argument for either one, but it seems terribly strange to apply such wildly different levels of punishment for what is ultimately the same act.
I think it’s quite clear our nation is tired of the double standards. Is an unborn child worthy of protection or not? This is the question America must ask herself.
