I'm really not sure why this is considered a victory for the right to life movement for the following reasons.
1. The court held that the partial birth abortion ban was legal because it did not place undue restriction on a woman's right to abortion. Unless I completely misunderstand this, the court found that banning IDX abortions would not prevent women from obtaining abortions. How is it a victory for prolife if it doesn't prevent abortions it just requires doctors to use another method.
2. In 36 states, late term abortions are already banned except in cases involving life or health of the mother, abnormality of the fetus, or sometimes rape. While I recognize that these laws can be misused by unscruplous doctors, the alternative to them, laws which would require some women to bleed to death rather than receive an abortion, would be unacceptable to most americans.
3. Only 1.4% of abortions occur after 20 weeks and only a fraction of those occur by IDX. While I could not find statistics on these abortions, it is reported that most abortion after 20 weeks are for medical reasons.
Since I first heard of partial birth abortion I have considered the attempts to ban to be fundamentally misguided. When abortions are immoral, it is because of WHY they are done NOT HOW they are done.
Partial Birth abortion bans are inspired by graphic horrific descriptions of the procedure rather than a rational analysis of situation.
I can not fully appreciate the circumstances that would lead a woman to seek a late term abortion. I can only begin to imagine how heart renching it must be to have to choose between the life of your unborn child and the your own life and health. What I do know with certainty is that if some one I know and love needed an abortion, I would want it done in the way that was safest for the mother. Partial birth abortion bans seem to ignore this reality.
So the bottom line appears to be that partial birth abortion bans won't actual stop any abortions. Instead abortions will just be done using other procedures which can be more dangerous for the mother. Why is that a victory for abortion opponents?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: The bit about fetal abnormalities worries me a little though. I'd like to see some studies on how abnormal we're talking.
... But I've read too many of sndrake's posts and links where people don't mind aborting babies that should have had decades of life with some assistance. I don't trust humanity to decide who would really die and who would be inconvenient.
*nods
Indeed. It is a concern worth intense consideration.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote:Why is that a victory for abortion opponents?
Because it signals a significant change in direction for the Court. The entire reason this is a victory is because of the way the issue was warped by the Court in Roe and Casey.
But also because sticking scissors in to the head of a wriggling baby is something I'm glad can be made illegal, even if it just means some other way to kill the child will be used.
Baby steps, so to speak.
quote:In 36 states, late term abortions are already banned except in cases involving life or health of the mother, abnormality of the fetus, or sometimes rape. While I recognize that these laws can be misused by unscruplous doctors
That doesn't require unscrupulous doctors (any more than I consider the act itself unscrupulous) because "health" includes emotional distress.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:That doesn't require unscrupulous doctors (any more than I consider the act itself unscrupulous) because "health" includes emotional distress.
I'd argue, and I think most psychiatrist would agree, that simple "emotional distress" does not constitute a threat to a woman's mental health. I would find any doctor who justified a late term abortion based solely on simple emotional distress to be unscrupulous.
The real questions are how often does such a thing happen and how easy is it for a woman to find a doctor that will perform a third trimester abortion because she is emotional distressed.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Does the law make an exception for a fetus that is already dead? Or is that covered under "health of the mother"?
The problem with "fetal abnormalities" is that it ranges from an extra toe to anencephaly. Are there more specific regulations regarding abortions in those cases?
While emotional distress might be pushing it, I do think it's reasonable to include mental health as a part of the mother's well-being. Mental illnesses are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, and pregnancies can definitely cause or worsen a mental illness.
That said, I generally support restrictions on abortion, particularly in the case of post-viability fetuses. If the pregnancy can be terminated without killing the fetus and without serious harm to the mother, then I don't think that there's generally a good excuse for performing an abortion.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I could see my baby's amazing and perfect spine, a precise, pebbled curl of vertebrae. His little round skull. The curve of his nose. I could even see his small leg floating slowly through my uterus.
My doctor came in a moment later, slid the ultrasound sensor around my growing, round belly and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not alive,” she said.
She turned her back to me and started taking notes. I looked at the wall, breathing deeply, trying not to cry.
I can make it through this, I thought. I can handle this.
I didn’t know I was about to become a pariah.
I was 19 weeks pregnant, strong, fit and happy, imagining our fourth child, the newest member of our family. He would have dark hair and bright eyes. He’d be intelligent and strong — really strong, judging by his early kicks.
And now this. Not alive?
I didn’t realize that pressures well beyond my uterus, beyond the too bright, too-loud, too-small ultrasound room, extending all the way to boardrooms of hospitals, administrative sessions at medical schools and committee hearings in Congress, were going to deepen and expand my sorrow and pain.
On November 6, 2003, President Bush signed what he called a “partial birth abortion ban,” prohibiting doctors from committing an “overt act” designed to kill a partially delivered fetus. The law, which faces vigorous challenges, is the most significant change to the nation’s abortion laws since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion legal in Roe v. Wade in 1973. One of the unintended consequences of this new law is that it put people in my position, with a fetus that is already dead, in a technical limbo.
Legally, a doctor can still surgically take a dead body out of a pregnant woman. But in reality, the years of angry debate that led to the law’s passage, restrictive state laws and the violence targeting physicians have reduced the number of hospitals and doctors willing to do dilations and evacuations (D&Es) and dilations and extractions (intact D&Es), which involve removing a larger fetus, sometimes in pieces, from the womb.
At the same time, fewer medical schools are training doctors to do these procedures. After all, why spend time training for a surgery that’s likely to be made illegal?
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: So the bottom line appears to be that partial birth abortion bans won't actual stop any abortions. Instead abortions will just be done using other procedures which can be more dangerous for the mother.
posted
yup, this just makes abortions more dangerous.
On the other hand, I think this will also take the abortion debate out of the public square in the 2008 elections.
I think the majority of Americans will never know the facts and view the partial birth abortion ban as a long coming and reasonable compromise between the two opposing groups shouting at the top of their lungs, and I think because of that, many americans will view the abortion debate as settled for now.
Undoubtedly, the extreme right will try to use the ban to generate momentum, and it will fire up some mostly female elements on the extreme left resulting in some nasty rhetoric on both fronts, but I think a lot of people, (if they even get a chance to hear about it in the next couple weeks since there is apparently no news in the world for the next three weeks other than vtech), will consider the issue, well, dead.
And I don't think either extremists are expecting that.
Posts: 128 | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:The real questions are how often does such a thing happen and how easy is it for a woman to find a doctor that will perform a third trimester abortion because she is emotional distressed.
No, that's not the real question, just as whether the people in GITMO are actually terrorists or not is not the real question.
The real question is why is there an absolute lack of legal review of questions of life and death under the current health of the mother regime, either before or after the act.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Boy, did a post of mine get deleted in this thread, or am I just crazy? I could have sworn I made a post where I was all like 'ha ha, but seriously, good riddance to the baby-hoovering practice.'
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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