Here is a really hair raising essay on how “pro-lifers” use words.
This usage also allows them to conjure up a boogeyman of clinics and “abortionists” who do nothing else, as if “abortion” were a recognized medical specialty field.
The title of that site is incredibly misleading. Abortion ‘facts’ my ass, it’s so pro-life slanted that I’m surprised it’s not reading vertically.
This has made me rethink my previous stance of no compromise being possible. I’ll stick by the impossibility of compromising with the US anti-choice movement, and that any compromise could not be a compromise between their position, and the present law (Casey).
But, the compromise I would accept:
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Abortion on demand in the first trimester, limited only as other medical procedures of equal risk and complexity are limited (licensed facilities etc, though RU 486 would alter that).
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Abortion availability in the second trimester based upon a sign off by a doctor, involving, I suppose I could accept, a degree of counseling as to options.
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Abortion availability in the third trimester based upon health of the mother, with another exemption to allow in cases where the mother (genuinely) was unable to receive a termination at an earlier stage.
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Comprehensive sex education throughout public education, and throughout society. Maybe even remove the parental opt out right.
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Government funding for abortions. Ideally as part of a universal health care system, but that isn’t part of the debate here. Otherwise Medicare (or Medicaid, I never remember which is which), and required coverage under insurance policies.
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Government funding for birth control. Again ideally free at point of use, alternatively through mandatory coverage under insurance.
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Government funding of medical facilities dependent on provision of abortion services (obviously within the scope of reason here). If my law school can risk the government funding for the hospital attached to the school by a policy that all employers wishing to interview the students on campus not discriminate against gays and lesbians, then I don’t think it is too much to ask that a hospital refusing to provide a legal medical procedure be subject to the same risk.
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Lesser parental notification than at present in many states. I don’t know exactly how much I can take, but I can try to work it out.
That’s a compromise I can get behind. Are there any anti-abortion rights people who could support that? I doubt it, but I live in hope.
Some anti-abortionists would not agree with #3. The mother’s health vs. the fetus’s life? Forget it! Only if the mother’s life is at stake.
Oh I don’t expect most anti-abortion rights people will agree with any of it, to be honest. But hope springs eternal.
I wouldn’t feel comfortable banning abortion, but I don’t feel entirely comfortable with the idea of promoting abortion as birth control either.
The best thing to do, given that abortion will stay legal, is to simply make not having abortions more attractive. The biggest concession pro-lifers really have to make is to start being pro-birth control (pro sex education would be nice too).
The second is to downplay the religious and fear mongering aspects. There may be compelling religious reasons against abortions (although does the Bible actually directly address that or is it an extrapolation?) but these don’t really have a place in legislation, education, or medicine. There’s plenty of secular and general ethical and psychological reasons as well as positive approaches and mixing religion or fear into it isn’t appropriate or even helpful.
Education about sex and birth control and positive relationships will lower the amount of abortions sought. Counseling and prenatal care will help women work through what is really best for them and their child, as well as presenting them with what their options and alternatives are. Education and counseling should be fair minded - downplaying both the “committing a sin” and “baby is just unfeeling tissue” aspects. Greater support for adoption and meeting the needs of single or poor pregnant women and women with children will also make these options seem more realistic to them.
They are already pay for that with taxes, but most pro-Birth people do not want to pay the taxes necessary to support the already born. The Republicans want only the middle class to support the rest of society, lower taxes for the rich. Let the poor take care of themselves seems to be the platform; let a woman bear a pregnancy she does not feel fit to endure. The state can regulate her body,she is just a brood mare attitude is not helping a woman who is already stressed. There are women who in some cases who have an abortion as a form of self defense. Because I didn’t have one doesn’t mean I have the right to dictate to another what they should do with their own bodies.
It takes taxes to pay for programs, we cannot help anyone with out funding.
Plus, the unwanted babies and abandonded ones were from People who did not want a child to begin with but was ignorant in many cases of sexuality,or was taught that birth control was wrong or abortian was murder.
Monavis
The pro-life side seems to be don’t have sex unless you are ready to get pregnant, don’t use any birth control that could cause a fertilized egg not to implant, if you get pregnant by any means including rape and/or incest or if your birth control fails you must continue the pregnancy, don’'t use in vitro fertilization unless you implant all the fertilized eggs, no abortion unless the woman’s life is absolutely, positively in danger, no assisted fertilizaion for gay/lesbian couples or single people, and if you give up the baby up for adoption, it has to be to a straight couple.
Any deviation from the above would be punishable by law.
Where are they willing to compromise?
I am not sure I see this as particularly fair minded. On the one hand you are suggesting the anti-abortion rights people give up telling peopel they are sinners for having abortions (during counselling) - in other words a purely opinion based, religious determined statement. On the other you are suggesting no reference to medical facts (assuming they are medical facts; I would think we both agree that counselling, if it happens, should not include provably false statements).
That’s not a fair compromise, really…
The “counseling” should be a discussion between the woman and her doctor, same as any other medical decision. And that’s already happening. There is no need of the government imposing another third party.
No, my point was that counseling should try to be free of spin and propaganda and try to stick to the demonstrable facts. This means free of spin on both sides. On the religious side, obviously matters of faith aren’t demonstrable facts. On the other side, dehumanizing the fetus can sometimes go past the point of facts and become spin. It should be sufficient to simply state the facts as far as what attributes the fetus has at each stage (heartbeat, whether it can feel pain or survive outside the womb) and let the woman make up her mind about what this signifies as far as how humanized this makes her fetus seem. Omitting statements of the doctors opinion about how the human the baby is at a certain point and whether this makes it ok is not suggesting no reference to medical facts.
Where does the woman’s obligation stop? At age two, the child could not survive without constant care and feeding from someone, usually the mother. Under your proposal, could we not just “state the facts” and “let the woman make up her mind” about “how humanized” the child is?
Remember this child cannot survive without adult help, and as such is a leech on the mother having to care for it. Wouldn’t a bullet in the brain to the child not only be a viable option, but the most humane?
Just because the fetus has left her body doesn’t make her obligations stop. I never understood the argument that “since the child is inside me, it’s my body and I should be allowed to kill it”.
Well, now the child is OUTSIDE your body, so your responsibilities to the child should be that much more removed. Let the little fucker starve to death in your living room; he’s an invader in your home.
If you look to Africa and other countries where the population has a great percentages of poor you can look into the eyes of the children dying of starvation and decease, perhaps a good method of birth control could save a lot of lives. There is a difference between a fully formed human and a fertile egg. Maybe if men were imprisioned for getting a woman pregnant when he knows he cannot afford to care for them, or have the attitude of forcing some one else to follow his particular beliefs then minds would change in a hurry.
Monavis
It’s true that the abortion debate isn’t as loud in most of Europe as it is in the US, but there is a significant anti-abortion minority in most countries and in a number of them they are gaining political ground. I’ve only just returned from an international (well, pan-EU) conference discussing just that. You might be interested to know that many speakers at the conference identified the time limits as one of the biggest problems with European abortion laws and the question was asked as to why there should be any time limit at all.
Maybe I’m picking you up wrong, but you seem to be suggesting that the lack of a nationally-imposed time limit in the US is a contributing factor to the vehemence of the debate there. I think that’s absurd. If you look at the European countries where abortion is an extremely divisive issue (I live in one of them), what they all have in common is an authoritarian religious tradition with a lot of political influence. For all its official secularism, the US has something very similar in fundamentalist Christianity and it strikes me that that more than anything else explains the polarisation.
Yes, if I remember correctly you are Irish which being Catholic is a bit special – or at least different than here. In Denmark there is practically zero discussion on abortion. The only party which might include an anti-abortion wing got kicked out of the parliament at the last election and currently polls around 0.2%. Suggesting we do away with free abortion till 12th week would be political suicide. I believe it’s the same in Sweden and Finland and to a lesser degree in Norway.
Well weather a time limit is a problem, depends on what you think abortion laws are for. Clearly a time limit exists for a number of reasons, one of them being that most people believe there is a qualitative difference between a two weeks old foetus and an eight months old foetus – and would consider killing the latter bloody murder. Suggesting we should do away with a time-limit would get you nothing but head-shaking and people thinking you were mad or an extremists – or both.
I’m more concerned that some EU institution suddenly decides that limitless abortion should be a pan-European law.
How is that absurd? If the abortion laws in Denmark were as lax as they are in the USA I know many whom would vehemently oppose abortion. Me included. It is true that Scandinavia is very secular, but that is perhaps what has allowed us to reach a compromise most people find acceptable. Just because God isn’t in the argument, doesn’t mean people would support what they consider infanticide.
How is Canada doing with that? I can only assume most women are waiting 'til their 8th month of pregnancy to get the thing taken care of, and that the abortion rate is triple to quadruple that of the US (especially since, I believe, it’s free in most provinces).
Last I checked Canada wasn’t in the EU. Was stuck in backwater America too. To its great disappointment I’m sure. Like we would ever want any of those barbarian unwashed hordes from the wrong side of the ocean in our exclusive club. But if there is anything you want to say, feel free to just come out and say it, instead of fucking around trying to be smug.
I live in Ireland, yes. And Ireland’s Catholicism doesn’t make it “special” in a European context … besides the North of Ireland is Protestant-dominated and they’re even more backward about abortion than we are. As a matter of fact the lack of any controversy over the issue in Scandinavia makes you special. Scandinavia is extremely peculiar in the absence of any significant anti-abortion sentiment. Even in the other countries of Europe where it is legal there are vocal minorities strongly opposed to it - and that includes countries that have similar laws to yours, so your argument that the laws themselves are the reason for the lack of controversy doesn’t really hold water.
If you think the laws are to prevent abortions beyond the 12th week, then they aren’t working. Women are still having abortions beyond the 12th week - they’re just going to countries where it’s legal. Or self-aborting, in the case of many poor (and especially migrant) women who don’t have the means to travel abroad. Now surely we can both agree that’s a problem? Obviously it increases the risk of the procedure (which is already riskier at that stage) - which I’m sure is a large part of the reason that the WHO representative at the conference was one of those who expressed the view that time limits are a problem.
If you think the laws are to prevent abortions of eight months old foetuses, then they are pointless. Women do not get to eight months pregnant and decide to abort. There’s no evidence of that whatsoever from Canada and the US states that don’t prohibit it.
So in other words these laws cause far more problems than they prevent. I don’t think it’s good enough to justify them on the grounds that they may make some people feel more comfortable about abortion.
Abortion is not an EU competency, but surely you know that.
Well as I said, for me it would be the reason for controversy. As well as many others in Denmark. Also if those European countries had more lax laws perhaps the controversy would be greater.
Murder is also still happening. Hopefully at a lesser rate than what would have happened without any anti-murder laws. I don’t think there is any great number of Danish women self-aborting (late-term) or going abroad for late term abortions. There is a case ever three or four years – and then everybody goes crazy for a few months, and then it dies down. Last time was in 2006 about an abortion house in Barcelona, which apparently performed very late term abortions, up till 32nd week and was filmed by hidden camera. That made the politicians wanted to tighten up the laws (Politicians wants to punish women for late term abortions (Politikere vil straffe kvinder for sen abort) – don’t know what became of it. There is a bit of difference what the parties want to do about the problem; the socialist parties want to punish the doctors the conservative parties both the doctors and the girls).
Eight months’ abortions? Of course not. At least very seldom. It should still be illegal since it is moral wrong. Every year there are some 800 enquires for permission for late term abortions – between 12th and 24th week. Around 700 of those were given permission, mostly because of genetic defects. I guess the prohibition against late term abortions are for those remaining 100. If you think late term abortion is wrong, 100 babies a year is not a minor thing. Of course there is also a number, which doesn’t bother to seek permission, since the laws are known by everybody. Also 65 girls (2006) under 18 wanted abortion without notifying the parents – 59 were given permission (mostly girls from Muslim families).
Only if you think more than 100 Danish girls travel abroad for late term abortions, which I highly doubt.
Yes I know that (although apparently your fellow citizens didn’t, when they last voted no) also EU bureaucracies – all bureaucracies – once created, have a tendency to grown and assume ever more responsibilities unless strictly kept in check.