Shodan- may I suggest you read my link to the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health Care logbook for their Abortion Care qualification.
It gives the skills and competencies required to perform surgical terminations after 19 weeks and suggests that no-one should perform the procedure unsuprvised until they have seen 5 and done 20 supervised, and that they have good experience of early second trimester terminations.
That is a fair amount of specialised skill (a pap smear, for example, is a pretty much “see one, do one” level of skill).
Given that the potential complications of the procedure include uterine perforation, maternal haemorrhage and shock, bowel and bladder damage and infection you really don’t want to just wing it.
The majority of in utero foetal deaths after 15 weeks are managed by using medication to essentially induce labour- most OBs will NOT have experience of surgically removing a dead foetus at this stage in pregnancy.
I"m not sure if you simply misunderstood me, or what, but I’ll restate for you anyway.
The point under discussion was that some of those entering the clinic would be going in to have an abortion for a non-viable fetus. Nobody said or implied otherwise. Shodan believes that this number of women with non-viable fetuses is so low as to be very much the exception. I do not think the number of women with non-viable fetuses can be simply discounted as an exception, especially for something this important.
Basically, it seems to me that this line of argument can be boiled down to my previous statement; These women are just collateral damage. The important thing for the anti-abortion movement is to close the clinics, and they simply ignore the women that need this procedure for health reasons as “the exception”.
This really kills me. A woman going to a clinic for a perfectly legal procedure has to face harrassment by the anti-abortion people. If you don’t like what they do, try getting Roe v. Wade overturned, and good fucking luck to you.
Then I will reiterate that the goal of the anti-abortion protesters is not primarily to shut down the clinic, but to end the abortion of viable fetuses. You are correct that the very small minority of women undergoing abortion for reasons of health are “collateral damage”, but this is unavoidable. Since, as I mentioned, they protesters have no way to tell which are the women undergoing abortions for what the protesters would consider valid reasons.
The clinics would continue to operate if abortion were ever outlawed, and, since the protesters would be reasonably sure that the abortions performed were justified, the “collateral damage” would cease to be a factor.
Besides, look at it from the anti-abortion point of view. You have a hundred women going to an abortion clinic. On the one hand, you have the harm of five or so women (on average) who have to cross a picket line when they shouldn’t have to. On the other hand, you have ninety-five murders of innocent children that you didn’t try to prevent. You don’t have to agree with their premises to see that their logic is sound.
You can have sound logic and nonsensical results. If the pro-life people really wanted to significantly reduce abortions, they would be putting their energy into real, comprehensive sex education and increasing the availability of and access to contraceptives instead of wasting it in outrage stomping around outside of gynecological clinics.
99% of pro-choice people would LOVE to see abortions made much rarer. But through the process of reducing unwanted pregnancies in the first place, not through the closing of those clinics by intimidation. Almost nobody ADVOCATES abortion…it’s not a procedure that should be taken lightly.
Thank you for this frank admission. Personally, I find this unacceptable, but you are entitled to a different opinion.
And here’s where you lose me. If abortion was outlawed, abortion clinics would continue to operate? Huh? Perhaps you meant to say, " if elective abortion of viable fetuses was outlawed."
The trouble is, there are many in the anti-abortion movement who, it would seem, would not accept this. In many minds, there is no such thing as a “justified” abortion. You may hold this view, but it does not mean that all anti-abortion people do, particularly those who are in the more vocal minority - the ones doing the organizing, the protesting, the screaming. They would continue.
He wasn’t stating a fact. He was expressing a suspicion. He doesn’t need to cite it.
Moreover, the reasoning behind Der Trihs’ statement isn’t particularly outlandish or offensive. To believe that abortion is murder is to believe that George Tiller was a murderer. There’s no room for nuance here. Given this, how could any pro-lifer mourn his passing? All Der Trihs is saying is that the majority of pro-lifers are probably secretly glad he’s dead. I don’t find this a particularly outlandish suspicion. After all, why would a pro-lifer be upset that there’s one less baby killer in the world?
I think the meaning here is that there are few, maybe none, “abortion clinics” that perform only abourtions. So I believe Shodan is saying the clinincs would remin open but not be providing that service. The other side of that coin is that the abortion picketers are screaming at and frightening every woman who walks through the doors of those clinics, and most of those women aren’t getting any form of abortion at all.
He made the claim that most pro-lifers support clinic bombings and murder. This must be based on something - either facts, or something else. He has not produced any factual basis for this - no polls of pro-lifers expressing support, nothing like that. Therefore, he is making a false and malicious accusation, based not on anything real but only his own hatred. He is projecting, in other words.
It is the same sort of thing as saying “most gays are child molesters”. Doesn’t require any cite, right?
They wouldn’t be providing elective abortions -the 90+% where the abortion is of a healthy fetus and a healthy mother.
If and when clinics cease to perform elective abortions of the sort under discussion, this too will no longer be the case. Even the most rabid pro-lifer isn’t going to object to women gong in for a Pap smear. If they did, they would protest at clinics who didn’t do elective abortions, even if they knew that this was the case.
Again, I am open to correction. Did you have a cite of pro-lifers protesting at clinics in the full knowledge that those clinics had no connection with elective abortions?
There is a OB/GYN outpatient clinic within a few blocks of my home. It does Pap smears and other kinds of routine gynecological care. It does not do abortions, and no protests have ever been held there. There is a Planned Parenthood clinic a few miles on the other side. They do, and there have certainly been protests there - my next door neighbor participated, as a matter of fact.
This may be the “fringe” of the anti-abortion movement, but it does exist, and will not go away if there are ANY abortions of living fetuses anywhere in the country.
I’m not sure about that. There is at least a strong minority of the pro-life movement that has the pro-life plank as part of a larger platform that seeks to reduce access to health care that can be construed as sex-positive.
It’s based on his understanding of the pro-life movement’s fundamental premises. If abortion is murder, then abortionists are murderers. There’s no getting around that. Given this, why is it difficult to believe that the majority of pro-lifers secretly cheer when one of these unrepentant baby-killers gets taken out?
I don’t think this is an appropriate counter-example. Homosexuality and pedophelia are separate orientations. A better comparison would be something like “Most gays would have sex with a lot of guys if there were no consequences” which is kinda obvious.