and 3. It is her decision (or should be)
That would be a horrible scenario, and it would be the most likely one too.
By “risk,” do you mean any risk, however slight?
What does the word mean as you use it?
In post 215, I asked Annie:
For you, I have the same question.
Is there any possible way to measure this?
It almost seems as though you’re asserting that your assignment of the weights and risks is definitive for this discussion, and mere statistics cannot be used to gainsay it. Is that correct? What if someone else disagrees?
One if five women will end up on bed rest during her pregnancy. That is an unmeasured complication by your cite. Approximately 15% of women will have PPD, another unmeasured complication by your cite. 20% of women have uriary incontence - with 8% of them having moderate to severe incontenence. Your cite sucks when it comes to measuring “inconvenience.”
Perhaps there is a statistical measure. Your cite is not it.
That’s absolutely a fair critique. My cite speaks of “serious” complications, and it’s not clear to me what the cutoff is; I read the HuffPo story and not the study it references.
But I’d like to nail down an agreement that this is a question susceptible to statistical analysis, or in the alternative clarify that you believe that “statistics doesn’t cover it.”
Here is the text of HR 586 (which seems odd: it says it is a bill for an Act, but is drafted as a resolution – should be an HB). This looks in line with your previously stated ideal of ensoulment-at-conception. Do you believe that, were it to pass, things would become as they were half a century ago? (Howsoever that was.)
Quid pro quo: do you know what it was actually like in that bygone era? Can you provide firm evidence that women were never assailed with prosecution for mysteriously failed pregnancies? And, more importantly, given the strong views of the anti-choice contingent, can you explain why you think things would simply revert to as they were back then? Because from what we are seeing there is a vehement minority who seem to really want to clamp down hard.
We would have to measure all the risks to a woman - all of them. Economic risks, physical risks. Little tiny ones - like “I leak when I sneeze and will for the rest of my life” or “I can’t really wear a bikini - the stretch marks are really bad” and big ones like “I have to stop taking medication that keeps me healthy for the sake of the baby.” And huge ones like “I could die - and the baby could die too - and I’d have died not bringing a stranger I don’t want anything to do with into this world, but for nothing.” Missed opportunity ones like “few guys ask out an eight month pregnant woman - I might miss my life partner” and “few people hire an eight month pregnant woman - I might miss the job of a lifetime.”
Then, once all those risks were quantified - which I don’t think you could actually do - given the limits of sociological research - what is the economic impact of a pregnancy on the average woman - you’d still be stuck with the fact that statistics describe populations - not the situation of any individual woman. Some women may be able to afford risking six months of bed rest. Other women can’t afford the 48 hours off for labor and delivery. Some will be at low risk for PPD - other people will find that the risk of PPD is really high (my grandmother committed suicide as a result of PPD).
The the problem is defining what a reasonable woman finds inconvenient. Is it inconvenient to get turned down for a job you really want because you are pregnant with a fetus you don’t? Is it inconvenient to have a 20% chance of having bed rest - for again - a fetus you don’t want? Or is it bigger than that? Is it inconvenient to go through labor - mine was twelve hours - ten of it in unmitigated pain without pain meds. Is that an inconvenience? Is it inconvenient for my friend to go off the liver medication she needs to live because it causes birth defects? And who, exactly, decides that. You know, I have a bright idea - given the variety of situations that makes one woman’s inconvenience another’s life altering (or life risking) reality - maybe that should be the woman.
So, no, I don’t think you can measure that statistically. Do you think it can?
What I would like to pin you down on is that if it you believe its legally ok say that this is reasonable - to save one “life” we ask someone to go through a “minor inconvenience” why don’t we pass laws for mandatory organ, marrow and blood donation? We don’t have enough organs. People - like born ones - are dying every day because they can’t get them. You don’t need two kidneys and one will save someone’s life - why shouldn’t the government obligate you to give one up. Statistically, most people do fine with just one, and statistically, the operation isn’t dangerous. You don’t need a whole liver either - and someone could have part of your liver and live for years.
No. Congress can’t legislate its way around the Supreme Court’s grounding of abortion rights in the Constitution. If that were to pass, its purported findings would be dead on arrival.
Now, again I ask for a cite from you for your claim.
Then it’s up to you to cite positive evidence. You cannot ask me to cite the lack of prosecutorial “assail” of women for failed pregnancies. Where do you imagine I would find them – the court docket of stuff that did not occur? If you claim that women WERE “assailed,” then provide the evidence. I can’t link to a site that lists all things that never happened.
No, you’ve laid out factors that are intrinsically subjective. I agree they cannot be meaningfully quantified.
I suppose because there’s a distinction between assigning responsibility for saving a life to a random person, and assigning it to a parent.
Now, of course that invites another question: why don’t we obligate parents to donate a kidney if their child needs one?
And I’d say that we don’t because the situation is so rare – that is, I can’t ever recall hearing of a case in which a parent was a suitable donor but refused to donate. Undoubtedly there are such cases, but they are so comparatively rare that they don’t capture public attention as a wrong to be righted.
That’s a bit disingenuous, though, in appropriating the connotations of the term “parent” as a loving protector to apply to an unwanted pregnancy.
Yes, we do expect parents to be willing to go through a lot for their kids, because we assume that parents in general love and cherish their kids and care a great deal about their well-being. But that assumes a voluntary parental relationship, at least in the vast majority of cases.
To an unwillingly pregnant woman, her fetus might well be just a “random person” (or more logically, not even a person), not a beloved and treasured child. You’re deliberately using the term “parent” instead of “pregnant woman” to imply the existence of a parental duty even in cases where no parental role or relationship is wanted.
No fair sneakily using language connoting loving filial bonds to insinuate that a pregnant woman should naturally be expected to make sacrifices to protect the fetus because that’s what parents do.
No abortions happen at 9 months. When come back bring facts.
I was not old enough pre-Roe to even understand the issue, so I cannot say what it was like. You made the claim that it will not be as has been depicted because it was not like that before. So it was your assertion that is being questioned, both on how it used to be and that that is what we would revert to.
To me, it does not seem like abortion was a forefront wedge issue in those days, such as it is now. That seems to be a pretty major difference between then and now. So, how you can just handwave off those concerns, based on knowledge that I doubt you actually have, is a bit of a mystery. I will concede that extremes are rarely reached, but, then again, sometimes they are.
The word is absolutely appropriate:
My context was absolutely clear and the word is precisely accurate.
Nope. Review the posts. My comment was in response to the confident declarationseen here:
That is the claim, and that bears the burden of proof. My response is simply a gratuitous denial of the gratuitous assertion.
But your attempt to use its connotations to imply what we usually think of as parental duty towards an unwanted fetus is disingenuous.
You drew a distinction between obligations to a random person and obligations as a parent, using as an example the situation of parents donating kidneys to children, an act which is overwhelmingly voluntary and prompted by a concept of parental duty based on love and concern.
You are trying to insinuate that unwillingly pregnant women should accept a similar expectation of parental duty, based on the technicality that they too are “parents” according to a biologically literal definition of the term.
Just letting you know that ISWYDT.
Tell you what. If I make an explicit argument, refute it. If you believe you have uncovered an insinuation, feel free to argue against it, but don’t expect me to defend it. My arguments are the ones I state.
Russification.
So, would my son’s birthfather, be required to provide a kidney? He did not sign away parental rights - except by absence.