I agree with you. A person of my close acquaintance is a very staunch Catholic, so much so that I was shocked when she told me she used birth control. When someone like that, someone who sincerely believes most of the RCC’s doctrines, breaks away on an issue, it seems a good bet that the issue will eventually be modified in some way.
I think that’s worth its own thread.
First of all, I see you have let pass, without comment, my rebuttal to your claim: If the anti-abortionists have their way, every known miscarriage will have to have a preliminary investigation as they are all suspicious and unexplained. Why is that? It seems intellectually honest to acknowledge when a particular argument has been eliminated; a concession that you no longer advance that claim would be much appreciated. And, if you do still advance that claim, perhaps a surrebuttal of my point would be in order?
Moving on… the page you listed above is largely a collection of the authors’ personally-collected anecdotes. I can easily compile six times as many contrary anecdotes from my own pro-life associations and experiences.
It does mention a study, however:
It even footnotes the studies!
But then it slips in the line I have bolded above, which is NOT part of the study’s conclusions. (The actual study is here in PDF form.) The study notes that abortion rates for Catholic women:
No portion of this study makes the claim that your citation does, nor does the data support it.
Now, when the truth doesn’t help your cause, and you are reduced to offering false or misleading data to support it… what does that say about the truthfulness of your cause?
Indeed. My wife’s volunteered there for seven years now. She came in very much in line with church teaching on birth control… and after seven years of helping pregnant women who should NOT be having babies, she has gone wholly over to the other side. She still acknowledges the technicality of sinfulness in contraception, but dismisses it entirely when weighed against the many problems that unwanted pregnancy brings.
Nothing. It says something about the truthfulness of the person making the claims. It doesn’t say if there were other, truthful, claims that could have been made.
The testimonies given at this site are different, in that they are from parents who very much wanted their babies but terminated the pregnancies, usually due to severe fetal abnormalities, genetic disorders, etc.
This aspect doesn’t seem to come up very often.
Good point.
What does it say about the person offering the claims in question?
If the pro-life idea that every conceived egg is a human being is adopted as law, then every suspicious death of a human being has to have a preliminary investigation would apply.
Hmm. I thought I answered that when I said “It says something about the truthfulness of the person making the claims.”
I’m not willing to weigh in on any specific claims made in this thread because I didn’t read anything that closely. I just saw your question and thought it deserved an answer.
And, to be honest, I haven’t read all the new GD rules (which is a big no-no, I know) and I don’t want tomndebb’s jackboots to crush my typing fingers.
You appear to be assuming that every miscarriage would qualify as a “suspicious death.”
In reality, such a law would have no hope for enforcement, so hysterical claims about it aren’t all that useful. There really are plenty of ways to argue for abortion rights that don’t involve predictive claims that are, by their nature, unproven.
I would not say that the person making the claims is in any way purposely untruthful. Rather, I would characterize it as a tendency to jump on even the smallest shred of information which seems to support a previously-held assumption or prejudice, and inflate that shred in their own mind into actual evidence.
And now, I too fear that I have said too much. (Runs away with jacket pulled over head.)
How would they know that the woman didn’t take some RU-486? In this day of chemical abortifacts, it would be imperative that any miscarriage be investigated as a potential homicide.
If my husband, who is in poor health, died tomorrow, there wouldn’t be an investigation unless the circumstances were so odd that they had to investigate.
I posted on the dope about a coworker’s BIL whose wife went home from work and found him dead on the sofa. There wasn’t even an autopsy because his health had been unstable.
The very nature of a pregnancy is that it is unstable. Miscarriages happen. They happen a lot. I don’t know the percentages, but it’s pretty damned common. Unless they had reason to investigate, even if it were considered full-fledged 1st degree murder, they wouldn’t likely investigate–just as they wouldn’t likely investigate my husband’s death, even though my killing him would be full-fledged 1st degree murder.
You use a lot of scare-tactic rhetoric. I don’t think it helps.
I am sure they would not investigate** all** miscarriages. After all, those types of people who could get safe, discrete abortions when they were legal before would still need to be able to get safe, discrete abortions if it was recriminalized.
That’s going to be the effect - as long as abortion is legal anywhere in the world, criminalizing it on a state level (or even possibly a national level) is simply a way of ensuring that safe abortion is only available to those with money to pay for it.
Unless, of course, we go to the next logical stage and ban any pregnant woman from travelling to have an abortion. Or maybe even from travelling to anywhere that has legal abortion. But then it is so tough to tell who is pregnant and who isn’t…
As stated above, I don’t think all anti-choice people are anti-choice because they hate women. But it does disturb me that a significant part of the anti-choice movement will oppose programs that reduce unwanted pregnancy (free contraception, sex education that acknowledges options other than abstinence…), in the presumed knowledge that will result in more unwanted pregnancies.
The question is, I think, how far will people who think abortion is murder go to prevent it? If a state criminalizes abortion on that premise, it doesn’t seem crazy to think that there will be investigations of miscarriages, if only to see if RU-486 was ordered over the internet by that person. And while it might be crazy to think that states might impose overseas travel bans on certain pregnant women, I seem to remember the Republic of Ireland trying to do a similar thing. The constitutional issues here are obviously different, though it is an issue that will arrive.
Yup on all counts. Good post.
There are plenty of reasons to support abortion rights. I fail to see the value is using easily dismissed claims.
It’s an interesting comparison you make. Given your husband’s ill health, I would imagine the best comparison to make would be to a pregnant woman who had either had previous documented miscarriages, or who had trouble in the pregnancy before hand. I think you are probably right that there would be no inevstigation performed in that situation.
If a previously healthy husband dies on the sofa, then, I presume, there will need to be some sort of investigation by someone. So what kind of miscarriages will be investigated - presumably those where the authorities think an abortion is most likely to have been the cause. Single women, poor women, young women, any woman who has ever expressed unhappiness about being pregnant strike me as the most likely targets here. it’s a logical use of police resources, but it is more than a little disturbing to me to think in that way.
Its also interesting that you stress, correctly, that:
I agree with you, that means a lot of early term miscarriages will go uninvestigated. But it also to me shouts out that attempting to equate an early term fetus with a human being (not that I am saying you are doing this - I have no idea of your position here) is bloody foolish.
For heaven’s sake, why?
People past the age of ninety die. It don’t know the percentages, but it happens. A lot.
So we cannot possibly equate people past ninety with human beings?
No. People past ninety are particularly frail human beings, who tend to die in great numbers for all sorts of causes.
Just as people just conceived, and in the first few months of life in the womb, are particularly frail and tend to die for all sorts of reasons. Doesn’t make them “not human beings.” Just makes 'em fragile.
That’s fair. And I should have put a lot more thought in than a simple throw away sentence.
I think what I am trying to say there is that given (trying to remember back aeons ago to high school biology) a very significant percentage of fertilized eggs result in early stage miscarriages, for reasons we don’t understand (and I am sure I am going to get ripped apart by medical experts on that one), it does not seem to be sensible/credible to award the status of “human being” with attendant legal rights until it is better established, as it were. Once such a status is awarded, I don’t think it should be taken away until death.
I guess the bottom line for me is if we have no idea if a group of cells is going to be carried to term, and have no real idea why certain group of cells do miscarry and certain don’t, then that is an argument, though I accept not in and of itself a controlling one, as to why the legal rights attached to status as a human being should not attach to said group of cells.
It’s a circular argument, I know - for those who see human life (to the degree of awarding legal rights) as beginning at the magical moment of conception, it doesn’t work. And it doesn’t help I am not expressing it well at all.
I think the nature of pregnancy is such that the default position would be “it was a miscarriage.”
I also think the nature of pregnancy is such that most miscarriages and/or abortions would happen without anyone having any idea that the pregnancy ever existed.
I also think (all that thinking! Whew!) that RU 486 would become the abortion method of choice and that the availability of that drug would skyrocket, perhaps even penetrating into areas that currently do not have abortion providers.
Certainly early on in the term I think that is correct. Where there would be investigations is with later term miscarriages.
Also true, I think. I would also imagine that a later term miscarriage would have a greater effect both physically and psychologically on the woman involved, and so if those are the ones to be more carefully invesitgated, that would not be a burden I would feel comfortable placing on a woman who had just suffered such an experience.
Overall this seems like a good thing. I’m all in favor of wider availability fo RU 486 and its ilk, presuming whatever is available is actually safe. I’m wondering if possession of something like Plan B or Ru 486, if legally obtained in another state, would become criminal.
I think it’s at least 30%. But I don’t see that as a good argument against the pro-choice position. Nor is it a good argument for the pro-choice position, either since the fetus is pretty well “established” within the timeframe that most abortions take place (in the first 2 months of pregnancy).
I know you’re not using that you sole argument, but I think it’s a pretty shaky one that doesn’t help the pro-choice side much, if any.