Interesting. Not a doctor (Fremulon!), but isn’t there a risk that the drug will get into the mother’s system if the heart does not stop quickly enough? I assume the placenta works bot directions.
Plus, I wasn’t referring to the laws requiring support/help after a live birth - I was referring to the act of causing a death of a person by doing something to the fetus before it was born that directly resulted in a death after birth. (building on the above - say, insufficient injection or labour and birth happening too fast afterwards) I assume there are legal consequences.
Doctors are not lawyers or judges. This is GQ. I am not putting forth any agenda. I am just saying that if I was a doctor, I would want more guidance than “health” of the woman as that could backfire if I get in front of a pro-life judge if I made the wrong call.
“Serious” health is still vague, yet a little better. There is no gotcha here as it can be readily understood that almost anything affects the health of the mother during pregnancy. I’m not taking the pro-life talking point that that is what the law means. It cannot or else the law would just say that abortion is legal at all times. I just think that laws should be drafted cleaner than that so the people know what the law is.
The people involved are in fact doctors, who go to lots of school and have lots of ethics meetings. They know very well what is and is not “okay”, and they will answer to a board of other medical professionals to explain their actions. It is not vague to them. You say, if you were a doctor you would want more guidance, well, if you were a doctor, you would have that guidance.
The problem is, is that you are not a doctor, but you think that you should be able to give guidance for making medical decisions that you are not well informed on or affected by.
You are right, there really is no “gotcha” here. It is not hard to understand, it is not complex, it is simply allowing doctors to make the best choices for their patients, without being interfered with by people who are not doctors, who are not there, who are not affected by the decision.
A woman, a week from her due date, comes into the ER at 3:00 AM after being involved in a serious car accident. She has gone into labor, and her injuries have already rendered the fetus non-viable, and attempting to give birth will most likely kill her, and will certainly cause further injury.
Unless you can say exactly what the doctor should do in that situation, as well as every single situation that can come up, then I recommend that you leave those decisions to the doctors and patients, rather than creating a situation where a doctor refuses to perform a necessary treatment out of a fear of being second guessed by non-medical professionals and being held criminally liable for it.
I disagree. The people involved are not all doctors. They will be prosecuting attorneys and judges and jury members determining whether that abortion was necessary for the “health” of the mother.
There will be appellate court judges determining the meaning of the word “health” because as I said, it cannot possibly mean any de minimis risk to health or even a slight or modest risk to health or else the law would legalize all late term abortions, a result, as any judge would correctly posit, could not have been the intent of the Legislature as it could have done so very easily in wording the law.
My concern protects doctors and their patients; it does not attempt to take away their professional judgment. The law itself does that.
Why are you having people with no medical decisions second guessing the decision of a medical professional?
No, there won’t be. I have no idea why you would think this.
How does the law take away their professional judgement? If the law told them to not use their professional judgement, and instead, simply said that if you cause an abortion on a fetus after 16 weeks, you go to jail, that would be taking away their judgment. Not having a law that specifies things like that allows a doctor to use their judgment.
You’re talking about a particular piece of legislation. Which takes abortion completely out of the criminal code. It also merely enshrines Roe v.Wade into state law, which will still be in effect if the Supreme Court decision was overturned. One would think if this was a real problem , it would have come up over the past 40 something years. But OK, we’ll have a hypothetical- a doctor performs an abortion post 24 weeks. And then what? The police arrest him? How does he come to their attentions? Who is telling them that there was no need for an abortion to protect the mother’s life or health? What are the charges?- remember , there isn’t any criminal law prohibiting an abortion after 24 weeks.
You keep talking about prosecutors and judges and juries- but you haven't explained 1) what crime would be committed nor 2) How this particular abortion comes to anyone's attention.
Everyone is governed by law. Doctors are not islands unto themselves. Their “professional decisions” are regulated by law. This law does not do as you claim and leave it to professional judgment. It specifically prohibits late term abortions except when is necessary for the “health” of the mother. It does not say “Doctors, go forth and practice medicine.” It has words which mean something and will be interpreted by courts.
Imagine some pro-life prosecutor in rural upstate New York. A doctor performs an abortion at 37 weeks because the 18 year old woman, who has previously suffered from depression, tells the doctor that she has changed her mind about having the baby/fetus and says that she will be suicidal if she has to raise a child, but will be equally suicidal knowing that there is a child out in the world that she gave up for adoption knowing that she could have cared for it.
Now, the doctor determines in his professional and esteemed judgment that this qualifies as a “health” exception under the law. The young woman’s mother, however, protests and is told that her protest does not matter. The doctor performs the abortion. The would be grandmother, who has political ties, convinces the pro-life prosecutor to bring murder charges because there was no serious “health” risk. The prosecutor indicts the doctor for first degree murder.
Who will decide the outcome? Hint: it won’t be doctors.
Hint - he can’t charge the doctor with murder or manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide because his actions do not meet the definition. Prosecutors are supposed to be governed by the law, too.
The old, pre-Roe law had different definitions that would have allowed the prosecution you described- which is exactly the reason for the change.
Okay, so what was all that about you complaining that “health” of the mother was too ambiguous, and that doctors should have more guidance? Sounds like you have no complaint about the law, then, glad you cleared up your confusion.
Make up your mind, either “health” is ambiguous, and leaves it to the judgement of the medical professional, or it is not ambiguous, and does not leave it up to their professional judgment. You are all over the map here, having made both claims, and complained about both.
Sounds like something that the doctor should make a judgment call on, hopefully with the advise of some of his colleague, and even an interview or two with a mental health professional.
Whatever decision the doctor makes, it will be reviewed by a panel of doctors who will determine whether or not he did the right thing.
Is your prefered outcome that the doctor simply refuses her, and she commits suicide, killing both herself and the baby?
Right, the reason that the mother’s protest in this case doesn’t matter is because the young woman is an adult, and the protests of the parents of adults don’t matter. I am not sure why you would add that to your hypothetical unless you thought it was important. Do you not think that adults should have autonomy, that they should be beholden to their parent’s decisions?
The grandmother could ask the prosecutor to bring charges, but the prosecutor would be stupid to do so. Just because she is politically connected doesn’t mean that he would ruin his career on a case that will be sure to lose. Even if the people would support his decision to pursue charges, they will lose support for him when he fails to get any sort of conviction.
And this is your preference? That people who are not doctors judge people who are doctors about their medical judgments?
That is a nightmare scenario that you are looking forward to.
Where did you get the idea a doctor cannot be charged, if the baby is born alive and dies?
“Homicide means conduct which causes the death of a person” - so the child is a person if born alive. If after being born - alive - it dies as a result of the actions done to cause the abortion then the doctor has caused the death of a person.
it does not say the actions/conduct have to be done after the child is born. As I said earlier, an analogous situation would be if during a DUI a person injures a pregnant woman so severely that she gives birth to a child who lives but dies not long after from injuries sustained in the crash. That would (IMHO) be no different legally than killing a child in the vehicle. Vehicular homicide. The crash caused the death. Similarly, if the abortion procedure caused the death of a fetus born alive, the doctor has committed homicide.
Which brings me back to the point - doctors are aware of this risk and are not going to do a procedure that has this risk to their freedom and career. Any action taken will weigh necessity against consequences using the professional judgement they have spent years acquiring. If there is less risk simply letting the mother go into labour and deliver, then a doctor will choose that.
If the argument is that the mother is suicidal - well nonpregnant non-women have been institutionalized for this too. I would hope any suicidal tendencies are addressed properly.
Actually, I didn’t say that, because the post I was responding to didn’t say anything about a failed abortion that resulted in a live birth and where the baby died after being born as a result of the doctor’s actions. It was about a pro-life would be grandmother convincing a pro-life prosecutor to charge the doctor who performed the abortion with murder because there was no serious health risk. There was no mention of a live birth and subsequent death.
Your position assumes there even is a way to end up with a live birth after an attempted abortion that causes the death of the child after it is born- and I’m not sure there is. I believe the potassium chloride or digoxin injections mentioned early will either be effective or not within a few minutes , and labor is not induced until there is no heartbeat.
Something like 1.4% of all abortions are performed after 21 weeks, and that means even fewer are performed after 24. And some of them are performed because the fetus has a condition that is incompatible with life. If all you are saying is that many/most doctors will be unwilling to perform an abortion after 24 weeks if the fetus is perfectly healthy, I won’t disagree with that. But I do disagree with the idea that it’s because they fear prosecution - those doctors who would be unwilling would be unwilling no matter what the law said. Just like the many obstetricians who currently don’t perform abortions are not unwilling because they fear being prosecuted for a first trimester abortion.
I would have thought an attorney would have read the text of the law. The NY law says:
§ 2599-AA. ABORTION. 1. A HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONER LICENSED, CERTI-
FIED, OR AUTHORIZED UNDER TITLE EIGHT OF THE EDUCATION LAW, ACTING WITH-
IN HIS OR HER LAWFUL SCOPE OF PRACTICE, MAY PERFORM AN ABORTION WHEN, ACCORDING TO THE PRACTITIONER’S REASONABLE AND GOOD FAITH PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT BASED ON THE FACTS OF THE PATIENT’S CASE: THE PATIENT IS WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR WEEKS FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF PREGNANCY, OR THERE IS AN ABSENCE OF FETAL VIABILITY, OR THE ABORTION IS NECESSARY TO PROTECT THE PATIENT’S LIFE OR HEALTH.
I’ve bolded the part that’s most applicable here. Note that practitioners using professional judgment is not the same as “being islands onto themselves.” Your cardiologist uses her professional judgment when she determines, after viewing test results, that you need heart valve surgery. You might get a second opinion, as do many women who get devastating news late in the pregnancy from their OB’s. My guess is, though, that you’d less suspicious of your cardiologist’s professional judgment than you are now of an OB’s.
Also, keep in mind that the docs who determine inviability are very seldom the docs performing the late-term abortion.
**Doreen **- yes, sorry, not meaning to be snarky - but then, we agree that it is remotely possible, but possible, that the fetus/baby could be born alive after a certain number of weeks, and as a result the physician risks prosecution for some homicide unless they can persuade 12 “reasonable” random men and women that the act was necessary and the best course of action for the mother.
And to go to **nelliebly’s **point, this is where the doctor’s professional judgement comes in. And I agree, doreen, that doctors are not driven to perform late term abortions for anything other than good reasons, and probably fear of prosecution is not one of the top reasons to exercise caution and judgement - but it is a factor they would be acutely aware of.
Sorry, I just had this same strong discussion the other day with my mother in law who watches too much Fox News. I know one of my relatives had two abortions - back in the 1960’s - because the doctors determined her on-again-off-again kidney condition meant she could not carry to term. I don’t have any details, and she’s been dead a while, but from what I gather she tried to hold on as long as possible before she and the doctors (professional judgement) admitted it wouldn’t work.