Anyone else agree with this? What relevance does this vague “religious context” of yours have to this or any other issue? Context? The “blessings of liberty” are those positive things that liberty blesses us with. What religious or spiritual beliefs are being referred to here? You’re really reaching here.
If Reagan and Bush’s desire was to overturn Roe v Wade, and Protestants are the most fiery of the anti-abortion crew, why do you suppose Bush and Reagan kept appointing Catholics, John? Why wouldn’t they go for a fiery Protestant abortion foe, if such were available.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Abortion foes to push for stricter limits : One activist says the Supreme Court’s ruling ‘swings the door wide open.’ A flood of legislation is expected.
By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer, April 19, 2007
Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, and other people, hope to introduce legislation in a number of states to
[ul][li]ban all abortions of viable fetuses unless mother’s life is endangered[/li][li]ban mid- and late-term abortions for abnormalities[/li][li]require doctors to show ultrasound images of a fetus and warn that patients may become suicidal after the abortion[/li][li]lengthen waiting periods[/ul][/li]
They are encouraged because the court upheld an outright ban on a procedure with no exceptions for waiving the ban if a woman’s physical or emotional health is at stake.
Abortion rights lawyer Katherine Grainger predicts many proposals will come next year, and that the people proposing new bills will pursue two strategies:
- use public discomfort about specific abortion techniques
- use testimony of women who regretted having abortions
Pretty much, yeah.
Yes. Though it’s worth noting that there are a lot of reasons more complicated than that, and most states already heavily restrict when you can do this on a viable fetus (Casey, in fact, established that this was something the states could take into account when restricting abortion).
One is hydrocephalus so severe (generally if it is not caught early enough) that delivery through the vagina is pretty much impossible: the baby’s head is swollen so large with fluid that it simply wont fit through, and generally a woman would die if that were tried, usually from bleeding to death.
That is, in fact, is often one of the major reasons FOR the suctioning out of the skull contents. Pro-life people would have you think that it’s just to be pointlessly cruel. The real reason is that often otherwise the head just wont fit through the opening, period. You have to do SOMETHING to get the baby out (and note that in many of these cases the baby is either brain dead, so severely brain damaged that it won’t survive long, or just flat out dead).
Of course, as slimy pro-life people carefully phrase it, this proceedure is not “necessary.” That’s because there are many ways to remove a dead/dying/gorked baby from a uterus, among them C-section or the proceedure which my wife has done, which is basically tearing the baby up inside the uterus and pulling it out part by part. Saying that D&E is “never” necessary is like saying that doors and windows aren’t necessary either for your house either: you can always just knock a hole in the wall. Technically true, but sort of misleading. That’s why you’ll see folks like Stratocaster crowing about PR rather than addressing the actual issue directly: there is a lot of smoke and mirrors to their position which relies on misleading people.
This might mean a whole lot less than we think/dread.
Firstly, the genii is out of the bottle, and has been for a generation. Really large social and cultural changes are slow but have a glacial momentum - they can be slowed but not stopped, and hardly ever reversed. Can you think of any social change on the scale of, say, civil rights that was successfully reversed once it was set in motion?
Secondly, this was a very peculiar and specific excercise in public manipulation. The “pro-life” forces put the most repulsive vision possible (the rarity of the procedure notwithstanding…) and managed to inspire the same intensity of negative response to “partial birth abortion” as was once attached to “abortion” itself.
But they had to manufacture that intensity, abortion is not a thing spoken in the most hushed of whispers anymore. Now, of course, they would like nothing better than to have this be the first of a series of “chip aways”. But what? What can they talk about that has such intensity, such revulsive power, now that abortion no longer does? “Partial birth” was a salient, it stuck out and could be isolated.
Frankly, I don’t see as how they’ve won much of anything.
Sandra Day O’Conner isn’t Catholic (nominated by Reagan), and neither is Harriet Miers, whom Bush nominated before Alito. And Thomas was an Episcopalian when he was nominated by Bush I. Not to mention that Kennedy got nominated after Bork was rejected by the Senate. Bork converted to Catholicism in the 90s, but he was not a Catholic when Reagan nominated him. I’d say your theory doesn’t hold water.
I have never been reluctant to address an abortion issue, and you’re a liar for suggesting otherwise. I have never equivocated on my position or attempted to obfuscate to lead anyone to a wrong conclusion. You’re lying. That’s okay, I forgive you. The end is in sight and you’re upset. Cock-a-doodle-doo.
Keep telling yourself that. We’ll see.
Right. That makes a world of difference. :rolleyes:
It can. If the only way to save the life of the mother is to kill the fetus, then kill the fetus, even if it’s viable. Killing a viable fetus once it’s out of the mother is murder. But like I said upthread, it’s hard for me to imagine that a doctor would kill a viable fetus if it could be safely delivered. I believe most of these procedures are done on fetuses that are either already dead, or that can’t survive outside the womb for whatever reason.
Polerius, I answered your question in post #70.
I generally agree with that. A mother’s life is not worth less than her child. If the unborn child is viable, though, why not deliver it?
You’re reading that post differently than I did. “If you have to kill the kid, do it in utero–outside the womb is just wrong, not when you have a womb handy to get the job done,” is how I read it.
I believe differently. I believe there are doctors that would kill an unborn child at any point, as long as the mother desired, so long as the law didn’t specifically prohibit it. I believe it has occurred countless times.
You can cluck all you want, doesn’t change reality.
But let’s lay out some things first.
Do you agree that it is misleading to say that D&E is never medically necessary? It’s one of those technically true things that nevertheless misleads, not unlike arguing that doors aren’t necessary for a house (because, you know, you could always jump out the windows).
Do you agree that it’s grossly misleading to say or imply that because of Roe and Casey that babies can be killed up until the instant of birth: that abortion is an absolute right unless something is done about it?
I thought I was crowing, not clucking.
I don’t know.
What if walking through the door created some harm for another. Would that influence your definition of “necessary”?
Neither Roe nor Casey establishes an absolute right to abortion. That is an assertion abhorrent to many pro-choicers, but that’s the inference from a simple reading.
Maybe the mother has a medical condition such that she couldn’t survive a delivery. Maybe the fetus is hydrocephalic and can’t pass thru the cervix.
I don’t know where you’re going with that. I was simply talking about the fact that killing a delivered, viable fetus would be murder.
And this belief is based on…?
Whaddaya talking? Its not even an argument so much as an observation: attitudes towards abortion have changed fundamentally, in my living memory. For the past twenty years, it has been a part of things. I’m not advocating, it is a fact obvious to the meanest intelligence.
Any part of that you disagree with? Dare we hope that some factual substantiation will accompany?
Just speculation, but I suppose it’s based on a similar foundation that permits you to suppose the contrary.
I agree, for the most part. I disagree that this is a decision of no consequence to the pro-choice camp. Nothing contradictory, IMO, between these two conclusions.
Well, doctors are trained to save lives, not take them, so I think my speculation has a strong basis in reality. Your speculation seems to be based on some desire to inflate the number of late term abortions that occur-- that they are “countless”.
Yes, there seems to be a desire on both parts to assert a particular position. Doctors are trained for all kinds of things, but lives are taken via abortions, well, millions and millions of times. “Saving lives” is truly a subjective determination, it would seem.