Partial Birth Abortion & Late Term Abortion -- should they be prohibited?

[NurseCarmen]

*Originally posted by beagledave *
**Huh. Umm, well no. **

well heck, how bout a quote from the ACLU, right back at ya.

Don’t doctors provide elective third-trimester abortions?

No. Only a handful of doctors in the United States perform third-trimester abortions, and these few do so only when the fetus is severely or fatally impaired or when the woman’s health or life is seriously at risk.

[tiny_ham]

Also purely anecdotal, but my roomate in college got two abortions within one school year and found it to be ‘less annoying’ than using condoms.

So yes, there IS a segment of the society that does that.

[beagledave]

*Originally posted by NurseCarmen *
**well heck, how bout a quote from the ACLU, right back at ya. **

1. See above bit from USA Today.

2. The web site I cited, even though from an advocacy group, quoted doctors (Haskell and McMahon) who actually performed these late term abortions, the quotes are attributed to them. (Keep in mind that this was in response to your 99% claim). Could you please indicate for me which data source the ACLU claim comes from?

[sqweels]

Beagledave, are there any statistics on elective vs therapudic abortions strictly in the 3rd trimester?

[beagledave]

*Originally posted by sqweels *
**Beagledave, are there any statistics on elective vs therapudic abortions strictly in the 3rd trimester? **

Why yes there are

From here…stats from the Allan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood)

Women who have later-term abortions – 16 weeks or more since last menstrual period – give a variety of reasons for their decision. Women gave an average of 2.2 reasons:
71% did not recognize that she was pregnant.
48% had difficulty arranging for an abortion; it took time to raise the money; they had to first get a Medicaid card; they couldn’t arrange transportation, etc.
33% were afraid to tell parents or patner of the pregnancy
24% needed time to make a decision
8% hoped that a bad relationship would change
8% felt pressure to not have an abortion
6% had something change during the pregnancy
6% did not know that timing was important
5% did not know that she could get an abortion
2% found out late in pregnancy that the fetus had an abnormality
11% other reasons

It must take some of that “new math” to get to the quoted 99% done for serious maternal health or fetal defects.

_

[NurseCarmen]

here you go Your USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/elect/ee/ee034.htm]cite also has a nice factoid showing that only 1% of all abortions are 3rd tri (when D&X’s are performed). My cite has a nice counter to that in

Doesn’t the law permit elective third-trimester abortions?
No. Long-standing, unchallenged statutes in 40 states and the District of Columbia prohibit elective abortions by any method after fetal viability (the point at which the fetus can survive outside the woman, usually at the beginning of the third trimester). For the most part, these laws conform to constitutional principles establishing that women have the right to choose abortion before fetal viability, but that states may regulate and even proscribe abortions after viability except where necessary to preserve the woman’s life or health.

Now to the point of refuting the quotes: You have got to be kidding me. I could cite a link from Iraq where Bush is avowing his allegence to Satan. Would you beleive that? The Haskell quotes wreak of propaganda that is belched up by BOTH sides and spread throughout the web as fact.

[you_with_the_face]

from beagledave’s link:
Women who have later-term abortions – 16 weeks or more since last menstrual period – give a variety of reasons for their decision…

16 weeks is hardly late-term. That’s early second trimester, and most women barely show at that point.

[ceyjen]

My problem with partial-birth abortion is neither political nor personal. I understand the necessity of the procedure at times when the mother’s life or health is at risk.

What I have a problem with is the duplicitous nature of the idea when the mother’s life or health is not at risk.

In some states, if a woman is more than 22 or 24 weeks (can’t remember exactly) pregnant and is attacked or hit by a drunk driver and she loses the baby, the attacker or drunkard can be charged with manslaughter (unsure whether voluntary or involuntary). So the law in some states considers an unborn fetus that is 5 or 6 months into gestation human enough to be killed.

But then a woman may walk into a clinic and have her unborn child disposed of no matter how far along she is.

There was a case in Arizona not too many years ago where a 14 year old girl who was a ward of the state was something like 7 months pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. The case was tied up in the legal system long enough that by the time she was allowed to have the abortion (at about eight and a half months), the procedure actually amounted to nothing less than inducing labor then killing the baby. There was no threat to her health. She had had a normal pregnancy. It was simply a matter of an immature girl who changed her mind.

[Apos]

—I’d like to propose everyone substitute the words “birth control” and “contraception” with the words “life prevention” in every post, article, and document—then see how moral it sounds…—

If it were really life prevention, I’m not sure why it would be immoral. One prevents life by not having sex in the first place just as much as one does by using contraception. But that term seems unacceptable to anyone who can see that, from ejaculation on, you are always dealing with things that are already alive, and certainly killing a fetus is more than just a “prevention” of life.

—1) See above bit from USA Today.—

An excellent example to dissect. An uncited poll from the Guttmacher Institute, which, as if characteristic of USA today fails tell us things like the alpha, the sample size, and what population an EPSEM was done for (if at all)

To things strike me about that particular data: first that multiple reasons are allowed, meaning that we have no idea how many actual women account for how many of the responses. We have no idea if specific options were mentioned, or if it was open-ended, and then how open-ended responses were grouped together. But more importantly, we have NO percentage for the number of women who cited health reasons for the third-trimester abortion. That seems pretty strange if the idea is to show that it’s an uncommon or non-primary reason: you’d normally say “only 2% of respondants mentioned health reasons.”

So, all in all, this is not a very helpful cite for really convincing people.

—From the data I’ve located (from a neutral source) it seems highly unlikely that all 94,000 21+ week abortions were life threatening situations when maternal deaths for those same years is only a couple percent of that total.—

This, too, is not a particularly strong case. First of all, it’s not at all the case that the maternal deaths were forseeable, or even that abortion could have prevented them (for instance, my girlfriend has lupus: if she got pregnant, it could cause a flare up which could kill her, utterly regardless of whether she had an abortion at some point or not). Worse, if abortions really do save mother’s lives in these cases, then having an abortion would prevent a death or serious injury. So we can’t just count them as a sort of representation of what pregnancies were potentially dangerous. Not to mention that this gives us no information at all about conditions that involve deformed or doomed babies.

—Still, I support continuing to use the act of birth to define the beginning of humanity, because it seems so natural.—

Well, I don’t see birth as a particularly important moment morally. Why would it be?

[beagledave]

*Originally posted by NurseCarmen *
**here you go

Umm you didn’t tell me where the ACLU got their data points from.

Your USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/elect/ee/ee034.htm]cite also has a nice factoid showing that only 1% of all abortions are 3rd tri (when D&X’s are performed).

Okay…of course no one in this thread (certainly not me) is claiming that 3rd trimester abortions make up a huge percentage of the total number of abortions…so not sure what your point is…

Now to the point of refuting the quotes: You have got to be kidding me. I could cite a link from Iraq where Bush is avowing his allegence to Satan. Would you beleive that? The Haskell quotes wreak of propaganda that is belched up by BOTH sides and spread throughout the web as fact. **

Umm, Dr Haskell and Dr McMahon are/were abortion providers. Their quotes are from an interview for a medical journal, and testimony before congress. (further analysis of McMahon’s data was done by Dr. Katherine Dowling, a family physician at the University of Southern California School of Medicine) Not quite sure how those are analagous to Iraqi newspaper comments about Bush.

If you want another source, Knock yerself out. This is from testimony before the House of Reps Judiciary Cmtee.

[CrazyCatLady]

Umm, am I the only one noticing that beagledave is using stats on 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions to rebut a comment on partial birth abortions? It was my understanding that PBA’s were done on pretty much full-term pregnancies, i.e. those at 36-40 weeks. I’m fairly sure the statistics on that time range are rather different than those for 20-24 week (the first cite) or at 16 weeks and up (the second cite).

Please, if I’m misunderstanding the terms, correct me. If not, does anyone have any statistics for abortions past 36 weeks?

[Apos]

—So the law in some states considers an unborn fetus that is 5 or 6 months into gestation human enough to be killed.—

One really shouldn’t look to the law for consistency. Especially because of cases like this: these sorts of laws are often proposed and supported by anti-abortion people precisely BECAUSE they help cut away at the legal case for late abortions: they help establish rights to the fetus.

[cuauhtemoc]

*Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole *
**Ahh…the “Stick Your Head in the Sand and Hope the Problem Goes Away or Doesn’t Bother You” method of thinking. **

Ahh… the “Hammer people into neat little boxes so they can more easily participate in USA Today opinion polls” method of whatever it is you’re doing.

[Snickers]

Originally posted by NurseCarmen

99% of the partial birth abortions aren’t done on the basis of “Mommy has decided she doesn’t want it”. They are done due to a medical condition of the fetus or when the mother’s life is at risk.

Thank you, NurseCarmen, for bringing this up. I read through the article linked in the OP and questioned the 2200 D&X abortion figure myself - simply because it wasn’t qualified. The article doesn’t state how many of the D&X’s were performed because of some other reason, such as the baby’s death, fatal condition, or threat to the mother. Nope, we’re just supposed to assume these were all abortions, with all the connotations that word carries. And that’s simply not the case.

Now, IANADoctor, pro-lifer, or what have you. However, my father is a doctor, and it’s his opinion that D&X’s are a vanishingly small percentage of abortions, and are usually performed only when the baby cannot live or the mother is threatened. The 0.17% of abortions figure cited in the OP’s linked article lends more credibility to this opinion. The truth is - these procedures are not carried out very often. And they’re largely not done as abortions - hell, I’ve read stories of women on this board who’ve had them due to miscarrages.

But pro-lifers (or what have you) like to jump on them because the nature of the procedure is grisly and shocking. And they like to characterize all abortions as D&X’s because it’s got shock value. And that disgusts me. Yes, let’s do go ahead and ban a rarely-used procedure that more often than not saves lives because of other complications. Brilliant reasoning.

Yep, put me in the No camp. Do not ban these procedures - just don’t. Keep 'em legal.

And sorry, beagledave, a cite from the National Right to Life Campaign doesn’t count as objective, in my book. Not on this topic. The Religious Tolerance’s website gives it a little less biased coverage and states that D&X’s account for only 1% of abortions: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_pba1.htm. Grim’s first cite says the same thing. This site - http://www.aradia.org/DandX.html - says that in 1995, three third trimester abortions (not necessarily D&X procedures) were performed out of approximately 25,000 in Washington state. Those’re about the least biased I could find, and the second is admittedly pretty biased.

Snicks

[Grim_Beaker]

NurseCarmen

Regarding your quote:

… but that states may regulate and even proscribe abortions after viability except where necessary to preserve the woman’s life or health.

In Doe v. Bolton 410 U.S. 179, 192 (1973). the courts defined health to be defined “in light of all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well being of the patient. All these factors relate to health.”

Since all abortions have an emotional and psychological component to them this basically allows any woman to have an abortion if she feels the pregnancy is “emotionally damaging” to her. Basically, abortion on demand. Besides which I believe the late abortion standard should be endangerment to the woman’s life, not some vaguely written definition of health.

… only 1% of all abortions are 3rd tri (when D&X’s are performed).

If you’ll refer back to the statistics in my first post you’ll find that the 94,000 late term abortions over those years are the results of the 1 - 2% of abortions. 94,000 in 6 years. We didn’t have 94,000 American combat deaths in Vietnam. 1% is a very big deal.

Grim

[Siege]

The problem is, many of the same people who are in favor of making third trimester abortions illegal are also in favor of adding additional requirements for getting an abortion, such as requiring counseling take place in a separate visit which occurs more than 24 hours before the procedure takes place. In addition, in some states there aren’t that many doctors who will perform abortions, especially late term ones. So, if a woman decides she needs an abortion, the nearest doctor who’ll perform one is over 100 miles away, and her state requires counseling 24 hours before the actual abortion (this is not an unlikely scenario), things become much more complicated.

CJ

[beagledave]

*Originally posted by CrazyCatLady *
**Umm, am I the only one noticing that beagledave is using stats on 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions to rebut a comment on partial birth abortions? **

When i look at the top of my browser…the thread title that I see is “Partial Birth Abortion & Late Term Abortion --should they be prohibited”.

So my comments include both PBAs and other abortions included under the description “late term”.

I note that you and others are questioning the definition of “later term” abortions starting at 16 weeks. I would point out that this definition comes from the Guttmacher Institute, the affiliate of Planned Parenthood…so perhaps you’d want to pass on your objections to them.

[Grim_Beaker]

Apos

Regarding:

First of all, it’s not at all the case that the maternal deaths were forseeable, or even that abortion could have prevented them (for instance, my girlfriend has lupus: if she got pregnant, it could cause a flare up which could kill her, utterly regardless of whether she had an abortion at some point or not). Worse, if abortions really do save mother’s lives in these cases, then having an abortion would prevent a death or serious injury. So we can’t just count them as a sort of representation of what pregnancies were potentially dangerous.

I wasn’t as clear as I should have been in my original post. My position is as follows:

Third semester abortions should not be allowed except in cases where the woman’s LIFE is in danger. I would probably even be ok if “health” was included provided that the definition of “health” used is unambiguous and pertains only to serious issues (i.e. permanent debilitation, drastic shortening of the woman’s life span, etc.). My point in making the comparisons in my first post was to point out my skepticism that a threat to a woman’s life exists in a majority of the 21+ week abortion cases.

The maternal death rate was for women who had live births. Presumably, since these were live births, these women opted to not have an abortion. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the maternal death rate for women who decided to have their babies would be similar to the maternal death rate of women who opted for abortion (if those women decided to have the baby rather than have an abortion). If we apply the 7.5 average maternal deaths per 100,000 live births figure to the women who had the aforementioned 21+ week abortions we could expect that about 7 of the women would have actually died from the process.

Even if I were incredibly lenient and said that for this group of women the chances of them dying were 100 times the national average that’s still only 700 maternal deaths. It seems highly improbable that these abortions are occuring because the mother’s life is in danger. Obviously there are other reasons why these women are choosing abortion at such a late date.

Grim

[CrazyCatLady]

Yeah, Dave, but the 99% figure you kept waving about was specifically about PBA’s. I can quote NurseCarmen’s post if you want.

[Apos]

—The maternal death rate was for women who had live births. Presumably, since these were live births, these women opted to not have an abortion.—

Which ruins the whole train of thought. Women who are at serious risk are much less likely to then HAVE a live birth… because presumably a lot of them go on to have abortions.

—I think it’s reasonable to assume that the maternal death rate for women who decided to have their babies would be similar to the maternal death rate of women who opted for abortion (if those women decided to have the baby rather than have an abortion).—

Again, that’s just sloppy, because the number of women that die from live births is reduced by the number of women who choose to have abortions for medical reasons, forseeing the risk. What you really need are a population of women that can represent the current population as a whole, but who cannot choose to have late-term abortions in response to risk.

You also have a host of other factors to consider. For instance, it could be that those women who don’t have abortions are poorer and get poor medical care to begin with (and thus are much more likely to die of complications with pregnancies). Some of these factors could work one way, and some the other: the end result being that this doesn’t really provide useful information for making either case.
Also, beagle: I see you’ve posted much more informative stats since I starting posting.

Since you didn’t summarize it for everyone: the rate of medical reasons for abortion is listed at 6% (while rape is 1%) for abortions overall in that cite. For late-term abortions, we again are left with a multiple reason questionaire and no tabluation for all medical reasons (just for late-discovered abnormalities, at 2%) though it is perhaps slipped into the “other” category (11%).

AGI and PFSR are both reputable, though again the cite doesn’t give me any of the data I need to evaluate the validity of their statistics or methods.

If third-trimester abortions are restricted except for medical and rape reasons in 40 states, what’s going on? Is this an issue of making laws for those remaining 10 states, or is it a matter of enforcing the laws better? What’s the federal interest here?