# Please help me understand the confusion over health exceptions to abortion bans **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 17, 2022, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117 "2022-07-17T21:21:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/41 "2022-07-18T18:20:19Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > > [@OldOlds](#): > > > > … the issue is a belief that personhood starts at conception. > > I’m willing to grant that there are people who believe this sincerely. But if they believe that the rights of a “person” gestating in a woman’s uterus are more important than the rights of the woman herself – even if it means legally prohibiting a medical procedure that’s necessary to protect the woman’s health, future fertility or even her life – then I vote for “misogynist nutjob.” This reminded me to an exchange reported on Reddit, there was one poster who adamantly approved of the idea of person hood starting at conception, the reply came “here is a thought experiment: in an in vitro fertilization clinic room there a canister with dozens of frozen fertilized eggs and a small kid, the building is on fire and you can carry only the kid or the canister. What would carry out?” The answer from the one talking about the person-hood idea was: “F\*\*\* you!” ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/42 "2022-07-18T18:23:15Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > After initially avoiding the question, Foster eventually addressed the hypothetical: “I believe it would probably impact her life, and so, therefore, it would fall under any exception **and would not be an abortion**.” There are a lot of anti-choice apologists now repeating some flavor of this: if the pregnancy would result in something horrible like a child being forced to give birth, or the death of the mother, then it is “not an abortion”. This is a lie. The law does not redefine this as “not an abortion.” Medical texts don’t redefine this as “not an abortion.” These people are willfully and purposely lying because they know it looks horrible to deny an abortion to a dying woman or a healthy 10-year-old. That’s exactly what they want, but they want to confuse prospective voters as to what they’re doing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/43 "2022-07-18T18:42:36Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > I think I just need to point something out in the interest of fairness. While there are, no doubt, plenty of misogynists in the pro-life movement, and plenty who think sex should be punished, I’ve certainly known some for whom the issue is a belief that personhood starts at conception. Even some sexually active, unmarried women I’ve known feel that way. These laws aren’t passed by pro-lifers. They’re passed by anti-choicers. They’re not the same thing. Anti-choicers would be just as happy passing laws mandating abortion as prohibiting it, if that were what was politically feasible. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/44 "2022-07-18T18:43:33Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > You know, if this camp is willing to allow pregnancy terminations in the case of rape, incest or to protect the mother’s health simply by saying those are not abortions, that’s a better situation than what currently exists in several states. It’s still evil and patently absurd, but that’s an upgrade over even-more-heinously evil and not absurd. Yeah, but you’d have to convince them to codify that restrictive definition of abortion into law, and as has been discussed at length in this thread the vagueness of the anti-abortion laws is seen as a feature rather than a bug by the pro-lifers. I think they’re afraid that if they doctors are allowed to use their judgement to determine when abortions are necessary for the health of the mother, that some doctors will use that leeway to provide abortions willy-nilly. Or if the drugs used to induce abortions are explicitly allowed to be prescribed for other conditions, that doctors will use that as an excuse to prescribe them to pregnant women. I’m sure they’ll be horrified when their own daughters or sisters or wives need to abort an ectopic pregnancy or similar and are unable to receive appropriate medical care. And they’ll probably blame those horrible liberal abortionists for forcing them to write such restrictive laws, or possibly turn it into a conspiracy by abortionist doctors to deny appropriate care out of spite. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/45 "2022-07-18T18:51:53Z")
> [@](#): > > “If a 10-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, **then that’s not an abortion** ,” Foster testified. Note as well that there are two requirements to meet Foster’s definition: rape, **plus** threatening her life. Nothing about rape by itself, or life-threatening by itself. Gotta get the twofer for it not to be an abortion, it sounds like. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/46 "2022-07-18T18:59:45Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > > [@Akaj](#): > > > > It’s still evil and patently absurd, but that’s an upgrade over even-more-heinously evil and not absurd. > > Except that this particular absurd belief of theirs isn’t codified in the law. I was picturing an absurd future where, to escape the worst of the backlash, they actually codify these exceptions by making up a new term for “abortion-but-not-really-abortion.” In reality, of course, they’ll express thoughts and prayers and do jack shit. > [@Gorsnak](#): > > I think they’re afraid that if they doctors are allowed to use their judgement to determine when abortions are necessary for the health of the mother, that some doctors will use that leeway to provide abortions willy-nilly. It’s more accurate if you take out “willy-nilly.” ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/47 "2022-07-18T19:05:07Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > While there are, no doubt, plenty of misogynists in the pro-life movement, and plenty who think sex should be punished, I’ve certainly known some for whom the issue is a belief that personhood starts at conception. You need to ask yourself this, though: _why_ does someone have such strong beliefs about the obscure topic of when life begins? What is important to them that they need to set it so rigidly, and why do these rigid-minded thinkers invariably place it at conception, rather than birth or quickening or some other milestone? If you dig into the answer that question, you’ll get to the real motive, which is that they don’t think women should have sex outside of their moral judgment, and they feel that pregnancy should be the punishment for that. In other worse - ritualized misogyny. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/48 "2022-07-18T19:05:34Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > Darn it, correcting a bit: This reminded me to an exchange reported in Reddit, there was one poster who adamantly approved of the idea of person hood starting at conception, the reply came: “Here is a thought experiment: in an in-vitro fertilization clinic room there is a canister with dozens of frozen fertilized eggs and a small kid, the building is on fire and you can carry only the kid or the canister. What would _you_ carry out?” The answer from the one talking about the person-hood idea was: “F\*\*\* you!” ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/49 "2022-07-18T20:52:45Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Note as well that there are two requirements to meet Foster’s definition: rape, **plus** threatening her life. Nothing about rape by itself, or life-threatening by itself. The really horrific thing about the whole “threat to the life of the mother” unstead of “health of the mother” is it means letting the pregnancy go longer, which makes the abortion more traumatic, more risky, and arguably less ethical. The “wait and see” is really “wait to kill”. So like, a 10 year okd is pregnant. If the law requires waiting until you actually can demonstrate that her life, not just her health, is threatened, that may be a very late term abortion. So she gets to live through a tramatic pregnancy for weeks or months, and then undergo a surgical abortion, possibly after quickening. By then, she may have decided she doesn’t want an abortion (because she is a baby herself! Not logical) so you have to convince or force a child to do this to save her life. Or pre-eclampsia. Usually it starts at like 32 weeks and you can deliver the baby and it has a chance. Sometimea it starts at 28 weeks and you play a dangerous game of chicken trying to decide how long you can wait, to give the baby as much time as possible. But sometimes it starts at 18 or 20 weeks. If you have pre-eclampsia at 20 weeks, you are almost certainly going to die of a stroke before the baby is viable. Often you have an abortion almost immediately because it is dangerous and doing untold damage to your whole circulatory system. But now I guess we will just let moms sit in the hospital for 4 weeks until they are literally about to stroke out, and then perform an abortion that is so much more traumatic. I can’t even. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/50 "2022-07-18T21:05:56Z")
> [@SwissMan](#): > > It may not just be a local prosecutor either; Republicans here in Texas are already claiming that they are going to try to pass a law to allow prosecutors in any county in Texas to prosecute doctors who perform abortions in any other county. This is an attempt to get around the fact that the D.A.s in many of the states largest counties (Dallas, Harris, etc.) have stated they are not going to pursue prosecutions. > > Under this rubric, a D.A. in Lubbock could prosecute a doctor in Houston, hundreds of miles away. The residents of Harris County may not approve of it, but they will have no recourse. After all, they don’t live in Lubbock County. I would question the constitutionality of this. The Sixth Amendment says that a defendant must be tried in the location where the crime occurred. Now, a Houston doctor would no doubt be prosecuted in Houston itself, but if the prosecution team is not from Houston, that would seem to violate the constitution - after all, **juries** must be chosen from the district where the crime occurred, so I do not see why prosecutors shouldn’t be also. ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/51 "2022-07-18T21:26:50Z")
The Sixth Amendment says that a defendant shall be tried in the “district” in which the crime occurred “which district shall have been previously ascertained by law.” There would be no problem with the state legislature breaking Texas up into three or four prosecutorial districts so that Austin is lumped in with Abilene and Dallas with Dalhart. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2022, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/52 "2022-07-18T23:52:39Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > then do all sorts of mental gymnastics to reconcile this with situations where it leads to morally absurd results. You don’t necessarily need to posit misogyny to get to this sort of view, although there is certainly a large dose of systemic misogyny built into the Catholic and Evangelical religious views that underpin much of the dogmatic pro-life position, and moreover the end result has misogynistic impacts even if it is not motivated by conscious misogyny. So they’re all misogynistic nutjobs? But it is not conscious? I kinda have to laugh at the mental gymnastics necessary to not label them what they are. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2022, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/53 "2022-07-19T02:10:51Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > The Sixth Amendment says that a defendant must be tried in the location where the crime occurred. Are you sure? I don’t see any reference to the trial being in the location where the crime occurred; rather that the jury must be drawn from the state and district (vicinage). That clause has not been held to be incorporated under the 14th Amendment, so how would it apply to a state trial for a state crime? See Wikipedia: > **[Vicinage Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicinage_Clause)** > > The Vicinage Clause is a provision in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution regulating the vicinity from which a jury pool may be selected. The clause says that the accused shall be entitled to an "impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law". The Vicinage Clause limits the vicinity of criminal jury selection to both the state and the federal judicial district where the crime > [@](#): > > The clause is one of the few [constitutional criminal procedure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_constitutional_criminal_procedure) provisions that has not been [incorporated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights) to apply to proceedings in state courts, the other being the [Grand Jury Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_States) of the Fifth Amendment. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2022, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117/54 "2022-07-19T15:15:28Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > You need to ask yourself this, though: _why_ does someone have such strong beliefs about the obscure topic of when life begins? What is important to them that they need to set it so rigidly, and why do these rigid-minded thinkers invariably place it at conception, rather than birth or quickening or some other milestone? The situation is strongly reminding me of pre-Civil War slavery debates. The pro-slavery camp evolved an exaggerated and distorted view of property rights that is similar to the “pro-life” camp’s journey to their exaggerated and distorted view of “personhood rights” today. The sanctity of property rights for slaveholders was considered so paramount that it justified denying any recognition of basic rights to the persons who were enslaved. Similarly, among abortion prohibitionists the alleged full personhood of a fertilized ovum or pre-viable embryo/fetus existing as part of a pregnant person’s body is considered so paramount that the bodily autonomy and even physical safety of the person carrying the pregnancy can be disregarded. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-understand-the-confusion-over-health-exceptions-to-abortion-bans/968117.md?page=2)