Yes. What I am talking about is surgical removal of a fetus. In other words, Cesarean section, which is absolutely a threat to the physical health of the mother. Much more sore than abortion. Additionally, C-sections very often result in weakened abdominal wall which can result in chronic medical issues, up to and including the inability to deliver vaginally. That is not a procedure that is as “easy” as you claim.
Then 45 states are making women’s health policy based only on the status of the fetus and not on the status of the mother. Because the status of the mother forced into an unnecessary delivery is at risk of serious medical complications and permanent injury.
As for not “put[ting] down adults,” you are incorrect. We absolutely do put down adults. It’s called the death penalty. We also withhold lifesaving medical treatment when the patient is unable to pay for it.
But irrelevant because there’s a significant difference between an adult and a fetus and that is that the adult resides outside of a womb and therefore is no longer biologically dependent on its mother.
That’s an interesting thing to debate, because that’s where the line gets shady. The fetus may still be reliant on its mothers’ body but it is also at that point a complete human being, no longer just a collection of tissue. It’s a matter of setting priorities. You believe that the mothers’ bodily autonomy is preeminent. I believe that life outweighs all other considerations. Viable life that is. I can concede that if a woman faces serious medical complications from giving birth, then an abortion should be allowed. However, elective abortion of viable fetuses is rightly against the law nearly everywhere.
It’s not just a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. Every person has a right to bodily autonomy. You are legally a person that is a citizen of the U.S. protected by law upon birth. Not upon conception. Not upon viability which is not, in any way, biologically independent. A person is a biologically independent human being. That is the most logical definition as it respects bodily autonomy of each individual which should be considered preeminent equally for males and females, of age of majority or minor.
Banning elective abortion of fetuses selectively violates women’s innate right to bodily autonomy. As a woman, as a mother and as an American, I just can’t see how that’s right, not ethically or judiciously. Not at all.
IT should be noted that Gosnell was delivering babies the regular way and then just killing them. So the women received no actual health benefit from his abortions.
THe Colorado government should do an investigation and make sure this isn’t what’s happening in the other remaining clinic that does late term abortions. There have been reports from other such places of pretty horrific murders of viable babies outside the womb.
If the child was born live and full term is indeed illegal. and people who call themselves pro-life(that in my opinion are just pro-birth), should be able to ask for, and get the child to support it; once born live it is the member of society. A woman can give birth, leave it at a hospital or police station without penalty and it should be the same for a child that was born live under any circumstance. It then becomes a child of the state and can be adopted by another person.
I heard plenty from the so called liberal media, because it wasn’t broadcasted every few minuets doesn’t mean it wasn’t told.
True, but until the refs were worked by the conservative media, it wasn’t reported a heck of a lot, and not nearly in proportion to its actual significance. It’s at least as important as Newtown.
Unless there have been legitimate reports specifically concerning the only other clinic in that state they have no business starting an investigation…unless of course your goal is not to investigate a possible crime, but to further discourage anyone from visiting the place.
Are you under the impression that an urgent care clinic and dental clinic are subject to the same regulations? They are not.
I agree with this, actually. I agree because a late term abortion is a more medically complicated procedure than an early one, and the risks to the mother are greater. There is also a chance of the fetus being born instead of aborted, and I agree that such a baby should - if its medical condition warrants it - be treated as a new patient in that hospital. Who pays for it? Whomever pays for indigent care for micropreemies now. Medicaid, if there’s no private insurance. Is this going to become a burdensome medical expense? Hardly, because women by and large don’t have elective abortions past the point of viability. Less than 2% of abortions are late term, and the vast majority of those are heartbreaking medical decisions.
Clinics? Plural? I thought your claim was that only *one *doctor in the US performs late term abortions. How many clinics does he work at?
And that’s why he’s looking at a long time in jail. No one thinks what he did is right, to those women, those babies or to his employees who have to look themselves in the mirror every night. The whole thing is a sack of disgusting, and I truly hope that everyone - not just Gosnell as a figurehead - who was performing procedures outside of their scope of practice is appropriately charged and punished.
So I think you and I are not so far apart as our labels would have us think. Where we seem mostly to differ is that I think this monster was allowed to get away with what he did because of a whole host of problems caused by people trying to restrict access to abortion, including the lack of inspections, a lack of funding and limited women’s health care, and you seem to think his patients were just clueless self absorbed ignorant women who couldn’t be bothered to schedule their abortion in a timely fashion. I’ve got news for you…if a woman has the money, if she knows she’s pregnant and if she doesn’t want to be, if she can get time off at work, if she has babysitting and transportation and if she is able to get an appointment at a safe, reputable medical center, she’s pretty damn unlikely to put it off for 5 months at a whim. But that’s a whole lot of “ifs” that the antiabortion legislators and culture have made exceedingly difficult for poor women to secure.
Do you have a cite for this claim? That 99.9% of doctors are *morally *opposed to late term abortions? That number seems high to me. It’s certainly much higher than the general population.
And let me be clear: by “if the medical condition warrants it”, I mean just that. Not every preterm infant is a good candidate for intensive care. I think that whether a preterm infant is whisked to the NICU should be decided without regard for how it entered the world. Some of that is based on oxygenation and muscle movement at birth, some based on birth weight, some on gender and complications during pregnancy and some part of it is based on what the parent(s) want to see happen.
When my own (wanted) daughter was needed to be delivered at 23 weeks, we were given the option, because she was so on the very border of viable - c-section and try to save her in the NICU, or induce a vaginal birth and allow her to die (it being exceedingly unlikely that she’d survive the stress of a vaginal birth.)
We were given a choice.
Choice.
We *chose *to have a c-section and send her to the NICU, and she’s a healthy 8 year old today. Thank goodness. But no more babies for me. She was my last safe pregnancy; now I’m at a much raised risk of uterine rupture, high enough that I’ve been advised never to get pregnant again.
But it was our choice. Our choice to pay the thousands of dollars in insurance copays. Our choice to live with the risks of long term disabilities. Our choice to sit at her bedside for hours every day for weeks. Our choice to live on a single income so that I could do her therapy and take her to doctor’s appointments and pump milk 10 times a day for 14 months. Our choice to never have another biological child or the natural childbirth we’d dreamed of.
That experience is what inspired me to become a nurse. A NICU nurse, in particular. Now, I’m not there yet (I’m actually working at the other end of life while I finish the schooling I need for NICU), but I will be someday. And I know that not every baby born will or should be brought to the NICU, and that sometimes my job will be to make a baby’s death the best death possible for them and their families, not to save their life. And I’m okay with that.
So, you ask me what we should do if a fetus is delivered alive? We should treat it as a baby. As any other baby in the hospital. Some of them we allow to die naturally, sometimes with sedation and painkillers, and some of them we attempt to save. And mother’s choice still weighs quite heavily in *that *decision making process.
But something doesn’t have to be a defined as a person before it can be protected by the law.
Yes, it does. But it does so to protect the rights of a viable fetus. Many of your rights can be limited, and your right to bodily integrity can, and is, “violated” to protect the rights of a viable fetus.
It’s a balancing of rights that in conflict, something that the law has done for centuries. If you, as I do, believe that the potential life of a fetus has value, then it is perfectly ethical and judicious for the law to protect that potential life.
It’s simple logic. Abortion clinics are already subject to constant threats and protests. But let’s just take Planned Parenthood since they are national and famous. How come Planned Parenthood won’t do abortions of viable fetuses? Fear? That would be hard to argue. And if fear isn’t what’s motivating them not to do it, it’s got to be principle.
Let me propose several other "logical’ reasons there may be fewer doctors performing late term abortions these days. Reason number one, of course, being that not very many women want them. There’s just not a huge swelling of demand. Number two, of course, is that, as you already know, they’re illegal or highly regulated in most states. Third, it’s a malpractice and liability insurance nightmare that can cost a phsyician hundred of thousands extra in insurance premiums every year. Fourth, doctors who do late term abortions and their families are disproportionally attacked in the media and in physical reality - even more that doctors who do “regular” abortions. Fifth, education is lacking - medical students aren’t being trained in these procedures as widely as they once were. Late term abortion may soon go the way of forceps delivery - something that your doctor has read about and watched a video of, but never actually done herself.
IOW, the very conservative Washington Times isn’t covering the story, but is pissed at the MSM for not covering the story.
He goes on to point out that the same is true pretty much across the right-wing media. None of them are devoting more than trivial coverage to the trial itself, but they’ve got wall-to-wall coverage of the mainstream media’s similar lack of coverage of the story.