Question about botched abortions

Lets suppose that a woman goes to have a late-term abortion and the doctor starts cutting into the viable fetus…unfortunately it pops out ALIVE.

There…A viable living baby born.

Let us also assume that no one tries to destroy this constitutionally protected life in order to “get the original job done”.

The baby has permanent injuries due to the attempted abortion.

Are the doctor and/or mother criminally responsible for injuries inflicted pre-natally, or are they protected by exercising a right…after all while still in the womb its LEGAL.

IMO your debate kinda stalls out right here, just a bit.

Your OP has me visualizing a horrified doctor staring down at the suddenly appearing living infant in his hands, which isn’t a very likely scenario.

First of all, a second-trimester fetus isn’t normally considered all that viable in the first place, being extremely premature and normally being rushed directly into a neonate unit upon “popping out”. So you’re talking about a third-trimester abortion, if you’re postulating that the fetus could “pop out alive” and survive without extraordinary life-support measures being taken.

http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/0819.html

http://www.todaysplanet.com/pg/beta/medical/trimester_abortion.htm

“D & E” means “dilation and evacuation”. Another common term for it, used by the lay public, is “partial birth abortion”. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?

This is how it works. Warning: Gross and TMI.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_pba1.htm

The procedure is usually performed during the fifth month of gestation or later. The woman’s cervix is dilated, and the fetus is partially removed from the womb, feet first. The surgeon inserts a sharp object into the back of the fetus’ head, removes it, and inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains are extracted. The head of the fetus contracts at this point and allows the fetus to be more easily removed from the womb.

There isn’t a way for the fetus to suddenly “pop out alive” into the doctor’s horrified hands. It doesn’t work like that.It’s alive, with its feet sticking out, then he reaches in and punctures its head and kills it. It’s not going to suddenly slide out of the vagina the rest of the way and be officially “born” [“oopsie…”] not while he’s standing there holding it.

So your debate point of “what if the fetus was damaged during the abortion?” seems kind of moot to me. If he’s the kind of doctor who’s willing to perform this kind of procedure, then he’s the kind of doctor who’s going to make damn sure he doesn’t screw up and allow it to “pop out alive”.

Once a midwife told me how horrified she was when she had to perform a relatively late abortion for the first time. The fetus came out alive and they just left it without any special treatment. Then it died within a few minutes.

???

Where do you live, that midwives perform abortions?

I’m not questioning the fact that during some kinds of second trimester abortion procedures, the fetus can emerge alive and survive for a few minutes. But the OP is talking about dilation and evacuation, or partial birth abortion (I’m assuming from his references to “cutting”), and during a D & E the fetus is cut up into pieces, and the pieces are suctioned out, and thus it is not going to emerge intact at all, let alone alive.

http://health_info.nmh.org/Library/HealthGuide/IllnessConditions/topic.asp?hwid=tw2462

In Germany. It wasn’t her alone, she might even have been in training at the time. Obviously it wasn’t an optional abortion (without punishment in the first 3 months here). So I might have missed the precise technical term. However it was clear that the fetus was not meant to survive (and never had a chance anyway.)

With the partial birth abortion, the fetus is pulled out feet first leaving the head inside the mother. Whats to say that as the sharp instrument is being guided throught the birth canal into the cranium, the baby “pops out”…after all, things are going to be slippery! :rolleyes:

Easy to see you’ve never had a baby. :smiley:

The head is the big part of a baby, and in a normal delivery, the head comes out first. The uterine contractions, repeated strongly throughout the many hours of labor, have the effect of actually molding the baby’s head, whose skull bones are not fused together at the top, into a more oblong shape, to make it easier for the head (the tricky part) to pass through the opening in the mother’s pelvis. Then, once the big part is out, the rest of the body slips out quite fast (pops out).

However, in a breech birth (feet first), which is basically what you’re talking about here, you’ve got the skinny, small part coming out first while the head is still up inside the uterus, without allowing the hours and hours of uterine pressure on the upside-down baby’s head in the pelvic opening to mold the head into a more ergonomic design. And in this case there’s a very real risk, depending on the size of the baby and the size of the mother’s pelvis, that the baby’s head will get stuck on the “still inside Mom” side of the pelvic opening like a cork in a bottle, and the baby will just “hang” there–can’t go forward, can’t go back. Then you’re looking at an emergency c-section (and in earlier eras, the mother and baby both simply died.)

So a breech presentation baby can’t physically “pop out” while the doctor is trying to maneuver his sharp pokey thing up past it in the vagina. Its big, round, unmolded head is still inside the uterus and is still locking the baby in place inside the mother’s pelvis. Even granted that you’re talking about a fetus that has a smaller head than a full-term baby, still the laws of physics will hold the Big Part up inside the mother, so it can’t “pop out”. Visualize a Tootsie Roll Pop inside your mouth. Now visualize your pesky kid brother trying to yank it out of your mouth–he can’t, as long as you keep your mouth closed around it. The uterus is closed around the baby’s head the same way, at the cervix.

The accounts of births that have the baby “popping out” because it’s slippery are generally speaking accounts of normal, head-first births, in which the uterine contractions were allowed to do their job of squeezing the baby’s head into a more manageable shape. Or they are accounts of natural premature births, when the baby’s head wasn’t as big as it was supposed to be, so it only took the uterus a short period of contractions to push the whole thing out, since it was overall much smaller and easier for it to fit through the pelvic opening.

But a late-term abortion like you’re talking about doesn’t involve any uterine contractions, so there’s no way for the fetus to be pushed out past the doctor’s hand, even with a smaller head. And with the cervix holding the head in place, it can’t slip out, no matter how slippery the vagina may be.

Morbid tones of this thread aside, nature is fascinating. Excellent posts, DDG. Add that to my pile of SD knowledge.

More on topic, in RE to the OP, I would figure that you are (theoretically) looking for laws regarding prenatal injury to the fetus, such as would occur as a result of direct physical injury?

Yes, exactly.

Can a child sue a doctor for injury prebirth, or is the doctor immune due to a loophole…the child at the time was an unprotected fetus and therefore legally destroy-able?

Is any of this what you’re looking for?

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0DPE/1_28/63397607/p2/article.jhtml?term=

The whole issue of fetal rights is very much up in the air; I don’t think you’ll be able to get a solid “yes” or “no” answer.