SlackerInc:
Bolding mine.
I’m curious what you think is happening in these later term abortions where they fail at aborting the fetus and it is born?
Describe the circumstances you think occur where doctors are aborting at the last moment.
Describe what state you think the now born baby is in.
Describe what you think the doctors and nurses do next.
This is something like a Gish Gallup. I don’t have to be intimately familiar with every detail of every institution impacted by a bill to have an opinion about it. I assume you supported Obamacare (or at least opposed the attempt to repeal it), as did I. Can you explain every detail about how it impacts every nook and cranny of the healthcare system? :dubious:
Democrats do have an obligation, though, to provide a clear answer to Americans who are not so cynical, who are concerned that our approach to abortion is one sign, along with policies espoused by Trump and Republicans, that we have lost our moral bearings as a country in pursuit of political power.
Only that that opinion is not an educated one. The Democrats explained clearly and it is more likely that some just fell for the spin of the Republicans and the concern trolls out there in the popular media.
Why did Democrats vote against it?
Broadly, critics of the bill said that it would take decisions out of the hands of parents and medical professionals and hand it to politicians. Democrats also argued that the number of relevant cases is vanishingly small, and usually involve heartbreaking situations that often have specific, unusual factors at play that are hard to accommodate in advance. Because of this, they saw the bill as a chance for Republicans to embarrass Democrats rather than as a genuine piece of legislation aiming to solve a significant problem.
Perhaps the Democrats’ most basic argument in the context of Trump’s charge, however, is that laws already exist to cover the scenario the bill would seek to prevent, making the new bill redundant.
In a floor speech before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, “It has always been illegal to harm a newborn infant. This vote has nothing—nothing—to do with that. Read the language.”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, echoed that argument. “This bill is not about protecting infants, as Republicans have claimed, because that is not up for debate and it is already the law,” she said.
Most legal experts we contacted agreed with this much of the Democrats’ argument: Killing a baby after birth is already against the law.
Regardless if they are replying to what Trump said, it is a very good reply to the ones like the opinion that writer of the Atlantic there has made about the Democrats ‘not being clear’.
SlackerInc:
This is something like a Gish Gallup. I don’t have to be intimately familiar with every detail of every institution impacted by a bill to have an opinion about it. I assume you supported Obamacare (or at least opposed the attempt to repeal it), as did I. Can you explain every detail about how it impacts every nook and cranny of the healthcare system? :dubious:
I was not asking for every nook and cranny detail. I asked for a broad description of how YOU thought it played out.
Apparently you have not thought about it and I suspect neither have most conservatives. It is all “gotcha” politics with no merit whatsoever.
The people who have thought about it realize it is all bullshit and there is no good to be had from the bill so they didn’t vote for it.
Whack-a-Mole:
I was not asking for every nook and cranny detail. I asked for a broad description of how YOU thought it played out.
Apparently you have not thought about it and I suspect neither have most conservatives. It is all “gotcha” politics with no merit whatsoever.
The people who have thought about it realize it is all bullshit and there is no good to be had from the bill so they didn’t vote for it.
Yep, that was clear to me too; also, what a former staffer of Obama that was involved in religious issues is not aware of that makes his opinion to be an underwhelming one.
Guinastasia:
The kind of the consequences are more than just “unfortunate”. “Get over it”? Look up some of the horrifying birth defects that lead to these scenarios, the come back and tell me they’ll just “get over it”.
(For example, alobar holoprosencephaly, often accompanied by cyclopia. Normally I’d caution AGAINST googling this sort of thing, but for someone like you, SlackerInc , I think you might need a reality check.)
I don’t know why, but I was expecting something along the lines of a “harlequin baby.” Your example is almost as disturbing.
Point of clarification: this bill originally came up in 2017. It didn’t even pass committee.
So yeah, it’s 100% gotcha politics, and those like SlackerInc that think this bill will actually do anything except but doctors in an incredibly tough position in some incredibly rare cases are fooling themselves and helping Republicans slander their opposition.
Kimstu
March 2, 2019, 8:10pm
68
The author of that article is an anti-abortion Democrat , namely, “a Democrats for Life board member who led faith-based outreach for President Barack Obama”. It is not surprising that he misrepresented the nature of the bill in question and the procedures that the bill is trying to criminalize, and disingenuously criticized fellow Democrats for voting against it. As I pointed out in this concurrent thread :
Kimstu:
A non-viable fetus that briefly survives induced delivery during a crisis pregnancy termination is NOT analogous to “similarly situated babies who are born under any other circumstance”, and refraining from temporarily resuscitating such a fetus is NOT “denying proper care”.
Criminalizing doctors’ and patients’ informed individual choices about how to care for such non-viable fetuses during their brief existence outside the womb is NOT protecting “babies born alive”. Republicans are, as usual, lying when they claim that Democrats’ insistence on letting pregnant women and doctors make these difficult choices without draconic state interference means that Democrats support killing babies.
Kimstu
March 2, 2019, 8:20pm
69
Another quote in that concurrent thread from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (February 2019) concerning third-trimester abortions:
The need for an abortion later in pregnancy could arise for a number of reasons, including fetal anomalies or complications that threaten a woman’s health. Women, in consultation with their physicians, must be able to evaluate all appropriate treatments and make informed choices about what’s best for their health and their pregnancies. Depending on the circumstance, this might include abortion care, induction of labor, or cesarean delivery. Women’s access to accurate, full information and care must never be constrained by politicians.
Many abortions that occur later in pregnancy involve fetal anomalies incompatible with life, such as anencephaly, the absence of the brain and cranium above the base of the skull, or limb-body wall complex, when the organs develop outside of the body cavity.ii In these cases, where death is likely before or shortly after birth, patients may decide whether to continue the pregnancy and deliver a nonviable fetus or have an abortion. In any case, the focus of medically-appropriate, compassionate care must be on the patient and what she feels is best for her health and her family.
Abortion later in pregnancy may also be necessary when complications severely compromise a woman’s health or life, conditions which may also reduce the possibility of fetal survival. These might include premature rupture of membranes and infection, preeclampsia, placental abruption, and placenta accreta. Women in these circumstances may risk extensive blood loss, stroke, and septic shock that could lead to maternal death. Politicians must never require a doctor to wait for a medical condition to worsen and become life-threatening before being able to provide evidence-based care to their patients, including an abortion.
I think the considered opinions of the actual medical professionals who have to deal with the traumatic medical crises leading to third-trimester abortions are more significant than those of an ex-Obama Administration “faith outreach” director who happens to be ideologically opposed to abortion rights in the first place.