It is one of the answers in that poll; and it certainly means something when you *don’t *believe “it depends”, as I believe about first trimester abortions. That means they are available to any and all adults, no conditions.
And I *was *more specific–I said if I had my druthers, later term abortions would have to pass muster with a bioethics board.
ETA: Your hostility also illustrates my point. So far, no one has piped up with “hey, yeah, I am with you–totally agree” even though that is, again, the most common position based on opinion polls.
That doesn’t mean anything. What is the criteria that your bioethics board will use to determine whether or not to allow a later term abortion? How does it differ from the Democratic Party position?
My hostility is because you won’t actually state your position. And since you won’t state your position, how can anyone totally agree with it?
I will say, that you probably won’t find many Democrats who would support a return to a board (I don’t believe that the pre-Roe boards were called “bioethics boards,” so I’m not even sure what you are talking about here), but they do support having medical doctors make ethical decisions about abortion.
I wouldn’t say I totally agree, but I think I generally do. The abortion debate appears to require extreme positions. I’m largely “pro-choice” but feel like many “pro-choicers” take their positions too far as a childish reaction to uncompromising “pro-lifers”.
Right, let’s take the statement made by the OP in the first post:
[QUOTE=OP]
That leaves 34 percent who (like me) believe first but not second trimester abortion should be legal.
[/QUOTE]
If I were to take that statement at face value, then that would mean that the OP believes that abortion should be banned completely in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. That is an extreme position. But in reading the OP, I guessed that the OP didn’t actually think that.
And Lo and Behold! Once I started pressing the OP, he/she comes out with that there are indeed some circumstances in which a 2nd or 3rd trimester abortion should be legal. The OP won’t tell us what those circumstances are, only that some mysterious board should make a decision (based on what? I don’t know). But at least this position is not as extreme as the position the OP originally asserted.
If the OP is in the habit of opening with the extreme position when it’s not actually his/her position, then it’s probably not surprising that he/she has trouble finding people to agree with.
ETA: And if the OP is going to go around calling people “ingrates,” then he/she can get off the high-horse about hostility. The OP itself was hostile.
The difficulty isn’t in that the middle ground is ignored; it’s in that it isn’t ignored. Both sides of the issue try to claim the middle-grounders as allies. America is divided into three roughly equal parts: One third thinks abortion should be legal under all circumstances, one third believes it should be illegal under all circumstances, and one third believes it should be legal under some circumstances but illegal under others (though which circumstances of course varies from person to person). So both extremes post statistics that say that the majority agree with them: 2/3 of Americans believe that at least some abortions should be illegal, or 2/3 of Americans believe that at least some abortions should be legal. And they’re both right, and are continually arguing past each other.
Come on. Do you really think 1/3 of Americans think abortion should be legal under all circumstances? If a woman wants an abortion of a viable fetus at 35 weeks, do you really believe that 1/3 of Americans would be okay with that? Because the phrase “under all circumstances” includes that scenario.
BrightNShiny, my original statement is completely in sync with the poll numbers I posted (from my OP, I acknowledged the “it depends” category). There are 27 percent who believe abortion should be unconditionally legal in the second trimester; I am not among them. There are 31 percent who believe it should be unconditionally illegal in the first trimester; I am not among them. My bloc, which does believe it should be unconditionally legal in the first trimester only, extrapolating from the numbers, represents 34 percent. Nothing about that mathematically or logically requires me to take a “no exceptions” policy about the second trimester.
Right, and doesn’t that leave you feeling like you have no place in the debate?
ETA:
The Gallup numbers suggest that number is actually 14 percent.
Interesting study. It says one of the main reasons people get third trimester abortions is that they cannot raise the money for an abortion in the first couple of months after realizing they are pregnant.
So doesn’t that mean that, in order to follow the will of the majority, we should ensure that poor women can afford first trimester abortions? Care to hazard a guess as to whether GOP-favored policies raise or lower the cost of first trimester abortion?
Nope. That’s not what the cite says. It says that there are 27% who think that abortion should “generally be legal” in the 2nd trimester. What does “generally” mean here? I don’t know. The question is worded vaguely. It probably includes people who think it should be unconditionally legal, but it probably also includes people who think there should be some restrictions in the 2nd trimester.
Again no. There are 31% who think that abortion should “generally be illegal” during the first trimester.
You are the one who made a statement that if read at face value says that you take a no-exceptions policy. Don’t make those kinds of statements if you want people to understand your position. And you still refuse to state what exceptions you think there should be. If you haven’t really thought in depth about the issue, that’s fine. But then why don’t you start a thread in GD to explore the issue and the ramifications of various types of exceptions. But if you can’t state your actual position, then there’s no reason for anyone to agree, disagree or take you seriously.
Again, see the word “generally.” The Gallup numbers don’t tell us anything about that.
Perhaps SlackerInc is not a doctor. I know there are good reasons to allow later abortions, and am comfortable saying I support allowing abortions at any time if medically justified. I would accept the advice of those who know far more about the subject than me. What I would be uncomfortable with is saying exactly which situations justify exceptions and which don’t. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
We can put some broad outlines here on “medical justification.” Are we talking about the mother or the fetus or both? I mean, I’m not a doctor, but I can give a broad outline of my views:
Pre-Viability: No restrictions on abortion, except solely to protect the physical health of the mother. E.g., abortions can take place according to medical safety guidelines performed by authorized people, but you can’t have some quack performing them.
Post-Viability: Abortion allowed to protect the health or life of the mother, or if the fetus has a condition which would cause it to die or suffer for its entire life.
Of course, those are broad outlines, but I’ve made it clear that I basically favor unrestricted abortion pre-viability, and pretty stringent restrictions after that. I could be talked out of that position. Someone could query me on a specific circumstance and I could see if I’ve thought about it or not. Maybe I change my position.
And this isn’t exactly the position of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is a bit more pro-choice than me. But I still find plenty of room for my position in the party, and nobody’s ever yelled at me at a party meeting because of it.
And if I can function in the Democratic Party with this position, the OP should be able to with his/her position. I can’t figure out exactly what that position is. I think it’s fairly close to mine, but since the OP can’t even give any clarity, then who knows?
It does indeed mean that–I absolutely support such govt. subsidy. But notice you are right back in the groove (rut) of arguing with the GOP bogeyman.
Which, if true, would make the most vocal and well represented group of pro-choicers an even smaller minority. But you are splitting hairs here. Ever heard of the FDA designation “generally recognized as safe”?
Personally, I’m not interested in viability, which is a moving target and a slippery slope; and does not relate to my moral concern which revolves more around sentience… What happens when viability begins immediately after conception? That day will inevitably come as technology improves. I am more interested in the “reasonable person” test. When would a reasonable person be expected to figure out that they are pregnant, and how long afterwards would it then take to get an abortion as quickly as practicable?
Yup. And it’s long been a strategy of the anti-abortion side to capitalize on the belief of many that there is something special about the first trimester that makes abortion not objectionable then, but objectionable later, then to throw up all kinds of stumbling blocks, from parental consent with judicial bypass, to clinics having to be attached to hospitals, to women having to view ultrasounds, to dissuading doctors from performing abortions in the first place, that make it more and more difficult for a woman to get an abortion before that first trimester window closes, at which point, that anti-abortionists suddenly gain a lot of new allies.
I’m pretty much with you here. I reject the “trimester” paradigm, and think viability is better, but I want the definition of viability not to be “Hey, there was once a 23-week fetus that survived after five months in a NICU, and it’s very disabled, but nevermind-- viability is 23 weeks.” I think viability is where the fetus has at least an even chance of surviving without intervention, and therefore a good chance of surviving with intervention, without a lot of residua.
NOTE: this discussion of viability shouldn’t affect how preemies are dealt with. Whether or not to try to save a very premature baby is a decision for the parents to make privately with the doctors, just like the decision to abort, or to withdraw support from someone in a vegetative state-- or not to abort a fetus with a lethal defect. Some parents choose to carry to term even after finding out a fetus has something like anencephaly. That’s a personal decision.
No, I’m not splitting hairs. You simply don’t understand the poll. You’ve taken a vague poll with conflicting data, and assigned it an extremist reading. And then you actually have the nerve to criticize other groups as extreme. If you don’t know how to read polling data properly, that’s your problem.
The FDA designation is part of a legal regulation. It’s not a poll. If you don’t understand that people taking polls are not FDA employees, then you really are talking nonsense.
Blah, blah, blah. Again we cannot tell what your actual position on abortion is.
I’d be okay with that definition that sets a hard line at a set amount of weeks based on current technology. I’d also be okay with re-examining the issue if the technology changes, but I don’t know what my position would be in response to technology that hasn’t been invented yet.
You realize that whether or not a woman is trying to get pregnant has a big impact on when she realizes she is pregnant? Women who are trying to get pregnant are taking tests every month. Women who become accidentally pregnant, especially young women, who are the most likely to have irregular periods, are the ones who are most likely not to know they are pregnant until they are 10 or even 14 weeks along.
It’s more like 10% of Americans think abortion should NEVER be legal, even when the mother’s life is threatened. I think ‘for what reasons should abortion be allowed’ is a better way of separating out opinions than ‘during which trimesters should they be allowed’.
Sounds like good grist for the argumentation phase before the court decides what length of time a “reasonable person” needs. If that edges slightly into the second trimester, fine: I don’t claim there’s something magical about that dividing line. But I don’t see it going too far into the second tri.
Plus that is kind of besides the point - the claim was that late-term abortions were for “cases of the health of the mother or significant deformity of the baby”. It turns out that this is not the case - procrastination is not a matter of the health of the mother nor a fetal deformity.
So what BrightNShiny claimed about the position of the Democratic Party on late-term abortion is wrong. In order to bring them into alignment with the majority, they need to speak out against abortions performed in cases other than those involving “the health of the mother or significant deformity of the baby”, since those are the common reasons for seeking a late-term abortion.
There are many factors that contribute to late abortions. Some of those factors are caused by Republicans–namely, making first trimester abortions as difficult to get and afford as possible, and keeping comprehensive sex education out of schools. Others of those factors include women delaying the decision because it is a hard one to make, or because they are disagreeing with the father. Therefore…
Neither party represents the will of the majority on abortion?