I recently became aware of some of the techniques used during late term abortions. I have generally been pro-choice. Now upon hearing/reading the gory details of sticking sharp objects into the base of the 7-9 month old fetus’s brain and moving it around to make the brain mush and then drain it. I find this practice totally repulsive.
I know many people are so very opinionated about abortions and right to choice. But I have defined my stance. If the CNS [ central nervous system] is developed in the fetus then abortion should be illegal. Period.
The practice of late term abortion is really disgusting. I have a 20 month old son, and i remember how precious he was at birth… and to imagine a doctor sticking a freddy krueger like object at the base of his spine and killing him… right before birth is a nightmareish thought that I cant escape.
Anything past the 15th trimester starts to get into a gray area. However, if there is a chance the parents might be on daytime television at any point in their lives, I fully support raising the limit to puberty.
Well, first, it’s the woman’s right to choose what she does with her body.
Second, I’m not sure how common that specific procedure is. Anyone?
Third, considering, generally speaking, the only time most doctors would suggest a procedure like that would be when the mother’s life is in danger… I’m pretty cool with it. I mean… you rather they both die?
You should run a quick search for this topic. We had a very lengthy debate about the issue not that long ago. The gist of it was that yes these are gross, like many surgical procedures, but the are not common, and are generally not performed for ‘elective’ reasons.
Relatively speaking they aren’t common (like 1% of all abortions). Absolutely speaking though the numbers are surprising. Thousands of late term abortions per year and there is credible doubt that they are performed primarily for ‘elective’ reasons.
I agree that she has the right to choose what she does with her body, but not with any other body. Read this carefully.
How common or not this procedure is done does not change or lessen what it is: the termination of a pregnancy by will. I admit I previously bought into the argument of saving a mother’s life. But upon closer examination of the late term abortion itself and questioning why - in that manner - it became clear that the reason was to prevent the unborn baby from taking a breath (which could happen in normal head down position or when delivered by c-section), therefore, legally skirting murder because it was rendered non-viable.
I am still in favor in saving the mother’s life when it is truly threatened, however, performing a breech “birth” is not necessarily a safer option for the mother than a c-section.
What does having children have to do with it? If you use those kind of standards, men won’t get to have opinions about abortion at all, because they can’t get pregnant.
Yes, late-term abortions are gory. So are early term abortions. So are C-sections. The things that happen during cardiac bypass surgery are just effing brutal and indescribably gory. I’m afraid that gross has nothing to do with the legality or morality of a medical procedure.
Personally, I’m pretty neutral on the subject. It’s not something I’d do, but I don’t think I or anyone else has the right to make that decision for anyone else. It’s not something that just happens on a whim, you know, and I feel it’s the height of inhumanity to make something like this even more traumatic by throwing around words like murder.
BTW, if you ask for people’s opinions on a subject, you have to be prepared for them to disagree with you. Throwing around graphic pictures and denigrating someone’s opinions because they might not have kids is not a valid debate tactic.
well I am a male and I have a 20 month old son. I have seen my child born and have cared from day one. All everyone talks about is the mother and her body. And I agree that up to a point it is her choice. But in this throw away society that we live in… mothers can decide up until near the baby birth that they dont want it and can have an abortion.
I stick to this. If the babies CNS has been developed, no abortion should be legal. Imagine the pain the poor fetus has to go through. Horrible.
So, just to check, if a woman wants to have the umbilical cord severed (I think that’s still part of her body. If not, simply measure up until you hit flesh that is definitively hers), and let the fetus rot, than just clean things out when life is exinct, that’s OK?
Look. Putting aside the whole sloppy debate about when a clump of cells with human DNA is or isn’t an individual person, the simple fact is that as long as a fetus physically requires it’s mother’s goodwill to survive, it has no right to life.
" . . . mothers can decide up until near the baby birth that they dont want it and can have an abortion."
I seriously doubt that an eight-month’s pregnant woman with a healthy fetus can walk into an doctor’s office and demand an abortion for no reason at all.
I think late term abortions should only be legal on far right fundamentalists who think killing babies is wrong, but shooting doctors and blowing up clinics is okay. And that should be legal up to at least 50 years of age!
Hey, anybody who has gone through a 45 month (15 trimester) pregnancy certainly has a right to choose! As to 99 month pregnancies (33 trimester) . . . even somebody as vehemently pro-choice as me would have to say that it’s leaving it a bit late.
Ugh, you know what is even grosser than those pics and descriptions? Live birth! With the placenta and the chunks and the slime. If I catch one more episode of “A Baby Story” I might just turn Pro-Abortion. Period.
Just happened to stumble upon that link, huh? First you claim to be mostly pro-choice, then you sprout up with the same tired old arguments. Will you be claiming it’s done for organ harvesting, or shall you be taking the satanic cult route this evening?
I have a kid. I find myself with E-Sabbath on this one; would you rather they both die? Now how often it is actually done where the health of the mother is involved is worthy of debate. The statistics are hazy at best, and both sides have polluted the waters so much, that reliable and unbiased stats are hard to come by.
and in fact, most states have laws pertaining to this. The debate comes then to, what is up to a doctor to diagnose, and what is up to a legislature to legislate? What will the courts allow the doctors to dictate and the legistators to legislate? If Nebraska legislates it, and the court denies it, where does it go next?
Double masectomies are gory as well. They were rarley allowed in Afghanistan, as well as many life saving female procedures, on religious grounds. On the flip side, it was common in China to kill female offspring post partum. Both far more morally reprehensible, but on the extreme sides opposite sides of the spectrum.
The “medically neccesary” portion of the debate lands in the middle of the spectrum. Is it right to deny a dying person care so that her unborn fetus can live, even though she/he will die when the mother does? At what point does it become a medical necessity? These are the points I’m up in the air with.
Wether it’s gory or morally reprehensible to you doesn’t phase me one bit. The true purpose of laws is to be bigger than you or I, and to set aside any bias I may have to come up with a defined solution.
From what I understand, late term abortion involves pulling the baby partially out of the birth canal and destroying its brain so that it cannot breath after it’s completely removed from the mother, right? No, I didn’t check the links, partly because my computer doesn’t always take kindly to side-trips and partly because I’ve read about this before.
Now, given that this procedure takes a fair bit of skill and sounds kind of difficult to perform, why is it more likely to save the mother’s life than a quick and commonly done c-section? How can there be any argument that it is anything but a choice to deliberately kill an unwanted baby? I’m referring of course to a fetus in the 7-9 month range, an age at which it is viable after birth with minor or no complications expected.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t see how a c-section wouldn’t be the first choice. After all, either way the baby is no longer in the mother and surely there are other options for the baby after birth if the mother wants to give it up. Once that baby has reached the point of definate viability, it ceases to be just the woman’s body. Unwilling or not, unless she’s just woken up from a coma and found herself pregnant, there’s very little excuse for letting the pregnancy continue so far if termination is considered.