SIL is still emotionally messed up because she chose to carry full term and then deliver “naturally” a brainless hunk of flesh. Her MD was feeding her “what if a miracle occurs” bullshit. Third-trimester must always be an option.
Can he take heroin legally?
If it was his fetish could he have his leg amputated?
If I were king, probably. As long as we paired legalization with a very robust health system to care for addiction.
I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal to cut off one’s own body parts. Are you aware of anyone ever being prosecuted for cutting off their own leg?
Yes, I’m sure hospitals are just wall-to-wall with physicians who will sign off on elective amputations. :rolleyes: Oy vey.
Just because you might, arguably, be able to/allowed to do something in no way obligates anyone else to assist you or enable you.
Although I think “elective amputation due to fetish” has no law against it mainly because it’s such a rare impulse that no one has bothered to make it illegal at this point.
1- I don’t think it is unreasonable for the public to believe and enact laws that restrict something so damaging to society like heroin. I appreciate the moral ground of having absolute authority over ones own body, but it does not always end there. With addiction comes addicts who will certainly adversely affect everyone around them. So in this case we have decided, and I agree, we as a society are more important than what one chooses to do with their body.
2- I didn’t say it was illegal, but docters won’t do it. No. Why? Do they not feel a person has complete autonomy over their own body? Would the patient not immediately be referred to psychiatric care like they really didn’t know what they wanted? How is that different than the bullshit medical referrals and ultrasounds required before women get abortions in southernn states?
For 1, okay, we disagree. Fine.
For 2, I believe that there is some science to mental health, and I think it’s reasonable that doctors might determine that desiring amputation with no medical cause might indicate a mental health issue, while desiring an abortion does not. In other words, yet another issue in which doctors and patients should be making the decisions rather than government. IMO.
I have no doubt doctors would pass on ethical grounds, but you better believe there’d be a tidal wave of ire if that same doctor refused to grant an abortion on ethical grounds. And you better believe the public would want the government to step in to protect the woman’s rights.
What I’m saying is no one has complete authority over what they can do within their own body, and I am not certain that’s bad.
There are plenty of doctors who refuse to perform abortions. There is no law compelling doctors to perform abortions. Were you not aware of this? My belief in the right to control access and usage of one’s own body does not require compelling others to use their body in service of mine.
As there are doctors that refuse to perform abortions based on ethical grounds, and there are no waves of ire, not sure what you mean.
Now, if you are talking about a situation where the life of the mother is at risk, and the doctor refuses to save the life of the mother based on his “ethics”, then I can see a bit of pushback on that.
In terms of NY law, the old law allowed abortions after the 24th week of gestation only if the mother’s life was in danger --nothing about the viability of the fetus.There was also concern that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, so adopting the Reproductive Health Act seemed pressing.
I’m not sure what “most people consider an abortion,” but the usual procedure is that a drug is injected into the fetus that stops the heart. Most people wince away from that, including me, but bear in mind we’re talking about situations where a woman was happily anticipating a new baby and found out the fetus couldn’t survive and/or the mother couldn’t. As much as some people would like you to believe women who have late-term abortions are monsters, the reality is that they’re simply put in an excruciating situation and chose the route that means less suffering for their fetus/baby. Labor is usually mechanically induced, and the woman delivers her dead baby a few days later. Many women choose to hold their lifeless babies. Does that sound like a monster to you? Me, neither.
A few examples:
•Jeune’s Syndrome, a condition in which deformation of the rib cage displaces liver and spleen. In severe cases, the lungs don’t fully develop, and the disease is inevitably fatal.
•osteogenesis imperfecta Type II, a condition in which the fetal bones are so fragile, severe fractures occur just from movement in the uterus. Type II babies seldom survive to birth; the few who do die within hours or days. And yes, by that point, the fractures are very painful.
•severe hydramnios: fetus is unable to process amniotic fluid. Usually associated with severe birth defects of the brain and spinal column. Odds of survival until birth are very low. Life-threatening maternal complications include kidney and heart insufficiency, respiratory distress, and many others.
•anencephaly: fetus is missing a skull and parts of the brain, usually the cerebrum, the thinking part of the brain. Very few survive more than hours or a few days after birth.
There are many, many other conditions, each tragic, though fortunately rare–as are late term abortions.
I’m not sure how many requests there are for late-term abortions for non-medical reasons, but I understand they’re even more rare than late-term abortions for medical reasons (Less than 2% of all abortions.). You’ll see people quoting reasons from a Guttmacher Institute survey, but the study lumped together midterm (after 12 weeks) and late-term abortions (after 20 weeks), so it’s pretty useless for late-term abortions. The women having LTA’s didn’t “wait so long”: they’d just received the diagnosis.To answer your last question, it’s not a matter of it being “less of a hassle,” a phrase that trivializes the real and heart-wrenching situations prospective parents face when the only compassionate choice is a late-term abortion.
Here’s an article that tells the story of three women who had late-term abortions. Give it a read. It’ll give you some insight.
Hope all this helps.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/thoracic-dystrophy
So I had a miscarriage late in the second trimester. By miscarriage I mean, the baby died. The procedure I had was, according to the hospital, an induced abortion. I wanted to argue about this. The nurse who was taking care of me said, “medically, any miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion. This is an induced abortion because labor didn’t start spontaneously.”
As far as the effect on me, the hospital induced labor and I was in labor for 12 hours (which is longer by twice as much than the births of any one of my four children who were full term). The good thing about it was since we weren’t concerned about the effect on the baby I could have any drug and I preferred being pretty much unconscious, for a number of reasons.
So, it’s not like you can run in in your third trimester and get a quick scrapeout, the way you can in the first trimester. To answer your question.
I’m pretty sure if there had been a way to do it that was easier on me, my doctor would have done it that way.
Now it is my understanding that under the terms of the old laws that prohibited abortion I would have been left to carry a dead baby around inside me until such time as my body decided to expel it, which could have been months. There are risks to that. I did wait a few days. My doctor suggested a week, but after five days I just couldn’t take it any more. That was a really bad five days. I think I would have gone literally insane if I couldn’t have had this procedure, not to mention there is a point where the decaying fetus starts poisoning the mother’s body.
That’s a rough situation, Hil. Thanks for sharing that. Couldn’t have been easy to do. You have my sympathies and my respect.
Thank you.
You’d think conservatives would be all for “less government interference”. But controlling women is more important. Cuz you can’t trust *women *to decide what should happen to their own damn bodies.:mad::rolleyes:
It’s important to remember that the bill will include the existing definitions that appear in the NY health code, so there’s more to it than its plain text. Terms like “medical judgment” are already well-defined in the existing statutes and case law. Moreover, health care legislation always has a degree of vagueness built in because it incorporates the existing standards of care (which shift as the state of the art shifts).